The Sixth Ghost Story Megapack Page 8

  “I’ll be getting home,” interrupted Mrs. Heath. “Most likely my girl is there waiting for me, and a fine laugh she will have against her poor old mother for being in such a taking. Yes, Lucy will have the breakfast ready. No, thank you; I’ll not wait to take anything. There will be a train back presently; and besides, to tell you the truth, food would choke me till I sit down again with my girl, and then I won’t be able to eat for joy.”

  Husband and wife looked at each other as Mrs. Heath spoke, and for the moment a deep pity pierced the hard crust of their worldly egotism.

  “Wait a minute,” cried Mrs. Pointer, “and I’ll put on my bonnet and go with you.”

  “No,” interrupted Mr. Pointer, instantly seizing his wife’s idea, and appropriating it as his own. “I am the proper person to see this affair out. There is not much doing, and if there were, I would leave everything to obtain justice for your niece. After all, however wrong she may have gone, she is your niece, Maria.”

  With which exceedingly nasty remark, which held a whole volume of unpleasant meaning as to what Mrs. Pointer might expect from that relationship in the future, Mr. Pointer took Mrs. Heath by the arm, and piloted her out into the street, and finally to Lower Halliford, where the missing Lucy was not, and where no tidings of her had come.

  Chapter Four

  Mr. Gage on Portents

  About the time when poor distraught Mrs. Heath, having managed to elude the vigilance of that cleverest of men, Maria Pointer’s husband, had run out of her small house, and was enlisting the sympathies of gossip-loving Shepperton in Lucy’s disappearance, Mr. Paul Murray arrived at Liverpool Street Station, where his luggage and his valet awaited him.

  “Get tickets, Davis,” he said; “I have run it rather close,” and he walked towards Smith’s stall, while his man went into the booking-office.

  As he was about to descend the stairs, Davis became aware of a very singular fact. Looking down the steps, he saw precisely the same marks that had amazed him so short a time previously, being printed hurriedly off by a pair of invisible feet, which ran to the bottom and then flew as if in the wildest haste to the spot where Mr. Murray stood.

  “I am not dreaming, am I?” thought the man; and he shut his eyes and opened them again.

  The footprints were all gone!

  At that moment his master turned from the bookstall and proceeded towards the train. A porter opened the door of a smoking carriage, but Murray shook his head and passed; on. Mr. Davis, once more looking to the ground, saw that those feet belonging to no mortal body were still following: There were not very many passengers, and it was quite plain to him that wherever his master went, the quick, wet prints went too. Even on the step of the compartment Mr. Murray eventually selected the man beheld a mark, as though some one had sprung in after him. He secured the door, and then walked away, to find a place for himself, marvelling in a dazed state of mind what it all meant; indeed, he felt so much dazed that, after he had found to seat to his mind, he; did not immediately notice an old acquaintance in the opposite corner, who affably inquired,—

  “And how is Mr. Davis?”

  Thus addressed, Mr. Davis started from his reverie, and exclaimed, “Why, bless my soul, Gage, who’d have thought of seeing you here?” after which exchange of courtesies the pair shook hands gravely and settled down to converse.

  Mr. Davis explained that he was going down with his governor to Norwich; and Mr. Gage stated that he and the old general had been staying at Thorpe, and were on their way to Lowestoft. Mr. Gage and his old general had also just returned from paying a round of visits in the West of England. “Pleasant enough, but slow,” finished the gentleman’s gentleman. “After all, in the season or out of it, there is no place like London.”

  With this opinion Mr. Davis quite agreed, and said he only wished he had never to leave it, adding,—

  “We have not been away before for a long time; and we should not be going where we are now bound if we had not to humour some fancy of our grandmother’s.”

  “Deuced rough on a man having to humour a grandmother’s fancy,” remarked Mr. Gage.

  “No female ought to be left the control of money,” said Mr. Davis with conviction. “See what the consequences have been in this case—Mrs. Murray outlived her son, who had to ask for every shilling he wanted, and she is so tough she may see the last of her grandson.”

  “That is very likely,” agreed the other. “He looks awfully bad.”

  “You saw him just now, I suppose?”

  “No; but I saw him last night at Chertsey Station, and I could but notice the change in his appearance.”

  For a minute Mr. Davis remained silent. “Chertsey Station!” What could his master have been doing at Chertsey? That was a question he would have to put to himself again, and answer for himself at some convenient time; meanwhile he only answered,—

  “Yes, I observe an alteration in him myself. Anything fresh in the paper?”

  “No,” answered Mr. Gage, handing his friend over the Daily News—the print he affected: “everything is as dull as ditchwater.”

  For many a mile Davis read or affected to read; then he laid the paper aside, and after passing his case, well filled with a tithe levied on Mr. Murray’s finest cigars, to Gage, began solemnly,—

  “I am going to ask you a curious question, Robert, as from man to man.”

  “Ask on,” said Mr. Gage, striking a match.

  “Do you believe in warnings?”

  The old General’s gentleman burst out laughing. He was so tickled that he let his match drop from his fingers.

  “I am afraid most of us have to believe in them, whether we like it or not,” he answered, when he could speak. “Has there been some little difference between you and your governor, then?”

  “You mistake,” was the reply. “I did not mean warnings in the sense of notice, but warnings as warnings, you understand.”

  “Bother me if I do! Yes, now I take you. Do I believe in ‘coming events casting shadows before,’ as some one puts it? Has any shadow of a coming event been cast across you?”

  “No, nor across anybody, so far as I know; but I’ve been thinking the matter over lately, and wondering if there can be any truth in such notions.”

  “What notions?”

  “Why, that there are signs and suchlike sent when trouble is coming to any one.”

  “You may depend it is right enough that signs and tokens are sent. Almost every good family has its special warning: one has its mouse, another its black dog, a third its white bird, a fourth its drummer-boy, and so on. There is no getting over facts, even if you don’t understand them.”

  “Well, it is very hard to believe.”

  “There wouldn’t be much merit in believing if everything were as plain as a pikestaff. You know what the Scotch minister said to his boy: ‘The very devils believe and tremble.’ You wouldn’t be worse than a devil, would you?”

  “Has any sign ever appeared to you?” asked Davis.

  “Not exactly; but lots of people have told me they have to them; for instance, old Seal, who drove the Dowager Countess of Ongar till the day of her death, used to make our hair stand on end talking about phantom carriages that drove away one after another from the door of Hainault House, and wakened every soul on the premises, night after night till the old Earl died. It took twelve clergymen to lay the spirit.”

  “I wonder one wasn’t enough!” ejaculated Davis.

  “There may have been twelve spirits, for all I know,” returned Gage, rather puzzled by this view of the question; “but anyhow, there were twelve clergymen, with the bishop in his lawn sleeves chief among them. And I once lived with a young lady’s-maid, who told me when she was a girl she made her home with her father’s parents. On a winter’s night, after everybody else had gone to bed, s
he sat up to make some girdle-bread—that is a sort of bread the people in Ireland, where she came from, bake over the fire on a round iron plate; with plenty of butter it is not bad eating. Well, as I was saying, she was quite alone; she had taken all the bread off, and was setting it up on edge to cool, supporting one piece against the other, two and two, when on the table where she was putting the cakes she saw one drop of blood fall, and then another, and then another, like the beginning of a shower.

  “She looked to the ceiling, but could see nothing, and still the drops kept on falling slowly, slowly; and then she knew something had gone wrong with one dear to her; and she put a shawl over her head, and without saying a word to anybody, went through the loneliness and darkness of night all by herself to her father’s.”

  “She must have been a courageous girl,” remarked Mr. Davis.

  “She was, and I liked her well. But to the point. When she reached her destination she found her youngest brother dead. Now what do you make of that?”

  “It’s strange, but I suppose he would have died all the same if she had not seen the blood-drops, and I can’t see any good seeing them did her. If she had reached her father’s in time to bid brother good-bye, there would have been some sense in such a sign. As it is, it seems to me a lot of trouble thrown away.”

  Mr. Gage shook his head.

  “What a sceptic you are, Davis! But there! London makes sceptics of the best of us. If you had spent a winter, as I did once, in the Highlands of Scotland, or heard the Banshee wailing for the General’s nephew in the county of Mayo, you wouldn’t have asked what was the use of second sight or Banshees. You would just have stood and trembled as I did many and many a time.”

  “I might,” said Davis doubtfully, wondering what his friend would have thought of those wet little footprints.

  “Hillo, here’s Peterborough! Hadn’t we better stretch our legs? And a glass of something would be acceptable.”

  Of that glass, however, Mr. Davis was not destined to partake.

  “If one of you is Murray’s man,” said the guard as they jumped out, “he wants you.”

  “I’ll be back in a minute,” observed Mr. Murray’s man to his friend, and hastened off.

  But he was not back in a minute; on the contrary, he never returned at all.

  Chapter Five

  Kiss Me

  The first glance in his master’s face filled Davis with a vague alarm. Gage’s talk had produced an effect quite out of proportion to its merit, and a cold terror struck to the valet’s heart as he thought there might, spite of his lofty scepticism, be something after all in the mouse, and the bird, and the drummer-boy, in the black dog, and the phantom carriages, and the spirits it required the united exertions of twelve clergymen (with the bishop in lawn sleeves among them) to lay; in Highland second sight and Irish Banshees; and in little feet paddling round and about a man’s bed and following wherever he went. What awful disaster could those footprints portend? Would the train be smashed up? Did any river lie before them? And if so, was the sign vouchsafed as a warning that they were likely to die by drowning? All these thoughts, and many more, passed through Davis’ mind as he stood looking at his master’s pallid face and waiting for him to speak.

  “I wish you to come in here,” said Mr. Murray after a pause, and with a manifest effort. “I am not quite well.”

  “Can I get you anything, sir?” asked the valet. “Will you not wait and go by another train?”

  “No; I shall be better presently; only I do not like being alone.”

  Davis opened the door and entered the compartment. As he did so, he could not refrain from glancing at the floor, to see if those strange footsteps had been running races there.

  “What are you looking for?” asked Mr. Murray irritably. “Have you dropped anything?”

  “No, sir; O, no! I was only considering where I should be most out of the way.”

  “There,” answered his master, indicating a seat next the window, and at the same time moving to one on the further side of the carriage. “Let no one get in; say I am ill—mad; that I have scarlet fever—the plague—what you please.” And with this wide permission Mr. Murray laid his legs across the opposite cushion, wrapped one rug round his shoulders and another round his body, turned his head aside, and went to sleep or seemed to do so.

  “If he is going to die, I hope it will be considered in my wages, but I am afraid it won’t. Perhaps it is the old lady; but that would be too good fortune,” reflected Davis; and then he fell “a-thinkynge, a-thinkynge,” principally of Gage’s many suggestions and those mysterious footprints, for which he kept at intervals furtively looking. But they did not appear; and at last the valet, worn out with vain conjectures, dropped into a pleasant doze, from which he did not awake till they were nearing Norwich.

  “We will go to an hotel till I find out what Mrs. Murray’s plans are,” said that lady’s grandson when he found himself on the platform; and as if they had been only waiting this piece of information, two small invisible feet instantly skipped out of the compartment they had just vacated, and walked after Mr. Murray, leaving visible marks at every step.

  “Great heavens! What is the meaning of this?” mentally asked Davis, surprised by fright after twenty prayerless and scheming years into an exclamation which almost did duty for a prayer. For a moment he felt sick with terror; then clutching his courage with the energy of desperation, he remembered that though wet footprints might mean death and destruction to the Murrays, his own ancestral annals held no record of such a portent.

  Neither did the Murrays’, so far as he was aware, but then he was aware of very little about that family. If the Irish girl Gage spoke of was informed by drops of blood that her brother lay dead, why should not Mr. Murray be made aware, through the token of these pattering footsteps, that he would very soon succeed to a large fortune?

  Then any little extra attention Mr. Davis showed his master now would be remembered in his wages.

  It was certainly unpleasant to know these damp feet had come down from London, and were going to the hotel with them; but “needs must” with a certain driver, and if portents and signs and warnings were made worth his while, Mr. Davis conceived there might be advantages connected with them.

  Accordingly, when addressing Mr. Murray, his valet’s voice assumed a more deferential tone than ever, and his manner became so respectfully tender, that onlookers rashly imagined the ideal master and the faithful servant of fiction had at last come in the flesh to Norwich. Davis’ conduct was, indeed, perfect: devoted without being intrusive, he smoothed away all obstacles which could be smoothed, and even, by dint of a judicious two minutes alone with the doctor for whom he sent, managed the introduction of a useful sedative in some medicine, which the label stated was to be taken every four hours.

  He saw to Mr. Murray’s rooms and Mr. Murray’s light repast, and then he waited on Mr. Murray’s grandmother, and managed that lady so adroitly, she at length forgave the offender for having caught a chill.

  “Your master is always doing foolish things,” she said. “It would have been much better had he remained even for a day or two in London rather than risk being laid up. However, you must nurse him carefully, and try to get him well enough to dine at Losdale Court on Monday. Fortunately tomorrow is Sunday, and he can take complete rest. Now Davis, remember I trust to you.”

  “I will do my best, ma’am,” Davis said humbly, and went back to tell his master the interview had gone off without any disaster.

  Then, after partaking of some mild refreshment, he repaired to bed in a dressing-room opening off Mr. Murray’s apartment, so that he might be within call and close at hand to administer those doses which were to be taken at intervals of four hours.

  “I feel better tonight,” said Mr. Murray last thing.

  “It is this beautiful air, si
r,” answered Davis, who knew it was the sedative. “I hope you will be quite well in the morning.”

  But spite of the air, in the grey dawn Mr. Murray had again a dreadful dream—a worse dream than that which laid its heavy hand on him in London. He thought he was by the riverside beyond Dockett Point—beyond where the water-lilies grow. To his right was a little grove of old and twisted willows guarding a dell strewed in dry seasons with the leaves of many autumns, but, in his dream, wet and sodden by reason of heavy rain. There in June wild roses bloomed; there in winter hips and haws shone ruddy against the snow. To his left flowed a turbid river—turbid with floods that had troubled its peace. On the other blank lay a stagnant length of Surrey, while close at hand the Middlesex portion of Chertsey Mead stretched in a hopeless flat on to the bridge, just visible in the early twilight of a summer’s evening that had followed after a dull lowering day.

  From out of the gathering gloom there advanced walking perilously near to Dumsey Deep, a solitary female figure, who, when they met, said, “So you’ve come at last;” after which night seemed to close around him, silence for a space to lay its hands upon him.

  About the same time Davis was seeing visions also. He had lain long awake, trying to evolve order out of the day’s chaos, but in vain. The stillness fretted him; the idea that even then those mysterious feet might in the darkness be printing their impress about his master’s bed irritated his brain. Twice he got up to give that medicine ordered to be taken every four hours, but finding on each occasion Mr. Murray sleeping quietly, he forebore to arouse him.

  He heard hour after hour chime, and it was not till the first hint of dawn that he fell into a deep slumber. Then he dreamt about the subject nearest his heart—a public house.

  He thought he had saved or gained enough to buy a roadside inn on which he had long cast eyes of affectionate regard—not in London, but not too far out: a delightful inn, where holiday-makers always stopped for refreshment, and sometimes for the day; an inn with a pretty old-fashioned garden filled with fruit trees and vegetables, with a grass-plot around which were erected little arbours, where people could have tea or stronger stimulants; a skittle-ground, where men could soon make themselves very thirsty; and many other advantages tedious to mention. He had the purchase-money in his pocket, and, having paid a deposit, was proceeding to settle the affair, merely diverging from his way to call on a young widow he meant to make Mrs. Davis—a charming woman, who, having stood behind a bar before, seemed the very person to make the Wheatsheaf a triumphant success. He was talking to her sensibly, when suddenly she amazed him by saying, in a sharp, hurried voice, “Kiss me, kiss me, kiss me!” three times over.