The Storyteller.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXIV, Issue 49, 2 April 1897, Page 21

The Storyteller.

JOHN HALLAM'S WIFE.

IN FOUR CHAPTERS.

(By Rosa Mulhollaxd, in Are Maria.")

CHAPTER 111,

Having taken measures to study the appearance of every female resident within the walls of the house, or who was used to come and go about it, I gave up the idea that the servants could have anything to do with our mystery. I said nothing to Mrs. Hallam about my fresh discovery, having made up my mind that she was not the person who performed the freaks for which she was held accountable. I was equally certain, however, that nothing would persuade Hallam of this truth unlesß I could bring him face to face with the real mischief-maker. At the same time I believed that he had been unconsciously influenced by my strong impression, though he refused to acknowledge it. Without much pressing, I consented to prolong my visit indefinitely. During the days that followed I occupied myself a good deal in my room, examining the amulet and endeavouring to decij her the fine inscriptions carved into the stones and the gold. The trinket might be described as a bracelet, but was too wide for a woman's arm, while it was not wide enough to serve as a necklet. I clasped it on my own arm, and it fitted me exactly. I was extremely pleased to wear it, looking on it as a link with the interesting world of my Eastern explorations ; and I went to bed that night without having removed it. It was not wonderful, perhaps, that I had a peculiar dream. I imagined I was lying awake, and that the door opened noiselessly to admit the figure of a woman like Mrs. Hallam in form and movement, dressed in extraordinary garments, with gold gleaming in the taint light of my night-lamp. She came stealthily across the floor and stood by my bedside, bending over me and peeping into my face to see whether or not I was asleep. My arm lay uncovered with the amulet clasped upon it. I thought that the woman approached her fingers to the clasp and was about to unfasten it, when I started up to repulse her, and discover that I was alone. The figure which had been called up at my imagination had disappeared. Musing over this vivid dream, I resolved to wear the amulet night and day in order to prevent such a misfortune as the loss of it by theft ; bo it remained on my arm henceforward, except while I was trying to decipher its enigmatical inscriptions. I come to a new starting-point in my story. One day Hallam and I had decided to visit a place of interest in the vicinity, expecting to be absent some hours. As we were leaving the house he said tome: "My wife tells me she intends to spend the interval of our absence in arranging some of my foreign curios : bat as soon as we are gone she will depart elsewhere. I can not, bung mybelf to return and watch her movements ; but you may do if you please. If she goes, she will go at once. I will wait for your return." I agreed to this suggestion, and went back to the house, gaining the staircase just in time to meet Mrs. Hallam in the corridor in her walking dress. She did not appear to see me ; and I had time to ob,erve how beautiful she was looking, and how becoming was her dress, before 1 put myself in her way and said : "So you have changed your mind, Mrs. Hallam ! You are ■coming to join us ? " She made no reply, but turned abruptly round as if to escape from me. I followed her up the corridor, both of us walking quickly. The passage ended with a wall through which there was no way : and as she neared thi* wall I called her name urgently : " Mrs. Hallam I Wait for me — li.->tcn to me ' "' The figure, with its back to me, wavered for a moment, and something about it affected me strangely. I changed my manner and said, in an imperative tone : " I command you to turn round and look at me I " The figure stood still, shuddered a little and stood still again ; then it began to turn slowly round, as if with extreme unwillingness. "Confront me !'" I said. '■ Look at me in the face and confess yourself ! " The head was now thrown back, and the face of Hallam's wife •was raised toward mine as if by some irrescible compelling force. I gazed on it with fascination and fear. I could see nothing there but the lineaments of the woman in whom I was so painfully interested. While I gazed, however, a change began to take place in the countenance : the clear carnations went out of the cheeks ; the skin became of an olive tint ; the features altered slightly : the eyes darkened to blackness and took an evil expression, which reminded me of the face that had passed me by lamplight one night on the corridor It was the face of Mrs. Hallam. yet with an extraordinary difference, I began to feel the whole experience a little weird, as something out of the usual order ol things. " Give an account of yourself, and tell me whether you are Mr*. Hallam or not ! " 1 said authoritatively. I stretched out my hand to touch her. As I spoke something shook itself free of my sleeve and fell rattling to the floor. At the same moment the angry glare in the eyes that were fixed on mine changed to a look of triumph ; the outlines of the face shifted and became confused, as if tome lapse in my brain had blurred my vision. I stooped and snatched up the amulet — for this was the object that had fallen, having filinped from my arm, — and when I raised my head again the woman in whose face I had been gazing had disappeared. Nothing was before me but the wall ; no one but myself in the corridor.

As Boon as I had recovered from my astonishment, I went straight to the room where Mrs. Hallam had announced her intention of spending the hours of our absence ; and here I found her quietly engaged in arranging the ennos. " Why have you returned 1 Is anything the matter with my husband t " she asked anxiously, at seeing me. " Nothing of the kind. I want a pair of glasses which are here. Will you kindly find them for me 1 " She put them in my hand. " You look Btrangely — as if you had got a fright." " I suppose it is the heat. Excuse my haete ! Hallam is waiting for me." I hurried away, but walked slowly enough across the park to rejoin my friend. I resolved that I would keep this last experience secret. I required time and solitude to think it over and arrive at some conclusion. To describe it at this moment would be to announce myself a fool or a madman. The drive through the green country restored my nerve, and the fresh ideas and conversation arising from our visit to a new scene were of excellent service in calming my excitement. I had merely said to Hallam on rejoining him : " I found your wife faithfully performing her task. She appeared to have no intention of going out of doors." He made no answer. His distrust of her had become co deeprooted that no reassurance of this kind gave him any relief. He had made up his mind that I was no more able to penetrate the dread mystery than he was himself, and that my eympathy for both him and his wife was overcoming my first eagerness for a solution of the problem. After dinner I felt I could not wait for bedtime to give my mind to the consideration of the event of the morning. I took up my letters which had come by the evening post, and said to Hallam : "I have something of importance to think of alone. I wili smoke a pipe out of doors, if you have no objection." Mechanically I took my way to the old garden where I had first seen Mrs. Hallam. The full moon was shining with a splendour of greenish light about the dark masses of the trees, here and there casting fantastic shadows across the solitary pathway. As I went I saw myself face to face with the conviction that the enemy who had been persecuting Mrs. Hallam was of a preternatural order. I had never before imagined that I had come in contact with the spirit-world, and the idea shocked and bewildered me. Accustoming myself to the idea, however, I soon became conscious of a certain pleasurable excitement. To reassure myself that no earthly agency could have produced the experience, I recalled again and again every circumstance of the morning's adventure. Standing in the garden, I reflected that this spirit — if spirit it were — must be easily within call, seeing that it played so frequent a part in our daily affairs. Lingering by the old fountain, and watching the moonsilvered water trickling into the old basin, I thought that there could not be a better spot than this for an experiment. Having made up my mind I pressed the amulet on my arm and urgently called on the being who had confronted me in the morning to approach me now. The words I used were in the dialect which Mrs. Hallam had told me was spoken by her Indian nurse. I will not boast that I felt no horror of what I was doing ; but curiosity and a desire to deliver my friend and his wife supported me. At first there was no response to my appeal, beyond the stirring of the branches near me, as if the breezes were mocking my audacity. After waiting a few minutes I repeated my summons uttering it, if possible, more distinctly than before. Presently I saw a gleam of something white in the distance ; then the whole of a white figure emerged from among the dark boughs into the moonlight ; and Mrs. Ha. 1 lam, in her evening dress and gossamer shawl, stood within a few paces of me. " I have come to look for you," she said. " John is growing impatient at your absence. Will you not come back with me to the house /" I was taken completely by surprise. Surely this was Virginia Hallam herself. Should I venture to frighten her by addressing her as a spirit of evil / " Mrs. Hallam," I said, " I have already presumed to counsel you not to come out in the chill of the night. Does your husband know of this particular rashness ?" •' I allow him to know very little of my movements," she answered. petti>hly. '■ Then you are less loyal to him than I believed you to be." "1 am not loyal to him, and he knows it. While lam with him I shall amuse myself as I please. When I leave him I shall enjoy my liberty." Face, voice, manner — all were so completely Mrs. Hallam that I paused again, uncertain how to proceed ; but a flash from the eyes that were watching me in the silence decided me. •' Your lie has discovered you," I said. " Cease to personate a virtuous woman, and show me your actual nature." I pressed the amulet tightly as I spoke, and had the satisfaction ,of seeing the figure begin to quiver and crouch, while the eyes glanced about uneasily. " Stand up and face me I" I said. " I have power over you." She rose and turned her face toward me, making every movement unwillingly and with a struggle. I fixed my eyes on the countenance so revealed. For the first minute it was Mrs. Hallam's face — fair and delicate of feature and complexion ; but as I pressed the amulet more closely, keeping my eyes on her eyes, the change I had expected began to take place. The features thickened somewhat ; the eyes grew dark and angry : the gold rings of hair became black ; the skin turned green and dusky. A baleful light came from the eyes, which looked back at me full of hatred and'defiance. " Now," I went on, " you must tell me who you are and why you haunt this place, making mischief in the lives of two innocent persons." She actually writhed under my gaze, but remained silent. I repeated my command again and again, till at last the answer came forth with a hiss : "lam Rhemba, the Queen of Aurungzoba. Two hundred years ago I lived on carth — "

Having got so far bhe irl<ip*ed into silence, while her eyes burned 6n me, full of indescribable malignity ; but finally lr.y perbibte;.ce Conquered her. and after an interval she continued : " Everyone obeyed me. I allowed nothing to stand in my way. I loved a white man, and he turned from me with disgust. I cursed those of my descendants who should marry with his raje. The woman 1 follow is the daughter of such a marriage, and reproduces my beauty with the differences caused by the colourless blood of her father's people. It is my purpose to follow her till I have accomplished her ruin. Do not venture to oppose me. Your power is imperfect and only occasional. I shall defeat you with terrible disaster to yourself." Satisfied that I had unmasked her, I relaxed my hold of the amulet ; when at once this evil being became to all appearance Virginia Hallam, who, gathering her light draperies around her. remarked that the air was growing chill ; and that if I would not return to the house, she would be obliged to go without me. Then she turned away, and I saw her pass slowly on between the trees, and disappear among the shadows which were created by the splendour of the moonlight. The next day I excused myself from going to ride with John, and went to seek Mrs. Hallam, whom I found continuing h"r task of arranging her husband's curios in the chamber I have mentioned. Her afternoon tea was spread on a small table of Indian carving, and she invited me to share it with her. While she dispensed the tea, talking pleasantly all the time, my mind was filled with the apparition of her by moonlight in the garden. Truly she had been marvellously personated. " I wonder," I said, "if there are ghosts about this place I An old house like this ought to have its ghost. Have you ever bad any supernatural experiences, Mrs. Ilallam ?" The smile and the lovely carnations went together out of her face. " I think I have," she said, hesitatingly ; " but the subject is painful to me." "Nothing interests me so much as a well-authenticated ghost story. Please to tell me. It is better to relate such an experience than to keep it to one's self." '• You will not laugh at me ?" "No ; and I can keep a secret. Nobody else shall laugh at you through me." She had dropped into a cha : r opposite me, and now fixed her eyes wistfully on my face. " You know what John Is," said ; " there is no one in the world like him — so good, so tender, so generous ; but you must have observed that he is pitilessly matter-of-fact. That is why I have never told him what lam going to tell you. I once made a beginning, but he laughed at me so immoderately that my intention was frustrated. My supernatural experience,'' she went on, " occurred when I was in India. The first was the frequent sight of a face boside my own in the looking-glass ; sometimes exactly the same as my own, and sometimes only like it with the strangest difference. When I told my old nurse she declared I had seen the spirit of my wicked ancestress. ' She pursues you,' she would cry, ' because of her hatred for your lily skin and the gold in your hair. You must always wear her amulet. She had it made for her own uses, and now you must turn its pow r ers against herself.' I think I told you before that I never wore the amulet, because my Christian father desired me to put away such things as superstitious, though I might keep them as trinkets. I tried to think that the face in the mirror had been conjured up by my imagination, excited by the weird and fantastic stories told me by my nnrse. But on one occasion after her death I believe I did come face to face with my evil f oremother I would rather not give you the details of this experience, as dwelling on them terrifies me. Since my coming to England I have not been troubled in the least ; but your suggestion of a ghost in this nice old house, which I am beginning to look on as home, startled me. " I think it is a pity that you do not even now talk to your husband about these matter?, just as you have talked to me," I said. "Ah !" she answered, with quick pain, "you mu=t know why I do not speak freely to my husband. For some mysterious reason I live under his displeasure.'" After this day I came to the conclusion that I could take no further steps without increase of knowledge. In the course of the evening I made occasion to tell Hallam. that pressing affairs of my own required me to return home for a time, but that I hoped to pay him another visit before the summer was over. " I thought that would be the end of it." he said. " But you have done your best, old friend ; aud I am thankful to you." I hesitated a moment before I said : " My parting word to you is this : bo charitably-minded towards your wife, no matter how appearances may be against her. Of one thing I am sure : she has a dangerous enemy, whom I hope to bring to light."

{To be emit Inn i (I.)