The Gables: a story of a life

Chapter I

" My soul from out the shadow that lies floating on the floor Shall be lifted, Nevermore!" — The Raven. And so, on this winter evening, Mrs. Lech mere sat alone. She had chosen the window, for the season was mild, and she had involunta rily shunned the fire-side of late ; the phantom faces that peopled its red depths vexed and fretted her. But there was no peace anywhere, for the VOL. II. B deep silence, and the pale moonlight falling on her, stirred up at last a vague, troubled awe within her restless soul, and she rose with a half thought of going up-stairs for companionship, when out of the deep shadows of the large, old fashioned house-porch, into the moonlight came the figure of a man. It looked so unearthly, gliding out from the darkness into that ghostly light, so like the embodiment of her own evil thoughts, that for an instant the blood curdled in her veins, and a cry sprung to her lips.

She drove it back contemptuously, however, and walked to the window ; were he man or spirit, she must look him in the face. A man, unmis takeably, he stood plainly revealed in the sharp winter moonlight, a mean, shabby, unprepossess ing figure enough, with nothing supernatural or terrific about him, dressed, as far as she could see, in a suit of rusty black, an old hat, and a threadbare comforter, looking very like some second-rate attorney's clerk. Sharply vexed with herself that such a figure should have caused her so keen a pang of terror, she opened one side of the glass door, and asked him, haughtily, what he wanted. As he turned his head to answer, and the moonlight fell full upon his face, she recoiled with a strange, disagreeable start, perhaps because it was a mean and ugly face enough, with its wide mouth and yellow teeth (which showed very much as the man spoke), its small, sharp eyes, and coarse stubbly, grey whiskers, an ill-favoured face altogether, and because, moreover, Mrs. Lechmere fancied that somewhere she had seen it before.

Still, mean and miserable as he was, the man did not look altogether the drunken beggar she would fain have fancied him. " Who are you, and what do you want with me ?" she asked again sharply, shrinking from him with increasing dislike. " This is a strange hour to come begging." " I am not a beggar, Mrs. Lechmere," he answered slowly, as he came a step nearer. She shrank back with something like terror, " I have nothing for you ; what do you mean by this insolence ? Go away instantly, or I will ring and call for assistance." " There is no need of that ; I am not a beggar, and I want nothing from you but a few minutes' conversation. I know you very well, B Mrs. Lechmere ; I have known you for months — years, I may say." There was something so strange in his low, suppressed manner, that she felt forced to listen, though she still held the window open, and the sharp night-air was chilling her to the bone.

" Known me?" " Yes, madam. I mean no offence by saying it. I have known you a long time. I knew your late lamented husband." He made a strange noise here, as though he were grating his teeth together. " Also the present master of the Ga bles, your stepson, that gallant young officer so honourably wounded while fighting against the enemies of his country." A visible sneer ran through the whole of this speech. He was no common beggar, or why did a sickly and undefinable dread shoot through her as she listened to him, standing without in the white moonlight with his ill-favoured, sordid face uplifted to hers ? But she shook it off sharply. " I wish to know your business with me — the reason that brought you here in this manner, at this hour." " Did you ever, may I venture to ask," — he had a disagreeable trick of slowly rubbing his stubbly chin with his hand whilst he spoke, and he kept his small eyes rivetted to her face — " did you ever hear — from your lamented husband or otherwise — of the name of Rugmore?"

She never had, and she haughtily said so. " Never ? that is strange. Of course, then — indeed, it is superfluous to ask — you never heard of its being the name of the — the unfortunate man, who, as it is said, destroyed himself in the library of this house ?" She stared at him in unfeigned amazement. How had he learnt that story ? " There is some idle superstition of that sort connected with the house ; I have never given myself the trouble to inquire into its particulars." He still eyed her sharply, as though half doubting the truth of her cold answer. "You are no believer in ghosts?" he said, showing his yellow teeth. " Few persons of sense are, I should conceive. This is a very strange, unnecessary subject, and if you have no errand or business with me—" Her words died away. She could not keep her eyes from his face, try as she might ; they rested there with a kind of fascinated dread, as though his mean features held some evil influence over her.

She could not shut him out nor ring for assistance. She wrapped round her a shawl that lay near, for she was shivering in the keen air, and stood listening. " I am intimately related to that ghost of yours, Mrs. Lechmere. Bodiless phantom as he is now, he was once a living man, a warm, breathing mortal, whose hand clasped mine (the only living hand that ever did) in kindness." A dreadful emotion shook his hard, grating voice here, and was gone in an instant. " My name is Rugmore, and that murdered man was my brother." " Murdered !" Mrs. Lechmere shuddered all over with an icy horror. " He died by his own hand," went on the voice without, in its former tone ; " that was the coroner's verdict and there has never been aught to prove the contrary. But he was a murdered man, nevertheless." She had heard, in indistinct rumours, some such vague story as this when she first married — of some old man, known to her husband, and brought, by his own recklessness and intempe rance, to the verge of ruin, having committed suicide in the library.

There had been some connection — what she never understood nor cared to inquire into — between him and her husband ; and she knew that Mr. Lechmere had always evaded the subject of the supposed ghost, as though it were disagreeable to him, and had ridiculed it as an idle superstition. Beyond this she knew nothing ; but as she listened to this strange man, an intense and terrible curiosity to know it all slowly woke up within her. She turned towards him her white face, whiter than ever in the moonlight, and signed to him to go on. " It is not a story precisely suited for a lady's ears," the man said, slowly. " Have you any motive — is there any cause for your raking up, this old, forgotten affair ?" she asked, a sudden suspicion as to whether it might be a pretext for extorting money occurring to her.

" That may appear hereafter — when you come to perceive that it is not so entirely forgotten," he answered, speaking very deliberately, and keeping his eyes on hers so intently that she could not meet them. " As you have heard so far, doubtless — pardon my freedom — you will listen to the end. Between my brother — the ghost that haunts your library — in his days of flesh and blood, and Septimus Lechmere, Esq., of the Gables, there existed, in years gone by, when the present master of the house was a child, money transactions. My brother was a money-lender — a bill-discounter — a usurer, if you will. Mr. Lechmere was a little gay — some what expensive in his tastes, as young men of good property and generous tempers often are. His first wife, who. died in giving birth to a son and heir, was an extremely amiable, but some what spiritless lady, and had not much influence over him.

My brother lent Mr. Lechmere large sums — upon good interest, I grant you. Per haps he made a handsome profit out of Mr. Lechmere, and out of many others. Perhaps he was a blood-sucker — a horse-leech, not to be shaken off when he had once fastened on. Per haps, also, he was no worse than the rest of his fraternity — a wise man, who throve on the follies of rich simpletons. Be that as it may, the master of this place was a very frequent cus tomer, and a good client of my brother's. But reflection comes at last ; and when Mr. Lechmere, sobered, perhaps, by his first wife's death, and by finding himself a father, began to sit down and think a little, he made the important discovery that he had been a fool — a striking era in a man's life, that ! — and he set about reforming himself and his affairs with a rapidity and vigour exceedingly disagreeable to his former friends.

He began to strain every nerve to set all things smooth and right, and to pay off the debts with which his old extravagance had saddled his property. And so my brother lost his best client ; and in proportion as your lamented husband left off play and betting, and champagne luncheons, and devilries of all kinds, and cast off bill-discounters, and all other improper charac ters with virtuous indignation, so my brother's affairs began to decline and fall off. He made B some unlucky hits, and so fell into disrepute, and some of his best customers went abroad for their health, and didn't come back again, and he fell from bad to worse, till finally ruin stared him in the face. Then — perhaps, your discernment can guess the rest, madam ; — he applied in his misery to his old client. There was money justly owing to him, you must remember.

He did not meet with a very courteous reception. In the heat of his fresh-blown virtue Mr. Lech mere refused to listen to him, called him a swindler, a knave, a usurer, and divers other hard names ; and when he repeated his applica tion — for misery had made him desperate — generously flung him a sovereign, and desired his footman to turn him out of doors. It was a refinement of revenge ; a subtlety worthy of his life, and for which I honour him." He grated his teeth horribly here, and hissed out his words with a ghastly exultation — " That he went into the library, locked the door upon him, and cut his throat ! He left his restless ghost as a legacy to his enemy. He left that blood upon the floor which you may have seen — which your servants will tell you they cannot wash out !" Mrs. Lechmere shivered from head to foot with a sick terror.

" How do I know that this is true ?" she asked, incoherently. He went on without noticing her question, speaking with a fierce rapidity. The passion of rage and grief that gleamed in his grey eyes and sordid features, and shook him all over, made a ghastly figure in the white moonshine — " There was a coroner's inquest on the body ; they brought it in ' Temporary insanity.' Mr. Lechmere was rich, well-known, universally re spected ; the dead man was a miserable, poverty stricken, unknown wretch, with no relation save a brother, poor and wretched as himself! And yet, woman," he broke out with a ferocity that made her shrink back in dread, " I loved that poor, slaughtered suicide ! Poor, broken-down hack as I am — mean hanger-on to the skirts of law — with every higher feeling withered up within me — my life a sordid struggle with po verty — I had some grains of kindness for that dead man !

I would pawn my existence to have vengeance for his death !" " He who caused it is beyond the reach of your revenge 1" The words broke involuntarily from her, shrinking terrified from the wild hoarse vehemence with which he spoke. "True!" Here he controlled himself by a mighty effort, and spoke more calmly : — " The dead carcass that I could spurn with my foot is laid in an honourable grave, followed there by weeping friends and kinsfolk, and there was a hatchment over the door, and a long epitaph on his tombstone, setting forth at full length his remarkable virtues — a sculptured lie !" He ground his teeth again fiercely — " He departed this life in seemly fashion, far otherwise than the man he drove into eternity, with all his sins upon his soul ! But he died at last — stricken down in the sunshine of his prosperity by a fit of apoplexy, and perhaps that ghost stood before his glazing eyes, as he lay speechless and powerless, to freeze his blood with horror !

My hatred cannot reach him in the grave — what satisfaction will you give me for my brother's blood ?" The question was asked with a ghastly eagerness. She leant back against the wall, sick and faint, shuddering with a nameless dread. " What can I do ? It was years ago — before I married — " broke from her. " Aye, it is eighteen years ago. For those eighteen years I have been a sore thorn in Mr. Lechmere's side. I have worried and harassed him, and wrung his proud soul more than he would like to acknowledge, were he in life now. I watched and waited patiently and industriously for my revenge ; but it did not come for all these years. What could a miserable, broken-down attorney do against the rich and respectable country gentleman ? If I could have destroyed his good name, caused his idol — the very dis cerning and keen-sighted world to hoot at, and fling mud upon him — brought him down from his pinnacle to penury and shame — I should have died happy !

But how could this be done ?" He gnashed his teeth together. " He is gone now ! He has escaped me. But he has left a son behind him. I have no love for the boy that fills his father's empty chair." She began to listen with all her might, with a dreadful, overwhelming intensity, and yet with a shuddering horror of the black thoughts that burst in like a flood, and filled her soul. " Would you murder him ?" broke from her white lips. " Murder him, madam ? I might have done that to his father. But penury-stricken wretch as I am, I set a value on my sordid existence, and was never ambitious of ending it upon the gallows. Murder him ! Oh, no, indeed ! Far be such a thought from you !" He rubbed his rough chin with both .hands, and glanced sharply at her with his ugly eyes, that glittered like snakes' in the moonlight, and filled her with a tumult of fear and dislike.

" Possibly," he went on, dropping his words sternly, as if half-mistrusting their effect upon her, " you, madam, being a lady of sense and judgment, made the discovery in those eighteen years of your married life, that your lamented husband's strict assumption of propriety and, loud-voiced profession of religion, was but a gentle manly outside garment, worn to edify the world, and that underneath was a sorry mass of human clay. Forgive the bold supposition ; but per haps there was not much love wasted between you — perhaps his frequent absences from home were a source of vexation ?" Her proud soul winced at the taunt, — she made some quick motion of her hand, as though to shield her face from his torturing, remorseless eyes ; but he did not lower them. " I, myself — were I so inclined — could tell you stories that would not much increase your affection for Mr. Lechmere's memory ; but I have done — I have done :" as though warding off a burst of impatience.

" I would merely say that such things were probable, and I will pre sume moreover, that you have no very powerful affection for the present owner of this place — the very gallant, but unfortunate hero, crippled by Russian bullets. I have heard such rumours, and I have been watching — closely watching this old house, and its doings, for eighteen years." " And what rumours have you heard ?" broke from her, with a quiver of impatient agony, as she held up her hand to ward off, not the moonlight, but his eyes. " Only some slight gossip — unfounded, I dare say ;" he seemed feeling his ground cautiously, as he spoke. " That Captain Lechmere was no great favourite of yours ; some foolish supposition that had he been killed outright at Sebastopol, you would not have been crushed to the earth with grief."

He paused for an instant, as though to see if she would contradict him, and then went on rapidly. " Perhaps those gossips were right ; may I presume that silence gives consent, Madam ? your feelings were doubtless very natural. The young gentleman in question, stood between your son and a comfortable estate — it was maternal affection, nothing more. And it would have been much better for all parties, had he died gloriously in the Crimea, — more pleasant for himself, and for you, and for Mr. Roland likewise." There was something horrible in the quiet of his hard, low voice. "He is recovering," said Mrs. Lechmere. She had no intention of speaking the words, and as soon as they were uttered, shuddered at the tone of unconscious regret. He saw with his unwinking, hard grey eyes, the links of the chain he was weaving about her, even while she shrank from him in fear and aversion, and he went on, — she listening, as though his voice were a nightmare she could not shake off, and that held every trembling power of her soul in its clutch.

Perhaps he saw that some subtle spirit within her was speaking for him, driving home his words. " I have no love for this young soldier. He has often sneered at me with his child's insolence, when I have come here — years ago, on my un happy brother's behalf. He was a saucy, spoiled brat enough, in those days ; pampered by foolish servants with stories of his future importance ; and I hated him then — as I do now, for his father's sake. But I must bide my time, and take, as I have long done, patience for my motto. Who knows if, some day, a portion of the legacy left to this house by Jonas Rug more — a dead man's curse — may not fall — " " Upon a guiltless head ?" Even while she asked the question, she was listening, straining her ears, with the same freez ing terror upon her ; her white face, turned to wards him, ghostly in the moon's rays.

" Aye," he said, still watchful of every change of feature, " the sins of the father are visited upon the children — sometimes, are they not? May we not say already," with a sneer on his thin lips, " that his chastisement has begun." She turned upon him with a quick flash of indignant horror, that lit up, for an instant, the darkness within, and mildly bade him be silent. "I am all obedience, madam." The instantaneous change from unembarrassed insolence to cringing servility was wonderful to see. " And there is no need of a longer conversa tion, since my story is ended now. But possibly — " He paused, as if uncertain how to go on. She glanced at his poverty-stricken figure, and involuntarily drew out her purse. She longed feverishly to get rid of him — to be freed from his presence — from the spell of his relent less, grey eyes, and mean ugly face.

" You think you have established a claim upon me" — she began, haughtily. " Well — if you choose to put it in that light. You have possibly an interest in keeping me silent, as the stories I might publish to the world, would considerably affect the credit, and stain the respectable tombstone of the amiable deceased ; and moreover, be highly unpleasant to yourself. But I do not wish the connection between us to be of that nature. I have made to-night the agreeable discovery," — he rubbed his chin with his dirty hand, harder than ever ; — " that your feelings and mine — forgive my naming us together — are of precisely the same nature as regards your gallant and very estimable step-son. Therefore, broken down, penury-stricken hack as I am, and proud, handsome lady as you are — there may possibly be a good understanding between us."

Her very soul turned sick within her, as she shrank away — her cheek flamed with wrath and contempt, and yet she felt this mean, wretched creature had won a terrible power over her, and the thought stung her with untold agony. " Leave me !" The words broke from her with a writhe. " Instantly. I beg your pardon — most humbly for detaining you so long in the cold. But I rejoice that there exists so perfect an under standing between us, that we may be friends — forgive my presumption — and coadjutors. We have one point of interest in common — Mrs. Lechmere — we must meet again — more than once — or twice perhaps !" " What do you mean?" she faltered, almost doubting whether the words, his presence, the moonbeams streaming on them as they faced each other, were not all the creatures of her sick brain.

He saw that he must speak out boldly, and so he came closer, and bending his ill-favoured eyes upon her — as though he would have looked down into the depths of her shuddering soul, and spoke — in a whisper, distinct enough — " I mean, woman — and you know my words are true, that the inmost wish of your soul — a wish you dare not acknowledge, even to yourself — :is that this lad were dead or disgraced, and cast out before you, and your son in his place. Be patient, tame down your pride, and we may work together for this end." He went back a step, removing the hideous influence of his eyes from her face, and she breathed again. Then her wild anxiety to be free from him stifling even her passion of indignation and fear, she flung him her purse ; and as, with a bow, and some muttered thanks, he glided off from the moonlight into the darkness, and was gone, the shadowy terror that he was no man, but a spirit of evil, woke up within her.

Was she henceforth, body and soul, to be in the power of this thing ? No human voice or step came near her, to break the deep silence of the room, or to still her inward raging ; and so she sat, for how long she knew not, gazing after the figure of the enemy that had vanished into darkness, the white moonshine falling on her unfelt.

Chapter II

" Woman's faith and woman's trust — Write the characters in dust, Stamp them in the running stream, Print them in the moon's pale beam ; And each evanescent letter, Shall seem clearer, firmer, better, And more permanent, I ween, Than the thing these letters mean !" The Beteothed. Robert Milford, Esq., of Milford Lodge, — M.P. for shire, justice of the peace and quorum, important individual as he was, rose next morning in a decidedly uncomfortable frame of mind, which increased as the day wore on, and was particularly visible at breakfast, depriving the ham and eggs of their usual charms, and the " Times" of its ordinary fascinations. In short, Mr. Milford had lost his appetite, which, as he usually played a pretty prominent part in the morning meal, was a change ex tremely alarming and mysterious to his lady \.if_, who sat opposite and eyed him through her spectacles with considerable misgivings as to his frame of mind, and the possible cause of it.

Everything was wrong, and nothing right. The " Times" was grunted over for an instant as a paper of Republican principles and levelling tendencies, and then flung snappishly aside. The eggs were too hard, and the tea was cold, and everything was uneatable. Fie fumed, and snapped, and snarled, " fit to bite a man's head off," as the footman protested, when he took down the breakfast things, and gave all other unmistakable signs of being thoroughly and determinately out of humour. And Mrs. Mil ford, finding her honied speeches of no avail in subduing her lord's irritation, sat still and sipped her tea, resolved to be patient and bide her time, like a wise woman as she was. Kate was breakfasting in bed — she was quite ill — entirely upset — of course she was. What else could be expected, after the poor child's late sufferings?" said Mrs. Milford, with motherly compassion for her daughter's wounded feelings.

" I am sure," said that heroic woman, gently dabbing her eyes with her pocket-handkerchief, " what I have undergone lately is more than any human being can conceive. A mother, perhaps" — here she shook her head with a gentle doubt — " might form some faint idea." " Pish ! stuff and nonsense !" broke in Mr. Milford, with rash indignation. His lady stared at him with genuine amazement, half puzzled for the moment in her stu pefaction of surprise how to resent the insult. It was not often that he kicked in harness. He had done it now, however, for once, and broke the traces. " I say, stuff and nonsense, Martha," resumed Mr. Milford, hotly, twitching his coat tails under his arm, and facing — with his back to the fire, and a great show of courage — the glassy glare of his wife's spectacles, under which, however, his excited glances very speedily drooped, perhaps from the power of old habit.

" Very good, indeed, my dear," replied Mrs. Milford, with the calm of insulted majesty. " It is stuff and nonsense, if you please." Mr. Milford was somewhat surprised and discomfited by this unlooked-for mildness — so, with his intended burst of eloquence decidedly frostbitten, he fell to poking the fire with much vehemence, and muttering fretfully between his teeth. Mrs. Milford was the cleverest woman in the county, and knew how to manage him. " You seem vexed, my dear," said she, taking off her spectacles with delightful composure. " I am vexed, Martha," broke out her hus band, chafing and fidgetting himself in a state of uncomfortable irritability, very unbecoming indeed to a justice of the peace, and a gentleman of his consequence. " I am in a d d un pleasant condition of mind this morning !"

" There U no necessity for swearing, Mr. Milford," said Martha, with lofty dignity. " None at all ! — I'm sure I beg your pardon, my dear," humbly returned her lord, his courage almost melting from her majestic eye ; " but I VOL. II. c am really annoyed, Martha ! really quite cut up ! We cut a bad figure in this business, my dear !" " In what business, my dear Mr. Milford ?" demanded his lady, with patient serenity. " Oh, you know well enough — now, don't irritate me, Martha !" here he plucked up again — " this business of Kate and poor young Lechmere." " I am sorry you think so, Mr. Milford," said Martha, meekly, taking a dainty bit of fancy knitting, kept for emergencies like the present, from her pocket, and falling to work with serene calmness. " I think so ! By George, everybody must think so !" retorted the worthy magistrate, work ing himself into an absolute passion, as that ter rific bugbear, public opinion, scowled in his dis mayed face.

" We've acted shamefully, Mrs. Milford, — unfeelingly, heartlessly, and deserve to be hooted round the county !" and he wiped the perspiration from his forehead at the bare idea. " We've behaved like a couple of old fools, and Kate like a heartless little coquette — as she is, thanks to your bringing-up !" Mrs. Milford stared wildly, but her lord, fairly wound up to fever heat, was dashing on reck less of consequences, and had cast fear to the winds for the present. " Old fools ! Well, really, Robert— Mr. Mil ford, pray speak for yourself ! My bringing-up ! Kate a heartless coquette ! Well, well ! — " " It's true, and you know it, Mrs. Milford. Hav'n't you crammed the girl's head full of nonsense ? Ain't you trying with all your might to catch this militia captain for her, with a face hke a block in a barber's window, and no more brains than a — " Mr. Milford was somewhat at a loss for a comparison — " all because report says he has two thousand a year ?"