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"So they tell me, by Jove. We're pretty well on though, Donnie – eh? Everyone knows my age – printed, you know, in the red book. You've the advantage of me there – eh, Don?"
"I'm just fifty-six, sir, and I don't care if all the world knewd it."
"All the world's curious, I dare say, on the point; but I shan't tell them, old Gwynn," said Sir Jekyl.
"Curious or no, sir, it's just the truth, and I don't care to hide it. Past that folly now, sir, and I don't care if I wor seventy, and a steppin' like a – "
"A sylph," supplied he.
"Yes – a sylph – into my grave. It's a bad world, and them that's suffered in it soon tires on it, sir."
"You have not had a great deal to trouble you. Neither chick, nor child, nor husband, egad! So here we are."
They were now standing on the gallery, at the head of the great staircase.
"These are the rooms your letter says are not furnished – eh? Let us come to the front gallery."
So, first walking down the gallery in which they were, to the right, and then entering a passage by a turn on the left, they reached the front gallery which runs parallel to that at the head of the stairs.
"Where have you put Beatrix?"
"She wished the room next mine, please, sir, up-stairs," answered the housekeeper.
"Near the front – eh?"
"The left side, please, sir, as you look from the front," replied she.
"From the front?" he repeated.
"From the front," she reiterated.
"Over there, then?" he said, pointing upward to the left.
"That will be about it, sir," she answered.
"How many rooms have we here in a row?" he asked, facing down the gallery, with its file of doors at each side.
"Four bed-rooms and three dressing-rooms at each side."
"Ay, well now, I'll tell you who's coming, and how to dispose of them."
So Sir Jekyl quartered his friends, as he listed, and then said he —
"And the large room at the other end, here to the right – come along."
And Sir Jekyl marched briskly in the direction indicated.
"Please, sir," said the slim, pale housekeeper, with the odd leer in her eye, overtaking him quietly.
"Ay, here it is," said he, not minding her, and pushing open the door of a dressing-room at the end of the gallery. "Inside this, I remember."
"But that's the green chamber, sir," continued Mrs. Gwynn, gliding beside him as he traversed the floor.
"The room we call Sir Harry's room, I know – capital room – eh?"
"I don't suppose," began the pale lady, with a sinister sharpness.
"Well?" he demanded, looking down in her face a little grimly.
"It's the green chamber, sir," she said, with a hard emphasis.
"You said so before, eh?" he replied.
"And I did not suppose, sir, you'd think of putting anyone there," she continued.
"Then you're just as green as the chamber," said Sir Jekyl, with a chuckle.
And he entered the room, holding the candle high in air, and looking about him a little curiously, the light tread and sharp pallid face of Donica Gwynn following him.
CHAPTER V
Sir Jekyl bethinks him of Pelter and Crowe
The Baronet held his candle high in air, as I have said, as he gazed round him inquisitively. The thin housekeeper, with her pale lips closed, and her odd eyes dropped slantingly toward the floor, at the corner of the room, held hers demurely in her right finger and thumb, her arms being crossed.
The room was large, and the light insufficient. Still you could not help seeing at a glance that it must be, in daylight, a tolerably cheerful one. It was roomy and airy, with a great bow-window looking to the front of the building, of which it occupied the extreme left, reaching about ten feet from the level of the more ancient frontage of the house. The walls were covered with stamped leather, chiefly green and gold, and the whole air of the room, even in its unarranged state, though somewhat quaint and faded, was wonderfully gay and cozy.
"This is the green chamber, sir," she repeated, with her brows raised and her eyes still lowered askance, and some queer wrinkles on her forehead as she nodded a sharp bitter emphasis.
"To be sure it is, damme! – why not?" he said, testily, and then burst into a short laugh.
"You're not a going, I suppose, Sir Jekyl, to put anyone into it?" said she.
"I don't see, for the life of me, why I should not – eh? a devilish comfortable room."
"Hem! I can't but suppose you are a joking me, Sir Jekyl," persisted the gray silk phantom.
"Egad! you forget how old we're growing; why the plague should I quiz you! I want the room for old General Lennox, that's all – though I'm not bound to tell you for whom I want it – am I?"
"There's a plenty o' rooms without this one, Sir Jekyl," persevered the lady, sternly.
"Plenty, of course; but none so good," said he, carelessly.
"No one ever had luck that slept in it," answered the oracle, lifting her odd eyes and fixing them on Sir Jekyl.
"I don't put them here for luck. We want to make them comfortable," answered Sir Jekyl, poking at the furniture as he spoke.
"You know what was your father's wish about it, sir?" she insisted.
"My father's wish – egad, he did not leave many of his wishes unsatisfied – eh?" he answered, with another chuckle.
"And your poor lady's wish," she said, a good deal more sharply.
"I don't know why the devil I'm talking to you, old Gwynn," said the Baronet, turning a little fiercely about.
"Dying wishes," emphasised she.
"It is time, Heaven knows, all that stuff should stop. You slept in it yourself, in my father's time. I remember you, here, Donica, and I don't think I ever heard that you saw a ghost – did I?" he said, with a sarcastic chuckle.
She darted a ghastly look to the far end of the chamber, and then, with a strange, half-frozen fury, she said —
"I wish you good-night, Sir Jekyl," and glided like a shadow out of the room.
"Saucy as ever, by Jupiter," he ejaculated, following her with his glance, and trying to smile; and as the door shut, he looked again down the long apartment as she had just done, raising the candle again.
The light was not improved of course by the disappearance of Mrs. Gwynn's candle, and the end of the room was dim and unsatisfactory. The great four-poster, with dark curtains, and a plume at each corner, threw a vague shadow on the back wall and up to the ceiling, as he moved his candle, which at the distance gave him an uncomfortable sensation, and he stood for a few seconds sternly there, and then turned on his heel and quitted the room, saying aloud, as he did so —
"What a d – d fool that old woman is – always was!"
If there was a ghost there, the Baronet plainly did not wish it to make its exit from the green chamber by the door, for he locked it on the outside, and put the key in his pocket. Then, crossing the dressing-room I have mentioned, he entered the passage which crosses the gallery in which he and Mrs. Gwynn, a few minutes before, had planned their dispositions. The dressing-room door is placed close to the window which opens at the end of the corridor in the front of the house. Standing with his back to this, he looked down the long passage, and smiled.
For a man so little given to the melodramatic, it was a very well expressed smile of mystery – the smile of a man who knows something which others don't suspect, and would be surprised to learn.
It was the Baronet's fancy, as it had been his father's and his grandfather's before him, to occupy very remote quarters in this old house. Solitary birds, their roost was alone.
Candle in hand, Sir Jekyl descended the stairs, marched down the long gaunt passage, which strikes rearward so inflexibly, and at last reaches the foot of a back staircase, after a march of a hundred and forty feet, which I have measured.
At top of this was a door at his left, which he opened, and found himself in his own bed-room.
You would have said on looking about you that it was the bed-room of an old campaigner or of a natty gamekeeper – a fellow who rather liked roughing it, and had formed tastes in the matter like the great Duke of Wellington. The furniture was slight and plain, and looked like varnished deal; a French bed, narrow, with chintz curtains, and a plain white coverlet, like what one might expect in a barrack dormitory or an hospital; a little strip of carpet lying by the bed, and a small square of Turkey carpet under the table by the fire, hardly broke the shining uniformity of the dark oak floor; a pair of sporting prints decorated the sides of the chimneypiece, and an oil-portrait of a grey hunter hung in the middle. There were fishing-rods and gun-cases, I dare say the keys were lost of many, they looked so old and dingy.
The Baronet's luggage, relieved of its black japanned casings, lay on the floor, with his hat-case and travelling-desk. A pleasant fire burnt in the grate, and a curious abundance of wax-lights, without which Sir Jekyl, such was his peculiarity, could not exist, enlivened the chamber.
As he made his toilet at his homely little dressing-table, he bethought him suddenly, and rang the bell in his shirt-sleeves.
"My letters."
"Yes, sir."
And up came a salver well laden with letters, pamphlets, and newspapers, of all shapes and sizes.
"And tell Miss Beatrix I shan't have any tea, and get some brandy from Mrs. Gwynn, and cold water and a tumbler, and let them leave me alone – d'ye see? – and give me that."
It was a dressing-gown which Tomlinson's care had already liberated from its valise, and expanded before the fire.
The Baronet's tastes, as we might see, were simple. He could dine on a bit of roast mutton, and a few glasses of sherry. But his mutton was eight years old, and came all the way from Dartbroke, and his sherry cost more than other men's Madeira, and he now lighted one of those priceless cigars, which so many fellows envied, and inhaled the disembodied aroma of a tobacco which, perhaps, Jove smokes in his easy chair on Olympus, but which I have never smelt on earth, except when Sir Jekyl dispensed the inestimable treasures of his cigar-case.
Now, the Baronet stood over his table, with a weed between his lips, tall in his flowered silk dressing-gown, his open hands shoving apart the pile of letters, as a conjurer at an exhibition spreads his pack of cards.
"Ha! poor little thing!" he murmured, with a sly simper, in a petting tone, as he plucked an envelope, addressed in a lady's hand, between two fingers, caressingly, from the miscellaneous assortment.
He looked at it, but reserved it as a bon-bouche in his waistcoat pocket, and pursued his examination.
There were several from invited guests, who were either coming or not, with the customary expressions, and were tossed together in a little isolated litter for conference with Mrs. Gwynn in the morning.
"Not a line from Pelter and Crowe! the d – d fellows don't waste their ink upon me, except when they furnish their costs. It's a farce paying fellows to look after one's business – no one ever does it but yourself. If those fellows were worth their bread and butter, they'd have known all about this thing, whatever it is, and I'd have had it all here, d – it, to-night."
Sir Jekyl, it must be confessed, was not quite consistent about this affair of the mysterious young gentleman; for, as we have seen, he himself had a dozen times protested against the possibility of there being anything in it, and now he was seriously censuring his respectable London attorneys for not furnishing him with the solid contents of this "windbag."
But it was only his talk that was contradictory. Almost from the moment of his first seeing that young gentleman, on the open way under the sign of the "Plough," there lowered a fantastic and cyclopean picture, drawn in smoke or vapour, volcanic and thunderous, all over his horizon, like those prophetic and retrospective pageants with which Doree loves to paint his mystic skies. It was wonderful, and presaged unknown evil; and only cowed him the more that it baffled analysis and seemed to mock at reason.
"Pretty fellows to keep a look-out! It's well I can do it for myself – who knows where we're driving to, or what's coming? Signs enough – whatever they mean – he that runs may read, egad! Not that there's anything in it necessarily. But it's not about drawing and ruins and that stuff – those fellows have come down here. Bosh! looking after my property. I'd take my oath they are advised by some lawyer; and if Pelter and Crowe were sharp, they'd know by whom, and all about it, by Jove!"
Sir Jekyl jerked the stump of his cigar over his shoulder into the grate as he muttered this, looking surlily down on the unprofitable papers that strewed the table.
He stood thinking, with his back to the fire, and looking rather cross and perplexed, and so he sat down and wrote a short letter. It was to Pelter and Crowe, but he began, as he did not care which got it, in his usual way —
"My dear Sir, – I have reason to suspect that those ill-disposed people, who have often threatened annoyance, are at last seriously intent on mischief. You will be good enough, therefore, immediately to set on foot inquiries, here and at the other side of the water, respecting the movements of the D – family, who, I fancy, are at the bottom of an absurd, though possibly troublesome, demonstration. I don't fear them, of course. But I think you will find that some members of that family are at present in this country, and disposed to be troublesome. You will see, therefore, the urgency of the affair, and will better know than I where and how to prosecute the necessary inquiries. I do not, of course, apprehend the least danger from their machinations; but you have always thought annoyance possible; and if any be in store for me, I should rather not have to charge it upon our supineness. You will, therefore, exert your vigilance and activity on my behalf, and be so good as to let me know, at the earliest possible day – which, I think, need not be later than Wednesday next – the result of your inquiries through the old channels. I am a little disappointed, in fact, at not having heard from you before now on the subject.
"Yours, my dear sir, very sincerely,
"Jekyl M. Marlowe."
Sir Jekyl never swore on paper, and, as a rule, commanded his temper very creditably in that vehicle. But all people who had dealings with him knew very well that the rich Baronet was not to be trifled with. So, understanding that it was strong enough, he sealed it up for the post-office in the morning, and dropped it into the post-bag, and with it the unpleasant subject for the present.
And now, a little brandy and water, and the envelope in the well-known female hand; and he laughed a little over it, and looked at himself in the glass with a vaunting complacency, and shook his head playfully at the envelope. It just crossed his sunshine like the shadow of a flying vapour – "that cross-grained old Gwynn would not venture to meddle?" But the envelope was honestly closed, and showed no signs of having been fiddled with.
He made a luxury of this little letter, and read it in his easy chair, with his left leg over the arm, with the fragrant accompaniment of a weed.
"Jealous, by Jove!" he ejaculated, in high glee; "little fool, what's put that in your head?"
"Poor, little, fluttering, foolish thing!" sang the Baronet, and then laughed, not cynically, but indulgently rather.
"How audacious the little fools are upon paper! Egad, it's a wonder there is not twice as much mischief in the world as actually happens. We must positively burn this little extravagance."
But before doing so he read it over again; then smiling still, he gallantly touched it to his lips, and re-perused it, as he drew another cigar from the treasury of incense which he carried about him. He lighted the note, but did not apply it to his cigar, I am bound to say – partly from a fine feeling, and partly, I am afraid, because he thought that paper spoiled the flavour of his tobacco. So, with a sentimental smile, a gentle shrug, and a sigh of the Laurence Sterne pattern, he converted that dangerous little scrawl into ashes – and he thought, as he inhaled his weed —
"It is well for you, poor little fanatics, that we men take better care of you than you do of yourselves, sometimes!"
No doubt; and Sir Jekyl supposed he was thinking only of his imprudent little correspondent, although there was another person in whom he was nearly interested, who might have been unpleasantly compromised also, if that document had fallen into other hands.
CHAPTER VI
Sir Jekyl's Room is Visited
It was near one o'clock. Sir Jekyl yawned and wound his watch, and looked at his bed as if he would like to be in it without the trouble of getting there; and at that moment there came a sharp knock at his door, which startled him, for he thought all his people were asleep by that time.
"Who's there?" he demanded in a loud key.
