THE GREY ROOM(灰房间)

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THE GREY ROOM

by Eden Phillpotts

THE GREY ROOM

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,

THE GREY ROOM

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

THE GREY ROOM

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 mainfested. 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

THE GREY ROOM

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 GREY ROOM

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

THE GREY ROOM

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 GREY ROOM

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-Micheil 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

THE GREY ROOM

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

THE GREY ROOM

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

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