IX.
Of my own accord I now reproduced my decanter of port-wine, and Calbot and I finished it before either of us spoke another word.
What he was thinking of meanwhile I know not; for my part, I was endeavouring to put in order a number of disjointed ideas, imbibed at various epochs during this evening, whose logical arrangement, I was convinced, would go far towards elucidating much of the mystery. As to the positively supernatural part of Calbot’s experience, of course I had no way of accounting for that; but I fancied there were materials at hand tolerably competent to raise a ghost, allowing such a thing as a ghost to be possible.
“I am glad, Calbot,” I began, “that you came to me. Your good sense—or instinct, perhaps—directed you aright. Do not despair: I should not be surprised were we to manage between us to discover that your happiness, so far from being at an end, was just on the point of establishing itself upon a trustworthy foundation.” Calbot shook his head gloomily. “Well, well,” resumed I, “let us see. In the first place—as regards that locket. It will perhaps surprise you to learn that I had heard of it before you came this evening—had read quite a minute description of it, in fact.”
“Where?” demanded my friend, raising his eyes.
“That will appear later. I must first ask you whether, in the old family documents you spoke of, the personal appearance of this Archibald Armstrong was particularly delineated?”
“I hardly know; I have no recollection of any especial passage—and yet I fancy it must have been given with some fulness; because when I saw the hobgoblin, its costume and aspect seemed curiously familiar.”
“And had I seen it, there is little doubt in my mind that I should have recognised it also.”
“Indeed!” exclaimed Calbot, sitting upright in his chair, “how happens that?”
“Wait a moment, I am merely collecting evidence. Now, have you any reason to suppose that a connection of any sort—friendly, business, or other—subsisted between your unhappy ancestor and this Armstrong previous to the former’s marriage?”
“Do you mean whether he was under any obligations to Armstrong?”
“Yes.”
“He may have been—but the idea is new to me. How——”
“I am not done yet. Now, did it never occur to you—or, I should say, does it not seem probable—that the locket which you had found hidden away in your mother’s jewel-box was in some way connected with the family tragedy you told me of?”
“I have thought of it, Drayton; there is no difficulty in imagining such a thing; the trouble is, we haven’t the slightest evidence of it.”
“I was about to say,” I rejoined, “that there is direct evidence of precisely such a locket having been bought, in the latter part of the seventeenth century, by precisely such a looking man as the hobgoblin you saw to-day. It was to be a wedding-gift to the woman he was to marry the next day.”
“Drayton!”
“That woman deceived him, and eloped on the eve of her marriage with a protégé of his. He professed forgiveness, and sent the locket as a pledge of it.”
“Odd!”
“He died in 1698, and his last recorded words were a curse invoked upon those whom he had before professed to pardon—upon them and their posterity.”
“But, Drayton—what——”
“It is my opinion that his forgiveness was merely a cloak to his deadly and unrelenting hatred. It is my opinion, Calbot, that the pledge he gave was poisonous with evil and malicious influences. The locket was made of tourmaline, which has mysterious properties. No doubt he believed it a veritable witch’s talisman; and from the sufferings which afterwards befell his enemies (not to speak of your own experience), one might almost fancy witchcraft to be not entirely a delusion after all.”
“One might, indeed! But if, as you seem to imply, this locket enabled Armstrong to persecute Calbot and his wife, why did not they send it back or destroy it?”
“Simply because they were not aware of its evil nature, and fancied that Armstrong’s (if it were his) profession of forgiveness had been genuine. Very likely Mrs. Calbot habitually wore it on her bosom, as Miss Burleigh did again yesterday, more than a century later. The persecutor must have been a devil incarnate, from the time he learnt his lady’s faithlessness until his death; and after that——”
“A plain devil. But to come to the point, you think that the locket was the sole medium of his power over them?”
“Undoubtedly. Then, after their death, it remained in the family, but never happened to be used again: it is not a jewel to catch the eye by any means. It remained perdu until you fished it out for Miss Burleigh, and thereby stirred up the old hobgoblin to play his devilish tricks once more. But by a lucky combination of accidents you parted with her in time; she returned you the locket, thus freeing herself from the spectre; and you, by throwing it in the Thames, have secured him against ever being able to make his appearance again.”
“It may be so, Drayton,” cried Calbot in great excitement. “I remember, too, that when I gave her the locket she promised fealty to the giver! Now, in fact, not I but this cursed Armstrong was the real giver; and so Edna was actually surrendering herself to his power. But, supposing your explanation correct, why may not Edna and I come together again?”
“Well, my dear fellow,” replied I, as I lit another Cabana, “unless you have acquired a very decided aversion to each other during the last few hours, I really don’t see why you shouldn’t.”
“Drayton, I’m afraid to believe this true! Tell me how you came upon your evidence, and what degree of reliance may be placed upon it.”
I told him briefly about the MS., and added the conviction (at which I had arrived during his narrative) that it must have been sent to me by my former friend, Armstrong’s executor; and probably comprised the very papers which I had made an ineffectual attempt to secure at the auction sale. “The only lame point about the matter,” I added, “is, that the MS. is wholly anonymous. All the names are blanks, and though I have no doubt, now, that they are Armstrong, Burleigh, and Calbot, there is no direct proof of it.”
My friend’s face fell. “There, it may be only a coincidence after all!”
“Nonsense! a coincidence indeed! If you have credulity enough to believe in such a ‘coincidence’ as that, you have certainly mistaken your profession.”
“If you were a lawyer,” returned he, “you would know that there is no limit to the strangeness of coincidences. But let me see the MS.”
“It is there on the table, at your elbow.”
Calbot turned and took it up.
“How’s this—it’s wet, soaking wet!” he exclaimed. “Drayton, I’m afraid I must have cracked that old vase of yours. It has been leaking, and the table is flooded.”
It was too true. The precious water of life had been preserved through so many generations merely for the sake of spoiling the morocco of my study table at last. Vanished were my hopes of earthly immortality. Cautiously lifting the vase, in the hope that somewhat of the precious ichor might yet be saved, the whole bottom fell out. Calbot was sorry, of course, but he had no conception of the extent of the misfortune. He observed that the vase could easily be mended, as if the vase were the chief treasure.
“Never mind,” said I, rather soberly, after we had sopped up the inestimable elixir, as well as we could, with our handkerchiefs. “I shall die an eternity or two the sooner, and shall have to get my table new covered, that’s all. I hope, Calbot, that the good which your visit here has done you, will be a small fraction as great as the loss it has inflicted on me. Well, and how has the MS. come out of the scrape? All washed out, I suppose.”
With a penitent eye Calbot took it up once more, and ran his eye over the last page. I saw his expression change. He knit his brows—looked up at me with a quick questioning glance—looked back to the page, and finally said: “Oh!”
“What?”
“It seems you had filled in the blanks before I came?”
“With the first four letters of the alphabet. Yes!”
“With the names in full!”
“What names?”
“Why, Drayton, the first thing I looked at was this record of ‘ondyinge Hatred,’ &c. It contains all the four names—yours as one of the witnesses of Armstrong’s signature. They are written out in pale red ink, as plain as can be——”
I had jumped from my chair and taken the MS. from Calbot’s hand. It was impossible—it was inconceivable, but it was true. The page was thoroughly wetted through, but there were the three names—the four names, for my own was added, in the character of compiler of the work—plainly traced out in light red ink. Could I have done it in a fit of abstraction? No, for the chirography was not mine—it was identical with all the rest of the writing. In my utter bewilderment, I raised my eyes to the wall, where hung the picture of my ecclesiastical ancestor—he, the alchemist, the busybody, the death-bed confidant, the suspected wizard—and my own namesake—we were the only two Toxophiluses in all the line of Draytons. Once more, for the third or fourth time that evening, it struck me that he looked excessively knowing and sly.
Who can analyse the lightning evolutions of human thought? I knew the truth before I could explain it. It crystallised in my brain all in a moment. A glance at the front of the MS., which had not been wetted, confirmed me.
I threw down the MS., clapped Calbot on the shoulder, and burst into an immoderate fit of laughter, which his astonished and concerned aspect served only to aggravate. It was some minutes before I could speak.
“It is a simple matter after all,” I said. “My old progenitor, there on the wall, was a friend—confidential friend—of Armstrong’s. It was he who wrote that MS., and left the blanks, which are not blanks, but names written in invisible ink. He prepared, then, the chemical reagent for the purpose of making the invisible writing visible whenever the time should come. Perhaps he meant to apply it himself some day; but, unluckily, death snatched him all unawares from the scene of his pious intrigues. The MS. got into the hands of Armstrong’s heirs (from whom I this day received it). The reagent stayed with the Draytons. This evening you came and brought the two together in your own inimitable style. You see, wherever the paper is wet, the blanks are filled in: the untouched parts are blanks still. Oh John, John! I wish this had happened before I printed my article on ‘Unrecognisable Truths:’ it is a peculiarly apt illustration.”
“Didn’t I tell you,” said Calbot, after a pause, “that there was nothing in the world so strange as coincidences?”
“There is the hobgoblin still unaccounted for,” answered I; “but I have done my part; I leave the rest to you.”
*****
The next day but one came a note from my friend. It ran:
“What did I do at your rooms last night? Was I queer at all? I had intended calling on you that day, to tell you that Edna and I were going to be married April 1st, and to get you for my best man. Did I tell you? Because, if not, I do now. The fact is, you see, I had been reading over some curious old family documents (I think I spoke to you about them), and then I went up to Edna’s and frightened her half to death with telling her ghost stories about the locket I’d given her as a betrothal gift (a queer little thing it is. Did I ever mention it to you?) Well, going home I met young De Quincey, and he proposed—he’s always up to some devilry or other—he proposed doing something which I shall never do again; I was a fool to try it at all, but I had no notion how it would act. I’m afraid I may have annoyed you. I have an idea I upset your ink-bottle, and that I got it into my head that the ghost story I had been telling Edna was true. How was it? I know I felt deathly sick the next morning; I’m not certain whether it was the port-wine I drank, or that confounded hasheesh that I took with young De Quincey. I promised Edna I’d never take any more. Well, you won’t object to being my best man, will you?
“J. C.”
So far from explaining the essential mystery—the Ghostly Rival—this letter of John’s only makes it, to my mind, more inscrutable than ever. Talk about coincidences! For my part, I prefer to believe in ghosts.