The Laughing Mill and Other Stories Part 8

"Drayton," said my friend--his utterance was interrupted somewhat by the nervous starts and twitches which still mastered his efforts to control them--"something terrible has happened. I wanted to tell you. I can't fathom it. Drayton, I've seen---- May I take a gla.s.s of wine?"

He drank two gla.s.ses in quick succession. As he hardly ever touched wine, there was no little significance in the act. The rich old liquor evidently did him good. To tell the truth, I would rather have given him some brandy. He was not in a state to appreciate a fine flavour, and my port was as rare as it was good. However, I was really concerned about him, and would gladly have given the whole decanterful to set him right again.

He would not take a chair, but stood on the rug with his back to the fire. As I sat looking up at his tall figure, I caught the painted eye of my priestly ancestor over his shoulder, and it seemed to me to twinkle with saturnine humour.

"Well, what have you seen, Calbot?"

"Some evil thing has come between Miss Burleigh and me, and has parted us. I have seen it--two or three times. She has felt it. It's killing her, Drayton. As for me.... You know me pretty well, and you know what my life has been thus far. I've not been a good man, of course--quite the contrary; I've done any quant.i.ty of bad things, but I don't know that I've committed any such hideous sin as ought to bring a punishment like this upon me--not to speak of _her_! I'm not a parricide, nor an adulterer; I never sold my salvation to the devil--did I, Drayton?"

"No, no, of course not, my dear Calbot. You have a fever, that's all.

Don't get excited. Just lie down on the sofa for half an hour, and quiet yourself a little."

"I see you think I'm out of my head, and no wonder. I behave like a madman. But I'm not mad at all; I wish I could think I were. This shuddering--it won't last--but I tell you, Drayton, when you see a man of my health and strength stricken this way in two days, you may believe it would have driven many a man to madness, or to suicide----"

"Let me pour it out for you; your hand shakes so. I can give you some splendid French cognac, if you'd prefer it? Well. Hadn't you better lie down?"

"Come, I can control myself, now--I will!" said Calbot, through his teeth, and putting a strong constraint upon himself. For about a minute he kept silent, the blood gradually coming into his cheeks and the nervous twitchings growing less frequent.

"That's better," said I, encouragingly. "You don't look so much as though you'd seen a ghost, now. How is that Chancery case of yours getting on?"

"A ghost? You speak lightly enough, and I suppose your idea of a ghost is some conventional bogey such as children are scared with. We laugh at such things--heaven knows why! An evil, sin-breathing spirit, coming from h.e.l.l to take vengeance, for some dead and buried wrong, upon living men and women--what is there laughable in that?"

"Really, Calbot," I said, with a smile--a rather uneasy smile, be it admitted--"I never laughed at a ghost, for the simple reason that I never saw one to laugh at."

"You never saw one, and you mean to hint, I suppose, that there are none to see?"

"Well," returned I, still maintaining a precarious grimace, "I'm not a spiritualist, you know----"

"Nor I," interrupted Calbot, in a lower and quieter tone than he had yet used. He took a chair, and, sitting down close in front of me, bent forward and whispered in my ear: "But I saw the soul of a dead man yesterday; and this afternoon I saw it again, and chased it from the Burleighs' house in Mayfair, along the Strand, and through the heart of London, to its grave in St. G----'s churchyard. I copied the inscription on the stone: it is a very old one, as you will see by the date."

A far bolder man than I have ever claimed to be might have felt his heart stand still at this speech; and its effect on me was greatly heightened by Calbot's tone and manner, and by the way he fastened his eyes upon me. Nor were the circ.u.mstances in other respects rea.s.suring--alone at night, with a man three or four times my physical equal, who was wholly emanc.i.p.ated from rational control. I sat quite still for a few moments--very long moments they seemed to me--staring helplessly at Calbot, who took a small notebook out of his pocket, tore out a leaf with something scrawled on it, and handed it to me. I read it mechanically--"Archibald Armstrong. Died February 6th, 1698." Meanwhile Calbot helped himself to another gla.s.s of wine; but I was too much unnerved to restrain him, and, indeed, too much bewildered.

"Archibald Armstrong," muttered I, repeating the name aloud; "died February 6th--yes; but it was this present year 1875--not 1698. Why, I went to the auction-sale of his effects this very afternoon!"

"Keep the paper," said Calbot, not noticing my observation, "it may possibly lead to something. And now I wish you to listen to my statement. I am neither crazy, Drayton, nor intoxicated. But I am not the same man you have known heretofore; my life has been seared--blasted. Perhaps you think my language extravagant; but after what I have experienced there can be no such thing as extravagance for me. It is an awful thing," he added, with a long involuntary sigh, "to have been face to face with an evil spirit!"

"In Heaven's name, Calbot," cried I, starting up from my chair, and trembling all over, I believe, from nervous excitement, "don't go on talking and looking like that. If you can tell me a straightforward, consistent story, I'll listen to it; but these hints and interjections of yours will drive me mad!"

"I'm going to tell you, Drayton, though it will be the next worst thing to meeting that----Thing----itself, to tell about it. But the matter is too grim earnest to allow of trifling. You have a great deal of knowledge on queer and out-of-the-way subjects, Drayton, and I thought it not impossible that you might make some suggestions, for there must be some reason for this hideous visitation--some cause for it; and though all is over for me now, there would be a kind of satisfaction in knowing what that reason was. Besides, I must speak to someone, and you are a dear friend, and an old one."

I was a good deal relieved to hear Calbot speak thus affectionately of our relations with each other; and indeed he appeared no way inclined to violence. Accordingly, having offered him a Cabana (which he refused), I put the box and the decanter back in the cupboard, and locked the door.

Then, relighting my own cigar, and putting a lump or two of coal on the fire, I resumed my chair, and bade my friend begin his story.

VI.

"There was an intermarriage between the Burleighs and the Calbots four or five generations ago," said he; "I found the record of it in our family papers, shortly before Miss Burleigh and I were engaged; but it appears not to have turned out well. I don't know whether the husband and wife quarrelled, or whether their troubles came from some outside interference; but they had not been long married before a separation took place--not a regular divorce, but the wife went quietly back to her fathers house, and my ancestor is supposed to have gone abroad. But this was not the end of it, Drayton; for, some years later, the husband returned, and he and his wife lived together again."

"Was there any further estrangement between them, afterwards?"

"It is an ugly story," said Calbot, gloomily, getting up from his chair, and taking his old place before the fire. "No; they lived together--as long as they did live! But it was about the era of the witchcraft mania--or delusion, if you choose to call it so--and it is strongly hinted in some of the doc.u.ments in my possession that the Calbots were--not witches--but victims of witchcraft. They accused no one, but they seemed to have been shunned by everybody like persons under the shadow of a curse. Well--it wasn't a great while before Mrs. Calbot died, and her husband went mad soon afterwards. There were two children.

One of them, the son, was born before the first separation. The other, a daughter, came into the world after the reunion, and she was an idiot!"

"An ugly story, sure enough," said I, shrugging my shoulders with a chilly sensation; "but what has it to do with your business?"

"Perhaps nothing; but there is one thing which would go for nothing in the way of legal evidence, but which has impressed me, nevertheless. The date of the second coming-together of my ancestor and his wife was 1698."

"Well?"

"If you look at that paper I gave you you'll see the date of Armstrong's death is also 1698."

"Still I don't see the point."

"It's simply this: the--Thing I saw was the condemned soul of that Archibald Armstrong. Who he may have been I don't know; but I can't help believing that my ancestor knew him when he was still in the flesh. They had a feud, perhaps--maybe about this very marriage--of course you understand I'm only supposing a case. Well, Calbot gets the better of his rival, and is married. Then Armstrong exerts his malignant ingenuity to set them at odds with each other. He may have played on the superst.i.tious fancies which they probably shared with others of that age, and at last we may suppose he accomplished their separation."

"An ingenious idea," I admitted, "but what about your date?"

"Why, on hearing of his death, they would naturally suppose all danger over, and that they might live together unmolested. And from this point you may differ with me or not, as you choose. I believe that it was only after Armstrong was dead that his power for evil became commensurate with his will. I believe, Drayton," said Calbot, drawing himself up to his full height, and emphasising his words with the slow gesture of his right arm, "that the soul of that dead man haunted that wretched couple from the day of his death until the whole tragedy was consummated--until the woman died and the man went mad. And I believe that his devilish malignity has lived on to this day, and wreaked itself, a second time, on Miss Burleigh and myself."

There was a short pause, during which my poor friend stood tapping one foot on the hearth-rug, his eyes bent downwards in sombre abstraction.

"Look here, my dear John," I said at length, speaking with an effort, for there was a sensation of heavy oppression on my chest; "listen to me, old fellow. You've had time to cool down and bethink yourself: so far as I can judge you appear, as you say, neither crazy nor intoxicated. Now I wish you, remembering that we are sensible, enlightened men, living in London in this year 1875, to tell me honestly whether I am to understand you as deliberately a.s.serting a belief in visitations from the other world. Because, really, you know, that is what anyone would infer from the way you have been talking this evening."

"I see there would be little use, Drayton, in my answering your question directly; but I will give you a deliberate and honest account of my personal experiences during these last two days: there will be no danger of your mistaking my meaning then. You won't mind my walking up and down the room while I'm speaking, will you? The subject is a painful one, and motion seems to make it easier, somehow."

I did mind it very much, it made me as nervous as a water-beetle; but, of course, I forbore to say so, and Calbot went on:

"I said I found out all this ancestral trouble some time before I was engaged; and, as you may imagine, I kept silence about it to Miss Burleigh. I think now it was a mistake to do so; but my ideas on many subjects have undergone modification of late. I believe I had forgotten all about the discovery by the time I had made up my mind to risk an avowal: at any rate, I had no misgivings about it; and when I came out from my interview with her--the happiest man in England!--ah Drayton, it seemed to me then that there could be no more pains nor shadows in life for me thence-forward for ever!"

I devoutly wished, not for the first time that evening, that Calbot would not be so painfully in earnest. In his normal state it was difficult to get a serious word out of him; he was br.i.m.m.i.n.g over with quaint humour and fun; but, as he himself had remarked, he was another man to-day. After walking backwards and forwards once or twice in silence, he continued:

"You know how happy I was those first few days. I daresay you wished me and my happiness in Jericho, when I insisted on deluging you with an account of it. Think! Drayton, that was hardly a week ago. Well, as soon as I had got a little bit used to the feeling of being engaged, I began to think what I should give her--Edna, you know--for a betrothal gift. A ring, of course, is the usual thing; but I couldn't be satisfied with a ring: I wanted my gift to be something rare--unique; in short, something different from what any other fellow could give his mistress; for I loved her more than any woman was ever loved before. After a good deal of fruitless bother, I suddenly bethought myself of a jewel-box which had belonged to my mother--G.o.d bless her!--and which she had bequeathed to me, intending, very likely, that I should use it for the very purpose I was now thinking of. I got out the box, and overhauled it. There was a lot of curious old trinkets in it; but the thing which at once took my eye was a delicately wrought gold necklace, that looked as though it had been made expressly for Edna's throat. There was a locket attached to it, which I at first meant to take off; but on examining it closely, I found it was quite worthy of the chain--was an exquisite work of art, indeed. It was made of a dark yellow or brownish sort of stone, semi-transparent, and was engraven with a very finely-wrought bas-relief."

"Calbot!" exclaimed I, starting upright in my chair, "what sort of a stone did you say that locket was made of?"

"What is the matter?" returned he, stopping short in his walk and facing me with a glance partly apprehensive, partly expectant. "I never saw exactly such a stone before--but why?"

"Oh, nothing," said I, after a moment's excited thought; "it certainly is very strange! But, never mind, go on," I added, throwing a glance at the old ma.n.u.script which lay open on the table; "go on. I'll tell you afterwards; I must turn it over in my mind a bit."

"The reason I described it so minutely," remarked Calbot, "was that I got a notion into my head that it had something to do with what happened afterwards, and the reason of that notion is, that almost from the very moment that Edna took the necklace--I clasped it round her neck myself--the strange awful influence--visitation--call it what you like--began to be apparent.

"Oh Drayton, you can never know how lovely, how divine she looked that evening. She had on what they call, I believe, a demi-toilette; open at the throat, you know, and half the arm showing. No woman could have looked more beautiful than she, before I put on the chain and locket; yet when they were on, she looked as handsome again. It was really wonderful--the effect they had. Her eyes deepened, and an indescribable change or modulation--imperceptible, very likely, to anyone beside myself, her lover--came over her face. I think it was a shade of sadness--of mystery--no, I can only repeat, that it was indescribable; but it gave her beauty just the touch that made it, humanly speaking, perfect. I daresay this is all very tiresome to you, Drayton, but I can't help it!"

"Oh, go on, my dear fellow," said I warmly; for, indeed, I was moved as well as excited. "Won't you sit down? Here, take my chair!"

But he would not.

"As I fastened the clasp, I said: 'You are fettered for ever now, Edna!'