The Laughing Mill and Other Stories Part 10

"A little more, and then my story will be finished indeed! I am going with the new expedition to the North Pole, and it will be my own fault if I return. Well, after leaving her, I came straight downstairs and hurried out. I felt as though I must go mad, or kill someone--myself perhaps. As I stood on the doorstep, mechanically b.u.t.toning up my ulster, I felt that creeping sickening chill once more, and knew that the unholy Thing had pa.s.sed me. I looked sharply about, and in a moment or two I saw it, as plainly as ever. It stood on the sunlit pavement, about fifty yards away, and appeared to be beckoning me to approach.

"I watched it for perhaps a minute, and then a sudden fury took possession of me. My hatred against this devil which had blighted my life and Edna's must have leapt up in my eyes, for I fancied, from the way the phantom leered at me, that he meant to claim a sort of relations.h.i.+p with me--as though I were become a devil too. Well, if I were a devil, perhaps I might be able to inflict some torture on this my fellow. I sprang down the steps, and set off towards it. It waited until I had pa.s.sed over more than half the intervening distance, and then it suddenly turned and walked onward before me. So a chase began."

"Good gracious, Calbot," remonstrated I; "you don't mean to tell me you ran after it--in the face of all London too?"

"I would have followed it to its own h.e.l.l if it had led me there,"

he returned. "At first it stalked along swiftly but easily, only occasionally cutting a grotesque caper in the air, with a flourish of its arms and legs. It kept always the same distance in front of me--with no effort could I lessen the interval. Nevertheless, I gradually increased my speed almost to a run, much to the apparent delight of the hobgoblin, who skipped with frantic glee over the cold pavements, occasionally half facing about to wave me on. It turned the corner of Piccadilly, and I lost sight of it for a moment; but, hurrying up, there it was again, a short distance up the street. It made me a profound mock obeisance, and immediately set off anew.

"As I need not tell you, the figure which I was pursuing was visible only to myself. The street was full of people, there were all the usual noise, bustle, and gaiety of the city at that hour; but though it pa.s.sed through the midst of the crowd, in all the fantastic singularity of its costume and manner, no one stepped out of its way or turned to gaze at it. That it should be so terrible a reality to me, and at the same time so completely non-existent to the rest of the world, affected me strangely. Here was a new bond of relations.h.i.+p between me and it.

My misery and I were one; but the link which united us was a cap of invisibility for the demon.

"_I_ was not invisible, however, nor unnoticed. I was conscious that everyone was staring at me--and no wonder! I must have presented an odd spectacle, hurrying onward with no apparent object, and with an expression of face which may well have been startling to behold. But so long as no attempt was made to stop me, I was indifferent to remark. I had determined to follow my black friend in the plumed hat, no matter where the chase might lead me.

"The pace grew quicker and quicker. We went down the Haymarket, and were now in the throng of the Strand. All the places which I know so well pa.s.sed by like remembered dreams. They seemed illusions, and the only real substance in the world was this Thing that I pursued. The dark shape continued to glide forward with easy speed, ever and anon giving me a glimpse of the pallid malignance of its evil visage; but my own breath was beginning to come hard, and the difficulty of forcing a path through the press became greater as we neared the heart of the city.

Pa.s.sing beneath Temple Bar, the spectre stopped a moment and stamped its foot imperiously, at the same time beckoning to me with an impatient gesture. I sprang forward, yearning to grapple with it; but it was gone again, and seemed to flit like a shadow along the sidewalk. Its merriment, however, now forsook all bounds--it appeared to be in a ceaseless convulsion of chuckling laughter. We fled onward, but so absorbed in my pursuit had I now become, that I recollect nothing distinctly until the tower of St. G----'s came into view. I think a premonition of what was to occur entered my mind then. The hobgoblin disappeared--seemingly through the iron railing of the contracted graveyard which bounds the northern side of the church. I came up to the railing and looked within. It was sitting on an ancient headstone, blackened by London smoke and worn by time; it sat with its elbows on its knees, and its head in its hands. A sombre shadow fell about it, which the cheerful suns.h.i.+ne could not penetrate; but its awful eyes emitted a dusky phosph.o.r.escent glare, dimly illuminating the leering features. As I looked, a change came over them--they were now those of a corpse already mouldering in decay, crumbling into nothingness before my eyes. The whole figure gradually faded or darkened away: I cannot tell how or when it vanished. Presently I was staring fixedly at an old tombstone, with a name and a date upon it; but the churchyard was empty."

IX.

Of my own accord I now reproduced my decanter of port-wine, and Calbot and I finished it before either of us spoke another word.

What he was thinking of meanwhile I know not; for my part, I was endeavouring to put in order a number of disjointed ideas, imbibed at various epochs during this evening, whose logical arrangement, I was convinced, would go far towards elucidating much of the mystery. As to the positively supernatural part of Calbot's experience, of course I had no way of accounting for that; but I fancied there were materials at hand tolerably competent to raise a ghost, allowing such a thing as a ghost to be possible.

"I am glad, Calbot," I began, "that you came to me. Your good sense--or instinct, perhaps--directed you aright. Do not despair: I should not be surprised were we to manage between us to discover that your happiness, so far from being at an end, was just on the point of establis.h.i.+ng itself upon a trustworthy foundation." Calbot shook his head gloomily.

"Well, well," resumed I, "let us see. In the first place--as regards that locket. It will perhaps surprise you to learn that I had heard of it before you came this evening--had read quite a minute description of it, in fact."

"Where?" demanded my friend, raising his eyes.

"That will appear later. I must first ask you whether, in the old family doc.u.ments you spoke of, the personal appearance of this Archibald Armstrong was particularly delineated?"

"I hardly know; I have no recollection of any especial pa.s.sage--and yet I fancy it must have been given with some fulness; because when I saw the hobgoblin, its costume and aspect seemed curiously familiar."

"And had I seen it, there is little doubt in my mind that I should have recognised it also."

"Indeed!" exclaimed Calbot, sitting upright in his chair, "how happens that?"

"Wait a moment, I am merely collecting evidence. Now, have you any reason to suppose that a connection of any sort--friendly, business, or other--subsisted between your unhappy ancestor and this Armstrong previous to the former's marriage?"

"Do you mean whether he was under any obligations to Armstrong?"

"Yes."

"He may have been--but the idea is new to me. How----"

"I am not done yet. Now, did it never occur to you--or, I should say, does it not seem probable--that the locket which you had found hidden away in your mother's jewel-box was in some way connected with the family tragedy you told me of?"

"I have thought of it, Drayton; there is no difficulty in imagining such a thing; the trouble is, we haven't the slightest evidence of it."

"I was about to say," I rejoined, "that there is direct evidence of precisely such a locket having been bought, in the latter part of the seventeenth century, by precisely such a looking man as the hobgoblin you saw to-day. It was to be a wedding-gift to the woman he was to marry the next day."

"Drayton!"

"That woman deceived him, and eloped on the eve of her marriage with a protege of his. He professed forgiveness, and sent the locket as a pledge of it."

"Odd!"

"He died in 1698, and his last recorded words were a curse invoked upon those whom he had before professed to pardon--upon them and their posterity."

"But, Drayton--what----"

"It is my opinion that his forgiveness was merely a cloak to his deadly and unrelenting hatred. It is my opinion, Calbot, that the pledge he gave was poisonous with evil and malicious influences. The locket was made of tourmaline, which has mysterious properties. No doubt he believed it a veritable witch's talisman; and from the sufferings which afterwards befell his enemies (not to speak of your own experience), one might almost fancy witchcraft to be not entirely a delusion after all."

"One might, indeed! But if, as you seem to imply, this locket enabled Armstrong to persecute Calbot and his wife, why did not they send it back or destroy it?"

"Simply because they were not aware of its evil nature, and fancied that Armstrong's (if it were his) profession of forgiveness had been genuine.

Very likely Mrs. Calbot habitually wore it on her bosom, as Miss Burleigh did again yesterday, more than a century later. The persecutor must have been a devil incarnate, from the time he learnt his lady's faithlessness until his death; and after that----"

"A plain devil. But to come to the point, you think that the locket was the sole medium of his power over them?"

"Undoubtedly. Then, after their death, it remained in the family, but never happened to be used again: it is not a jewel to catch the eye by any means. It remained perdu until you fished it out for Miss Burleigh, and thereby stirred up the old hobgoblin to play his devilish tricks once more. But by a lucky combination of accidents you parted with her in time; she returned you the locket, thus freeing _herself_ from the spectre; and you, by throwing it in the Thames, have secured him against ever being able to make his appearance again."

"It may be so, Drayton," cried Calbot in great excitement. "I remember, too, that when I gave her the locket she promised fealty _to the giver_!

Now, in fact, not I but this cursed Armstrong was the real giver; and so Edna was actually surrendering herself to his power. But, supposing your explanation correct, why may not Edna and I come together again?"

"Well, my dear fellow," replied I, as I lit another Cabana, "unless you have acquired a very decided aversion to each other during the last few hours, I really don't see why you shouldn't."

"Drayton, I'm afraid to believe this true! Tell me how you came upon your evidence, and what degree of reliance may be placed upon it."

I told him briefly about the MS., and added the conviction (at which I had arrived during his narrative) that it must have been sent to me by my former friend, Armstrong's executor; and probably comprised the very papers which I had made an ineffectual attempt to secure at the auction sale. "The only lame point about the matter," I added, "is, that the MS. is wholly anonymous. All the names are blanks, and though I have no doubt, now, that they are Armstrong, Burleigh, and Calbot, there is no direct proof of it."

My friend's face fell. "There, it may be only a coincidence after all!"

"Nonsense! a coincidence indeed! If you have credulity enough to believe in such a 'coincidence' as that, you have certainly mistaken your profession."

"If you were a lawyer," returned he, "you would know that there is no limit to the strangeness of coincidences. But let me see the MS."

"It is there on the table, at your elbow."

Calbot turned and took it up.

"How's this--it's wet, soaking wet!" he exclaimed. "Drayton, I'm afraid I must have cracked that old vase of yours. It has been leaking, and the table is flooded."

It was too true. The precious water of life had been preserved through so many generations merely for the sake of spoiling the morocco of my study table at last. Vanished were my hopes of earthly immortality.

Cautiously lifting the vase, in the hope that somewhat of the precious ichor might yet be saved, the whole bottom fell out. Calbot was sorry, of course, but he had no conception of the extent of the misfortune. He observed that the vase could easily be mended, as if the vase were the chief treasure.

"Never mind," said I, rather soberly, after we had sopped up the inestimable elixir, as well as we could, with our handkerchiefs. "I shall die an eternity or two the sooner, and shall have to get my table new covered, that's all. I hope, Calbot, that the good which your visit here has done you, will be a small fraction as great as the loss it has inflicted on me. Well, and how has the MS. come out of the sc.r.a.pe? All washed out, I suppose."

With a penitent eye Calbot took it up once more, and ran his eye over the last page. I saw his expression change. He knit his brows--looked up at me with a quick questioning glance--looked back to the page, and finally said: "Oh!"