In Ghostly Company (Tales of Mystery & The Supernatural) (18 page)

It was clear that at half-past three on the afternoon of her disappearance Anna was in good health and spirits. Her diary showed that up to the night before she had been ignorant of the existence of the secret room; it is impossible that she should have known it and of its contents and should not have mentioned them in her diary. As she did not come down to the kitchen at five o’clock it must be assumed that at some time between half-past three and five o’clock something occurred which caused her to leave her work in one part of the castle, go to another part, discover a secret room and voluntarily shut herself up in it – it was proved that the door of the secret passage was not self-closing.

And having entered the secret room why did she kneel down and adore a skeleton? Most people, young girls especially, on finding themselves in such company would have done their best to escape from it; again, why did she not make her presence in the secret room known to one or other of the search parties? It is unlikely that she died so quickly as not to have heard either Michael or later on the first search party calling in the East Hall, though it is possible she may have succumbed before the advent of the priest’s party on the following day. The questions, as my friend, the Budapest agent, said, are easy enough to put but impossible to answer unless one is willing to believe that the wicked Count, driven to his terrible death by the mob headed by Pavlinski, continued after leaving his earthly body to pursue Pavlinski and his family with his vengeance. The seemingly accidental and violent deaths within the walls of the castle of the two male members of the family may perhaps be thus explained, as well as the singular illusions which lured to her end the unfortunate Anna, the last of her race.

The Governess’s Story

We were sitting, a large group of us, round the blazing fire in the old hall one Christmas Eve and the conversation, guided by both hour and place, drifted on to things supernatural. Among those present was old Miss Hosmer, a lady well-known and popular, who, after an early life of struggle and poverty, was now spending her declining years in comfort on a modest fortune, derived from the bequest of a distant relative. In her youth Miss Hosmer had earned her livelihood as a governess and in the course of her scholastic career she had lived in various families and had undergone various experiences, some grave, some, but alas fewer, gay; she had seen the skeletons kept in more than one cupboard and had been the confidante of more than one curious story.

As a rule she was chary of recounting her experiences, since she rightly held that the histories of others, however discovered, should be kept confidential, and that more mischief is the result of idle gossip than comes from malicious tale-bearing. In person, she was small, grey-haired, old-fashioned, with a keen sense of humour twinkling in her blue eyes and a warm corner in her heart for those in difficulty or distress. During the early part of our talk, she had remained silent, listening with a queer expression of detachment to the various stories that circulated round the circle, and contributing nothing to them till directly appealed to by Mrs Leveson, one of her former and well-loved pupils.

In a pause of the conversation, Mrs Leveson turned abruptly to Miss Hosmer and said: ‘Can’t you tell us a story, Miss Hosmer? I know you have told me more than once that when you were quite a young woman you saw a ghost.’

‘No, my dear,’ answered Miss Hosmer, ‘I never told you that. I never saw a ghost in all my life.’

‘But surely you had some queer experience of that nature, didn’t you?’ returned Mrs Leveson.

‘Well,’ said the other, ‘I did once have an adventure of the sort you mention. I don’t often speak of it nowadays, and I try to think of it as little as I can.’

‘Why?’ I interrupted, ‘Is it anything so very dreadful?’

‘No,’ said Miss Hosmer slowly. ‘It was not really dreadful, but it was very, very sad, and I feel, perhaps, that I should be doing harm and causing pain to perfectly innocent people by repeating it.’

‘But not if you conceal the names and places,’ answered Mr Davies, the barrister, ‘and, now you have roused our curiosity so much, surely you will gratify it and tell us the story.’

Miss Hosmer hesitated for a few minutes, and then replied: ‘Well, perhaps you are right and, in any case, I hope and believe that I can so conceal identities that none of you will know of whom I am speaking. But I beg,’ she went on, ‘that if any of you do guess, you will keep your guesses to yourselves. Two of the people implicated are alive today, and I would not for the world that either of them should have the slightest inkling of what happened in their family when they were little children.’

We promised as she desired, and Miss Hosmer began.

‘What I am going to tell you is an experience that I actually underwent many years ago, when I was quite a girl, and had only recently taken up governessing as a means of earning my daily bread. I had been out of a situation for some little time, and was beginning to grow anxious as to my future; so that it was with a feeling of real happiness that one morning I opened a letter from Miss Butler, at whose agency I was registered, in which she asked me to come round to her office as soon as possible. It was not long before I was with her, when she told me that she had just had an application from Lady K., the widow of the late Sir Arthur K., G.C.M.G., for a young lady to come to her in the country to educate her two children, a boy of nine and a little girl of seven, and to give especial attention to preparing the boy for school. Up to the present, so far as I could gather, Lady K. had had entire charge of the education of the children since her husband’s death, but she did not feel her-self capable of instructing the boy sufficiently to prepare him for school, and she also desired a resident governess to continue the girl’s education after the boy had left home.

‘Miss Butler gave me Lady K.’s letter to read, and I gleaned from it that the family resided always at the family seat Wyke Hall, near the town of Dellingham, in one of the Midland Counties. The work appeared to be exactly what I wanted and felt capable of undertaking; the terms offered were quite satisfactory, and the quietness of the life was by no means distasteful to me, since I have always been a lover of the country. It was accordingly arranged that I should write to Lady K. and seek an interview with her to go further into the matter. I returned to my rooms without delay and, having written and posted my letter, I hunted up an old book of reference that had belonged to my father to see what mention it made of the K. family. I quickly found what I sought and learned that Sir Arthur K. had died in 1887, leaving three children. He had been twice married, once to a Miss C. in 1874, by whom he had had one son, Edward, born in 1877, and again in 1883 to a Miss Constance G. by whom he had had two children, Arthur, born in 1884, and Eleanor, born in 1886. As the year of which I am speaking was 1893, this would make the ages of the three children sixteen, nine, and seven respectively. Except that the family residence was Wyke Hall, which I knew already, this was all the information my rather out-of-date reference book contained about the K. family.

‘In course of post I received a reply from Lady K. stating that she would be at a certain hotel in London, on a certain not distant date, and asking me to call and see her there. I complied with her request, and one fine morning late in August, 1893, beheld me ushered in a rather nervous condition into the presence of Lady K. On entering the private sitting-room where she was awaiting me, as she rose from her chair to greet me I saw before me a tall, stately, handsome woman of about thirty-five years of age. She was a blonde with aquiline features, a handsome, well-preserved figure, dressed in handsome though rather old-fashioned clothes. Her voice was gentle, low and cold, with a curiously monotonous intonation. Her manners were dignified and reserved, though perfectly courteous. She was in half-mourning, and wore no jewellery.

‘In short, a first glance displayed a rather fine, if cold-looking woman of the world; a closer inspection revealed something else. Beneath all her perfect manners and frigid exterior there seethed a medley of strong passions; and among these, lurking in the depths and only occasionally peeping forth, was fear. I have always been something of a physiognomist, and I felt sure I was not deceived. Of what she was in fear, and of what was concealed beneath that calm exterior, I could not even hazard a guess; but that Lady K. possessed a secret, and a painful if not a terrible one, I was not an instant in doubt. After our formal greetings we stood looking at each other, and in that brief moment I formed the conviction that I did not and never could like Lady K. However, it is not for a hard-up governess to pick and choose. If Lady K. liked me, I felt I was bound to accept her situation; it would have been impossible for me to go back to Miss Butler and tell her that I had refused an excellent position with a family of standing, simply because I did not like an indescribable something in my would-be employer’s face,

‘Well, I need not go into the details of my interview with Lady K. except to say that she made most particular and minute enquiries into my capabilities, qualities, failings, good points, family and, in fact, every conceivable thing about me. My sense of dislike to her was not intensified by this inquisition, in fact it rather raised her in my opinion as being evidence that she was a careful and conscientious woman. I noticed also that the mention of her children was the sole thing that brought a gleam of light and happiness into that cold, hard face.

Evidently she adored her little Arthur, her little Eleanor. After a long interview we parted, I going out with the assurance of Lady K. that, if the references with which I had supplied her were as satisfactory as our conversation, I might consider myself engaged to come to Wyke Hall after the holidays were over – in about a month’s time.

‘The references proved satisfactory, and one evening in late September saw me arriving at Dellingham Station. It was a fine evening, but the journey from town had been long and tedious and it was growing dark by the time I left the station. Outside, I found await-ing me a well-appointed, single-horse brougham, driven by a neatly liveried and respectful groom. Into this I mounted and my luggage having been bestowed on the carriage rack we started off for Wyke Hall. So far as I could see, after we had disengaged ourselves from the streets of the little town of Dellingham, we drove through a typical English midland county landscape; gentle rolling hills, green pasture and well-kept arable land were intermingled, and our road seemed to follow generally the course of the little river Dell. We passed smiling farmhouses and pleasant cottages during the drive: our lines lay in peaceful and homelike places. About five miles from Dellingham, so far as I could judge, the brougham turned up an elm-shaded avenue, and in a few minutes more stopped before the door of Wyke Hall. It was now almost dark, and I could see but little of the house, except that it appeared to be of fair size and to be surrounded by a broad, stone-flagged terrace.

‘The front door was opened by a neat-looking footman in livery, behind whom loomed the more dignified form of a middle-aged butler, and I entered the hall, which was of considerable size. Opposite the front door was another, which led into Lady K.’s private sitting and business room. Close to this second door, the main staircase of the house commenced; this led up to a wide gallery on the first floor. Out of this gallery on the left-hand side opened a swing-door which gave access to the upper passage of the wing. The butler, having relieved me of my handbag and umbrella, led the way across the ball and ushered me into Lady K.’s room.

‘Lady K. greeted me with as much cordiality as she appeared capable of assuming, seated me by the fire, ordered me up a belated, but much welcome tea, enquired about my journey and generally did her best to give me a polite welcome. I still, however, could not get over that faint sense of dislike towards her, which I had felt from the first, and it was with relief that I heard her say as I put down my tea cup: “Well, now I suppose you would like to meet the children. I will send for them to come down.”

‘And in a few minutes down they came, and at once I fell in love with both of them. It has been my lot to teach and to love many young people, but, assuredly, I can say that in all my experience I never met two to whom I took so quick and warm a fancy, and from whom I received so soon such affectionate devotion. Of the two, perhaps my favourite was the boy, Arthur; he was fair like his mother, but instead of her cold expression he was bubbling over with life and good spirits. He was the leader of the two, and ruled his little sister with a vigour, which, if it had not been loving, would have been merciless. She reciprocated his devotion, and was never so happy as when trotting after him and carrying out his instructions. She was dark – I presume she took after her father – and intelligent, but Arthur was an unusually brilliant child.

We spent a little time in making acquaintance, and I became confirmed in my original opinion that the one really soft spot in Lady K. was her passionate adoration of her children.

‘After about half an hour thus spent, Lady K. rose and said she was sure I would wish to see my own quarters, and we accordingly all of us proceeded upstairs. On reaching the swing-door on the upper floor Lady K. pushed it open, and descending a couple of steps we entered the wing of the house, which was traversed by a wide but not lengthy passage terminating in a large window. Lady K. threw open the first door on the right hand of this passage and disclosed a large, cheerful-looking room, the schoolroom and general living room, in which the children spent the bulk of their waking hours. Having duly inspected this apartment, we proceeded down the passage to the door of a second room which formed the end room of the house.