"I know that he was lame." This was Madge; all eyes stared at her.
"You knew? How did you know?"
"Because she told me."
Ella"s eyes opened wider.
"She told you? Who?"
"The ghost"s wife."
"The ghost"s wife!"
"Yes, the ghost"s wife. But never mind about that now. Mr. Graham will perhaps go on."
And Mr. Graham went on.
"This had preyed upon his spirits his whole life long; and, as his unwillingness to show himself among his fellows increased, it had made of him almost a recluse. He was, however, as it seemed, a man of strong affections, tender heart, and simple disposition. In these respects Ballingall could not speak of him with sufficient warmth.
There never had been, he declared, a man like Tom. There was nothing he would not do for a friend--self-abnegation was the pa.s.sion of his life. Ballingall owned that he owed everything to Ossington. Ossington had set him up in business, had helped him in a hundred ways. In return he (Ballingall) had rewarded him with the most hideous ingrat.i.tude. This part of the story was accompanied by such a strong exhibition of remorse that I, for one, found it difficult not to believe in the fellow"s genuineness.
"In spite of his mis-shapenness, Ossington had found a wife, apparently a lovely one. The man loved her with the single-eyed affection of which such natures as his are capable. She, on the other hand, was as unworthy of his affection as she possibly could have been. From Ballingall"s account she was evil through and through; he could find no epithet too evil to hurl at her. But then it was very possible that he was prejudiced. According to him, this woman, Ossington"s wife, loathing her devoted husband, full to the lips with scorn of him, had deliberately laid herself out to win his (Ballingall"s) love, and had succeeded so completely as to have caused him to forget the mountain-load of grat.i.tude under which he ought to have stumbled, even to the extent of causing him to steal his friend"s wife--the wife who was the very light of that friend"s eyes.
"I think there was some truth in the fellow"s version of the crime--for crime it was, and of the blackest dye. He declared to me that as soon as the thing was done, he knew himself to be the ineffable hound which he indeed was. The veil which the woman"s allurements and sophistries had spread before his eyes was torn into shreds, and he saw the situation in all its horrible reality. She was as false to him as she had been to her husband, and he had been to his friend. In a few months she had left him, having ruined him before she went. From that time his career was all downhill. Remorse pursued him day and night. He felt that he was a pariah--an outcast among men; that an ineffaceable brand was on his brow which would for ever stamp him as accursed. It is possible that under the stress of privation,--for he quickly began to suffer actual privation--his mind became unhinged. But that he had suffered, and was still suffering, acutely, for his crime, the sweat of agony which broke out upon his brow as he told his tale was, to me, sufficient evidence.
"Two or three years pa.s.sed. He sank to about the lowest depths to which a man could sink. At last, ragged, penniless, hungry, he was refused a job as a sandwich-man because of his incapacity to keep up with his fellows. One night he was on the Surrey side of the Embankment, near Westminster Bridge. It was after one o"clock in the morning; shortly before, he had heard Big Ben striking the hour. He was leaning over the parapet in front of Doulton"s factory--you will observe that I reproduce the attention to detail which characterised this portion of his story, such an impression did it make upon my mind. As he stood looking at the water, some one touched him on the shoulder. Supposing it was a policeman who suspected his intentions, he turned hastily round. To his astonishment it was Tom Ossington.
"Tom!" he gasped.
""Charlie!" returned the other. "Come the first thing to-morrow morning to Clover Cottage."
"Without another word he walked rapidly away in the direction of the Wandsworth Road--Ballingall distinctly noticing, as he went, that his limp had perceptibly diminished. Left once more alone, Ballingall was at a loss what to make of the occurrence. Ossington"s appearance at that particular moment, so far away from home at that hour of the night, was a problem which he found it difficult to solve. He at last decided that the man"s incurable tender-heartedness had caused him to at least partially overlook the blackness of the offence, and to offer his whilom friend succour in the depths of his distress. Anyhow, the next morning found the broken-down wretch in front of Ossington"s house--of this house, as I understand."
As Mr. Graham said this, for some reason or other at least two of its hearers shivered; Ella clasped her hands more tightly as they lay upon her knee, and the expression of Madge"s wide-open eyes grew more intense. Even Jack Martyn seemed subdued.
"To his indescribable astonishment, the house was empty. A board in the garden announced that it was to be let or sold. As he stood staring, a policeman came along.
""Excuse me!" he said, "but doesn"t Mr. Ossington live here?"
""He did!" answered the policeman; "but he doesn"t now."
""Can you tell me where he is living? I want to know because he asked me to call on him."
""Did he? Then if he asked you to call on him, I should if I was you.
You"ll find him in Wandsworth Churchyard. That"s where he is living now!"
"The policeman"s tone was jocular, Ballingall"s appearance was against him. Evidently the officer suspected him of some clumsy attempt at invention. But as soon as the words were uttered Ballingall staggered back against the wall, according to his own account, like one stricken with death. He was speechless. The policeman, with a laugh, turned on his heel and left him there. Impelled by some influence which he could not resist, the conscience-haunted vagabond dragged his wearied feet to the churchyard. There among the tombstones he found one which purported to be erected to the memory of Thomas Ossington, who had been interred there some two years previously. While he stared, thunderstruck, at the inscription, Ballingall a.s.sured me that Tom Ossington stood at his side, and pointed at it with his finger."
[Ill.u.s.tration: "Tom Ossington stood at his side, and pointed at it with his finger." (_To face p_. 116)]
Graham paused. His listeners fidgeted in their seats. It was a second or two before the narrator continued.
"You understand that I am telling you the story precisely as it was told me, without accepting for it any responsibility whatever. I can only a.s.sure you that whilst it was being told, I was so completely held, by what I can best describe as the teller"s frenzied earnestness, that I accepted his facts precisely as he told them, and it was only after I got away from the glamour of his intensity of self-conviction that I perceived how entirely irreconcilable they were with the teachings of our everyday experience.
"Thenceforward, Ballingall declared that he was never without a feeling that Ossington was somewhere in the intermediate neighbourhood--to use his own word, that he was shadowing him. For the next week or two he lighted upon somewhat better times. He obtained a job at road-cleaning, and in one way or another managed to preserve himself from actual starvation. But, shortly, the luck ran out, and one night he again found himself without a penny with which to buy either food or lodging. He was struggling up Southampton Street, in the Strand, intending to hang about the purlieus of Covent Garden with the faint hope that he might be able to get some sort of job at the dawn of day, when he saw, coming towards him from the market, Tom Ossington. Ballingall shrank back into the doorway, and, while he stood there shivering, Ossington came and planted himself in front of him.
""Charlie!" he said, "why didn"t you come to Clover Cottage when I told you?"
"Ballingall protested that he looked and spoke just like a rational being--with the little air of impatience which had always been his characteristic; that there was nothing either in his manner or his appearance in any way unusual, and that there was certainly nothing to suggest an apparition. A conversation was carried on between them just as it might have been between an ordinary Jones and Robinson.
""I did come!" he replied.
""Yes--but you stopped outside. Why didn"t you come inside?"
""Because the house was empty!"
""That"s all you know."
""Yes," repeated Ballingall, "that"s all I do know."
""There"s my fortune in that house!"
""Your fortune?"
""Yes my fortune; all of it. I brought it home, and hid it away--after Lily went."
"Lily was his wife"s name. He spoke of her with a sort of gasp.
Ballingall felt as if he had been struck.
""What"s your fortune to do with me?"
""Everything maybe--because it is yours, if you"ll come and get it; every farthing. It"s anyone"s who finds it, anyone"s--I don"t care who it is. What does it matter to me who has it--now? Why shouldn"t it be yours? There"s heaps and heaps of money, heaps! More than you suppose.
It"ll make a rich man of you--set you up for life, buy you houses, carriages and all. You have only got to come and get it, and it is yours. Think of what a difference it"ll make to you--of all that it will do for you--of all that it will mean. It will pick you out of the gutter, and place you in a mansion, with as many servants as you like to pay for at your beck and call. And all yours for the fetching--or anyone"s for the matter of that. But why shouldn"t you make it yours?
Don"t be a fool, but come, man, come!"
"He continued urging and entreating Ballingall to come and take for his own the treasures which he declared were hidden away in Clover Cottage, until, turning round, without a farewell word, he walked down the street and disappeared into the Strand.
"Ballingall a.s.sured me that he didn"t know what to make of it; and if he was speaking the truth, I quite understand his difficulty. He was aware that, neither physically nor mentally, was he in the best of health, and he knew also that Ossington was continually in his mind.
He might be the victim of hallucination; but if so, it was hallucination of an extraordinary sort. He himself had not touched Ossington, but Ossington had touched him. His touch had been solid enough, he looked solid enough, but how came he to be in Southampton Street if he was lying in Wandsworth Churchyard? On the other hand, the story of the hidden fortune was quite in accordance with what he knew of the man"s character. He always had a trick of concealing money, valuables, all sorts of things, in unusual places. And for him to have secreted the bulk of his capital, or even the whole of it, or what represented the whole of it, and then to have left the hiding-place unrevealed, for some one to discover after he was dead and gone, was just the sort of thing he might have been expected to do.
"Anyhow, Ballingall did not go to Clover Cottage the following day. He found a job when the market opened, and that probably had a good deal to do with his staying away. The next night Ossington returned--if I remember rightly, just as Ballingall was about to enter a common lodging-house. And he came back not that night only, but over and over again, so far as I could understand, for weeks together, and always with the same urgent request, that he would come and fetch the fortune which lay hidden in Clover Cottage.
"At last torn by conflicting doubts, driven more than half insane--as he himself admitted--by the feeling that his life was haunted, he did as his mysterious visitor desired--he went to Clover Cottage. He hung about the house for an hour. At last, persuaded that it was empty, he gained admission through the kitchen window. No sooner was he in than a constable who, unconsciously to himself, had been observing his movements with suspicious eyes, came and found him on the premises.
The feeling that, after all, he had allowed himself to be caught in something that looked very like a trap, bereft Ballingall of his few remaining senses, and he resisted the officer with a degree of violence which he would not have shown had he retained his presence of mind.
"The result was that instead of leaving Clover Cottage the possessor of a fortune, he left it to be hauled ignominiously to the stationhouse."