[COPYRIGHT STORY.] TOLD IN THE TRAIN

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XXXVIII, Issue 5, 2 February 1907, Page 27

[COPYRIGHT STORY.] TOLD IN THE TRAIN

By

Lady Napier of Magdala

TWO men sat opposite each other, sole occupants of a third-class carriage in the afternoon express to the west of England. ' Artists apparently, judging by the character of the impedimenta crowding the racks. Typical painters, too, bushy of beard, soft of hat, easy of clothing, observant of eye, one considerably senior to the other. Brown and Jones we will call them. It was early Summer time, and the country was a dream of delicate beauty and fresh gfeenery, the sky an exquisite turquoise blue. s *- Both men smoked in silence, deepest satisfaction beaming from their countenances. as they revelled in the beauty and freshness of the scene as the train rolled smoothly on its way. ~ — Afternoon was drawing towards ing"What a wonderful old house, Brown, do look!” exclaimed the younger man. “Its windows are all blood-red j in the Betting'*sun. Did you ever see such a delightfill place? Look at the gables! I suppose It is one 'of .my Lord Tomnoddy’s seats that he don’t sit in, confound him!' Do' you know anything about it, you know these parts so Brown hesitated. “Yes I; know it. I have good cause to know it. It is an accursed place. It cost me- the life of one of the dearest of my friends, and one of the most rising painters of the day. You would hardly remember poor Charlie Shaw, Jones. He was before your time.” “No, but. I have heard a lot about his work though,” . said , Jones. “It was splendid, I have seen some of it.” Brown sighed heavily, and lit another pipe. “I suppose it is all for the best iu this best of all possible .worlds,” he said, “but I do grudge Charlie Shaw.” “Do you mind telling-me about it?” «aid Jones, all - agog with curiosity. “That is to say if you do not mind talking about it.” i “No my boy. but I must ask you not to let* it go any farther. This is what happened. A good many '. years ago Charlie Shaw and I were flying westwards to paint, much as you and I are doing now. I was death on apple orchards in those days, and he found the material he liked to work from also in the west. He was a dreamy sort of a fellow, he would roam round. a place sometimes for weeks together before he would settle, to any serious work, but when-once he began he was a cross between a tiger and a bear with a sore head. He was nailed to his business so to speak, however, all this won’t interest you. We took up our quarters that time at a eharming little inn, in the neighbourhood of that infernal house we have just passed, worse luck. It was lovely weather, and I found exactly what I wanted in the way of subject at Once, and started work. I saw little of Charlie Sfiaw. who I supposed was as usual wandering round. I was working hard one evening when he came to me. “Johnny,” he said, “you are missing the most wonderful thing I have ever Been in the way of old* buildings. ‘ It is a painter's dream. I have been there every day since we came here. Do come and see it.” I always did what old Charlie wanted me to do, somehow. so I cleaned up.my palette and we started oil to -see that Mme house.

It certainly was wonderful. Such

colour, such gables, such yew hedges, and weird old leaden statues in dim corners, such an air of decay and unspeakable gloom, were on that lovely summer's evening. A silence that could be felt seemed to brood over the place. Moss-grown steps ran up to the hall door, a long iron bell pull with wrought metal handle hung at the side. The paint was dropping away from the woodwork in strips, unwholesome looking liehens clung to the stone. Charlie Shaw sprang up the steps and rang a peal at the bell,- much to my dismay. "Oh, no one comes,” he said. “I ring every day. I would not miss it - for worlds. Did you ever hear anything so weird as the echoes. Listen!”

I ant not a nervous man, but I can tell you that the sound of that hall bell creaking, clanging and echoing through that empty house gave on my nerves, as the French say, and there was something about the whole place that gave me the creeps. The empty stables, .the empty dog kennels. It was as"~tlibugli death reigned;.over the whole thing; I coultt hardly get Charlie away, however. ’ -T ’ . ' * If I had not been so busy at this, time I should have been rather- anxious about him, for this hateful place a’pepared to be taking a sort of possession of him. and at last I did not like to ask him where he had been during the day, he seemed rather to resent it. Of work he did none. We had been established in the little inn for some weeks when he hunted me up one afternoon in my apple orchard, his eyes blazing with excitement. “I have found out all about the Manor house,” he said. “It has an evil reputatfon and is supposed to be haunted. It has such a bad name that the owners never come near it. I have always longed to see a ghost, dear old Johnny, and I want you to come with me and sit up in the haunted room- -and -see what' happens. 1 feel convinced we shall see something. I have been to the agent of the family to whom it belongs, he lives in the country town here, and he has given me leave. I pretended we might take the house, they are dead keen to let it, it has remained empty so long, and 1 gather that owing to its bad name they would jump at anyone, to let or sell it to. You must come. 1 have ordered some firewood in, and packets of candles, and we will go up there to-night after dinner and see what happens." As I told you before. I always did what Charlie Shaw asked me to do, so sorely against the grain I started off with him after our comfortable dinner at.the inn. The Manor House looked still more forbidding in the gloaming. The brooding silence, the smell of damp and decay, the bats squeaking and flying about. Charlie drew the key- of the front door from his pocket. A large key of wroughtiron work like that on the bell-pull, the bolt shot back with a creaking sound that echoed through the house. A musty smell of decay floated out into the summer air. There was a square entranee, a billiard table at one side, the cloth in strips and soaking with damp. Portraits mildewed, and some in rags hung on the walls, a wide, shallow, steep staircase led out of the hall to the landing above. Charlie ran up it, two steps at a time and flung open a door. “ This is the room where the ghost is supposed to appear,” he shouted in his ringing voice, “and there is her portrait over the fireplace.”

It was a very long gallery, in the same

state of disrepair as was the rest of the house. Several doors opened into it. A heavy, old-fashioned writing-table, amt a few chairs were all the furniture it boasted. “Come and look at the portrait,” said Charlie impatiently. It was a portrait of a woman, with a black coif on her powdered hair, pale cold eyes, acquiline nose, and thin cruet mouth, the eyes seemed to follow you about in an unpleasant manner, as is the way with some portraits. “ Mr. Carr, the agent, said it was all nonsense about there being a ghost.” said Charlie. He wanted me to take the place offhand at a nominal rent, just to get it aired, he said its being so out of the way. and this not being so fashionable a neighbourhood as it once was, way th:, only reason against its letting, byt I said I must insist on sleeping in the haunted room for a night before I did anything else. I got out of him that the portrait we are looking at is the portrait of the ghost, but he treated it as a joke. Mrs. Evans at the inn had told me about it.” A good sppply of wood wap, stacked by' the fireplace and the fire laid, requiripg only the match promptly applied by m£ We stuck candles into all the candlesticks we could find, old Sheffield plate, most of them battered but still beautiful in shape and workmanship. Charlie drew up two chairs to the fire, now roaring up the chimney, we lit our pipes and I think we both felt rather asses. It was pitch dark outside, though the moon would rise later, and the owls hooted and shrieked eerily. I was do-' tired. I had be?n working double tides at my apple blossom from morn till eve, and I could hardly keep my eyes open. I must have given a heavy lurch nearly into the fire onee, for Charlie seized me just in time to save me. “Look here, old chap,” he said, “it is really rather rough on you, go and lie down. There is a bed and a good supply of blankets in a room leading out of this, lie down, and I will give you a halloa when the ghost appears. That door over there.” I must tell you that I did not really believe in ghosts so I gladly did as he suggested, stretching my weary limbs on the lied, rolling myself comfortably in the blankets, and almost before my head touched the pillow I was asleep.

How long I slept I know not. Something aroused me, and I was as broad awake as ever 1 was in my life. I sprang to the floor ami rushed to the door of my room which had been left open, and stood rooted on the threshold.

Charlie was standing by th? fireplace, bis eyes fixed on the door at the end of the gallery, which was slowly opening. An icy breath wavered through the room making the candles wink, then a silent procession of figures passed through the doorway. A woman, the woman of the portrait, there was no mistaking her. Her

hand grasped the shoulder of a sullen* looking youth, not for support., there was no need of support in that haughty, upright figure. She seemed to be propelling him forward. Two white haired old men dressed like Hogarth’s lawyers, on? carrying what looked like parchment deeds, aud a black bag, followed the woman and her son into the room, distress on their faces and in the gesture of their upraised hands. The woman pushed the youth onwards towards the writing table and forced him into a chair, beckoning imperiously to the old man to approach. Taking the paper from the hand of his colleague the old lawyer spread it out on th? table before the youth and with shaking hands pressed together, appeared to murmur, in his ear. The woman broke in with impatient gesture, and the old man with trembling finger pointed to.the place where the deed was to be signed. The youth gazed stupidly at the paper, making no attempt to take the pen held out to him. Suddenly he rose to his feet, and with a gesture of-fury,, tore the deed across and across, and flung it from him. An awful expression came across his mother’s face. Th? fires of hell blazed in her eyes. Seizing a heavy paper-weight lying on the table sha struck him on the head with it with all her force. lie fell dead at her feet ami the old men with their hands raised to heaven hurried from the room. The woman stood as though carved in stone. Charlie, his face as the face of the dead tried to leave the room. She turned and saw him, and with menacing gesture advanced towards him. With a shriek of horror that still rings in my cars, lie fell face forward on the ground, and the whole scene vanished. He and 1 .were alone. I rushed to Charlie. It was long liefore he recovered from his swoon, and I could get him back to the inn. Once there lie took to his bed. Brain fever set in and be hovered between life and death for many weeks. He never really recovered his health, but died about two years afterwards, poor dear old Charlie. After his death, poor dear fellow. 1 never rested or left one stone unturned in order to find out the meaning of . the horror we bad seen, a difficult job, but time and money accomplished it. The woman, or rather the fiend, that we bad both seen was the widow of a former proprietor of the Manor House. A great beauty in her day, and gossip had it. as bad as beautiful. She had married her husband iu order to scr.cn herself from the consequences of an escapade that would have put her beyond the pale of society, even in those lax days. ,

Bewildered by her Is-auty, she turned her husband round her linger, but ha found her out in course of time, and

•ome said that it was by no accident that he came by his death after some few years of wedded life. Two sons were born of the marriage. The eldest, the heir to his father’s name and estates, a gentle creature, backwara and nervous, ami some "said, wanting. This his father, his people, and dependent- uould never allow. All adored him lor his gentleness, his kindness, his pas- • mate love of animals; and strange were the pets harboured by many a poor defM iident for the young heir. His love for his home was a passion. All the affection of his tender nature, denied other outlet, seemed to concentrate on the home of his fathers, and he would listen by the hour to tales and legends treasured up by some of the old people ©n the estate connected with the doings ©f his race. His mother’s feeling for him was one of cold dislike verging on hatred as lie filled the place that would otherwise have been occupied by his brother, on whom she expended the whole force of

an adoration, savage and unbalanced in its intensity. Utterly unworthy was the object of this maternal passion. Vicious and selfindulgent from childhood, his life was given up to the basest pleasures, and to the excitements of gambling. In those days people did mueh as they liked, and trustees troubled themselves but little with their trusts. After her husband’s death the woman seized the reins of power as regarded the management of the estate, and slice after slice had been cut off to satisfy the increasing demands of the younger son. The elder, come to man’s estate, his signature was absolutely necessary for the last call, however, which meant the passing of the Manor house and what remained of the once fair heritage to strangers. We have seen what happened, and the hideous scene is apparently re-enacted nightly in the same place. The woman, however, little knew, when she struck the blow that laid her son dead at her

feet, that the blow had left her childless and a beggar. „ Her other son had fallen but a few hours earlier in a duel in a cause worthy of the life he laid down. The heir-at-law swooped down on the scene, he laughed the idea of’debts of honour to scorn, the woman was handed over to be dealt with by the strong arm of the law, and expiated her crimes on the scaffold. There is the story, Jones, and we will not allude to it again, and here is I)— raining as usual!’’