Walter Lee. A story of Marlborough College

Chapter I

It was all through a ghost. They are the plague of my life, these ghosts ; I am the most haunted man in the world, I believe : such a number of ghosts too, bogy-ghosts, and dream-ghosts, and brain -ghosts, and over-excitement-ghosts, and dyspepsia-ghosts, and ghosts of old joys : — and these last are the worst of all. So you understand, if you do not believe in ghosts, you need not read this story ; you can have no sympathy with me. Now I must introduce myself to you : VOL. I. v. my name is Walter Lee, and, at the time I am going to tell you about, I was a boy of nineteen, in my last half-year at school at Marlborough, going up to College in October, and considering myself generally "a swell;" I was in the Upper Sixth, Captain of the Eleven, and in the Twenty at Football ; but above all I had about ten hairs on my upper lip which I waxed vigorously every morning with soap to make them stand out ; I was late for chapel many a time, I am afraid, through this same waxing.

Altogether I put a great deal of side on, and all the other fellows agreed with me that I was undoubtedly a small Apollo — if they had not done so, I should have thrashed them, so you will value their opinion. Now you know me fairly well, so I will come to the story. It was debate night : every Monday we had debates in the Sixth Form Room, after the manner of the Union at Oxford ; we had some fine speakers too; it would have done you good to have heard the fiery eloquence of poor Percy — he is dead now — when he denounced the tyranny of the House of Lords, and called on the Queen " to resign the painted bauble of her idle crown and to prove herself a useful member of a noble Republic," — he used to sign himself " Cassius " in the school Magazine ; " the Marlburian " it was called. And on this night in question the sub ject for debate was " the reality of ghosts ; that there is a connexion between the world of spirits and the world of men ; " and the room was crowded almost to suffocation, and several masters had come to speak, and everybody was in a state of great excitement.

Greenway, the proposer of the motion, had just finished a long rambling speech, wandering helplessly and wisely in a maze b of metaphysics, in which, although he held that in many cases what were called ghosts were simply the reflex operation of the brain on the eye, yet he finally came to the conclusion that there was a spirit-world, and that spirits were real, and could be seen ; and then a young master had spoken shortly in favour of the motion, when Percy, bursting with impatience, was on his legs, and in a torrent of fervid rhetoric denounced the whole system and theory of ghosts as a gross imposture on the credu lity of fools. The President rose to order ; was not " fools" a strong word ? " No, sir," roared Percy, " not half strong enough, — idiots ! " And then there had been a squabble between Greenway, and Percy, and the President, and finally "fools" was main tained, and Percy went on in triumph ; and for some twenty minutes he cut and thrust among the goblin arguments like a veri table Don Quixote, and dealt heavy blows of double-shotted sarcasm as trenchantly as when Charlemagne ground to pieces the Irminsul, when the church was veritably militant ; and finally he sat down after a furious peroration in which he denounced superstition, denounced all belief, de nounced aU credulity, as utterly unworthy of a thinking man — we were all " thinking men " in the Sixth Form, or, at any rate, in the Upper Sixth.

For a few moments we were most of us carried away by his vehemence, and even I began to vow that there was no reason why I should be afraid to go through a churchyard at midnight, and a pleasant haze of scepticism settled down over my mind. But the next speaker, one of the masters, a pale man with a long melan choly face, told us a series of ghost stories so horrible that I shook in my shoes, metaphorically if not literally. And then the debate was adjourned, and we went off to bed : — I noticed that no one went alone, but little parties were formed, as the boys trooped off to tlieir respective houses. I was in Blythe's house, down at Preshute, about three quarters of a mile off the main body of the school, and Percy and I were the only two of Blythe's fellows who had been at the debate. "We walked along quietly, I thinking over the last goblin story and wishing the moon would come out from the clouds where it had hidden itself, when suddenly a bat flew almost in my face : I could not help clutching Percy's arm, I was so startled.

" Why, Lee," he laughed, " the bogies have upset you ! " "No," I said, "I was only startled; any fellow would jump, if a bat flew in his face." "Ah! it's all very fine, but you are as nervous as possible ; I believe you believe in ghosts," he added scornfully. Now, as I have told you, I do believe in ghosts, most devoutly; but I dare not sacrifice my reputation as a " thinking man " to the scornful Percy ; so after a moment's hesitation I laughed brazenly and vowed I cared no more for ghosts than Percy himself. But I repented five seconds afterwards, for he took me up at my word, " Bet you half a skiv you dare not stop a quarter of an hour in ' the haunted house ' — there, that is fair." Woe was me ! But half-a-sovereign was half-a-sovereign to a school-boy, and reputation was reputation. " Done with you !

" I answered ; but my heart sank within me. For " the haunted house " was a dreary old mansion with empty echoing rooms in which no one had lived for fifty years, and it lay some mUe away, outside Preshute, up a dim lane, set round fearfully with poplars that clattered and shivered their bare boughs one against the other, rest lessly, always. For no leaf had grown on those accursed trees since they had beheld the fair young bride of the house of Cheverly slain foully in her sleep by the base vhlain who had married her for her wealth, and rid himself of his beauteous burden by murder, and fled to strange lands with another love : and there he wandered miserably till he died, bent and old before his time ; but some said that he was like the Wandering Jew, and lived still, a long penance of life.

And every night, at midnight, the mur dered lady was said to come to the room where the deed was done, and strange shrieks would be heard in the still night, gruesomely ; I knew all the story by heart, old Voss the Porter had often told me of it, and in the short winter evenings I had passed by the house with bated breath and hurried tread on my way back on Wednes days from Paper-chasing ; and this was the fate I had committed myself to by a cowardly bet ! But one hope flashed across my mind — " Look here, Percy," I said, " you had better come too ; you can stop outside, you know, but you will want some witness to see that I do go actually and don't cheat you of your bet." He chuckled grimly, " Never mind that, old man, I'll take your word of honour ; you must be in the ' haunted house ' by twelve o'clock at night, and stay tiU a quarter past; the lady ghost will see all fair."

Desperation ! I was in for it ! But I sneered recklessly, " Lady ghost be blowed; if she does come I'll kiss her." " Done with you for another half skiv," quoth Percy pitilessly. "All right — that's a sovereign altogether. When is it to come off ?" " To-morrow night : nothing like taking time by the forelock." a Everything comes that you don't want to come, so of course to-morrow night came. And a pale wind-blown moon looking down through hurried frightened-looking clouds saw me trudging doubtfully along the winding lane to the " haunted house," poorer by half-a-crown wherewith I had bribed the Porter to let me have the pass-key. I had a great mind to turn back ; but no ; I steeled myself, and went fearfully on through the shivering moonbeams that trembled through the hedge-rows, untd the house rose before me bare and bleak and black and forlorn-looking, with open windows mournfully, as if all joy and life had gone out of them years ago, and a shutter moaned loose on its rusted hinge, and those everlasting poplars muttered and soughed and sighed, and the low wind moaned fitfully — confound it all, I could not stop a quarter of an hour in that dismal den !

But my sovereign and my reputation. So I crept in, and stood straight behind the door ; I dare not go further in : then I drew the door back, till it partly covered me. I had not long to wait ; I had run the time close you may be sure ; and in a few minutes the Preshute Church clock tolled twelve ; how the long-drawn notes of the bell stole and echoed and whispered through the sounding halls ! — Hark, was not that a footstep ? Psha ! what a fool I was, it was only a piece of mortar that had fallen. And now the sound had died away, and there was a dead stiUness of night, only broken by the stray squeak of a bat, or the rustling of the trees outside, and I was be ginning to think myself safe and a fool for all my fears, when there was a slight noise beside me, and in through the door, right past me, glided a white shrouded figure with a strange halo of dim light glimmering wanly all over and round it ; and it went on a few paces and then sat down on the floor, and tossed its arms and wailed — a long, low, weary wail.

I did not faint — only a great gasping for breath, and a feel as if my heart had burst right across, and then a dizzy whirl ing of everything all round me — but still that white figure with its ghastly-gleaming halo sat moaning before me. But I kept quite quiet, trembling all over for fear, till at length the spirit rose, and took a step onwards, and then paused as if uncertain about something : and then before my starting eyes the white covering was lifted slowly, and I beheld — Percy lifting up a sheet, and peering anxiously round, with a bull's eye lantern tied on to his waist — I saw it all now ; he could not understand my silence and thought I was not there : and now he was looking for me to make sure. Close to the wall behind that friendly door I pressed, and I saw him fold up his sheet over his arm, and turn towards the door to go,- — and then I gave a great long sigh that whispered eirily through the roof.

You should have seen him start, and the fearful look he cast over his shoulder as he hurried off. But Nemesis was upon him ; swiftly and silently (I slipped off my shoes as I saw he had done) I stole after him, and with a wild yell I sprung upon his back, and held on, shrieking as hard as I could, while he ran as if all Pandemonium were upon him, until at last he fell, panting and breathless on a bank, and lay there groaning feebly for sheer terror. My wrath — for I was tremendously angry at first — had all vanished now; " You old fool, Percy," I laughed, " stump up that sovereign you owe me " — and 1 gave him a great sounding kiss, — " I have stopped in the haunted house, and I've kissed the ghostly lady." He gave a great gasp of relief, " Ah, is it you ? what a brute you are to frighten a fellow so !" .

" Never mind that, it's your own doing ; now look here, I will not let you go unless you'll promise to make another speech next debate night in favour of ghosts." " I can't do that — I don't believe in them, you see." "Now, come, none of that; you can't deny that you do now ; if you don't make the speech I'll give you the most awful licking you ever had" — he was a good deal smaller than I was, and I was kneeling over him, so he had no chance ; but he gave a struggle or two, and I had to throttle him a httle. Then he gave in, and pro mised So we went home together, back to Blythe's; but just as he reached the gate he said, " Look here, Lee, it is only ten bob ; I'm not a lady, so you don't get anything for kissing me." I looked at him, "Do you mean that?" I asked. " Of course I do." " Very weU — if you have not paid that sovereign to me to-morrow night at even ing chapel, I take my davy I'll tell the whole school all about this business : you won't like that; good night." And I went to bed without another word.

Chapter II

Percy paid up the sovereign next day after all. I thought he would all the while : it was the most expedient policy, and in the end the cheapest. For all over the world I have seen this one truth universal, that, shy as people are of their pockets, they are shyer still of their reputations (which are like the bloom on the cheek of a peach, tender and sweet); therefore Percy paid his money manfully and kept his reputation — and I think it was cheap at the price. Only he seemed uneasy for days lest I should tell the story of the Haunted House, and lest he should wake up one morning and find himself famous (famosus, I mean); but at last he found that I kept faith with him, and he took to asking me to all his Saturday suppers, and hot Sunday breakfasts ; so that we gradually became quite fast friends.

Not that I cared for his suppers and breakfasts. But I wished to show the poor fellow that he need not be afraid of me, and that I meant him no harm ; be sides, it is the meanest thing a man can do to scorn the gratitude of one below him : — and Percy, poor boy, though good at debates, was nowhere in the cricket-field, nor yet at football, a game any one can play if he has legs and courage ; but he had too much of the first (they were aU shins), and very little of the second. Therefore it was that I encouraged his advances, and I even asked him sometimes to come out with me after Middle Chapel on Sundays for a walk, which was the vol. i. c truest sign of school friendship which we had at Marlborough. And so it came to pass that the half-year sped on apace, and the days of the Cheltenham match, which was to be played at Marlborough that year, drew close at hand.

We were to have theatricals too on the night before the first clay of the match, which was an extra, and beyond the usual hospitalities which we showed to our adversaries ; but this year it was to be a war of giants. We had both beaten the Marylebone and the Middlesex clubs, and we both felt sure of victory : moreover we had both won nine matches in previous years, so that this was to be a deciding one : therefore, when Hammish, the Senior Prefect, said to me one night, " Don't you think, Lee, that we ought to give these Chel tenham fellows something out of the com mon this year ? " I had said, " Yes ; we will beat them in one innings ; " — I was thinking of the match, you see : and he had laughed, and answered, " True for you, most bloodthirsty captain of a glorious eleven; but I was thinking of something calculated rather to soften that great beating which you will give them : what do you say to a concert ?

" Then I had understood him, and we talked it over for a long time, doubting what was the best thing to choose. And, finally, we settled that an extravaganza of some sort would be the most amusing and fittest choice. And we had chosen an adaptation of " The Rose and the Ring," and the days passed merrily with rehearsals, and dress ing, and connings of parts, till we aU agreed that theatricals were the pleasantest things in all the world, and that we were all born ''Master Betties." Excepting of course the lady actors. And here I must mention two discoveries c that I made at that early age, and I think they were true. The first is that ladies have no right to the distinctive title of "the fair sex." It sounds very dreadful, and I am quite willing to allow the title to con tinue out of courtesy, but in the interests of truth it must be here set down that our actresses were only lower-school boys (chosen for impudence and smoothest cheeks) ; and yet our princesses were more beautiful (when duly dressed and rouged) than all the princesses I have ever seen, whether in real life, or at Madame Tussaud's, or on the stage — more beautiful even than Mrs. Rousby as the Princess Elizabeth when I saw her in " 'Twixt Axe and Crown," in the first blush of success and glory.

Yet these boys, when put in male attire again, were no more beautiful than other boys; some of them rather less so. Therefore I say again that ladies have no real right to be called "the fair sex"; what right they have is brought by clothes. And my second discovery was also con cerning clothes : and it was this, — that vanity is wrongly supposed to be the exclu sive property of women. For I am well assured and quite convinced that any one of those boys, when decked in spangles and diamonds bright of paste, went quite as often to the glass, and flirted quite as lamentably with his fan, and made bold eyes at the actors quite as much as ever did the most vain-hearted girl that ever breathed. Therefore of this too I say it is the clothes, and that if women would only clothe themselves soberly and modestly, as do we, there would be less brilliance and more goodness, less vanity and more weight of worth, less misery and more happiness in this bright and vain and un happy world.

Not that I recommend Bloomer. Pretty Puritans are what I like, with snowy broad collars, and dainty grey bodices. But I digress :— at College I was told by Mr. Fowlie, of Logical fame, that I never kept to the point. I remember making him dreadfully angry once when he said so, by explaining to him that I always made it my endeavour to follow after the ideal ; and the ideal point being an invisi ble nothingness, how could he expect me to keep to it ? I was very nearly sent down for a term, as there were already many straws piled on his portly back. But to return to Percy. One Sunday as we were strolling along towards the town after Middle Chapel, as aforesaid, he blurted out in a queer sudden way of his, "Come down to the 'Aylesbury Arms,' Lee ? " " All right," I said, " but ain't it rather risky just now ? better wait tiU the masters have cleared off a bit."

For I thought of a certainty he was going to stand cigars and beer, which it would have been, to say the least of it, un wise to smoke and quaff in the chief hotel just after Chapel ; there being a galling rule to the rising manhood of Marlborough that such luxuries were visited with condign punishment. Though I always thought it would have been best to leave us alone, for I, for one, should never have dreamed of making myself sick and ill over a penny worth of bird's-eye if it had not been forbidden. But Percy stared, — " Why risky ? I only want to get rooms ; my mother and sister are coming down for the theatricals and the Cheltenham match." " Oh, is that all ? " I said, rather coldly; what did I want with his mother and sister, confound them ! If it had been cigars, now, or even a churchwarden, it ' would have been different : but it was too bad to disappoint a fellow so cruelly.

And we walked on silently, along to wards the queer lop-sided houses, and big bouldered streets, with their rambling, tumble-down colonnades where the funny crushed-looking shop windows were all closed, dismally (being Sunday), till we came to the Castle and Ball, which was open in reckless defiance of pinkth or pro priety, while old Jerry Hammond, the landlord, stood in the doorway like a cozy, plump, plausible, old spider waiting for the fly. " Anything in my line to-day, Mr. Lee ? " he asked : but with aching heart and lingering steps we strode on for the squat-roofed town hall, and so, across the widening market place, to where the Aylesbury stood, stern, solemn and sober seeming, in decorous guise of Sabbath keeping. And then the rooms were taken, and we were wandering purposelessly on again to kill time before dinner, when Percy spoke again, contrariwise, in the middle of a speech of mine on the merits of Miles, our slow round left-handed bowler, " Come and dine with my mother on Wednesday ?

They'll be down by the afternoon train." " Thanks, most happy," I blundered in tuitively, brought up short in my yam and taken unawares ; but I was huffed at being interrupted in that way, and I began to meditate that it would probably be awfully slow, an old woman with white hair and a heavy brow, like Percy's, and a long, gawky, ugly girl — she could not be pretty, being Percy's sister — that was my fate, I thought ; and it would not be only for that Wednesday evening either, for they would be sure to be wanting me to help in showing them about, afterwards, especially in the matter of the cricket match, I being captain. Yet I was in for it ; I could see no way out of it without gross incivility to Percy, and I did not want to hurt his feelings. But this silent meditation of mine was not a kind return for an invitation to dinner (which to a school-boy is a great thing), so I roused myself up and prepared to talk of his people.

" By the way," I said, after some commonplaces, " is it your younger or elder sister that is coming ? " He laughed, " I have no younger sister at all ; my sister is three years older than I am." Ah, that would make her twenty. Per haps things might be better after all — any way I should not have to be tied to the petticoat of a girl of twelve or thirteen . And I grew quite condescending and chatty with Percy; for if one must be tied to a petticoat at all it is always best to be made fast to a long one — it gives one more room. Therefore, being well assured of my popularity with all long-robed ladies, chiefly owing to my ten-haired moustache I told you of, and a flirtation not unsuccessful which I had carried on last holidays with a young lady aged thirty-eight, I retired to rest that night in a more satisfied frame of mind ; and I dreamed of Percy as best man giving away a veiled figure at the altar of the school chapel to me, Walter Lee, dressed in my new cut-away made by Poole.

Chapter III

Wednesday was a half-holiday, and Percy and I were at the station a full half-hour before the train arrived. But at last we saw it coming, grinding and squeaking down the incline, and there was a shouting of porters, and a fussing of omnibus men, and an opening of doors, and Percy made a bolt at a carriage where there was a fluttering; of lip-fit ribbons and a kind Smiles o ing face of an oldish-looking lady, and by her side the vision of a fair gleaming of golden hair round a bright picture of heaven. So at least it seemed to me ; and in another minute I heard Percy introducing me, and his mother speaking some kind commonplace ; but all this was vague and dim; for over all my sight a great haze had come, and I could only feel confusedly that there was a subtle power of some strange presence of which I knew nothing to understand, as I stood there on the pavement blushing and stammering, with my hands and feet feeling as if they were swelhng visibly and thrusting themselves some miles out of my sleeves and trowsers beneath the derisive gaze of Percy's sister.

" 0 Walter Lee, Walter Lee," I said to myself, " what a fool you are ! gaping and gawking like a lower-school boy before a girl only a year older than yourself! go to ! " But it was of no use ; I could not " go to " at aU ; and I foUowed, dazed and stupid, as far as the omnibus of the Ayles bury Arms, and in a few minutes we were jolting down the hiU ; and there was I next to Percy, opposite to his sister, with my tongue glued to the roof of my mouth and the blood throbbing in my temples as if I were drunk. Then we stopped, and there was some thing about dinner at half-past six, and I knew that I had left them at the hotel and was running as hard as I could up Sun Lane to the cricket-field ; I was late enough already, and it was the last day of the Common Room match : but the school were in, so it did not matter that I was late.

Indeed it would not have mattered if I had stayed away altogether, for my wits were all wool-gathering, and when I went in I could not for the life of me get that girl's face out of my head, and the very first ball came crashing in on my leg stump, and I walked back to the pavilion amid an ominous silence : it did not look well for the Cheltenham match when the Captain went out first ball, off an easy half volley too. But just now I did not seem as if I cared for Cheltenham match or anything else rational, only, as I sat on the end of a bench, with my elbows on my knees, looking away over the field and down on to the town, with the hill and the edge of the forest over above fringing it, there among the dim beech-trees shimmering in the dis tant heat-haze this one face kept shaping forth its imaging before my eyes, till I only heard the noise of the talking, and the shouts of the school at each good hit, like a far-off hum of a big bee-hive at swarming time.

And yet if I had been asked to describe her face I could not have done so a bit ; I had never once dared to look at her ; still I knew that the face I pictured there over Savernake forest was her very self's like ness, and it had a sweet, calm brow, and deep, quiet, yet half-laughing eyes, and a quick, mobile mouth that looked like a spring rose-bud changing hue and shape with every breath and shower of May ; and more than all, there was a lithe, graceful neck, with a throat tremulous and rounded like a bird's when it plumes itself to sing and tell how beautiful the summer-world and sunshine is. That was the picture I kept dreaming over, answering short and sharp when any one spoke, till the last wicket seU, and every one swarmed round into the pavilion, and one of the masters called me to arrange about the catering for the Cheltenham fellows : the match was to be played on the Friday and Saturday next, this being Wednesday.

And then I heard a clock strike — good gracious ! it was six, and I rushed down in hot haste to dress ; but, do what I would, I could not be at the Aylesbury in time. Therefore you may judge of my relief when, just as I was turning sharp round the corner by old Goatie's stall, I ran in headlong haste right into Percy's arms ; he was coming out of the Chapel which he had been showing to his people ; and the excess of hurry drove away my fears, and, some how, I managed to look them all straight in the face now, and felt much more like myself. " Dress ? no, certainly not ; won't you come down with us now ? Mabel won't mind your flannels, and I am sure mother won't," — so said Percy, as I was excusing myself and preparing to hurry on, down to Blythe's, for my clothes ; and then she — Mabel — had spoken, and said that she thought blue and white flannels were much prettier than black swallow-tails ; and I was walking by her side (not a bit afraid now, only with a deep reverential awe at my heart, such as one would have for one's patron saint), listening to her sweet clear voice as she talked and laughed and asked VOL. I. D questions about the buildings and the fellows we passed, till I almost thought there must be some good fairy at work, everything was so bright, and good, and strange.