CHAPTER XXII.
A GREAT MYSTERY.
verybody, not to say every householder, is alive to the acute dangers of escaping gas. Every other thought was suspended for the moment. The hall door was left open, watched over by little Hugh, and everybody, even the stranger, Mrs. Grant, rushed to open some window. The next thing was to find out the peccant burner.
Clementina called from the kitchen that the gas there was properly turned off, save one light still burning. It was the same in hall and dining-room; what was not alight was duly turned off. Miss Latimer, coming downstairs at the moment, reported that there was no odour of escaping gas in the higher regions.
“Well, there’s only my bedroom left,” said Tom, “and I’m certain I turned off mine.”
But as he opened his chamber door his face lengthened. There was no doubt now as to the source of the danger. No light was there, but the cock of the gas-bracket stood “full on.”
The mischief was swiftly remedied, though the room was so saturated with effluvia that it would take a prolonged airing to free it from the fumes. But Tom was terribly perturbed by the discovery.
“I could have made affidavit that I turned off the gas,” he declared. “I had it burning to dress by its light, and if I didn’t turn it off, how came the light to be out?”
“You must have forgotten it wasn’t a candle, and you must have blown it out, Tom,” said Miss Latimer.
“Well, then, I’m getting about as bad as my old landlady’s servant girls,” decided Tom. “I can’t believe it of myself. Henceforth, I’ll never feel sure of having done anything!”
“Perhaps you did turn it out, and then gave it an accidental knock which turned the cock back again,” suggested Miss Latimer; “such things will happen sometimes.”
Tom shook his head.
“The cock is very stiff,” he said.
“You must remember you were in haste. We are all rather put about just now,” Miss Latimer went on. “But you must not dwell on it. All is well that ends well.”
Still Tom remained dissatisfied and unconvinced, and took no part in the eager discussion which had already begun between the two anxious wives seated at the breakfast table.
“I think I know how I’ll manage,” said the Captain’s wife. “I’ll go to the shipping offices myself. No”—she interrupted herself as Lucy made a hasty movement—“you mustn’t think of coming with me. With your face, my dear, you’d never get anything out of them while there was the faintest chance of their being able to hold it back. But perhaps,” she added turning to Tom, “this young gentleman will come with me to show me the way, and to take care of me over those busy City crossings, for I recollect that when I once went with the Captain to the office, there was some clever steering to be done ere we got there!”
Up to this point nobody had remembered that Mrs. Grant did not know Tom. Now Lucy recollected herself and introduced the boy as an employee in Charlie’s office, and at present a member of the Challoner household.
Mrs. Grant beamed on him.
“This is most fortunate,” said she. “For I’m sure your masters will give you an off day to help me find out whether there’s any news of their Mr. Challoner—and of my Captain!”
“I’m sure they will!” cried Tom. “The chiefs are always asking whether we have heard anything. Still I’ll have to go to the office first to tell them why I’m wanting leave of absence.” He suited the action to the word, bustling away, saying, “Wait till I come back—and I’ll be back as fast as I can fly!”
When he was gone, Mrs. Grant and Lucy had time for a little quiet talk. It was very easy for Mrs. Grant to say that on the platform she had recognised Lucy from her old photograph, but she did not add that she was shocked at the change visible in her, the manifold signs of nerve strain and exhaustion.
“If she has much more waiting, she’ll set sail herself for a far-off shore,” thought the good woman. Yet when she found that Lucy had regular duties at the Institute, she would not allow Lucy to dream of absenting herself for her sake.
“No, no,” she said. “I did not come here to upset your regular ways. For one thing, if you begin to change those, people will realise how anxious you are, and then they’ll pull long faces to you, and that will make everything still harder and worse to bear. It’s wise to keep a still sough, as we say in the North. You just go about your usual day’s work, and when you come home, you’ll find me and the young gentleman returned and waiting, and whatever we have heard, you shall hear it all—honour bright, I promise you.”
Lucy had her full share of the sweet womanly instinct of obedience. It is an instinct which is often strong in proportion to the strength of the whole nature. It works so naturally and grows so strong in the fortunate daughter and the happy wife, that it adds terribly to the sense of disaster when the props to which it twines are withdrawn and it is left trailing on the ground. Lucy was quite ready to succumb to the genial domination of this wholesome kindly woman, already her sister in suspense and who might so soon be also her sister in sorrow. She went upstairs before she went away, and came down saying that poor Tom’s mischance with his gas-burner had made her so nervous that she had carefully tested all the upstairs burners.
“Somebody else might have made a similar mistake,” said she, “but they are all right.” So she went off, taking Hugh to the Kindergarten on her way.
“Let her keep regularly to her teaching,” Mrs. Grant confided to Miss Latimer. “Keep her up to that, I beg you. While we wait, and when waiting ends—as it may—there’s nothing helps us as work does. It’s the blessed will of God that what most of us have to do for our bread is exactly what is good for our souls. The wash-tub and the scrubbing brush have done lots for many a poor body who is left behind. I’ve often seen that. It’s not for any widow’s having to work that I’m ever sorry, but because her work is often so ill-paid, that do what she may, she can’t keep her head above water. But, I say,” she added, sniffing, “don’t you smell the gas very strong again?”
“Oh, it is only the remains of the accident in the boy’s bedroom,” answered Miss Latimer. “The breeze through the back windows is driving it more to the front of the house.”
Just at that moment Tom’s key was heard turning in the front door, and directly he entered the house he cried—
“Why, the smell of gas is worse than ever!”
“So I think,” observed Mrs. Grant.
Tom rushed to his own bedroom.
“There’s something at the bottom of all this,” he said. “I’m as positive that I turned it off the first time as we all are that it was turned off afterwards.” He stamped about the chamber, exclaiming, “It’s all right here now, the gas is turned off, and there’s no smell inside here. The mischief is somewhere else.”
“Mrs. Challoner examined all the burners upstairs, and saw that they were right before she went out,” said Miss Latimer. “Perhaps you notice the smell more because you’ve just come in from the fresh air, Tom.”
“But I’ve been in the house all the time,” persisted Mrs. Grant.
Tom sprang upstairs.
“There!” he shouted. “Here’s the staircase burner turned full on, and it’s the same here—and here—and here,” he cried, rushing from chamber to chamber, turning off burners and throwing open windows. “Yes,” he reiterated, as he came downstairs again, “every burner upstairs was started—the only ones turned off are that in my room where the mischief began and in the dining-room where you were sitting.”
“They are all right downstairs,” remarked Clementina from the back of the hall. But Tom went down and made a re-examination before he would be satisfied on that point.
Mrs. Grant and Miss Latimer looked at each other bewildered.
“I’ve not been upstairs to do up the rooms yet,” observed Clementina. “The only room I’ve tidied yet is Mr. Tom’s. I heard the mistress say to you, ma’am, as she went out, that she’d just been over all the burners, and that they were right.”
“Poor dear lady,” said Mrs. Grant; “she has been so flurried and put about that when she tried the handles, she must have turned the gas on and never noticed that she did it!”
“That must have been so, I suppose,” Miss Latimer reluctantly admitted; “but it’s hard to believe. Lucy is so wonderfully careful. However much she suffers herself, none of her duties suffer!”
“Ah, but that’s different,” Mrs. Grant replied. “She thought she was thoroughly doing her duty now; only her mind slipped off, and she did it the other way about.”
“I don’t believe it,” said Clementina energetically.
“What don’t you believe?” asked Tom.
“I don’t believe my mistress made any mistake. I never knew anybody so careful as she is.”
“But what other explanation can we offer?” inquired Miss Latimer.
Clementina answered solemnly, “I believe there is an evil spirit in this house just now.” Then, as if to give emphasis to her words, she turned and marched from the room.
“She is very superstitious,” Miss Latimer observed to Mrs. Grant. “If she gets this sort of thing into her head, as I’ve felt she was doing for some time, she’ll go off, and her departure just now will be a great trial. Are many people in the north superstitious?” she asked.
Mrs. Grant laughed. “Human nature is much the same everywhere,” she answered. “That’s what the Captain always said. He’s known folks black, and brown, and yellow, and every shade that they call white, but he says there are only two differences among them, and that’s goodness and badness, and that you find both everywhere. All the qualities, he says, are sprinkled over the world, pretty fairly divided. As for superstitions, what does the word mean? I believe in evil spirits, of course, but they work through ourselves.”
“Well, I’m very glad I am not going to my pupils this morning,” observed Miss Latimer, “and as I shall spend most of my time supervising the gas-burners, I think you may rely that you will not find the house blown up when you return from your quest.”
Mrs. Grant and Tom started off for the shipping office. As they went, she confided to him her plan of operations.
“I shall send you in first,” she said. “Men often won’t tell a woman the worst, though they know she’s got to hear it. They put off the hard job on somebody else. It’s a cruel sort of kindness. Very likely they’ll tell you plainly what they would gloss over to Mrs. Challoner or me.”
“But they’ll ask who sent me?” suggested Tom.
“Don’t wait till they ask the question,” she answered. “What’s the name of the firm you work for?”
“Patrick, Elsum, and Challoner,” he replied. “That’s the proper name; but as Mr. Challoner only newly got into the firm, his name is often not added. I don’t think it is in the Directory.”
“Then say straight out that you are a clerk at Patrick and Elsum’s, and that you want to know everything they have heard of the Slains Castle. Don’t seem any more anxious than you would be if it was a matter of some client’s cargo. As soon as you come out and tell me all they say, I’ll go in myself with you and have it all cleared up.”
She had to wait rather longer than she had thought, and when Tom came out and advanced towards her, she saw that his face was very grave indeed.
“Well?” she said, quite sharply.
“There is something known,” Tom answered in a low and solemn voice. “They say that a spar and a piece of sail, with Slains Castle painted on them, have been picked up by a Pacific liner.”
Mrs. Grant stood still, and caught her breath.
“I’m going straight into the office,” she said, “to ask why they could not write that to me, instead of bringing me up here to have to get it out of them by guile! And it’s not such a wonderful thing that they need keep it to themselves. One knew something must have happened, and this only shows how something has gone wrong, and how they’ve had to take to the boats and get into any port they could. That’s how I’m going to look at it, and so must Mrs. Challoner.”
Her interview in the office was not very long. As she walked back with Tom, Mrs. Grant’s thoughts seemed of Lucy rather than of herself.
“You see all this trouble has come into her life by an accident, as it were,” she said; “it’s like happening to get shot the first time you handle a gun. But this is the ill wind that I’ve always watched to bring my trials. I laid that to my soul when I married the Captain.”
“I’m so glad that you’ll be with my poor friend,” remarked Tom, himself immensely relieved by this vigorous presence.
“But, my dear boy, I must go straight home by the night train. If any mischance has befallen the Captain, there’s but the more reason for the mate to be at her post. Mrs. Challoner has got Miss Latimer and you to look after her; she couldn’t have kinder people.”
All the little household had gathered in before Lucy came. They had the fire blazing, and the tea set for her return. They could not lighten the falling blow, but they could surround her with loving kindliness.
Lucy heard the news very quietly indeed. She lifted Hugh upon her knee and kissed him two or three times. Then she said she was afraid they would all take cold through wandering about in such disagreeable weather. She put Hugh down, rose, and went out of the room, leading him by the hand.
Mrs. Grant shook her head. “If our husbands are really gone,” she said, “she won’t stay long after them.”
“Oh, yes, she will,” asserted Miss Latimer; “the source of all strength is open to my Lucy, and she will be found ready to do the next thing.”
“I know there’s a great deal in that,” Mrs. Grant admitted. “Grief does not kill according to the greatness of itself, or of the love behind it, only according to the weakness of the constitution; but she looks little more than a spirit already.”
A postman’s knock came to the door. Tom ran to see what had arrived. He did not come straightway back to the parlour, and when he did, he threw Miss Latimer a significant glance.
“I think I’d better run round to the office,” he said, “and let them know what we have heard. And I think I’ll look in also on Mr. Somerset. I’ll be back in good time to see Mrs. Grant to the station, as she is quite determined to go to-night.”
By the time Tom reached the office, his principals had departed. Tom did not choose to tell his melancholy news to any of the underlings; but he was only too anxious to disburden himself to Mr. Somerset.
That gentleman was deeply moved by the tidings of the Slains Castle—so ominous of the true significance of the long silence. Yet he allowed himself to see that there might be some force in Mrs. Grant’s arguments, when Tom repeated them to him.
But Tom had more news. He had to show Mr. Somerset what had arrived by post only the minute before he started to visit him—what indeed had been the controlling cause of that visit.
It was a letter with a black edge so deep that it scarcely left room for the ill-written, ill-spelled direction—
To the Peple
at No. — Pellum Street.
“It is the same handwriting as was on the envelope of the blank sheet that Mrs. Challoner got before Christmas,” said Tom. “Don’t you remember that envelope was torn up at first, but that I got the pieces out of the waste-paper basket and kept them? Directly I saw this I compared the two; it’s the same handwriting, only this is worse.”
Mr. Somerset turned it over and over in his hand. “Did you tell Mrs. Challoner about this?” he asked.
“No,” answered Tom emphatically; “I did not. It would have been too cruel to show it to her to-day—I couldn’t. Besides, it is not addressed to her.”
“You have done rightly,” said Mr. Somerset; “even if it be nothing but the circular of a mourning warehouse, it is not a thing for her to see to-day. Its coming to-day is a very strange coincidence!”
“Is it a mere coincidence?” questioned Tom.
“Well, as you say, it is not addressed to Mrs. Challoner. You are one of ‘the peple’ as much as she is. You have a perfect right to open it, and when we see its contents we can the better judge of its significance.”
The contents were a sheet of thick paper with heavy black borders, between which, on all four sides, was a long “screed,” which seemed to the most careful scrutiny to be nothing but pot-hooks and hangers, dotted i’s, and crossed t’s, making not one intelligible word among them all!
“It is evident to me,” said Mr. Somerset, “that the blank letter and the ‘knocks’ and this letter all emanate from somebody who wishes to annoy and to give pain. I can’t see why they should do so. It is probably the work of some of the servants who have given Mrs. Challoner so much trouble, or of some of their friends. At any rate, the matter is not one in which we can readily move; and to-day we will not call Mrs. Challoner’s attention to it. She has but too much trouble already!”
“Yes, indeed!” sighed Tom. “We’ve all been terribly upset since yesterday. We scarcely know what we are doing. I left my gas turned on this morning, and not alight, and Mrs. Challoner got so nervous that she tried if all the other burners were right, and turned them on by mistake!”
Mr. Somerset did not pay much heed to these domestic catastrophes. He was preparing to accompany Tom back to Pelham Street. He wanted to see Mrs. Grant himself. He did not forget that the Challoners’ woe involved hers, and like their true friend, as he was, he wished to show all the attention and hospitality which he knew they would have desired to tender to a woman under such anxiety.
He found Lucy, as Mrs. Grant whispered, “holding on bravely.” She was even preparing to accompany her guest to the railway station, to see her off on her homeward journey. But she was not reluctant to yield to Mr. Somerset’s request that she would delegate this duty to him—a proposal which Mrs. Grant backed with much urgency.
“Keep her to her work, all you good friends of hers,” whispered that worthy woman. “Never mind her getting tired. For the rest, let her be quiet when she wishes it. Spare her from all the little squalid worries you can; I don’t mean keep them from her, but stand between her and them; let her get them, as it were, passed through you first. Ah, I know!” added Mrs. Grant; “for as I’m a sailor’s wife, so am I a sailor’s daughter, and what we’re bearing to-day, I’ve seen my mother live through thrice—once for her husband, and twice for her sons.”
As their cab drew up at the station, it had to wait a second while a carriage drove off.
“Dr. Ivery’s carriage,” whispered sharp Tom to Mr. Somerset. “So I suppose he is in the station.”
True enough, as they passed through the booking-office, there was Dr. Ivery taking his ticket. Mr. Somerset knew him, having met him several times during Mr. Challoner’s illness. They greeted each other, Mrs. Grant and Tom passing on. Mrs. Grant’s train was already in the station, but would not start for another quarter of an hour.
Tom turned to look at his friend and the physician. He saw that they were in close conversation, and Mr. Somerset had actually produced the black-edged letter! The doctor was carefully examining it under a lamp. He handed it back with a few emphatic words, which Mr. Somerset received with a gesture of surprise and interrogation. Then they both looked at it together, the doctor pointing to details in the superscription, Mr. Somerset eagerly following his words, and alternately watching his finger and looking into his face. Finally, he re-took the letter, and both gentlemen shook their heads, the doctor extending both his hands as though to say that his words opened wide issues. Then, as Mrs. Grant’s train was just starting, they hastily shook hands, and Mr. Somerset hastened back to give the good lady his parting words as she went off.
“Tom,” said Mr. Somerset, grasping the lad’s arm as they re-entered the cab, which Mr. Somerset had retained to drive them back to Pelham Street, “Dr. Ivery is truly concerned about the news I gave him. He has much admiration for Mrs. Challoner’s pluck and determination. Then I thought I would tell him about the little worry of these letters; and, Tom, he has a most startling theory on the subject—indeed, it is no theory, he regards it as a scientific fact.”
“What is it?” Tom asked eagerly.
“He says these letters are written by some demented person; that such things are a well known phase of mental failure; that the very caligraphy is characteristic, the way the letters and lines run into each other, the bad spelling—everything!”
“I don’t see that the doctor’s opinion helps us much,” remarked Tom, almost irritably. “Who is the lunatic? and why is the lunatic concerned with our household?”
“Those questions remain unanswered,” said Mr. Somerset. “There is no need to ask ‘why’ where lunacy is concerned. It is precisely without reason that it acts, and there is little organic unity in its actions.”
They found Miss Latimer sitting alone in the parlour. Lucy had retired.
“Sorrow is sometimes sleepy,” said Miss Latimer, “and it is God’s medicine when it is.” But Lucy had left behind kind “good nights” for Mr. Somerset and Tom, and exhortations that the former was not to think of going home without having his supper.
It was a dreary little meal. While Clementina set or removed the dishes, they did not check their conversation about the general position.
“If these strange freaks be really the work of a lunatic,” said Mr. Somerset, “of course the poor creature cannot be blamed; but none the less we must try that he or she be in some way restrained, as soon as discovered, for nobody knows what they may do next.”
“Those that get called mad are sometimes not so mad as folks think, sir,” Clementina put in, in her civil, sad way.
“It’s strange to discover that we seem to know as little of what is going on beside us, as we do of what is happening to Mr. Challoner at the other side of the world,” remarked Tom.
“Oh, we are badly in want of a sixth sense, such as some of your old Highland seers claimed, Clementina,” said Miss Latimer.
“Aye, but they did not claim it, they had it,” said Clementina confidently; “yet it wrought them little good. They could not use it when they wished, they had to wait for it, and it came only when it listed; often it would not come, and it would never bide.”
“Yet some people claim that these mysterious faculties are being slowly brought into light and order,” observed Mr. Somerset, turning to Miss Latimer. “I do not know anything of the subject myself, and I find it hard to believe. There are people who profess so much of this modern magic that if you gave them Charlie’s last letter, they would pretend to tell you where he is, and what he is doing.”
“The Brahan Seer did that, nigh two hundred years ago,” said Clementina eagerly. “He told the proud Lady Seaforth what was keeping her husband in France, and he got himself burned for his pains.”
“I should think it was bordering on sin to make any such inquiry,” said Miss Latimer. “If there are any mysterious faculties only half developed in human nature, we should not hasten to mix them up with the solemn and sacred things of our lives. We know enough to be sure that many spiritual dangers lie that way. To venture our peace of mind among such risks, is like going into a laboratory and tasting everything, not knowing which is poisonous.”
“Yet, to use your simile, there must be laboratories, and tests, and fit occasions for working among such things,” said Mr. Somerset. “Still I agree with you absolutely in the necessity of keeping the treasures of our hearts and lives out of so tainted and be-fogged an atmosphere.”
“Well, I’m sure these silly letters are not sacred treasures,” said Tom. “Suppose we give one of them to a detective to-morrow, and take him with us to put it into the hand of a psychometric or clairvoyant, or whatever they call the modern wizard or witch, and allow them to clairvoyantly perceive—isn’t that the cant?—the person who sent it. It would be a good test if this did give us a clue, and if it didn’t, or if it misled us, why there would be no harm done—it wouldn’t matter a bit—we should be just where we are.”
Clementina had removed the supper-tray while he was speaking. Mr. Somerset rose up to go. He did not reply to Tom’s suggestion, not taking it seriously, but said “good night,” promising to come back very soon, possibly next day.
In the morning Tom woke rather lazily, but he jumped up in a great fright, seeing that his watch already pointed to half-past eight! “I must have slept very heavily,” he thought, “to have heard no knock nor bell, nor anything!”
And he dressed in great haste.
(To be continued.)