Tom Ossington's Ghost

Her eyes wandered round the room, as if in search of some one or of something, and presently they lighted upon Mr. Ballingall. As they did so, the whole expression of her countenance was changed; it assumed a look of unspeakable horror.

"Charles Ballingall!" she gasped. "Tom-Tom, what is he doing here?"

She stretched out her hands, seeming to seek for protection from the some one who was in front of her-repeating the other's name as if involuntarily, as though it were a thing accursed.

"Charles Ballingall!"

Slowly, inch by inch, her glance passed from the shrinking vagabond, until it stayed, seeming to search with an eager longing the face of the one who was before her in the apparently vacant air.

"Tom! – what's he doing here? Tom! Tom! don't look at me like that! Don't, Tom-for God's sake, don't look at me like that!" She broke into sudden volubility, every word a cry of pain. "Tom, I'm-I'm your wife! You-you brought me home! Just now! – from the Borough! – all the way! – all the long, long way-home! Tom!"

The utterance of the name was like a scream of a wounded animal in its mortal agony.

The four onlookers witnessed an extraordinary spectacle. They saw this tattered, drabbled remnant of what was once a woman, whose whole appearance spoke of one who tottered on the very borders of the grave, struggling with the frenzy of an hysterical despair with the visitant from the world of shades who, it was plain to her, if not to others, was her companion-the husband whom, with such malignant cruelty and such persistent ingratitude, she had wronged so long ago. She had held out her hands, her treacherous hands, seeking to shelter them in his; and it seemed as if, for a moment, he had suffered them to stay, and that now, since she had realised the presence of her associate in sin, unwilling to retain them any more in his, he sought to thrust them from him; while she, perceiving that what she had supposed to be the realisation of hopes which she had not even dared to cherish was proving but a chimera, and the fruit which she was already pressing to her lips but an Apple of Sodom, strained every nerve to retain the hold of the hands whose touch had meant to her almost an equivalent to an open door to Paradise. With little broken cries and gasping supplications, she writhed and twisted as she strove to keep her grasp.

"Tom! Tom! Tom!" she exclaimed, over and over again. "You brought me home! you brought me home! Don't put me from you! Tom! Tom! Tom!"

It seemed that the struggle ended in her discomfiture, and that the hands which she had hoped would draw her forward had been used to thrust her back; for, staggering backwards as if she had been pushed, she put her palms up to her breasts and panted, staring like one distraught.

By degrees, regaining something of her composure, she turned and looked at Ballingall, with a look before which he cowered, actually raising his arm as if warding off a blow. And, when she had breath enough, she spoke to him, in a whisper, as if her strength was gone.

"What are you doing here?"

Ballingall hesitated, looking about him this way and that as if seeking for some road of retreat. Finding none, making a pitiful effort to gather himself together, he replied to her question in a voice which was at once tremulous and sullen.

"Tom asked me to come. You know, Tom, you asked me to come."

He stretched out his arm with a gesture which was startling, as if to him also the woman's companion was a reality. There was silence. He repeated his assertion, still with his outstretched arm.

"You know, Tom, you asked me to come."

Then there happened the most startling thing of all. Some one laughed. It was a man's laugh-low, soft, and musical. But there was about it this peculiar quality-it was not the merriment of one who laughs with, but of one who laughs at; as though the laugher was enjoying thoroughly, with all his heart, a jest at another's expense. Before it the man and woman cowered, as if beneath a rain of blows.

After it ceased they were still. It was plain that the woman was ashamed, disillusioned, conscious that she had been made a butt of; and that, in spite of all appearances to the contrary, she was still among the hopeless, the outcast, the condemned. She glanced furtively towards the companion of her shame; then more quickly still away from him, as if realising only too well that, in that quarter, there was no promise of hope rekindled. And she said, with choking utterance:

"Tom, I never thought-you'd laugh at me. Did you bring-me home-for this?"

She put up her hands, in their dreadful gloves, to her raddled, shrunken face, and stood, for a moment, still. Then her frame began to quiver, and she cried; and as she cried there came that laugh again.

The note of mockery that was in it served to sting Ballingall into an assertion of such manhood as was in him. He clenched his fists, drew himself straighter, and, throwing back his head, faced towards where the laughter seemed to stand.

"Tom," he said, "I've used you ill. We've both of us used you ill, both she and I-she's been as false a wife to you as I've been friend. Our sins have been many-black as ink, bitter as gall. We know it, both of us. We've had reason to know it well. But, Tom, consider what our punishment has been. Look at us-at her, at me. Think of what we were, and what we are. Remember what it means to have come to this from that. Every form of suffering I do believe we've known-of mind and of body too-she in her way, and I in mine. We've been sinking lower and lower and lower, through every form of degradation, privation, misery, until at last we're in the ditch-amidst the slime of the outer ditch. We've lost all that there is worth having, so far as life's concerned, for ever. The only hope that is left us is the hour in which it is appointed that we shall die. For my part, my hope is that for me that hour is not far off. And, as I'm a living man, I believe that for her it has already come; that the scythe is raised to reap; that she's dying where she stands. Have you no bowels of compassion, Tom-none? You used to have. Are they all dried and withered? There's forgiveness for sinners, Tom, with God; is there none with you? You used to be of those who forgive till seventy times seven; are you now so unforgiving? You may spurn me, you may trample on me, you may press my head down into the very slime of the ditch; you know that these many months you've torn and racked me with all the engines of the torture chambers: but she's your wife, Tom-she was your wife! you loved her once! She bore to you a little child-a little baby, Tom, a little baby! It's dead-with God, Tom, with God! She's going to it now-now, now! While she's passing into the very presence chamber, where her baby is, don't abase her, Tom. Don't, Tom, don't!"

He threw out his arms with a gesture of such frenzied entreaty, and his whole figure was so transformed by the earnestness, and passion, and pathos, and even anguish with which he pressed his theme, that at least the spectators were cut to the heart.

"I know not," he cried, "whether you are dead or living, or whether I myself am mad or sane-for, indeed, to me of late the world has seemed all upside down. But this I know, that I see you and that you see me, and if, as I suppose, you come from communion with the Eternal, you must know that, in that Presence, there is mercy for the lowest-for the chief of sinners! There is mercy, Tom, I know that there is mercy! Therefore I entreat you to consider, Tom, the case of this woman-of she who was your wife, the mother of your child. She has paid dearly for her offence against you-paid for it every moment of every hour of every day of every year since she offended. Since then she has been continually paying. Is not a quittance nearly due-from you, Tom? If blood is needed to wash out her guilt, she has wept tears of blood. If suffering-look at her and see how she has suffered. And now, even as I stand and speak to you, she dies. She bears her burden to the grave. Is she to add to it, still, the weight of your resentment? That will be the heaviest weight of all. Beneath it, how shall she stagger to the footstool of her God? All these years she has lived in hell. Don't-with your hand, Tom! – now she's dying, thrust her into hell, for ever. But put her hand in yours, and bear her up, and stay her, Tom, and lead her to the throne of God. If she can say that you've forgiven her, God will forgive her too. And then she'll find her baby, Tom."

It was a strange farrago of words which Ballingall had strung together, but the occasion was a strange one too. His earnestness, in which all was forgotten save his desire to effect his purpose, seemed to cast about them a halo as of sanctity. It was almost as if he stood there, pleading for a sinner, in the very Name of Christ-the great Pleader for all great sinners.

The woman, this latest Magdalene, did as that first Magdalene had done, she fell on her knees and wept-tears of bitterness.

"Tom! Tom!" she cried, "Tom! Tom!"

But he to whom she cried did not do as the Christ, the Impersonation of Divine Mercy, did. Christ wept with the sinners. He to whom she pleaded laughed at her. And, beneath his laughter, she crouched lower and lower, till she lay almost prostrate on the floor; and her body quivered as if he struck her with a whip.

Ballingall, as if he could scarcely credit the evidence of his own senses, started back and stared, as though divided between amazement and dismay. Under his breath, he put a singular inquiry-the words seeming to be wrung from him against his will.

"Tom! – Are you a devil?"

And it seemed as if an answer came. For he stood in the attitude of one who listens, and the muscles of his face worked as if what was being said was little to his mind. A dogged look came into his eyes, and about his mouth. He drew himself further back, as if retreating before undesired advances. Words came sullenly from between his teeth.

"No, Tom, no-I want none of that. It isn't that I ask; you know it isn't that."

It appeared as if the overtures made by the unseen presence, unwelcome though they were, were being persisted in. For Ballingall shook his head, raising his hands as if to put them from him, conveying in his bearing the whole gamut of dissent; breaking, at last, into exclamations which were at once defiant, suppliant, despairing.

"No, Tom, no! I don't want your fortune. You know I don't! All this time you've been dangling it before my eyes, and all the time it's been a will-o'-the-wisp, leading me deeper and deeper into the mire. I was unhappy enough when first you came to me and spoke of it-but I've been unhappier since, a thousand times. You might have let me have it at the beginning, if you'd chosen-but you didn't choose. You used it to make of me a mock, and a gibe-your plaything-whipping boy! To-night the lure of it has only served as a means to bring us here together-she and I! – when you know I'd rather have gone a hundred miles barefooted to hide from her my face. I don't know if there is a fortune hidden in this house or not, and I don't care if behind its walls are concealed the riches of Golconda. I'll have none of it-it's too late! too late! I've asked you for what I'd give a many fortunes, and you've laughed at me. You'll not show, by so much as a sign, that you forgive her-now, at this eleventh hour. There's nothing else of yours I'll have."

In reply, there came again that quiet laughter, with in it that curious metallic quality, which seemed to act on the quivering nerves of the two sin-stained, wayworn wretches as if it had been molten metal. At the sound of it they gave a guilty start, as if the ghosts of all their sins had risen to scourge them.

From her demeanour, the laugher, diverting his attention from Ballingall, had apparently turned to address the woman. In accents which had grown perceptibly weaker since her first entering, she essayed to speak.

"Yes, Tom, I'll get up. If you wish me, Tom, of course I will. I'm-tired, Tom-that's all."

She did get up, in a fashion which demonstrated she was tired. The process of ascension was not the work of a moment, and when she had regained her feet, she swung this way and that, like a reed in the wind. It was only by what seemed a miracle that she did not fall.

"Don't be angry-I'm tired-Tom-that's all."

In her voice there was a weariness unspeakable.

Something, it seemed, was said to her-from which, as Ballingall had done, only in her feebler way, she expressed dissent.

"I don't want your money, Tom. It's so good of you; it's like you used to be, kind and generous. You always did give me lots of money, Tom, But-I don't want money-not now, Tom, not now."

Something else was said, which stung her, for she clasped her hands in front of her, with a movement of pain.

"I-didn't wish to make you angry, Tom-I'm-sure I didn't. Don't speak to me and look at me like that, don't, Tom, don't! You don't know how it hurts me, now-that I'm so tired. I'll go and fetch your money if you wish me-of course I will, if-you'll show me-where it is. I'll go at once. Upstairs? Yes, Tom-I don't think I'm-too tired to go upstairs, if-you'll come with me. Yes, Tom-I'm-going-now."

The woman turned towards the door hastily.

With a swift, eager gesture, in which there was something both mysterious and secretive, Ballingall addressed the four onlookers, the spellbound spectators of this, perhaps, unparelleled experience in the regions of experimental psychology. He spoke beneath his breath, hurriedly, hoarsely, with fugitive sidelong glances, as if before all things he was anxious that what he said should be heard by them alone.

"He's going to show her where the fortune is!"

The woman opened the door.

CHAPTER XVII

THE KEY TO THE PUZZLE

She stood, for a second, with the handle of the open door in her grasp-as if she was glad of its support to aid her stand. Then, with a quick glance backwards, as of pleading to the one who exercised over her so strange a spell, she tottered from the room. She continued speaking as she went, as if deprecating the other's wrath.

"I shall be all right-in a moment-if you don't-hurry me at first. I'm only slow because-I'm a little tired. It'll soon go, this tired feeling, Tom-and I'll be sure-to be quicker when it's gone."

Ballingall hung back as she passed from the room, seeming, from his attitude, to be in two minds whether to follow her at all. The others, as if taking their cue from him, seemed hesitating too-until Madge, with head thrown back, and fists hanging clenched at her sides, went after her through the door. Then they moved close on Madge's heels-Bruce Graham in front, Ballingall bringing up the rear.

The woman was staggering up the stairs, with obvious unwillingness-and, also, with more than sufficient feebleness. It was with difficulty she could lift her feet from step to step. Each time she raised her foot she gave a backward lurch, which threatened to precipitate her down the whole of the distance she had gained.

Madge's impulse was to dash forward, put her arms about the unfortunate creature's wrist and, if she needs must go forward, bear her bodily to the top of the stairs. But although, at the pitiful sight which the woman presented, her fingers tingled and her pulses throbbed, she was stayed from advancing to proffer her the assistance which she longed to render by the consciousness, against which she strove in vain, that between the woman and herself there was a something which not only did she dare not pass, but which she dare not even closely approach. Over and over again she told herself that it was nonsense-but a delusion born of the woman's diseased and conscience-haunted brain. There was absolutely nothing to be seen; and why should she, a healthy-minded young woman, suffer herself to be frightened by the vacant air? But in spite of all her efforts at self-persuasion, she allowed a considerable space to continue to exist between herself and the trembling wretch upon the stairs.

Slowly the queer procession advanced-the woman punctuating, as it were, with her plaintive wailings every step she took.

"Tom! Tom! Tom!" She continually repeated the name, with all the intonations of endearment, supplication, reproach, and even terror. To hear her was a liberal education in the different effects which may be produced by varieties of emphasis.

"Don't hurry me! I'm-going as quickly as I can. I-shall soon be at the top! It's so-so steep-a staircase-Tom."

At last the top was reached. She stood upon the landing, clinging to the banisters as she gasped for breath. Her figure swayed backward and forward, in so ominous a fashion that, halfway up the staircase, almost involuntarily Madge stretched out her arms to catch her if she fell. But she did not fall-nor was she allowed much time to recover from her exertions.

"I'm going-if-you'll let me-rest-for just one moment-Tom. Where do you wish me to go?"

It seemed as if her question was answered, for she gave a shuddering movement towards the wall, and burst into a passion of cries.

"No, Tom-not there! not there! not there! Don't make me go into our bedroom-not into our bedroom!"

The command which had been given her was apparently repeated, for, drawing herself away from the wall, she went with new and shuddering haste along the passage.

"I'm-I'm going! Only-have mercy-have mercy on me, Tom! I don't wish to anger you, only have mercy, Tom!"

The bedroom in front of the house was the one which was occupied by Ella, It was towards this room that the woman was moving with hurried, tremulous steps. Her unwillingness to advance was more marked than before, and yet she seemed urged by something which was both in front and behind her, which she was powerless to resist. They could see she shuddered as she went; and she uttered cries, half of terror, half of pain.

And yet she advanced with a decision, and a firmness, and also a rapidity, which was unlike anything she hitherto had shown. On the threshold of the room she stopped, starting back, and throwing out her hands in front of her.

"It's our bedroom, Tom-it's full of ghosts! Ghosts! Ghosts! Don't make me go into the bedroom, Tom."

But the propelling force, whatever it might have been, was beyond her power to withstand. She gave a sudden, exceeding bitter cry. Turning the handle, she flung the door right back upon its hinges. With a peal of laughter, which grated on the ears of those who heard almost more than anything which had gone before, she staggered into the room. As she disappeared they stopped, listening, with faces which had suddenly grown whiter, to her strange merriment.

"This is our bedroom-ha! ha! ha! – where you brought me when we were first married! Why, Tom, how many years is it since I was here? Ha, ha, ha! – I never thought I should come back to our bedroom, Tom-never! Ha, ha, ha!"

All at once there was a change in her tone-a note of terror. The laughter fled with the dreadful suddenness with which it had come.

"Don't, Tom, Don't! Have mercy-mercy! I'll do as you wish me-you know I will; I'll-get your money. Only-I didn't know-you kept it-in our bedroom-Tom. You didn't use to."

So soon as the laughter, fading, was exchanged for that panic cry, Madge hurried after her into the room-the others, as ever, hard upon her heels. The woman stood in the centre of the floor, looking about her with glances of evident bewilderment, as if seeking for something she had been told to look for. She searched in vain. Her eagerness was pitiful. She looked hither and thither, in every direction, as if, urged to the search, she feared, in speechless agony, the penalties of disobedience. All the while she kept giving short, sharp cries of strained and frenzied fear.

"I'm looking! I'm looking, Tom, as hard as I can, but-I see nothing-nothing, Tom! I'm doing as you tell me-I am-I am-I am! Oh, Tom, I am! But I don't see your money-I don't! I don't! If you'll show me where it is, I'll get it; but I see nothing of your money, Tom! Where is it? – Here!"

She moved towards the wash-hand stand, which was at the side of the room.

"Behind the washstand?"

She lifted the piece of furniture on one side with a degree of strength of which, light though it was, one would not have thought that she was capable. Getting behind it, she placed against the wall her eager, trembling hand.

"But-your money isn't here. There's nothing but the wall. Take the paper off the wall? But-how am I to do it? – With my fingers! – I can't tear off with my fingers, Tom. Oh, Tom, I'll try! Don't speak to me like that-I'll try!"

With feverish haste she dragged the apologies for gloves off her quivering hands.

"Where shall I tear it off? – Here? Yes, Tom, I'll try to tear it off just here."

Dropping on her knees she attacked with her nails the wall where, while she remained in that posture, it was about the height of her head-endeavouring to drive the edges through the paper, and to pick it off, as children do.

But her attempts were less successful than are the efforts of the average ingenious child.

"I can't, Tom, I can't! My fingers are not strong enough, and my nails are broken-don't be angry with me, Tom."

She made frantic little dabs at the wall. But her endeavours to make an impression on the paper were without result. It was plain that with her unassisted nails she might continue to peck at it in vain for ever.

Madge turned to Mr. Graham.

"Have you a pocket-knife?"

Without a word he took one from his waistcoat pocket.

Not waiting for him to open it, she took it from him with an action which almost amounted to a snatch. With her own fingers she opened the largest blade. Making a large, and under the circumstances curious circuit, in order to reach her, leaning over the washstand, touching the woman on the shoulder, she held out to her the knife.

Shrinking under Madge's finger, with an exclamation she looked round to see who touched her.

"Take this," said Madge. "It's a knife. With its help you'll be better able to tear the paper off the wall."

She took it-without a word of thanks, and, with it in her grasp, returned to the attack with energies renewed.

"I've got a knife, Tom, I've got a knife. Now I'll get the paper off quicker-much quicker. I'll soon get to your money, Tom."

But she did not get to it. On the contrary, the process of stripping off the paper did not proceed much more rapidly than before, even with the help of Mr. Graham's knife. It was with the greatest difficulty that she was able to get off two or three square inches.

The disappearance, however, of even this small portion revealed the fact that the paper-hanger who had been responsible for putting it into place, instead of stripping off the previous wall covering, as paperhangers are supposed to do, had been content, to save himself what he had, perhaps, deemed unnecessary trouble, to paste this latest covering on the previous one. This former paper appeared to have been of that old-fashioned kind which used to be popular in the parlours of country inns, and such-like places, and which was wont to be embellished with "pictorial illustrations." The scraping off, by the woman, of the small fragments of paper which she had succeeded in removing, showed that the one beneath it seemed to have been ornamented with more or less striking representations of various four-footed animals. On the space laid bare were figures of what might have been meant for anything; and which, in the light of the last line on Mr. Ballingall's manuscript, were probably intended for cats and dogs.

With these the woman was fumbling with hesitating, awkward fingers.

"Cat-dog? I don't-I don't understand, Tom-I see, Tom, – these are the pictures of cats and dogs. I'm blind, and stupid, and slow. I ought to have seen at once what they were? – I know I ought. But-be patient with me, Tom. Which one? – This one? Yes, I see-this one. It's-it's-yes, Tom, it's a dog's head, I see it is. – What am I to do with it? Press? – Yes, Tom, I am pressing. – Press harder? Yes, I'll-I'll try; but I'm-I'm not very strong, and I can't press much harder. Have mercy! – have mercy, Tom! Say-say you forgive me-forgive me! but I-I can't press harder, Tom-I can't!"

She could not-so much was plain. Even as the words were passing from her lips, she relinquished pressing altogether. Uttering a little throbbing cry, she turned away from the wall, throwing up her arms with a gesture of entreaty, and sinking on to the floor, she lay there still. As she dropped, that gentle, mocking laugh rang through the startled room.