I knew that she suffered from these headaches at times, and was therefore not surprised by her asking leave to ring for the pony carriage at once, and we were soon on our way home.
Mrs Fitz Herbert was driving the pony, and as we turned out of the long elm avenue she murmured in a tone of relief:
"How thankful I am to have got away from that old man! I knew he was telling me what to say about that letter, but afterwards he wanted to give me some message himself, and I could not understand it, and that is what made my head so bad." Then she explained, seeing my bewilderment, that she was referring to the old gentleman whose portrait hung over the door I have mentioned.
I suggested that we had better try to find out what the old man wanted to say, and we arranged to do so that evening after dinner; but as Mr Fitz Herbert (who had a very charming tenor voice) elected to come in and sing to us, the old gentleman's communication had to be postponed until the morning.
Mrs Fitz Herbert and I sat down in the drawing-room the next day, armed with pencils and paper, so soon as her domestic duties were over. She was most anxious that I should take the message, but this seemed to me absurd, considering that I had received no sort of impression about the picture and could not even recall the face. So she took up the pencil very unwillingly, and after some difficulty the name of Richard Lyon was given, with the information that he had owned Greba, and had passed over to the next sphere about one hundred and thirty years previously. But when it came to trying to find out what he wanted to say, she professed herself quite unable to grasp it, and passed the pencil determinedly over to me.
Much to my surprise (for I had seemed to have no link with the old man at all), he was able to write through my hand with great ease.
He explained to me that he had been much devoted to the property, had lived only to improve it in every possible way, and that through his concentration of interest on this one subject his life had been a very limited one, and that now he could not get away from the remembrance of his earth life and his beloved Greba.
"I suppose he is trying to explain that he is earth-bound," suggested Mrs Fitz Herbert.
"Yes; that is just the truth," was the eager response through my hand, "and it is so sad to think that my own descendants are the ones to keep me imprisoned in this way. I am told that I could progress, as they call it here, and be much happier if I could only forget Greba, even for a time. And it worries me to see things done so differently and not to be able to do anything myself for the old place. There is no happiness for me here. Do ask them to set me free," he continued rather pathetically.
"But they don't want to hold you down," I answered. "Tell me how they do it and what you wish them to do."