"I am aware that the seeming anomaly of my conduct ent.i.tles you to think the worst of me."
"Seeming anomaly!" She laughed contemptuously. "Pray, sir, permit me to lead the way--to the back door."
She strode off, with her head in the air; he came after, with a brow as black as night. At the back door they paused.
"I thank you for having afforded me shelter, and apologise for having sought it."
She looked him up and down, as if she were endeavouring, by mere force of visual inspection, to make out what kind of a man he was.
"I want to ask you a question. Answer it truthfully, if you can. Is the man in front a policeman?"
He started with what seemed genuine surprise.
"A policeman! Good heavens, no."
"Are you sure?"
"Of course I"m sure. He"s very far from being a policeman--rather, if anything, the other way." What he meant to infer, she did not know; but he laughed shortly, "What makes you ask such a thing?"
She was holding the door open in her hand. He had crossed the threshold and stood without. Malice--and something else--gleamed in her eyes.
"Because," she answered, "I wondered if you were a thief."
With that she slammed the door in his face and turned the key. Then, slipping into the kitchen which was on her left, keeping the door on the jar, remaining well in the shadow, she watched his proceedings through the window.
For a moment he stayed where she had left him standing, as if rooted to the spot. Then, with an exaggerated courtesy, taking off his hat, he bowed to the door. Turning, he marched down the garden path, his tall figure seeming more gigantic than ever as she noted how straight he held himself. In a twinkling he was over the fence and hedge. Once on the other side, he shook his fist at Clover Cottage.
The watcher in the kitchen clenched her teeth as she perceived the gesture.
"Ungrateful creature! And to think that a man who has the very spirit of music in his soul, and who plays the piano like an angel, should be such a wretch! That a monster seven feet high, who looks like a combination of Samson and Goliath rolled into one, should be such a coward and a cur--afraid of a pigmy five foot high! I hope I"ve seen the last of him. If I have any more such pupils I shall have to shut up shop. Now perhaps I shall be allowed to post my MS. and run across to Brown"s to get a chop for Ella"s tea."
With that she pa.s.sed from the back to the front. Outside the front door she paused to look around her and take her bearings, half doubtful as to whether any more dubious strangers might not be in sight.
The only person to be seen was the man whose presence had proved so disconcerting to her recent visitor. He had reached the corner of the street, and, turning, strolled slowly back towards Clover Cottage. He gave one quick, shifty glance at her as she came out, but beyond that he took--or appeared to take--no notice of her appearance.
"Now, I wonder," she said to herself, "who you may be. Your friend, who, for all I know, is now running for his life across the common, said you were no policeman--and, I am bound to say, you don"t look as if you were; he added that, if anything, you were rather the other way. If, by that, he meant you were a thief, I"m free to admit you look your profession to the life. I wonder if it would be safe to run across to Brown"s while you"re about;--not that I"m afraid of you, as I"ll prove to your entire satisfaction if you only let me have the chance. Only you seem to be one of those agreeable creatures who, if they are only sure that a house is empty, and there"s not even a girl inside, can enact to perfection the part of area sneak; and neither Ella nor I wish to lose any of the few possessions which we have."
While she hesitated a curious scene took place--a scene in which the gentleman on the prowl played a leading role.
The road in which Clover Cottage stood was bisected on the right and left by other streets, within a hundred yards of the house itself. On reaching the corner of the street on the left, the gentleman on the prowl, as we have seen, had performed a right-about-face, and returned to the cottage. As he advanced, a woman came round the corner of the street, upon the right. He saw her the instant she appeared, and the sight had on him an astonishing effect. He stopped, as if petrified; stared, as if the eyes were starting from his head; gave a great gasp; turned; tore off like a hunted animal; dashed round the corner on the left; and vanished out of sight. Having advanced to within a few feet of where Madge was standing, she was a close spectator of his singular behaviour. As she looked to see what had been the exciting cause, half expecting that her recent visitor had come back and that the tables had been turned, and the gentleman on the prowl had played the coward in his turn, the woman who had come round the other corner had already reached the cottage. Pushing the gate unceremoniously open, she strode straight past Madge, and, without a with-your-leave or by-your-leave, marched through the open door into the hall beyond.
As Madge eyed her with mingled surprise and indignation she exclaimed, with what seemed unnecessary ferocity--
"I"ve come to see the house."
CHAPTER II
THERE"S A CONSCIENCE!
Madge had been taken so wholly unawares that for a moment she remained stock-still--and voiceless. Then she followed the woman to the door.
"You have come to do what?"
"I"ve come to see the house."
"And pray who are you?"
"What affair is that of yours? Don"t I tell you I"ve come to see the house?"
"But I don"t understand you. What do you mean by saying you"ve come to see the house?"
For only answer the woman, turning her back on her, walked another step or two along the little pa.s.sage. She exclaimed, as if addressing the staircase, which was in front of her, in what seemed a tone of intense emotion--
"How his presence is in all the place! How he fills the air!"
Madge felt more bewildered than she would have cared to admit. Was the woman mad? Mad or sane, she resolved that she would not submit tamely to such another irruption as the last. She laid her hand upon the woman"s shoulder.
"Will you be so good as to tell me, at once, to whom I have the pleasure of speaking, and what business has brought you here?"
The woman turned and looked at her; as she did so, Madge was conscious of a curious sense of discomfort.
She was of medium height, slender build, and apparently between forty and fifty years of age. Her attire was not only shabby, it was tawdry to the last degree. Her garments were a heterogeneous lot; one might safely swear they had none of them been made for the wearer. One and all were shocking examples of outworn finery. The black chip hat which she wore perched on her head, with an indescribable sort of would-be jauntiness, was broken at the brim, and the one-time gorgeous ostrich feathers were crushed and soiled. A once well-cut cape of erstwhile dark blue cloth was about her shoulders. It was faded, stained, and creased. The fur which had been used to adorn the edges was bare and rusty. It had been lined with silk--as she moved her arms one perceived that of the lining there was nothing left but rags and tatters. Her dress, once the latest fashionable freak in some light-hued flimsy silk, had long since been fit for nothing else than cutting into dusters. She wore ancient patent-leather shoes upon her feet, and equally ancient gloves upon her hands--the bare flesh showing through holes in every finger.
If her costume was strange, her face was stranger. It was the face of a woman who had once been beautiful--how long ago, no one who chanced on her haphazard could with any certainty have guessed. It might have been five, ten, fifteen, twenty years ago--and more than that--since hers had been a countenance which charmed even a casual beholder. It was the face of a woman who had been weak or wicked, and maybe both, and who in consequence had been bandied from pillar to post, till this was all that there was left of her. Her big blue eyes were deep set in careworn caverns; her mouth, which had once been small and dainty, was now blurred and pendulous, the mouth of a woman who drank; her cheeks were sunk and hollow as if she had lost every tooth in her head, the cheek-bones gleaming through the yellow skin in sharp and cruel ridges. To crown it all, her hair was dyed--a vivid yellow. Like all the rest of her, the dye was old and worn. It stood in urgent need of a renewal. The roots were grey, they demonstrated their greyness with savage ostentation. Here and there among the yellow there were grey patches too--in some queer way her attempt at juvenesence had made her look older even than she was.
This was not a pleasant face to have encountered anywhere at any time, being the sort from which good women instinctively shrink back. Just now its unpleasantness was intensified by the fact that it was lit up by some, to Madge, inscrutable emotion; inflamed by some mastering excitement. The hollow eyes gleamed as if they were lighted by inner fires; the lips twitched as if the muscles which worked them were uncontrollable. The woman spoke in short, sharp, angry gusts, as if she were stumbling on the verge of frenzied pa.s.sion.
"This house is mine," she said.
"Yours?"
"It was his, and mine--and now it"s mine."
Madge, persuaded that the woman must be either mad or drunk, felt that perhaps calmness might be her safest weapon.
"Do you mean that you"re the landlady?"
"The landlady!" The woman laughed--unmirthfully. "There is no landlady. And the landlord--he"s a ghost. He"s in it now--don"t you feel that he is in it?"
She spoke with such singular intensity that, in spite of herself, Madge shuddered. She was feeling more and more uncomfortable--wishing heartily that some one might come, if it was only the mysterious stranger who had previously intruded.
The woman went on--her excitement seeming to grow with every word she uttered.
"The house is full of ghosts--full! They"re in every corner, every nook and cranny--and I know them every one. Come here--I"ll show you some of them."