The haunted house
don’t think I can do anything with that Frenchman. He’s shown no signs.
I fear he is impervious to the influences of the Other World.”
“I know,” said Bo simply. “Frenchmen are brass.”
“They give no credit, miss, to the doctrine of eternal punishment.”
“That’s what I meant,” said Bo.
“Now, Corton,” John went on, “listen to what Miss Hellup and I have
arranged. I’m going to put on a long black coat she has got for me; and
we’ve taken down one of the swords from the sham armour that Aunt Hilda
bought the other day, and shall stick it through the slit in the coat.
Then she’s made a big ruff. I shall put the whole thing over my head,
and there I shall be. A short man with his head in his chest, or a tall
man without a head—whichever you like. A ruff where his neck ought to
be, but nothing above it.”
“It was Miss Hellup who thought of that!” said Corton with admiration.
“No, Corton,” said Bo. “We both thought of it. But it is I who made up
the properties—and they’re dandy.”
“You’ll keep them carefully concealed, miss—and you, sir—until the
right moment?” said. Corton anxiously.
The two younger people nodded. John went on.
“That old gentleman’s going to hear voices, Corton, till they drive him
to bed. And you know that Aunt Hilda has put him into the Armada room?”
“Yes, Master John,” answered Corton very seriously. “The room that’s
panelled with oak which I hear is derived from the wrecks of the
Spanish Armada, as is also that in the dining-room.”
“That’s right,” said John cheerfully. “That’s where the ghost’s going
to be. For I am the ghost, and I know. There’s just room between the
tapestry on the wall and the red damask hangings at the head of the
four-post bed.” Then he added oddly, “I wish I hadn’t gone in for it.
It feels mean. But I had to take his appetite away, Corton. I don’t
want those millions to eat up Rackham.”
“You’ll make me despise you, Jacko,” said Bo, with the cruelty of her
sex. “What you want is to make the old brute roaring crazy. If you
don’t, I shall.”
“I’ll go through with it, Bo,” said Jacko simply. “But I do pity the
old boy all the same. You see, I have had nerves myself—when I was a
child.”
“And you’ll have them again to-night, if there’s a mirror in the room
and you squint through a button-hole,” Bo answered. “Now, Corton, all
this is bright and right?”
“Perfectly, miss, absolutely,” said Corton.
“Well, then, I’ll be getting back and helping some more with this lil’
haunting, and I’ll go coach Lovey-Lad. I know how to make him whine and
shiver.”
So did these conspirators part.
* * * * *
Still at her desk, the telephone relinquished, the Esthonian for a
moment silenced, Hilda Maple jotted away.
If she sold for £40,000 she could live modestly and freely for the rest
of her life; she had gone into the prices of annuities at her age, and
she knew what the £20,000 extra when all was paid off could buy.
If she could sell for £50,000, with a balance of £30,000 over for an
annuity—well and good. Or rather, well and better.
But time pressed, even if she hooked one of her two fish, she must have
something in writing by the morrow.
She was a determined woman, and a clear-headed woman, and also by
nature as hopeful as she was decided. She said to herself, as she
jotted figures slowly down on the paper before her, that if she played
her cards at all properly she would have her competing offers before
the evening was out. Then in the morning before her guests went away
she would get a brief note from the firm bidder. She would say it was
more regular, and whoever it was that had promised wouldn’t be able
to refuse that small formality. Then she could breathe again with
something to take up to town on the Tuesday. She would play her cards
first with Bruvvish—there was margin to play with in the devotion of
Lord Hellup. She must take Bruvvish for a foundation.
Bruvvish therefore she boarded, taking him aside immediately after she
had given him tea, as the sacrificial victim is taken aside after a
draught of honeyed wine. She got him into the library, alone, and fired
a broadside under which he reeled, and from which he could not recover.
She told him that she had divined his desire to purchase Rackham; she
loyally swore that his wife had never breathed a word of it, but she
admitted that Amathea had not been able to conceal her very natural
feeling about the place. They were old friends, were they not? and dear
friends—or she would not be speaking so frankly.
Well, as he knew, until quite lately she would have thought that
anyone who asked her to sell Rackham was mad. But then, with him and
Amathea it was different. And one thing she had always said: if it
had to go—and if it really was her duty to the boy that she should
sell—at least it should be in the hands of friends, and for the sake
of friends, still more for the sake of feeling that the old place
was still in the same kind of hands, she would take what she would
certainly take from no one else.
All the great spirit of the Huggins blood rose at that moment, and
before the fatal figures could be uttered, before the foot could be
slipped into the open door, the initiative had passed from Hilda to
the enemy. The mighty man of business spoke. These things have to be
done as with an axe—once, and decisively. He had always read that of
the millionaires in the papers. And since he had become a millionaire
himself he had been determined to live up to it. He settled his head
well down, shortening still further his short neck, he put on the
sullen expression which he associated with financial mastery, and he
said these words:
“I ’ad thort o’ going to £30,000.”
Hilda Maple was worthy of herself, and of the occasion.
“Yes,” she said simply—and then, as though no one had spoken, “as you
say. It is most strange to me how long it takes me to make up my mind.
I will be straightforward with you, Lord Mere. When I was offered sixty
thousand all those years ago....”
“Sixty thousand!” gasped Lord Mere de Beaurivage.
Hilda Maple waved her hand impatiently.
“Sixty thousand, I said. Well, when I was offered it all those years
ago I refused it. Not for the money, mind you—I thought it was a very
fair price, especially as I had not added anything to speak of in those
days. But I could not bear to think of selling the place. They might
have offered me sixty million and it would have been the same. But
now it’s another matter. You know, dear Lord Mere de Beaurivage” (he
quailed beneath her eye), “... that I’m saying it to you because it
_is_ you—you and dearest Amathea. One can’t have many close friends in
this world. And you know too that I’m thinking of the boy. If I knew
that I could get even fifty thousand guineas now, and leave it in safe
hands.... Why.... Yes ...” again she sighed. “I suppose I should yield.”
“Fifty thousand!” almost shouted Lord Mere de Beaurivage.
“Yes,” nodded his handsome friend. “Fifty thousand guineas. That’s it.
It’s too little, I know. I know what you’re feeling for me—but can’t
beat up a price. I can’t haggle. I never could bear the details of
business. And if I must suffer, why, it’s like an operation.... I want
something quick, clean, and done with.... So I’d take even that.”
It was on the tip of his lordship’s tongue to utter the fatal words,
“Yer would, would yer?”—and then her patience would have broken and
there would have been a scene. But he stood in sufficient awe of
superior culture to be restrained in time. All he said was:
“Well, ma’am—Ilda, I mean—honest and square like ... come ... I do
think when you say fifty thousand pounds....”
“Guineas,” murmured Hilda Maple.
“Ho? Guineas?” he muttered savagely. “You’re fair coming it over me!
That’s wot you are, strite—altogether coming it over me!”
“Oh!” moaned Hilda Maple wearily. “How I hate all this business talk!
_I_ don’t want to sell the place. I wish I’d never mentioned it. And
if it’s going to interrupt our friendship, for God’s sake let’s say no
more about it at all. It’ll be a load off my mind, anyhow, to drop the
whole thing. And there I shall be in Rackham, where I’ve always been.
And it’s my soul’s home. And with John ... here as I grow old ... to
inherit it all from me,” she added, with beautiful sentiment.
“Don’t misunderstand me, Ilda, don’t misunderstand me,” said the great
man. “We need to be friendly in business, same as in everythink else.
Don’t we? Now s’posin we talk it over quiet-like. Here have I been
talkin’ thirty thousand pounds. Well, I tell ye’ strite, that was just
bargaining. You wouldn’t have me not bargain, would yer? Yer think less
of me, wouldn’t yer?”
“Oh, I’m tired ... tired, tired!” exclaimed the lady, in tragic tones,
higher than she had yet used, and alarming to the financier, who was
always terrified of women’s whims. “I can’t go into it any more,
George” (she did not often call him George—but she called him George
now). “Really I can’t. I tell you....” She got up and moved as though
she would go.
“Stye a bit. Wite a bit, Ilda, do!” he cried, hoisting himself out of
his chair. “I’ve got ter tell Mattie somethin, yer know. Now, let’s be
reasonable. We was saying fifty thousand pounds, that’s what you and I
was saying....”
“‘Guineas,’ I said. No! no! I can’t go on,” burst forth Hilda Maple,
making for the door in her agitation. Then she turned back suddenly and
frankly took his hands. “We won’t quarrel, George, will we? Only don’t
let us talk business any more.”
And then she was gone.
His lordship sank back into the big chair from which he had so
painfully raised himself for that moment, and he grumbled to himself
half aloud:
“All Mattie’s doin’; she’s that keen on the place! Fifty thousand!
Well, it’s a ramp. But now she’s broke off! What am I to say to Mattie?”
* * * * *
Hilda Maple, singularly composed after her recital, not unlike King
Lear or any other tragic figure when it gets off into the wings for
its pot of beer, had two things clearly fixed in her mind: first, she
had established her fifty thousand—guineas; there was no doubt of that
at all. She had laid her foundation. Secondly, Lord Hellup would be
spending the time between tea and dressing, as he always did, in the
little Red Room, reading Motley’s _Dutch Republic_—it was astonishing,
she thought, how that great man could read and re-read Motley’s _Dutch
Republic_. But it argued a stable mind. Anyhow, he would be there, in
the little Red Room. And therefore to the little Red Room did Hilda
Maple steal.
* * * * *
For once in his life Lord Hellup did not mind being interrupted in his
re-reading for the fiftieth time of the Monstrous Alva, the Divine
William of Orange, the heroic Dutch and the villainous Dagoes. He put
down his book with a snap; he was on his feet at once; he had put a
winning look into his face, and was about to put a winning tone into
his voice to greet her, when Hilda forestalled him.
“Lord Hellup,” she said, “I have come to ask your advice. No one would
give it more freely or more generously than you, and I would trust your
judgment beyond that of any living person.”
“Is that so?” replied the peer, with pleasure ringing through the quiet
words.
“Lord Hellup, I have made up my mind to sell Rackham.”
“You don’t say?” repeated her guest, in the same courteous intonation.
“That was what I felt scared about when you were talking just now in
the garden. Well, well, so you want to sell Rackham?”
“Yes. But I come to you—I shall be quite frank, because you can help me
as no one else can....”
“Help—how?” said his lordship courteously.