Old Fires and Profitable Ghosts Part 7

"But the unarmed man happens to be himself."

"Suppose that in this instance your distinction won't work? Look here,"

he went on, as I pushed back my chair impatiently, "I have one truth more for you. I swear I believe that what we have hated, we two, is not each other, but ourselves or our own likeness. I swear I believe we two have so shared natures in hate that no power can untwist and separate them to render each his own. But I swear also I believe that if you lift that revolver to kill, you will take aim, not at me, but by instinct at a worse enemy--yourself, vital in my heart."

"You have some pretty theories to-night," I sneered. "Perhaps you'll go on to tell me which of us two has been Elaine's husband, feeding daintily in Lennox Gardens, clothed in purple and fine linen, while the other--"

He interrupted me by picking up his revolver and striding to the fireplace again.

"So be it, since you will have it so. Kill me," he added, with a queer look, "and perhaps you may go back to Lennox Gardens and enjoy all these things in my place."

I took my station. Both revolvers were levelled now. I took sight along mine at his detested face. It was white but curiously eager-- hopeful even. I lowered my arm, scanning his face still; and still scanning it, set my weapon down on the table.

"I believe you are mad," said I slowly. "But one thing I see--that, mad or not, you're in earnest. For some reason you want me to kill you; therefore that shall wait. For some reason it is torture to you to live and do without me: well, I'll try you with that. It will do me good to hurt you a bit." I slipped the revolver into my pocket and tapped it.

"Though I don't understand them, I won't quarrel with your sentiments so long as you suffer from them. When that fails, I'll find another opportunity for this. Good night." I stepped to the door. "Reggie!"

I shut the door on his cry: crossed the corridor, and climbing out through the window, let myself drop into the lane.

As my feet touched the snow a revolver-shot rang out in the room behind me.

I caught at the frozen sill to steady myself: and crouching there, listened. Surely the report must have alarmed the house! I waited for the sound of footsteps: waited for three minutes--perhaps longer.

None came. To be sure, the room stood well apart from the house: but it was incredible that the report should have awakened no one! My own ears still rang with it.

Still no footsteps came. The horse in the stable close by was still shuffling his hoof on the cobbles. No other sound . . .

Very stealthily I hoisted myself up on the sill again, listened, dropped inside, and tip-toed my way to the door. The candles were still burning in the Room of Mirrors. And by the light of them, as I entered, Gervase stepped to meet me.

"Ah, it's you," I stammered. "I heard--that is, I thought--"

And with that I saw--recognised with a catch of the breath--that the figure I spoke to was not Gervase, but my own reflected image, stepping forward with pale face and ghastly from a mirror. Yet a moment before I could have sworn it was Gervase.

Gervase lay stretched on the hearthrug with his hand towards the fire.

I caught up a candle, and bent over him. His features were not to be recognised.

As I straightened myself up, with the candle in my hand, for an instant those features, obliterated in the flesh, gazed at me in a ring, a hundred times repeated behind a hundred candles. And again, at a second glance, I saw that the face was not Gervase's but my own.

I set down the candle and made off, closing the door behind me.

The horror of it held me by the hair, but I flung it off and pelted down the lane and through the mews. Once in the street I breathed again, pulled myself together, and set off at a rapid walk, southwards, but not clearly knowing whither.

As a matter of fact, I took the line by which I had come: with the single difference that I made straight into Berkeley Square through Bruton Street. I had, I say, no clear purpose in following this line rather than another. I had none for taking Lennox Gardens on the way to my squalid lodgings in Chelsea. I had a purpose, no doubt; but will swear it only grew definite as I came in sight of the lamp still burning beneath Gervase's portico.

There was a figure, too, under the lamp--the butler--bending there and rolling up the strip of red carpet. As he pulled its edges from the frozen snow I came on him suddenly.

"Oh, it's you, Sir!" He stood erect, and with the air of a man infinitely relieved.

"Gervase!"

The door opened wide and there stood Elaine in her ball-gown, a-glitter with diamonds.

"Gervase, dear, where have you been? We have been terribly anxious--"

She said it, looking straight down on me--on me--who stood in my tattered clothes in the full glare of the lamp. And then I heard the butler catch his breath, and suddenly her voice trailed off in wonder and pitiful disappointment.

"It's not Gervase! It's Reg--Mr. Travers. I beg your pardon.

I thought--"

But I pa.s.sed up the steps and stood before her: and said, as she drew back--

"There has been an accident. Gervase has shot himself." I turned to the butler. "You had better run to the police station. Stay: take this revolver. It won't count anything as evidence: but I ask you to examine it and make sure all the chambers are loaded."

A thud in the hall interrupted me. I ran in and knelt beside Elaine, and as I stooped to lift her--as my hand touched her hair--this was the jealous question on my lips--

"What has _she_ to do with it. It is _I_ who cannot do without him--who must miss him always!"

A PAIR OF HANDS

AN OLD MAID'S GHOST-STORY

"Yes," said Miss Le Petyt, gazing into the deep fireplace and letting her hands and her knitting lie for the moment idle in her lap.

"Oh, yes, I have seen a ghost. In fact I have lived in a house with one for quite a long time."

"How you _could_--" began one of my host's daughters; and "_You_, Aunt Emily?" cried the other at the same moment.

Miss Le Petyt, gentle soul, withdrew her eyes from the fireplace and protested with a gay little smile. "Well, my dears, I am not quite the coward you take me for. And, as it happens, mine was the most harmless ghost in the world. In fact"--and here she looked at the fire again-- "I was quite sorry to lose her."

"It was a woman, then? Now _I_ think," said Miss Blanche, "that female ghosts are the horridest of all. They wear little shoes with high red heels, and go about _tap, tap_, wringing their hands."

"This one wrung her hands, certainly. But I don't know about the high red heels, for I never saw her feet. Perhaps she was like the Queen of Spain, and hadn't any. And as for the hands, it all depends _how_ you wring them. There's an elderly shop-walker at Knightsbridge, for instance--"

"Don't be prosy, dear, when you know that we're just dying to hear the story."

Miss Le Petyt turned to me with a small deprecating laugh. "It's such a little one."

"The story, or the ghost?"

"Both."

And this was Miss Le Petyt's story:--

"It happened when I lived down in Cornwall, at Tresillack on the south coast. Tresillack was the name of the house, which stood quite alone at the head of a coombe, within sound of the sea but without sight of it; for though the coombe led down to a wide open beach, it wound and twisted half a dozen times on its way, and its overlapping sides closed the view from the house, which was advertised as 'secluded.' I was very poor in those days. Your father and all of us were poor then, as I trust, my dears, you will never be; but I was young enough to be romantic and wise enough to like independence, and this word 'secluded'

took my fancy.

"The misfortune was that it had taken the fancy, or just suited the requirements, of several previous tenants. You know, I dare say, the kind of person who rents a secluded house in the country? Well, yes, there are several kinds; but they seem to agree in being odious. No one knows where they come from, though they soon remove all doubt about where they're 'going to,' as the children say. 'Shady' is the word, is it not? Well, the previous tenants of Tresillack (from first to last a bewildering series) had been shady with a vengeance.

"I knew nothing of this when I first made application to the landlord, a solid yeoman inhabiting a farm at the foot of the coombe, on a cliff overlooking the beach. To him I presented myself fearlessly as a spinster of decent family and small but a.s.sured income, intending a rural life of combined seemliness and economy. He met my advances politely enough, but with an air of suspicion which offended me.

I began by disliking him for it: afterwards I set it down as an unpleasant feature in the local character. I was doubly mistaken.