As he spoke the figure vanished, making no sign and saying no word. After a while, seeing that the ghost came no more, Mr. Bunker pulled himself together. He picked up the papers and the candle and went slowly downstairs again, turning every moment to see if his sister-in-law came too. But she did not, and he went to the bright gas-lit back parlor, where his supper was spread.
After supper he mixed a glass of brandy-and-water, stiff. After drinking this he mixed another, and began to smoke a pipe while he turned over the papers.
"He can't have meant anything," he said. "What should the boy know? What did the gentleman know? Nothing. What does anybody know? Nothing. There is nobody left. The will was witnessed by Mr. Messenger and Bob Coppin. Well, one of them is dead, and as for the other——" [he paused and winced]—"as for the other, it is five-and-twenty years since he was heard of, so he's dead, too; of course, he's dead."
Then he remembered the spectre and he trembled. For suppose Caroline meant coming often; this would be particularly disagreeable. He remembered a certain scene where, three-and-twenty years before, he had stood at a bedside while a dying woman spoke to him; the words she said were few, and he remembered them quite well, even after so long a time, which showed his real goodness of heart.
"You are a hard man, Bunker, and you think too much of money; and you were not kind to your wife. But I'm going too, and there is nobody left to trust my boy to, except you. Be good to him, Bunker, for your dead wife's sake."
He remembered, too, how he had promised to be good to the boy, not meaning much by the words, perhaps, but softened by the presence of death.
"It is not as if the boy was penniless," she said; "his houses will pay you for his keep, and to spare. You will lose nothing by him. Promise me again."
He remembered that he had promised a second time that he would be good to the boy; and he remembered, too, how the promise seemed then to involve great expense in canes.
"If you break the solemn promise," she said, with feminine prescience, "I warn you that he shall do you an injury when he grows up. Remember that."
He did remember it now, though he had quite forgotten this detail a long while ago. The boy had returned; he was grown up; he could do him an injury, if he knew how. Because he only had to ask his uncle for an account of those houses. Fortunately, he did not know. Happily, there was no one to tell him. With his third tumbler Mr. Bunker became quite confident and reassured; with his fourth he felt inclined to be merry, and to slap himself on the back for wide-awakedness of the rarest kind. With his fifth, he resolved to go upstairs and tell Caroline that unless she went and told her son, no one would. He carried part of this resolution into effect; that is to say, he went to his bedroom, and his housekeeper, unobserved herself, had the pleasure of seeing her master ascending the stairs on his hands and feet—a method which offers great advantages to a gentleman who has had five tumblers of brandy-and-water.