The Grey Room Part 9

"Don't bother about the future, don't think about it. Consider yourself, and take a little rest this afternoon. Everybody is very concerned for you, they mean to be awfully decent in their way; but I know how they try you. They can't help it. Such a thing takes them out of their daily round, and beggars their experience, and makes them excited and tactless. There's no precedent for them, and you know how most people depend on precedent and how they're bowled over before anything new."

"I will go to Mary, I think. Has the undertaker been?"

"Yes, uncle."

"I want him to be buried with us here. I should not suppose his father will object."

"Not likely. Mary would wish it so."

"It was so typical of Mary to think of Septimus May before everybody.

She put her own feelings from her that she might soften the blow for him."

"She would."

"Are you equal to telling the clergyman at the station that his son is dead, or can't you trust yourself to do it?"

"I expect he'll know it well enough, but I'll tell him everything there is to tell. I remember long ago, after the wedding, that he was interested in haunted rooms, and said he believed in such things on Scriptural grounds."

Sir Walter took pause at this statement.

"That is news to me. Supposing he--However, we need not trouble ourselves with him yet. He will, of course, be as deeply concerned to get to the bottom of this as I am, though we must not interfere, or make the inquiry harder for Hardcastle than he is bound to find it."

"Certainly n.o.body must interfere. I only hope we can get Peter Hardcastle."

"Tell them to call me when Mr. May arrives, and not sooner. I'll see Mary, then lie down for an hour or two."

"You feel all right? Should you care to see Mannering?"

"I am right enough. Say 'Good-bye' to Vane and Miles Handford for me. They may have to return here presently. One can't tell who may be wanted, and who may not be. I don't know--these things are outside my experience; but they had better both leave you their directions."

"I'll ask them."

Sir Walter visited his daughter, and changed his mind about sleeping.

She was pa.s.sing through an hour of unspeakable horror. The dark temple of realization had opened for her and she was treading its dreary aisles. Henceforth for long days--she told herself for ever--sorrow and sense of unutterable loss must be her companions and share her waking hours.

They stopped together alone till the dusk came down and Mannering returned. He stayed but a few minutes, and presently they heard his car start again, while that containing the departing guests and Henry Lennox immediately followed it.

In due course Septimus May returned to Chadlands with him. The clergyman had heard of his son's end, and went immediately to see the dead man. There Mary joined him, and witnessed his self-control under very shattering grief. He was thin, clean-shaven--a grey man with smouldering eyes and an expression of endurance. A fanatic in faith, by virtue of certain asperities of mind and a critical temperament, he had never made friends, won his parish into close ties, nor advanced the cause of his religion as he had yearned to do. With the zeal of a reformer, he had entered the ministry in youth; but while commanding respect for his own rule of conduct and the example he set his little flock, their affection he never won. The people feared him, and dreaded his stern criticism.

Once certain spirits, smarting under pulpit censure, had sought to be rid of him; but no grounds existed on which they could eject the reverend gentleman or challenge his status. He remained, therefore, as many like him remain, embedded in his parish and unknown beyond it.

He was a poor student of human nature and life had dimmed his old ambitions, soured his hopes; but it had not clouded his faith. With a pa.s.sionate fervor he believed all that he tried to teach, and held that an almighty, all loving and all merciful G.o.d controlled every destiny, ordered existence for the greatest and least, and allowed nothing to happen upon earth that was not the best that could happen for the immortal beings He had created in His own image. Upon this a.s.surance fell the greatest, almost the only, blow that life could deal Septimus May. He was stricken suddenly, fearfully with his unutterable loss; but his agony turned into prayer while he knelt beside his son. He prayed with a fiery intensity and a resonant vibration of voice that scorched rather than comforted the woman who knelt beside him. The fervor of the man's emotion and the depth of his conviction, running like a torrent through the narrow channels of his understanding, were destined presently to complicate a situation sufficiently painful without intervention; for a time swiftly came when Septimus May forced his beliefs upon Chadlands and opposed them to the opinions of other people as deeply concerned as himself to explain the death of his son.

Mr. May, learning that most of the house party could not depart until the following morning, absented himself from dinner; indeed, he spent his time almost entirely with his boy, and when night came kept vigil beside him. Something of the strange possession of his mind already appeared, in curious hints that puzzled Sir Walter; but it was not until after the post-mortem examination and inquest that his extraordinary views were elaborated.

Millicent Fayre-Mich.e.l.l and her uncle were the first to depart on the following day. The girl harbored a grievance.

"Surely Mary might have seen me a moment to say 'Good-bye,'" she said. "It's a very dreadful thing, but we've been so sympathetic and understanding about it that I think they ought to feel rather grateful.

They might realize how trying it is for us, too. And to let me go without even seeing her--she saw Mrs. Travers over and over again."

"Do not mind. Grief makes people selfish," declared Felix. "Probably we should not have acted so. I think we should have hidden our sufferings and faced our duty; but perhaps we are exceptional. I dare say Mrs. May will write and express regret and grat.i.tude later. We must allow for her youth and sorrow."

Mr. Fayre-Mich.e.l.l rather prided himself on the charity of this conclusion.

When Mr. and Mrs. Travers departed, Sir Walter bade them farewell.

The lady wept, and her tears fell on his hand as he held it. She was hysterical.

"For Heaven's sake don't let Mary be haunted by that dreadful priest,"

she said. "There is something terrible about him. He has no bowels of compa.s.sion. I tried to console him for the loss of his son, and he turned upon me as if I were weak-minded."

"I had to tell him he was being rude and forgetting that he spoke to a lady," said Ernest Travers. "One makes every allowance for a father's sufferings; but they should not take the form of abrupt and harsh speech to a sympathetic fellow-creature--nay, to anyone, let alone a woman. His sacred calling ought to--"

"A man's profession cannot alter his manners, my dear Ernest; they come from defects of temperament, no doubt. May must not be judged. His faith would move mountains."

"So would mine," said Ernest Travers, "and so would yours, Walter. But it is perfectly possible to be a Christian and a gentleman. To imply that our faith was weak because we expressed ordinary human emotions and pitied him unfeignedly for the loss of his only child--"

"Good-bye, good-bye, my dear friends," answered the other. "I cannot say how I esteem your kindly offices in this affliction. May we meet again presently. G.o.d bless and keep you both."

The post-mortem examination revealed no physical reason why Thomas May should have ceased to breathe. Neither did the subsequent investigations of a Government a.n.a.lytical chemist throw any light upon the sailor's sudden death. No cause existed, and therefore none could be reported at the inquest held a day later.

The coroner's jury brought in a verdict rarely heard, but none dissented from it. They held that May had received his death "by the hand of G.o.d."

"All men receive death from the hand of G.o.d," said Septimus May, when the judicial inquiry was ended. "They receive life from the hand of G.o.d also. But, while bowing to that, there is a great deal more we are called to do when G.o.d's hand falls as it has fallen upon my son.

To-night I shall pray beside his dust, and presently, when he is at peace, I shall be guided. There is a grave duty beside me, Sir Walter, and none must come between me and that duty."

"There is a duty before all of us, and be sure n.o.body will shrink from it. I have done what is right, so far. We have secured a famous detective--the most famous in England, they tell me. He is called Peter Hardcastle, and he will, I hope, be able to arrive here immediately."

The clergyman shook his head.

"I will say nothing at present," he answered. "But, believe me, a thousand detectives cannot explain my son's death. I shall return to this subject after the funeral, Sir Walter. But my conviction grows that the reason of these things will never be revealed to the eye of science.

To the eye of faith alone we must trust the explanation of what has happened. There are things concealed from the wise and prudent--to be revealed unto babes."

That night the master of Chadlands, his nephew, and the priest dined together, and Henry Lennox implored a privilege.

"I feel I owe it to poor Tom in a way," he said. "I beg that you will let me spend the night in the Grey Room, Uncle Walter. I would give my soul to clear this."

But his uncle refused with a curt shake of the head, and the clergyman uttered a reproof.

"Do not speak so lightly," he said. "You use a common phrase and a very objectionable phrase, young man. Do you rate your soul so low that you would surrender it for the satisfaction of a morbid craving? For that is all this amounts to. Not to such an inquirer will my son's death reveal its secret."

"I have already received half-a-dozen letters from people offering and wishing to spend a night in that accursed room," said Sir Walter.

"Do not call it 'accursed' until you know more," urged Septimus May.

"You have indeed charity," answered the other.

"Why withhold charity? We must approach the subject in the only spirit that can disarm the danger. These inquirers who seek to solve the mystery are not concerned with my son's death, only the means that brought it about. Not to such as they will any answer be vouchsafed, and not to the spirit of materialistic inquiry, either. I speak what I know, and will say more upon the subject at another time."

"You cannot accept this awful thing without resentment or demur, Mr.

May?" asked Henry Lennox.