Chapter 4

"The code of--these mirrors. You won't do the thing because it's not the thing to do; because these fellows"--he waved a hand and the ghosts waved back at him--"don't do such things, and you haven't the nerve to sin off your own bat. Come"--he strolled back to his seat and leaned towards me across the table--"it's not much to boast of, but at this eleventh hour we must snatch what poor credit we can. You are, I suppose, a more decent fellow for not having fired: and I--By the way, you did feel the temptation?"

I nodded. "You may put your money on that. I never see you without wanting to kill you. What's more, I'm going to do it."

"And I," he said, "knew the temptation and risked it. No: let's be honest about it. There was no risk: because, my good Sir, I know you to a hair."

"There was," I growled.

"Pardon me, there was none. I came here having a word to say to you, and these mirrors have taught me how to say it. Take a look at them-- the world we are leaving--that's it: and a cursed second-hand, second-class one at that."

He paced slowly round on it, slewing his body in the chair.

"I say a second-class one," he resumed, "because, my dear Reggie, when all's said and done, we are second-class, the pair of us, and pretty bad second-class. I met you first at Harrow. Our fathers had money: they wished us to be gentlemen without well understanding what it meant: and with unlimited pocket-money and his wits about him any boy can make himself a power in a big school. That is what we did: towards the end we even set the fashion for a certain set; and a rank bad fashion it was. But, in truth, we had no business there: on every point of breeding we were outsiders. I suspect it was a glimmering consciousness of this that made us hate each other from the first. We understood one another too well. Oh, there's no mistake about it! Whatever we've missed in life, you and I have hated."

He paused, eyeing me queerly. I kept my hands in my pockets. "Go on," I said.

"From Harrow we went to College--the same business over again. We drifted, of course, into the same set; for already we had become necessary to each other. We set the pace of that set--were its apparent leaders. But in truth we were alone--you and I--as utterly alone as two shipwrecked men on a raft. The others were shadows to us: we followed their code because we had to be gentlemen, but we did not understand it in the least. For, after all, the roots of that code lay in the breeding and tradition of honour, with which we had no concern. To each other you and I were intelligible and real; but as concerned that code and the men who followed it by right of birth and nature, we were looking-glass men imitating--imitating--imitating."

"We set the pace," said I. "You've allowed that."

"To be sure we did. We even modified the code a bit--to its hurt; though as conscious outsiders we could dare very little. For instance, the talk of our associates about women--and no doubt their thoughts, too--grew sensibly baser. The sanctity of gambling debts, on the other hand, we did nothing to impair: because we had money. I recall your virtuous indignation at the amount of paper floated by poor W---- towards the end of the great baccarat term. Poor devil! He paid up--or his father did--and took his name off the books. He's in Ceylon now, I believe. At length you have earned a partial right to sympathise: or. would have if only you had paid up."

"Take care, Gervase."

"My good Sir, don't miss my point. Wasn't I just as indignant with W--? If I'd been warned off Newmarket Heath, if I'd been shown the door of the hell we're sitting in, shouldn't I feel just as you are feeling? Try to understand!"

"You forget Elaine, I think."

"No: I do not forget Elaine. We left College: I to add money to money in my father's office; you to display your accomplishments in spending what your father had earned. That was the extent of the difference. To both of us, money and the indulgence it buys meant everything in life. All I can boast of is the longer sight. The office-hours were a nuisance, I admit: but I was clever enough to keep my hold on the old set; and then, after office-hours, I met you constantly, and studied and hated you--studied you because I hated you. Elaine came between us. You fell in love with her. That I, too, should fall in love with her was no coincidence, but the severest of logic. Given such a woman and two such men, no other course of fate is conceivable. She made it necessary for me to put hate into practice. If she had not offered herself, why, then it would have been somebody else: that's all. Good Lord!" he rapped the table, and his voice rose for the first time above its level tone of exposition, "you don't suppose all my study-- all my years of education--were to be wasted!"

He checked himself, eyed me again, and resumed in his old voice--

"You wanted money by this time. I was a solicitor--your old college friend--and you came to me. I knew you would come, as surely as I knew you would not fire that pistol just now. For years I had trained myself to look into your mind and anticipate its working. Don't I tell you that from the first you were the only real creature this world held for me? You were my only book, and I had to learn you: at first without fixed purpose, then deliberately. And when the time came I put into practice what I knew: just that and no more. My dear Reggie, you never had a chance."

"Elaine?" I muttered again.

"Elaine was the girl for you--or for me: just that again and no more."

"By George!" said I, letting out a laugh. "If I thought that!"

"What?"

"Why, that after ruining me, you have missed being happy!"

He sighed impatiently, and his eyes, though he kept them fastened on mine, seemed to be tiring. "I thought," he said, "I could time your intelligence over any fence. But to-night there's something wrong. Either I'm out of practice or your brain has been going to the deuce. What, man! You're shying at every bank! Is it drink, hey? Or hunger?"

"It might be a little of both," I answered. "But stay a moment and let me get things straight. I stood between you and Elaine--no, give me time--between you and your aims, whatever they were. Very well. You trod over me; or, rather, you pulled me up by the roots and pitched me into outer darkness to rot. And now it seems that, after all, you are not content. In the devil's name, why?"

"Why? Oh, cannot you see? . . . Take a look at these mirrors again-- our world, I tell you. See--you and I--you and I--always you and I! Man, I pitched you into darkness as you say, and then I woke and knew the truth--that you were necessary to me."

"Hey?"

"_I can't do without you!_" It broke from him in a cry. "So help me God, Reggie, it is the truth!"

I stared in his face for half a minute maybe, and broke out laughing. "Jeshurun waxed fat and--turned sentimental! A nice copy-book job you make of it, too!"

"_Oh, send my brother back to me-- I cannot play alone!_"

"Perhaps you'd like me to buy a broom and hire the crossing in Lennox Gardens? Then you'd be able to contemplate me all day long, and nourish your fine fat soul with delicate eating. Pah! You make me sick."

"It's the truth," said he quietly.

"It may be. To me it looks a sight more like _foie gras_. Can't do without me, can't you? Well, I can jolly well do without you, and I'm going to."

"I warn you," he said: "I have done you an injury or two in my time, but by George if I stand up and let you shoot me--well, I hate you badly enough, but I won't let you do it without fair warning."

"I'll risk it anyway," said I.

"Very well." He stood up, and folded his arms. "Shoot, then, and be hanged!"

I put out my hand to the revolver, hesitated, and withdrew it.

"That's not the way," I said. "I've got my code, as I told you before."

"Does the code forbid suicide?" he asked.

"That's a different thing."

"Not at all. The man who commits suicide kills an unarmed man."

"But the unarmed man happens to be himself."

"Suppose that in this instance your distinction won't work? Look here," he went on, as I pushed back my chair impatiently, "I have one truth more for you. I swear I believe that what we have hated, we two, is not each other, but ourselves or our own likeness. I swear I believe we two have so shared natures in hate that no power can untwist and separate them to render each his own. But I swear also I believe that if you lift that revolver to kill, you will take aim, not at me, but by instinct at a worse enemy--yourself, vital in my heart."

"You have some pretty theories to-night," I sneered. "Perhaps you'll go on to tell me which of us two has been Elaine's husband, feeding daintily in Lennox Gardens, clothed in purple and fine linen, while the other--"

He interrupted me by picking up his revolver and striding to the fireplace again.

"So be it, since you will have it so. Kill me," he added, with a queer look, "and perhaps you may go back to Lennox Gardens and enjoy all these things in my place."

I took my station. Both revolvers were levelled now. I took sight along mine at his detested face. It was white but curiously eager-- hopeful even. I lowered my arm, scanning his face still; and still scanning it, set my weapon down on the table.

"I believe you are mad," said I slowly. "But one thing I see--that, mad or not, you're in earnest. For some reason you want me to kill you; therefore that shall wait. For some reason it is torture to you to live and do without me: well, I'll try you with that. It will do me good to hurt you a bit." I slipped the revolver into my pocket and tapped it. "Though I don't understand them, I won't quarrel with your sentiments so long as you suffer from them. When that fails, I'll find another opportunity for this. Good night." I stepped to the door. "Reggie!"

I shut the door on his cry: crossed the corridor, and climbing out through the window, let myself drop into the lane.

As my feet touched the snow a revolver-shot rang out in the room behind me.

I caught at the frozen sill to steady myself: and crouching there, listened. Surely the report must have alarmed the house! I waited for the sound of footsteps: waited for three minutes--perhaps longer. None came. To be sure, the room stood well apart from the house: but it was incredible that the report should have awakened no one! My own ears still rang with it.

Still no footsteps came. The horse in the stable close by was still shuffling his hoof on the cobbles. No other sound . . .

Very stealthily I hoisted myself up on the sill again, listened, dropped inside, and tip-toed my way to the door. The candles were still burning in the Room of Mirrors. And by the light of them, as I entered, Gervase stepped to meet me.

"Ah, it's you," I stammered. "I heard--that is, I thought--"

And with that I saw--recognised with a catch of the breath--that the figure I spoke to was not Gervase, but my own reflected image, stepping forward with pale face and ghastly from a mirror. Yet a moment before I could have sworn it was Gervase.

Gervase lay stretched on the hearthrug with his hand towards the fire. I caught up a candle, and bent over him. His features were not to be recognised.

As I straightened myself up, with the candle in my hand, for an instant those features, obliterated in the flesh, gazed at me in a ring, a hundred times repeated behind a hundred candles. And again, at a second glance, I saw that the face was not Gervase's but my own.

I set down the candle and made off, closing the door behind me. The horror of it held me by the hair, but I flung it off and pelted down the lane and through the mews. Once in the street I breathed again, pulled myself together, and set off at a rapid walk, southwards, but not clearly knowing whither.

As a matter of fact, I took the line by which I had come: with the single difference that I made straight into Berkeley Square through Bruton Street. I had, I say, no clear purpose in following this line rather than another. I had none for taking Lennox Gardens on the way to my squalid lodgings in Chelsea. I had a purpose, no doubt; but will swear it only grew definite as I came in sight of the lamp still burning beneath Gervase's portico.

There was a figure, too, under the lamp--the butler--bending there and rolling up the strip of red carpet. As he pulled its edges from the frozen snow I came on him suddenly.

"Oh, it's you, Sir!" He stood erect, and with the air of a man infinitely relieved.

"Gervase!"

The door opened wide and there stood Elaine in her ball-gown, a-glitter with diamonds.

"Gervase, dear, where have you been? We have been terribly anxious--"

She said it, looking straight down on me--on me--who stood in my tattered clothes in the full glare of the lamp. And then I heard the butler catch his breath, and suddenly her voice trailed off in wonder and pitiful disappointment.

"It's not Gervase! It's Reg--Mr. Travers. I beg your pardon. I thought--"

But I passed up the steps and stood before her: and said, as she drew back--

"There has been an accident. Gervase has shot himself." I turned to the butler. "You had better run to the police station. Stay: take this revolver. It won't count anything as evidence: but I ask you to examine it and make sure all the chambers are loaded."

A thud in the hall interrupted me. I ran in and knelt beside Elaine, and as I stooped to lift her--as my hand touched her hair--this was the jealous question on my lips--

"What has _she_ to do with it. It is _I_ who cannot do without him--who must miss him always!"

A PAIR OF HANDS

AN OLD MAID'S GHOST-STORY

"Yes," said Miss Le Petyt, gazing into the deep fireplace and letting her hands and her knitting lie for the moment idle in her lap. "Oh, yes, I have seen a ghost. In fact I have lived in a house with one for quite a long time."

"How you _could_--" began one of my host's daughters; and "_You_, Aunt Emily?" cried the other at the same moment.

Miss Le Petyt, gentle soul, withdrew her eyes from the fireplace and protested with a gay little smile. "Well, my dears, I am not quite the coward you take me for. And, as it happens, mine was the most harmless ghost in the world. In fact"--and here she looked at the fire again-- "I was quite sorry to lose her."

"It was a woman, then? Now _I_ think," said Miss Blanche, "that female ghosts are the horridest of all. They wear little shoes with high red heels, and go about _tap, tap_, wringing their hands."

"This one wrung her hands, certainly. But I don't know about the high red heels, for I never saw her feet. Perhaps she was like the Queen of Spain, and hadn't any. And as for the hands, it all depends _how_ you wring them. There's an elderly shop-walker at Knightsbridge, for instance--"

"Don't be prosy, dear, when you know that we're just dying to hear the story."

Miss Le Petyt turned to me with a small deprecating laugh. "It's such a little one."

"The story, or the ghost?"

"Both."

And this was Miss Le Petyt's story:--

"It happened when I lived down in Cornwall, at Tresillack on the south coast. Tresillack was the name of the house, which stood quite alone at the head of a coombe, within sound of the sea but without sight of it; for though the coombe led down to a wide open beach, it wound and twisted half a dozen times on its way, and its overlapping sides closed the view from the house, which was advertised as 'secluded.' I was very poor in those days. Your father and all of us were poor then, as I trust, my dears, you will never be; but I was young enough to be romantic and wise enough to like independence, and this word 'secluded' took my fancy.

"The misfortune was that it had taken the fancy, or just suited the requirements, of several previous tenants. You know, I dare say, the kind of person who rents a secluded house in the country? Well, yes, there are several kinds; but they seem to agree in being odious. No one knows where they come from, though they soon remove all doubt about where they're 'going to,' as the children say. 'Shady' is the word, is it not? Well, the previous tenants of Tresillack (from first to last a bewildering series) had been shady with a vengeance.

"I knew nothing of this when I first made application to the landlord, a solid yeoman inhabiting a farm at the foot of the coombe, on a cliff overlooking the beach. To him I presented myself fearlessly as a spinster of decent family and small but assured income, intending a rural life of combined seemliness and economy. He met my advances politely enough, but with an air of suspicion which offended me. I began by disliking him for it: afterwards I set it down as an unpleasant feature in the local character. I was doubly mistaken. Farmer Hosking was slow-witted, but as honest a man as ever stood up against hard times; and a more open and hospitable race than the people on that coast I never wish to meet. It was the caution of a child who had burnt his fingers, not once but many times. Had I known what I afterwards learned of Farmer Hosking's tribulations as landlord of a 'secluded country residence,' I should have approached him with the bashfulness proper to my suit and faltered as I undertook to prove the bright exception in a long line of painful experiences. He had bought the Tresillack estate twenty years before--on mortgage, I fancy--because the land adjoined his own and would pay him for tillage. But the house was a nuisance, an incubus; and had been so from the beginning.

"'Well, miss,' he said, 'you're welcome to look over it; a pretty enough place, inside and out. There's no trouble about keys, because I've put in a housekeeper, a widow-woman, and she'll show you round. With your leave I'll step up the coombe so far with you, and put you in your way.' As I thanked him he paused and rubbed his chin. 'There's one thing I must tell you, though. Whoever takes the house must take Mrs. Carkeek along with it.'

"'Mrs. Carkeek?' I echoed dolefully. 'Is that the housekeeper?'

"'Yes: she was wife to my late hind. I'm sorry, miss,' he added, my face telling him no doubt what sort of woman I expected Mrs. Carkeek to be; 'but I had to make it a rule after--after some things that happened. And I dare say you won't find her so bad. Mary Carkeek's a sensible comfortable woman, and knows the place. She was in service there to Squire Kendall when he sold up and went: her first place it was.'

"'I may as well see the house, anyhow,' said I dejectedly. So we started to walk up the coombe. The path, which ran beside a little chattering stream, was narrow for the most part, and Farmer Hosking, with an apology, strode on ahead to beat aside the brambles. But whenever its width allowed us to walk side by side I caught him from time to time stealing a shy inquisitive glance under his rough eyebrows. Courteously though he bore himself, it was clear that he could not sum me up to his satisfaction or bring me square with his notion of a tenant for his 'secluded country residence.'

"I don't know what foolish fancy prompted it, but about halfway up the coombe I stopped short and asked:

"'There are no ghosts, I suppose?'

"It struck me, a moment after I had uttered it, as a supremely silly question; but he took it quite seriously. 'No; I never heard tell of any _ghosts_.' He laid a queer sort of stress on the word. 'There's always been trouble with servants, and maids' tongues will be runnin'. But Mary Carkeek lives up there alone, and she seems comfortable enough.'

"We walked on. By-and-by he pointed with his stick. 'It don't look like a place for ghosts, now, do it?'

"Certainly it did not. Above an untrimmed orchard rose a terrace of turf scattered with thorn-bushes, and above this a terrace of stone, upon which stood the prettiest cottage I had ever seen. It was long and low and thatched; a deep verandah ran from end to end. Clematis, Banksia roses and honeysuckle climbed the posts of this verandah, and big blooms of the Marechal Niel were clustered along its roof, beneath the lattices of the bedroom windows. The house was small enough to be called a cottage, and rare enough in features and in situation to confer distinction on any tenant. It suggested what in those days we should have called 'elegant' living. And I could have clapped my hands for joy.

"My spirits mounted still higher when Mrs. Carkeek opened the door to us. I had looked for a Mrs. Gummidge, and I found a healthy middle-aged woman with a thoughtful but contented face, and a smile which, without a trace of obsequiousness, quite bore out the farmer's description of her. She was a comfortable woman; and while we walked through the rooms together (for Mr. Hosking waited outside) I 'took to' Mrs. Carkeek. Her speech was direct and practical; the rooms, in spite of their faded furniture, were bright and exquisitely clean; and somehow the very atmosphere of the house gave me a sense of well-being, of feeling at home and cared for; yes, _of being loved_. Don't laugh, my dears; for when I've done you may not think this fancy altogether foolish.

"I stepped out into the verandah, and Farmer Hosking pocketed the pruning-knife which he had been using on a bush of jasmine.

"'This is better than anything I had dreamed of,' said I.

"'Well, miss, that's not a wise way of beginning a bargain, if you'll excuse me.'

"He took no advantage, however, of my admission; and we struck the bargain as we returned down the coombe to his farm, where the hired chaise waited to convey me back to the market town. I had meant to engage a maid of my own, but now it occurred to me that I might do very well with Mrs. Carkeek. This, too, was settled in the course of the next day or two, and within the week I had moved into my new home.

"I can hardly describe to you the happiness of my first month at Tresillack; because (as I now believe) if I take the reasons which I had for being happy, one by one, there remains over something which I cannot account for. I was moderately young, entirely healthy; I felt myself independent and adventurous; the season was high summer, the weather glorious, the garden in all the pomp of June, yet sufficiently unkempt to keep me busy, give me a sharp appetite for meals, and send me to bed in that drowsy stupor which comes of the odours of earth. I spent the most of my time out of doors, winding up the day's work as a rule with a walk down the cool valley, along the beach and back.

"I soon found that all housework could be safely left to Mrs. Carkeek. She did not talk much; indeed her only fault (a rare one in house-keepers) was that she talked too little, and even when I addressed her seemed at times unable to give me her attention. It was as though her mind strayed off to some small job she had forgotten, and her eyes wore a listening look, as though she waited for the neglected task to speak and remind her. But as a matter of fact she forgot nothing. Indeed, my dears, I was never so well attended to in my life.