That panelled corridor is admirable; it looks as if it stretched away, in its brown dimness (the lamps didn"t seem to me to make much impression on it), for half a mile."
"Oh, don"t go to the end of it!" exclaimed the Colonel, smiling.
"Does it lead to the haunted room?" Lyon asked.
His companion looked at him a moment. "Ah, you know about that?"
"No, I don"t speak from knowledge, only from hope. I have never had any luck--I have never stayed in a dangerous house. The places I go to are always as safe as Charing Cross. I want to see--whatever there is, the regular thing. _Is_ there a ghost here?"
"Of course there is--a rattling good one."
"And have you seen him?"
"Oh, don"t ask me what _I"ve_ seen--I should tax your credulity. I don"t like to talk of these things. But there are two or three as bad--that is, as good!--rooms as you"ll find anywhere."
"Do you mean in my corridor?" Lyon asked.
"I believe the worst is at the far end. But you would be ill-advised to sleep there."
"Ill-advised?"
"Until you"ve finished your job. You"ll get letters of importance the next morning, and you"ll take the 10.20."
"Do you mean I will invent a pretext for running away?"
"Unless you are braver than almost any one has ever been. They don"t often put people to sleep there, but sometimes the house is so crowded that they have to. The same thing always happens--ill-concealed agitation at the breakfast-table and letters of the greatest importance.
Of course it"s a bachelor"s room, and my wife and I are at the other end of the house. But we saw the comedy three days ago--the day after we got here. A young fellow had been put there--I forget his name--the house was so full; and the usual consequence followed. Letters at breakfast--an awfully queer face--an urgent call to town--so very sorry his visit was cut short. Ashmore and his wife looked at each other, and off the poor devil went."
"Ah, that wouldn"t suit me; I must paint my picture," said Lyon. "But do they mind your speaking of it? Some people who have a good ghost are very proud of it, you know."
What answer Colonel Capadose was on the point of making to this inquiry our hero was not to learn, for at that moment their host had walked into the room accompanied by three or four gentlemen. Lyon was conscious that he was partly answered by the Colonel"s not going on with the subject. This however on the other hand was rendered natural by the fact that one of the gentlemen appealed to him for an opinion on a point under discussion, something to do with the everlasting history of the day"s run. To Lyon himself Mr. Ashmore began to talk, expressing his regret at having had so little direct conversation with him as yet. The topic that suggested itself was naturally that most closely connected with the motive of the artist"s visit. Lyon remarked that it was a great disadvantage to him not to have had some preliminary acquaintance with Sir David--in most cases he found that so important. But the present sitter was so far advanced in life that there was doubtless no time to lose. "Oh, I can tell you all about him," said Mr. Ashmore; and for half an hour he told him a good deal. It was very interesting as well as very eulogistic, and Lyon could see that he was a very nice old man, to have endeared himself so to a son who was evidently not a gusher. At last he got up--he said he must go to bed if he wished to be fresh for his work in the morning. To which his host replied, "Then you must take your candle; the lights are out; I don"t keep my servants up."
In a moment Lyon had his glimmering taper in hand, and as he was leaving the room (he did not disturb the others with a good-night; they were absorbed in the lemon-squeezer and the soda-water cork) he remembered other occasions on which he had made his way to bed alone through a darkened country-house; such occasions had not been rare, for he was almost always the first to leave the smoking-room. If he had not stayed in houses conspicuously haunted he had, none the less (having the artistic temperament), sometimes found the great black halls and staircases rather "creepy": there had been often a sinister effect, to his imagination, in the sound of his tread in the long pa.s.sages or the way the winter moon peeped into tall windows on landings. It occurred to him that if houses without supernatural pretensions could look so wicked at night, the old corridors of Stayes would certainly give him a sensation. He didn"t know whether the proprietors were sensitive; very often, as he had said to Colonel Capadose, people enjoyed the impeachment. What determined him to speak, with a certain sense of the risk, was the impression that the Colonel told queer stories. As he had his hand on the door he said to Arthur Ashmore, "I hope I shan"t meet any ghosts."
"Any ghosts?"
"You ought to have some--in this fine old part."
"We do our best, but _que voulez-vous_?" said Mr. Ashmore. "I don"t think they like the hot-water pipes."
"They remind them too much of their own climate? But haven"t you a haunted room--at the end of my pa.s.sage?"
"Oh, there are stories--we try to keep them up."
"I should like very much to sleep there," Lyon said.
"Well, you can move there to-morrow if you like."
"Perhaps I had better wait till I have done my work."
"Very good; but you won"t work there, you know. My father will sit to you in his own apartments."
"Oh, it isn"t that; it"s the fear of running away, like that gentleman three days ago."
"Three days ago? What gentleman?" Mr. Ashmore asked.
"The one who got urgent letters at breakfast and fled by the 10.20. Did he stand more than one night?"
"I don"t know what you are talking about. There was no such gentleman--three days ago."
"Ah, so much the better," said Lyon, nodding good-night and departing.
He took his course, as he remembered it, with his wavering candle, and, though he encountered a great many gruesome objects, safely reached the pa.s.sage out of which his room opened. In the complete darkness it seemed to stretch away still further, but he followed it, for the curiosity of the thing, to the end. He pa.s.sed several doors with the name of the room painted upon them, but he found nothing else. He was tempted to try the last door--to look into the room of evil fame; but he reflected that this would be indiscreet, since Colonel Capadose handled the brush--as a _raconteur_--with such freedom. There might be a ghost and there might not; but the Colonel himself, he inclined to think, was the most mystifying figure in the house.
II
Lyon found Sir David Ashmore a capital subject and a very comfortable sitter into the bargain. Moreover he was a very agreeable old man, tremendously puckered but not in the least dim; and he wore exactly the furred dressing-gown that Lyon would have chosen. He was proud of his age but ashamed of his infirmities, which however he greatly exaggerated and which did not prevent him from sitting there as submissive as if portraiture in oils had been a branch of surgery. He demolished the legend of his having feared the operation would be fatal, giving an explanation which pleased our friend much better. He held that a gentleman should be painted but once in his life--that it was eager and fatuous to be hung up all over the place. That was good for women, who made a pretty wall-pattern; but the male face didn"t lend itself to decorative repet.i.tion. The proper time for the likeness was at the last, when the whole man was there--you got the totality of his experience.
Lyon could not reply that that period was not a real compendium--you had to allow so for leakage; for there had been no crack in Sir David"s crystallisation. He spoke of his portrait as a plain map of the country, to be consulted by his children in a case of uncertainty. A proper map could be drawn up only when the country had been travelled.
He gave Lyon his mornings, till luncheon, and they talked of many things, not neglecting, as a stimulus to gossip, the people in the house. Now that he did not "go out," as he said, he saw much less of the visitors at Stayes: people came and went whom he knew nothing about, and he liked to hear Lyon describe them. The artist sketched with a fine point and did not caricature, and it usually befell that when Sir David did not know the sons and daughters he had known the fathers and mothers. He was one of those terrible old gentlemen who are a repository of antecedents. But in the case of the Capadose family, at whom they arrived by an easy stage, his knowledge embraced two, or even three, generations. General Capadose was an old crony, and he remembered his father before him. The general was rather a smart soldier, but in private life of too speculative a turn--always sneaking into the City to put his money into some rotten thing. He married a girl who brought him something and they had half a dozen children. He scarcely knew what had become of the rest of them, except that one was in the Church and had found preferment--wasn"t he Dean of Rockingham? Clement, the fellow who was at Stayes, had some military talent; he had served in the East, he had married a pretty girl. He had been at Eton with his son, and he used to come to Stayes in his holidays. Lately, coming back to England, he had turned up with his wife again; that was before he--the old man--had been put to gra.s.s. He was a taking dog, but he had a monstrous foible.
"A monstrous foible?" said Lyon.
"He"s a thumping liar."
Lyon"s brush stopped short, while he repeated, for somehow the formula startled him, "A thumping liar?"
"You are very lucky not to have found it out."
"Well, I confess I have noticed a romantic tinge----"
"Oh, it isn"t always romantic. He"ll lie about the time of day, about the name of his hatter. It appears there are people like that."
"Well, they are precious scoundrels," Lyon declared, his voice trembling a little with the thought of what Everina Brant had done with herself.
"Oh, not always," said the old man. "This fellow isn"t in the least a scoundrel. There is no harm in him and no bad intention; he doesn"t steal nor cheat nor gamble nor drink; he"s very kind--he sticks to his wife, is fond of his children. He simply can"t give you a straight answer."
"Then everything he told me last night, I suppose, was mendacious: he delivered himself of a series of the stiffest statements. They stuck, when I tried to swallow them, but I never thought of so simple an explanation."
"No doubt he was in the vein," Sir David went on. "It"s a natural peculiarity--as you might limp or stutter or be left-handed. I believe it comes and goes, like intermittent fever. My son tells me that his friends usually understand it and don"t haul him up--for the sake of his wife."
"Oh, his wife--his wife!" Lyon murmured, painting fast.
"I daresay she"s used to it."
"Never in the world, Sir David. How can she be used to it?"