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THE GREY ROOM

by Eden Phillpotts

CONTENTS

CHAPTER
I. THE HOUSE PARTY
II. AN EXPERIMENT
III. AT THE ORIEL
IV. "BY THE HAND OF GOD"
V. THE UNSEEN MOVES
VI. THE ORDER FROM LONDON
VII. THE FANATIC
VIII. THE LABORS OF THE FOUR
IX. THE NIGHT WATCH
X. SIGNOR VERGILIO MANNETTI
XI. PRINCE DJEM
XII. THE GOLDEN BULL
XIII. TWO NOTES

CHAPTER I

THE HOUSE PARTY

The piers of the main entrance of Chadlands were of red brick, and
upon each reposed a mighty sphere of grey granite. Behind them
stretched away the park, where forest trees, nearly shorn of their
leaves at the edge of winter, still answered the setting sun with
fires of thinning foliage. They sank away through stretches of
brake fern, and already amid their trunks arose a thin, blue
haze--breath of earth made visible by coming cold. There was frost
in the air, and the sickle of a new moon hung where dusk of evening
dimmed the green of the western sky.

The guns were returning, and eight men with three women arrived at
the lofty gates. One of the party rode a grey pony, and a woman
walked on each side of him. They chattered together, and the
little company of tweed-clad people passed into Chadlands Park and
trudged forward, where the manor house rose half a mile ahead.

Then an old man emerged from a lodge, hidden behind a grove of
laurel and bay within the entrance, and shut the great gates of
scroll iron. They were of a flamboyant Italian period, and more
arrestive than distinguished. Panelled upon them, and belonging
to a later day than they, had been imposed two iron coats of arms,
with crest above and motto beneath--the heraldic bearings of the
present owner of Chadlands. He set store upon such things, but
was not responsible for the work. A survival himself, and steeped
in ancient opinions, his coat, won in a forgotten age, interested
him only less than his Mutiny medal--his sole personal claim to
public honor. He had served in youth as a soldier, but was still
a subaltern when his father died and he came into his kingdom.

Now, Sir Walter Lennox, fifth baronet, had grown old, and his
invincible kindness of heart, his archaic principles, his great
wealth, and the limited experiences of reality, for which such
wealth was responsible, left him a popular and respected man. Yet
he aroused much exasperation in local landowners from his
generosity and scorn of all economic principles; and while his
tenants held him the very exemplar of a landlord, and his servants
worshipped him for the best possible reasons, his friends, weary
of remonstrance, were forced to forgive his bad precedents and a
mistaken liberality quite beyond the power of the average
unfortunate who lives by his land. But he managed his great manor
in his own lavish way, and marvelled that other men declared
difficulties with problems he so readily solved. That night, after
a little music, the Chadlands' house party drifted to
the billiard-room, and while most of the men, after a heavy day
far afield, were content to lounge by a great open hearth where a
wood fire burned, Sir Walter, who had been on a pony most of the
time, declared himself unwearied, and demanded a game.

"No excuses, Henry," he said; and turned to a young man lounging
in an easy-chair outside the fireside circle.

The youth started. His eyes had been fixed on a woman sitting
beside the fire, with her hand in a man's. It was such an attitude
as sophisticated lovers would only assume in private but the pair
were not sophisticated and lovers still, though married. They
lacked self-consciousness, and the husband liked to feel his wife's
hand in his. After all, a thing impossible until you are married
may be quite seemly afterwards, and none of their amiable elders
regarded their devotion with cynicism.

"All right, uncle!" said Henry Lennox.

He rose--a big fellow with heavy shoulders, a clean-shaven,
youthful face, and flaxen hair. He had been handsome, save for a
nose with a broken bridge, but his pale brown eyes were fine, and
his firm mouth and chin well modelled. Imagination and reflection
marked his countenance.

Sir Walter claimed thirty points on his scoring board, and gave a
miss with the spot ball.

"I win to-night," he said.

He was a small, very upright man, with a face that seemed to belong
to his generation, and an expression seldom to be seen on a man
younger than seventy. Life had not puzzled him; his moderate
intellect had taken it as he found it, and, through the magic
glasses of good health, good temper, and great wealth, judged
existence a desirable thing and quite easy to conduct with credit.
"You only want patience and a brain," he always declared. Sir
Walter wore an eyeglass. He was growing bald, but preserved a pair
of grey whiskers still of respectable size. His face, indeed,
belied him, for it was moulded in a stern pattern. One had guessed
him a martinet until his amiable opinions and easy-going
personality were manifested. The old man was not vain; he knew that
a world very different from his own extended round about him. But
he was puzzle-headed, and had never been shaken from his life-long
complacency by circumstances. He had been disappointed in love as
a young man, and only married late in life. He had no son, and was
a widower--facts that, to his mind, quite dwarfed his good fortune
in every other respect. He held the comfortable doctrine that
things are always levelled up, and he honestly believed that he had
suffered as much sorrow and disappointment as any Lennox in the
history of the race.

His only child and her cousin, Henry Lennox, had been brought up
together and were of an age--both now twenty-six. The lad was
his uncle's heir, and would succeed to Chadlands and the title;
and it had been Sir Walter's hope that he and Mary might marry.
Nor had the youth any objection to such a plan. Indeed, he loved
Mary well enough; there was even thought to be a tacit
understanding between them, and they grew up in a friendship which
gradually became ardent on the man's part, though it never ripened
upon hers. But she knew that her father keenly desired this
marriage, and supposed that it would happen some day.

They were, however, not betrothed when the war burst upon Europe,
and Henry, then one-and-twenty, went from the Officers' Training
Corps to the Fifth Devons, while his cousin became attached to the
Red Cross and nursed at Plymouth. The accident terminated their
shadowy romance and brought real love into the woman's life, while
the man found his hopes at an end. He was drafted to Mesopotamia,
speedily fell sick of jaundice, was invalided to India, and, on
returning to the front, saw service against the Turks. But chance
willed that he won no distinction. He did his duty under dreary
circumstances, while to his hatred of war was added the weight of
his loss when he heard that Mary had fallen in love. He was an
ingenuous, kindly youth--a typical Lennox, who had developed an
accomplishment at Harrow and suffered for it by getting his nose
broken when winning the heavy-weight championship of the public
schools in his nineteenth year. In the East he still boxed, and
after his love story was ended, the epidemic of poetry-making took
Henry also, and he wrote a volume of harmless verse, to the
undying amazement of his family.

For Mary Lennox the war had brought a sailor husband. Captain
Thomas May, wounded rather severely at Jutland, lost his heart to
the plain but attractive young woman with a fine figure who nursed
him back to strength, and, as he vowed, had saved his life. He
was an impulsive man of thirty, brown-bearded, black-eyed, and
hot-tempered. He came from a little Somerset vicarage and was the
only son of a clergyman, the Rev. Septimus May. Knowing the lady
as "Nurse Mary" only, and falling passionately in love for the
first time in his life, he proposed on the day he was allowed to
sit up, and since Mary Lennox shared his emotions, also for the
first time, he was accepted before he even knew her name.

It is impossible to describe the force of love's advent for Mary
Lennox. She had come to believe herself as vaguely committed to
her cousin, and imagined that her affection for Henry amounted to
as much as she was ever likely to feel for a man. But reality
awakened her, and its glory did not make her selfish, since her
nature was not constructed so to be; it only taught her what love
meant, and convinced her that she could never marry anybody on
earth but the stricken sailor. And this she knew long before he
was well enough to give a sign that he even appreciated her
ministry. The very whisper of his voice sent a thrill through her
before he had gained strength to speak aloud. And his deep tones,
when she heard them, were like no voice that had fallen on her ear
till then. The first thing that indicated restoring health was
his request that his beard might be trimmed; and he was making love
to her three days after he had been declared out of danger. Then
did Mary begin to live, and looking back, she marvelled how horses
and dogs and a fishing-rod had been her life till now. The
revelation bewildered her and she wrote her emotions in many long
pages to her cousin. The causes of such changes she did not indeed
specify, but he read between the lines, and knew it was a man and
not the war that had so altered and deepened her outlook. He had
never done it, and he could not be angry with her now, for she had
pretended no ardor of emotion to him. Young though he was, he
always feared that she liked him not after the way of a lover. He
had hoped to open her eyes some day, but it was given to another to
do so.

He felt no surprise, therefore, when news of her engagement reached
him from herself. He wrote the letter of his life in reply, and
was at pains to laugh at their boy-and-girl attachment, and lessen
any regret she might feel on his account. Her father took it
somewhat hardly at first, for he held that more than sufficient
misfortunes, to correct the balance of prosperity in his favor,
had already befallen him. But he was deeply attached to his
daughter, and her magical change under the new and radiant
revelation convinced him that she had now awakened to an emotional
fulness of life which could only be the outward sign of love. That
she was in love for the first time also seemed clear; but he would
not give his consent until he had seen her lover and heard all
there was to know about him. That, however, did not alarm Mary,
for she believed that Thomas May must prove a spirit after Sir
Walter's heart. And so he did. The sailor was a gentleman; he
had proposed without the faintest notion to whom he offered his
penniless hand, and when he did find out, was so bewildered that
Mary assured her father she thought he would change his mind.

"If I had not threatened him with disgrace and breach of promise,
I do think he would have thrown me over," she said.

And now they had been wedded for six months, and Mary sat by the
great log fire with her hand in Tom's. The sailor was on leave,
but expected to return to his ship at Plymouth in a day or two.
Then his father-in-law had promised to visit the great cruiser, for
the Navy was a service of which he knew little. Lennoxes had all
been soldiers or clergymen since a great lawyer founded the race.

The game of billiards proceeded, and Henry caught his uncle in the
eighties and ran out with an unfinished fifteen. Then Ernest
Travers and his wife--old and dear friends of Sir Walter--played
a hundred up, the lady receiving half the game. Mr. Travers was a
Suffolk man, and had fagged for Sir Walter at Eton. Their
comradeship had lasted a lifetime, and no year passed without
reciprocal visits. Travers also looked at life with the eyes of a
wealthy man. He was sixty-five, pompous, large, and rubicund--a
"backwoodsman" of a pattern obsolescent. His wife, ten years
younger than himself, loved pleasure, but she had done more than
her duty, in her opinion, and borne him two sons and a daughter.
They were colorless, kind-hearted people who lived in a circle of
others like themselves. The war had sobered them, and at an early
stage robbed them of their younger boy.

Nelly Travers won her game amid congratulations, and Tom May
challenged another woman, a Diana, who lived for sport and had
joined the house party with her uncle, Mr. Felix Fayre-Michell.
But Millicent Fayre-Michell refused.

"I've shot six partridges, a hare, and two pheasants to-day," said
the girl, "and I'm half asleep."

Other men were present also of a type not dissimilar. It was a
conventional gathering of rich nobodies, each a big frog in his
own little puddle, none known far beyond it and none with
sufficient intellect or ability to create for himself any position
in the world save that won by the accident of money made by their
progenitors.

Had it been necessary for any of them to earn his living, only in
some very modest capacity and on a very modest plane might they
have done so. Of the entire company only one--the youngest--
could claim even the celebrity that attached to his little
volume of war verses.

And now upon the lives of these every-day folk was destined to
break an event unique and extraordinary. Existence, that had
meandered without personal incident save of a description common
to them all, was, within twelve hours, to confront men and women
alike with reality. They were destined to endure at close quarters
an occurrence so astounding and unparalleled that, for once in
their lives, they would find themselves interesting to the wider
world beyond their own limited circuit, and, for their friends and
acquaintance, the centre of a nine days' wonder.

Most of them, indeed, merely touched the hem of the mystery and
were not involved therein, but even for them a reflected glory
shone. They were at least objects of attraction elsewhere, and for
many months furnished conversation of a more interesting and
exciting character than any could ever claim to have provided
before.

The attitude to such an event, and the opinions concerning it, of
such people might have been pretty accurately predicted; nor would
it be fair to laugh at their terror and bewilderment, their
confusion of tongues and the fatuous theories they adventured by
way of explanation. For wiser than they--men experienced in the
problems of humanity and trained to solve its enigmas--were
presently in no better case.

A very trivial and innocent remark was prelude to the disaster; and
had the speaker guessed what his jest must presently mean in terms
of human misery, grief, and horror, it is certain enough that he
would not have spoken.

The women were gone to bed and the men sat around the fire smoking
and admiring Sir Walter's ancient blend of whisky. He himself had
just flung away the stump of his cigar and was admonishing his
son-in-law. "Church to-morrow, Tom. None of your larks. When
first you came to see me, remember, you went to church twice on
Sunday like a lamb. I'll have no backsliding."

"Mary will see to that, governor."

"And you, Henry."

Sir Walter, disappointed of his hopes respecting his nephew and
daughter, had none the less treated the young man with tact and
tenderness. He felt for Henry; he was also fond of him and
doubted not that the youth would prove a worthy successor. Thomas
May was one with whom none could quarrel, and he and his wife's
old flame were now, after the acquaintance of a week, on friendly
terms.

"I shan't fail, uncle."

"Will anybody have another whisky?" asked Sir Walter, rising.

It was the signal for departure and invariably followed the stroke
of a deep-mouthed, grandfather clock in the hail. When eleven
sounded, the master rose; but to-night he was delayed. Tom May
spoke.

"Fayre-Michell has never heard the ghost story, governor," he said,
"and Mr. Travers badly wants another drink. If he doesn't have
one, he won't sleep all night. He's done ten men's work to-day."

Mr. Fayre-Michell spoke.

"I didn't know you had a ghost, Sir Walter. I'm tremendously
interested in psychical research and so on. If it's not bothering
you and keeping you up--."

"A ghost at Chadlands, Walter?" asked Ernest Travers. "You never
told me."

"Ghosts are all humbug," declared another speaker--a youthful
"colonel" of the war.

"I deprecate that attitude, Vane. It may certainly be that our
ghost is a humbug, or, rather, that we have no such thing as a
ghost at all. And that is my own impression. But an idle
generality is always futile--indeed, any generality usually is.
You have, at least, no right to say, 'Ghosts are all humbug.'
Because you cannot prove they are. The weight of evidence is very
much on the other side."

"Sorry," said Colonel Vane, a man without pride. "I didn't know
you believed in 'em, Sir Walter."

"Most emphatically I believe in them."

"So do I," declared Ernest Travers. "Nay, so does my wife--for
the best possible reason. A friend of hers actually saw one."

Mr. Fayre-Michell spoke.

"Spiritualism and spirits are two quite different things," he said.
"One may discredit the whole business of spiritualism and yet
firmly believe in spirits."

He was a narrow-headed, clean-shaven man with grey hair and
moustache. He had a small body on very long legs, and though a
veteran now, was still one of the best game shots in the West of
England.

Ernest Travers agreed with him. Indeed, they all agreed. Sir
Walter himself summed up.

"If you're a Christian, you must believe in the spirits of the
dead," he declared; "but to go out of your way to summon these
spirits, to call them from the next world back to ours, and to
consult people who profess to be able to do so--extremely
doubtful characters, as a rule--that I think is much to be
condemned. I deny that there are any living mediums of
communication between the spirit world and this one, and I should
always judge the man or woman who claimed such power to be a
charlatan. But that spirits of the departed have appeared and been
recognized by the living, who shall deny?

"My son-in-law has a striking case in his own recent experience.
He actually knows a man who was going to sail on the Lusitania, and
his greatest friend on earth, a soldier who fell on the Maine,
appeared to him and advised him not to do so. Tom's acquaintance
could not say that he heard words uttered, but he certainly
recognized his dead friend as he stood by his bedside, and he
received into his mind a clear warning before the vision disappeared.
Is that so, Tom?"

"Exactly so, sir. And Jack Thwaites--that was the name of the
man in New York--told four others about it, and three took his
tip and didn't sail. The fourth went; but he wasn't drowned. He
came out all right."

"The departed are certainly proved to appear in their own ghostly
persons--nay, they often have been seen to do so," admitted
Travers. "But I will never believe they are at our beck and call,
to bang tambourines or move furniture. We cannot ring up the dead
as we ring up the living on a telephone. The idea is insufferable
and indecent. Neither can anybody be used as a mouth-piece in that
way, or tell us the present position or occupation and interests
of a dead man--or what he smokes, or how his liquor tastes. Such
ideas degrade our impressions of life beyond the grave. They are,
if I may say so, disgustingly anthropomorphic. How can we even
take it for granted that our spirits will retain a human form and
human attributes after death?"

"It would be both weak-minded and irreligious to attempt to get
at these things, no doubt," declared Colonel Vane.

"And they make confusion worse confounded by saying that evil
spirits pretend sometimes to hoodwink us by posing as good spirits.
Now, that's going too far," said Henry Lennox.

"But your own ghost, Sir Walter?" asked Fayre-Michell. "It is a
curious fact that most really ancient houses have some such
addition. Is it a family spectre? Is it fairly well authenticated?
Does it reign in a particular spot of house or garden? I ask from
no idle curiosity. It is a very interesting subject if approached
in a proper spirit, as the Psychical Research Society, of which I
am a member, does approach it."

"I am unprepared to admit that we have a ghost at all," repeated
Sir Walter. "Ancient houses, as you say, often get some legend
tacked on to them, and here a garden walk, or there a room, or
passage, is associated with something uncanny and contrary to
experience. This is an old Tudor place, and has been tinkered and
altered in successive generations. We have one room at the
eastern end of the great corridor which always suffered from a bad
reputation. Nobody has ever seen anything in our time, and neither
my father nor grandfather ever handed down any story of a personal
experience. It is a bedroom, which you shall see, if you care to
do so. One very unfortunate and melancholy thing happened in it.
That was some twelve years ago, when Mary was still a child--two
years after my dear wife died."

"Tell us nothing that can cause you any pain, Walter," said Ernest
Travers.

"It caused me very acute pain at the time. Now it is old history
and mercifully one can look back with nothing but regret. One must,
however, mention an incident in my father's time, though it has
nothing to do with my own painful experience. However, that is
part of the story--if story it can be called. A death occurred
in the Grey Room when I was a child. Owing to the general vague
feeling entertained against it, we never put guests there, and so
long ago as my father's day it was relegated to a store place and
lumber-store. But one Christmas, when we were very full, there
came quite unexpectedly on Christmas Eve an aunt of my father--an
extraordinary old character who never did anything that might be
foreseen. She had never come to the family reunion before, yet
appeared on this occasion, and declared that, as this was going to
be her last Christmas on earth, she had felt it right to join the
clan--my father being the head of the family. Her sudden advent
strained our resources, I suppose, but she herself reminded us of
the Grey Room, and, on hearing that it was empty, insisted on
occupying it. The place is a bedroom, and my father, who personally
entertained no dislike or dread of it, raised not the least
objection to the strong-minded old lady's proposal. She retired,
and was found dead on Christmas morning. She had not gone to bed,
but was just about to do so, apparently, when she had fallen down
and died. She was eighty-eight, had undergone a lengthy coach
journey from Exeter, and had eaten a remarkably good dinner before
going to bed. Her maid was not suspected, and the doctor held her
end in no way unusual. It was certainly never associated with
anything but natural causes. Indeed, only events of much later
date served to remind me of the matter. Then one remembered the
spoiled Christmas festivities and the callous and selfish anger of
myself and various other young people that our rejoicings should
be spoiled and Christmas shorn of all its usual delights.

"But twelve years ago Mary fell ill of pneumonia--dangerously--
and a nurse had to be summoned in haste, since her own faithful
attendant, Jane Bond, who is still with us, could not attend her
both day and night. A telegram to the Nurses' Institute brought
Mrs. Gilbert Forrester--'Nurse Forrester,' as she preferred to be
called. She was a little bit of a thing, but most attractive and
capable. She had been a nurse before she married a young medical
man, and upon his unfortunate death she returned to her profession.
She desired her bedroom to be as near the patient as possible, and
objected, when she found it arranged at the other end of the
corridor. 'Why not the next room?' she inquired; and I had to tell
her that the next room suffered from a bad name and was not used.
'A bad name--is it unwholesome?' she asked; and I explained that
traditions credited it with a sinister influence. 'In fact,' I
said, 'it is supposed to be haunted. Not,' I added, 'that anything
has ever been seen, or heard in my lifetime; but nervous people do
not like that sort of room, and I should never take the
responsibility of putting anybody into it without telling them.'
She laughed. 'I'm not in the least afraid of ghosts, Sir Walter,'
she said, 'and that must obviously be my room, if you please. It
is necessary I should be as near my patient as possible, so that I
can be called at once if her own nurse is anxious when I am not on
duty.'

"Well, we saw, of course, that she was perfectly right. She was a
fearless little woman, and chaffed Masters and the maids while they
lighted a fire and made the room comfortable. As a matter of fact,
it is an exceedingly pleasant room in every respect. Yet I
hesitated, and could not say that I was easy about it. I felt
conscious of a discomfort which even her indifference did not
entirely banish. I attributed it to my acute anxiety over Mary--
also to a shadow of--what? It may have been irritation at Nurse
Forrester's unconcealed contempt for my superstition. The Grey
Room is large and commodious with a rather fine oriel window above
our eastern porch. She was delighted, and rated me very amusingly
for my doubts. 'I hope you'll never call such a lovely room
haunted again after I have gone,' said she.

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