The Shadow in the Corner.
Mary Elizabeth Braddon.
Wildheath Grange stood a little way back from the road, with a barren stretch of heath behind it, and a few tall fir trees, with straggling wind-tossed heads, for its only shelter. It was a lonely house on a lonely road, little better than a lane; leading across a desolate waste of sandy fields to the sea-sh.o.r.e; and it was a house that bore a bad name among the natives of the village of Holcroft, which was the nearest place where humanity might be found.
It was a good old house, nevertheless, substantially built in the days when there was no stint of stone and timber a good old grey stone house with many gables, deep window-seats, and a wide staircase, long dark pa.s.sages, hidden doors in queer corners, closets as large as some modern rooms, and cellars in which a company of soldiers might have lain perdu.
This s.p.a.cious old mansion was given over to rats and mice, loneliness, echoes, and the occupation of three elderly people: Michael Bascom, whose forebears had been landowners of importance in the neighbourhood, and his two servants, Daniel Skegg and his wife, who had served the owner of that grim old house ever since he left the university, where he had lived fifteen years of his life five as student, and ten as professor of natural science.
At three-and-thirty Michael Bascom had seemed a middle-aged man; at fifty-six he looked and moved and spoke like an old man. During that interval of twenty-three years he had lived alone in Wildheath Grange, and the country people told each other that the house had made him what he was. This was a fanciful and superst.i.tious notion on their part, doubtless, yet it would not have been difficult to have traced a certain affinity between the dull grey building and the man who lived in it. Both seemed alike, remote from the common cares and interests of humanity; both had an air of settled melancholy, engendered by perpetual solitude; both had the same faded complexion, the same look of slow decay.
Yet lonely as Michael Bascom"s life was at Wildheath Grange, he would not on any account have altered its tenor. He had been glad to exchange the comparative seclusion of college rooms for the unbroken solitude of Wildheath. He was a fanatic in his love of scientific research, and his quiet days were filled to the brim with labours that seldom failed to interest and satisfy him. There were periods of depression, occasional moments of doubt, when the goal towards which he strove seemed unattainable, and his spirit fainted within him. Happily such times were rare with him. He had a dogged power of continuity which ought to have carried him to the highest pinnacle of achievement, and which perhaps might ultimately have won for him a grand name and world-wide renown, but for a catastrophe which burdened the declining years of his harmless life with an unconquerable remorse.
One autumn morning when he had lived just three-and-twenty years at Wildheath, and had only lately begun to perceive that his faithful butler and body servant, who was middle-aged when he first employed him, was actually getting old Mr Bascom"s breakfast meditations over the latest treatise on the atomic theory were interrupted by an abrupt demand from that very Daniel Skegg. The man was accustomed to wait upon his master in the most absolute silence, and his sudden breaking out into speech was almost as startling as if the bust of Socrates above the bookcase had burst into human language.
"It"s no use," said Daniel; "my missus must have a girl!"
"A what?" demanded Mr Bascom, without taking his eyes from the line he had been reading.
"A girl a girl to trot about and wash up, and help the old lady. She"s getting weak on her legs, poor soul. We"ve none of us grown younger in the last twenty years."
"Twenty years!" echoed Michael Bascom scornfully. "What is twenty years in the formation of a strata what even in the growth of an oak the cooling of a volcano!"
"Not much, perhaps, but it"s apt to tell upon the bones of a human being."
"The manganese staining to be seen upon some skulls would certainly indicate-" began the scientist dreamily.
"I wish my bones were only as free from rheumatics as they were twenty years ago," pursued Daniel testily; "and then, perhaps, I should make light of twenty years. Howsoever, the long and the short of it is, my missus must have a girl. She can"t go on trotting up and down these everlasting pa.s.sages, and standing in that stone scullery year after year, just as if she was a young woman. She must have a girl to help."
"Let her have twenty girls," said Mr Bascom, going back to his book.
"What"s the use of talking like that, sir? Twenty girls, indeed! We shall have rare work to get one."
"Because the neighbourhood is spa.r.s.ely populated?" interrogated Mr Bascom, still reading.
"No, sir. Because this house is known to be haunted."
Michael Bascom laid down his book, and turned a look of grave reproach upon his servant.
"Skegg," he said in a severe voice, "I thought you had lived long enough with me to be superior to any folly of that kind."
"I don"t say that I believe in ghosts," answered Daniel with a semi-apologetic air, "but the country people do. There"s not a mortal among "em that will venture across our threshold after nightfall."
"Merely because Anthony Bascom, who led a wild life in London, and lost his money and land, came home here brokenhearted, and is supposed to have destroyed himself in this house the only remnant of property that was left him out of a fine estate."
"Supposed to have destroyed himself!" cried Skegg. "Why the fact is as well known as the death of Queen Elizabeth, or the Great Fire of London. Why, wasn"t he buried at the crossroads between here and Holcroft?"
"An idle tradition, for which you could produce no substantial proof," retorted Mr Bascom.
"I don"t know about proof; but the country people believe it as firmly as they believe their Gospel."
"If their faith in the Gospel was a little stronger they need not trouble themselves about Anthony Bascom."
"Well," grumbled Daniel, as he began to clear the table, "a girl of some kind we must get, but she"ll have to be a foreigner, or a girl that"s hard driven for a place."
When Daniel Skegg said a foreigner, he did not mean the native of some distant clime, but a girl who had not been born and bred at Holcroft. Daniel had been raised and reared in that insignificant hamlet, and, small and dull as it was, he considered the world beyond its only margin.
Michael Bascom was too deep in the atomic theory to give a second thought to the necessities of an old servant. Mrs Skegg was an individual with whom he rarely came in contact. She lived for the most part in a gloomy region at the north end of the house, where she ruled over the solitude of a kitchen that looked like a cathedral, and numerous offices of the scullery, larder, and pantry cla.s.s, where she carried on a perpetual warfare with spiders and beetles, and wore her old life out in the labour of sweeping and scrubbing. She was a woman of severe aspect, dogmatic piety, and a bitter tongue. She was a good plain cook, and ministered diligently to her master"s wants. He was not an epicure, but liked his life to be smooth and easy, and the equilibrium of his mental power would have been disturbed by a bad dinner.
He heard no more about the proposed addition to his household for a s.p.a.ce of ten days, when Daniel Skegg again startled him amidst his studious repose by the abrupt announcement: "I"ve got a girl!"
"Oh," said Michael Bascom, "have you?" and he went on with his book.
This time he was reading an essay on phosphorus and its functions in relation to the human brain.
"Yes," pursued Daniel in his usual grumbling tone; "she was a waif and stray, or I shouldn"t have got her. If she"d been a native she"d never have come to us."
"I hope she"s respectable," said Michael.
"Respectable! That"s the only fault she has, poor thing. She"s too good for the place. She"s never been in service before, but she says she"s willing to work, and I daresay my old woman will be able to break her in. Her father was a small tradesman at Yarmouth. He died a month ago, and left this poor thing homeless. Mrs Midge at Holcroft is her aunt, and she said to the girl, "Come and stay with me till you get a place"; and the girl has been staying with Mrs Midge for the last three weeks, trying to hear of a place. When Mrs Midge heard that my missus wanted a girl to help, she thought it would be the very thing for her niece Maria. Luckily Maria had heard nothing about this house, so the poor innocent dropped me a curtsey, and said she"d be thankful to come, and would do her best to learn her duty. She"d had an easy time of it with her father, who had educated her above her station, like a fool as he was," growled Daniel.
"By your own account I"m afraid you"ve made a bad bargain," said Michael. "You don"t want a young lady to clean kettles and pans."
"If she was a young d.u.c.h.ess my old woman would make her work," retorted Skegg decisively.
"And pray where are you going to put this girl?" asked Mr Bascom, rather irritably. "I can"t have a strange young woman tramping up and down the pa.s.sages outside my room. You know what a wretched sleeper I am, Skegg. A mouse behind the wainscot is enough to wake me."
"I"ve thought of that," answered the butler, with his look of ineffable wisdom. "I"m not going to put her on your floor. She"s to sleep in the attics."
"Which room?"
"The big one at the north end of the house. That"s the only ceiling that doesn"t let water. She might as well sleep in a shower-bath as in any of the other attics."
"The room at the north end," repeated Mr Bascom thoughtfully; "isn"t that-?"
"Of course it is," snapped Skegg, "but she doesn"t know anything about it."
Mr Bascom went back to his books, and forgot all about the orphan from Yarmouth, until one morning on entering his study he was startled by the appearance of a strange girl, in a neat black-and-white cotton gown, busy dusting the volumes which were stacked in blocks upon his s.p.a.cious writing-table and doing it with such deft and careful hands that he had no inclination to be angry at this unwonted liberty. Old Mrs Skegg had religiously refrained from all such dusting, on the plea that she did not wish to interfere with the master"s ways. One of the master"s ways, therefore, had been to inhale a good deal of dust in the course of his studies.
The girl was a slim little thing, with a pale and somewhat old-fashioned face, flaxen hair braided under a neat muslin cap, a very fair complexion, and light blue eyes. They were the lightest blue eyes Michael Bascom had ever seen, but there was a sweetness and gentleness in their expression which atoned for their insipid colour.
"I hope you do not object to my dusting your books, sir," she said, dropping a curtsey.
She spoke with a quaint precision which struck Michael Bascom as a pretty thing in its way.
"No; I don"t object to cleanliness, so long as my books and papers are not disturbed. If you take a volume off my desk, replace it on the spot you took it from. That"s all I ask."
"I will be very careful, sir."
"When did you come here?"
"Only this morning, sir."
The student seated himself at his desk, and the girl with-drew, drifting out of the room as noiselessly as a flower blown across the threshold. Michael Bascom looked after her curiously. He had seen very little of youthful womanhood in his dry-as-dust career, and he wondered at this girl as at a creature of a species. .h.i.therto unknown to him. How fairly and delicately she was fashioned; what a translucent skin; what soft and pleasing accents issued from those rose-tinted lips. A pretty thing, a.s.suredly, this kitchen wench! A pity that in all this busy world there could be no better work found for her than the scouring of pots and pans.
Absorbed in considerations about dry bones, Mr Bascom thought no more of the pale-faced handmaiden. He saw her no more about his rooms. Whatever work she did there was done early in the morning, before the scholar"s breakfast.
She had been a week in the house, when he met her one day in the hall. He was struck by the change in her appearance.
The girlish lips had lost their rose-bud hue; the pale blue eyes had a frightened look, and there were dark rings round them, as in one whose nights had been sleepless, or troubled by evil dreams.
Michael Bascom was so startled by an undefinable look in the girl"s face that, reserved as he was by habit and nature, he expanded so far as to ask her what ailed her.
"There is something amiss, I am sure," he said. "What is it?"
"Nothing, sir," she faltered, looking still more scared at his question. "Indeed, it is nothing; or nothing worth troubling you about."
"Nonsense. Do you suppose, because I live among books, I have no sympathy with my fellow-creatures? Tell me what is wrong with you, child. You have been grieving about the father you have lately lost, I suppose."
"No, sir; it is not that. I shall never leave off being sorry for that. It is a grief which will last me all my life."
"What, there is something else then?" asked Michael impatiently. "I see; you are not happy here. Hard work does not suit you. I thought as much."
"Oh, sir, please don"t think that," cried the girl, very earnestly. "Indeed, I am glad to work glad to be in service; it is only-"
She faltered and broke down, the tears rolling slowly from her sorrowful eyes, despite her effort to keep them back.
"Only what?" cried Michael, growing angry. "The girl is full of secrets and mysteries. What do you mean, wench?"
"I I know it is very foolish, sir; but I am afraid of the room where I sleep."
"Afraid! Why?"
"Shall I tell you the truth, sir? Will you promise not to be angry?"
"I will not be angry if you will only speak plainly; but you provoke me by these hesitations and suppressions."
"And please, sir, do not tell Mrs Skegg that I have told you. She would scold me; or perhaps even send me away."
"Mrs Skegg shall not scold you. Go on, child."
"You may not know the room where I sleep, sir; it is a large room at one end of the house, looking towards the sea. I can see the dark line of water from the window, and I wonder sometimes to think that it is the same ocean I used to see when I was a child at Yarmouth. It is very lonely, sir, at the top of the house. Mr and Mrs Skegg sleep in a little room near the kitchen, you know, sir, and I am quite alone on the top floor."
"Skegg told me you had been educated in advance of your position in life, Maria. I should have thought the first effect of a good education would have been to make you superior to any foolish fancies about empty rooms."
"Oh, pray, sir, do not think it is any fault in my education. Father took such pains with me; he spared no expense in giving me as good an education as a tradesman"s daughter need wish for. And he was a religious man, sir. He did not believe-" here she paused, with a suppressed shudder "-in the spirits of the dead appearing to the living, since the days of miracles, when the ghost of Samuel appeared to Saul. He never put any foolish ideas into my head, sir. I hadn"t a thought of fear when I first lay down to rest in the big lonely room upstairs."
"Well, what then?"
"But on the very first night," the girl went on breathlessly, "I felt weighed down in my sleep as if there were some heavy burden laid upon my chest. It was not a bad dream, but it was a sense of trouble that followed me all through my sleep; and just at daybreak it begins to be light a little after six I woke suddenly, with the cold perspiration pouring down my face, and knew that there was something dreadful in the room."
"What do you mean by something dreadful? Did you see anything?"
"Not much, sir; but it froze the blood in my veins, and I knew it was this that had been following me and weighing upon me all through my sleep. In the corner, between the fire place and the wardrobe, I saw a shadow a dim, shapeless shadow-"
"Produced by an angle of the wardrobe, I daresay."
"No, sir; I could see the shadow of the wardrobe, distinct and sharp, as if it had been painted on the wall. This shadow was in the corner a strange, shapeless ma.s.s; or, if it had any shape at all, it seemed-"
"What?" asked Michael eagerly.
"The shape of a dead body hanging against the wall!"
Michael Bascom grew strangely pale, yet he affected utter incredulity.
"Poor child," he said kindly; "you have been fretting about your father until your nerves are in a weak state, and you are full of fancies. A shadow in the corner, indeed; why, at daybreak, every corner is full of shadows. My old coat, flung upon a chair, will make you as good a ghost as you need care to see."
"Oh, sir, I have tried to think it is my fancy. But I have had the same burden weighing me down every night. I have seen the same shadow every morning."
"But when broad daylight comes, can you not see what stuff your shadow is made of?"
"No, sir. The shadow goes before it is broad daylight."
"Of course, just like other shadows. Come, come, get these silly notions out of your head, or you will never do for the work-a-day world. I could easily speak to Mrs Skegg, and make her give you another room, if I wanted to encourage you in your folly. But that would be about the worst thing I could do for you. Besides, she tells me that all the other rooms on that floor are damp; and, no doubt, if she shifted you into one of them, you would discover another shadow in another corner, and get rheumatism into the bargain. No, my good girl, you must try to prove yourself the better for a superior education."
"I will do my best, sir," Maria answered meekly, dropping a curtsey.
Maria went back to the kitchen sorely depressed. It was a dreary life she led at Wildheath Grange dreary by day, awful by night; for the vague burden and the shapeless shadow, which seemed so slight a matter to the elderly scholar, were unspeakably terrible to her. n.o.body had told her that the house was haunted, yet she walked about those echoing pa.s.sages wrapped round with a cloud of fear. She had no pity from Daniel Skegg and his wife. Those two pious souls had made up their minds that the character of the house should be upheld, so far as Maria went. To her, as a foreigner, the Grange should be maintained to be an immaculate dwelling, tainted by no sulphurous blast from the underworld. A willing, biddable girl had become a necessary element in the existence of Mrs Skegg. That girl had been found, and that girl must be kept. Any fancies of a supernatural character must be put down with a high hand.
"Ghosts, indeed!" cried the amiable Skegg. "Read your Bible, Maria, and don"t talk no more about ghosts."
"There are ghosts in the Bible," said Maria, with a shiver at the recollection of certain awful pa.s.sages in the Scripture she knew so well.
"Ah, they was in their right place, or they wouldn"t ha" been there," retorted Mrs Skegg. "You ain"t agoin" to pick holes in your Bible, I hope, Maria, at your time of life."
Maria sat down quietly in her corner by the kitchen fire, and turned over the leaves of her dead father"s Bible till she came to the chapters they two had loved best and oftenest read together. He had been a simple-minded, straightforward man, the Yarmouth cabinet-maker a man full of aspirations after good, innately refined, instinctively religious. He and his motherless girl had spent their lives alone together, in the neat little home which Maria had so soon learned to cherish and beautify; and they had loved each other with an almost romantic love. They had had the same tastes, the same ideas. Very little had sufficed to make them happy. But inexorable death parted father and daughter, in one of those sharp, sudden partings which are like the shock of an earthquake instantaneous ruin, desolation, and despair.
Maria"s fragile form had bent before the tempest. She had lived through a trouble that might have crushed a stronger nature. Her deep religious convictions, and her belief that this cruel parting would not be forever, had sustained her. She faced life, and its cares and duties, with a gentle patience which was the n.o.blest form of courage.
Michael Bascom told himself that the servant-girl"s foolish fancy about the room that had been given her was not a matter of serious consideration. Yet the idea dwelled in his mind unpleasantly, and disturbed him at his labours. The exact sciences require the complete power of a man"s brain, his utmost attention; and on this particular evening Michael found that he was only giving his work a part of his attention. The girl"s pale face, the girl"s tremulous tones, thrust themselves into the foreground of his thoughts.
He closed his book with a fretful sigh, wheeled his large arm-chair round to the fire, and gave himself up to contemplation. To attempt study with so disturbed a mind was useless. It was a dull grey evening, early in November; the student"s reading-lamp was lighted, but the shutters were not yet shut, nor the curtains drawn. He could see the leaden sky outside his windows, the fir-tree tops tossing in the angry wind. He could hear the wintry blast whistling amidst the gables, before it rushed off seaward with a savage howl that sounded like a war-whoop.
Michael Bascom shivered, and drew nearer the fire.