The Japanned Box


It WAS a curious thing, said the private tutor; one of those

grotesque and whimsical incidents which occur to one as one goes

through life. I lost the best situation which I am ever likely

to have through it. But I am glad that I went to Thorpe Place,

for I gained--well, as I tell you the story you will learn what I

gained.



I don't know whether you are familiar with that part of the

Midland
which is drained by the Avon. It is the most English part

of England. Shakespeare, the flower of the whole race, was born

right in the middle of it. It is a land of rolling pastures,

rising in higher folds to the westwards, until they swell into the

Malvern Hills. There are no towns, but numerous villages, each

with its grey Norman church. You have left the brick of the

southern and eastern counties behind you, and everything is stone--

stone for the walls, and lichened slabs of stone for the roofs. It

is all grim and solid and massive, as befits the heart of a great

nation.



It was in the middle of this country, not very far from

Evesham, that Sir John Bollamore lived in the old ancestral home of

Thorpe Place, and thither it was that I came to teach his two

little sons. Sir John was a widower--his wife had died three years

before--and he had been left with these two lads aged eight and

ten, and one dear little girl of seven. Miss Witherton, who is now

my wife, was governess to this little girl. I was tutor to the two

boys. Could there be a more obvious prelude to an engagement? She

governs me now, and I tutor two little boys of our own. But,

there--I have already revealed what it was which I gained in Thorpe

Place!



It was a very, very old house, incredibly old--pre-Norman, some

of it--and the Bollamores claimed to have lived in that situation

since long before the Conquest. It struck a chill to my heart when

first I came there, those enormously thick grey walls, the rude

crumbling stones, the smell as from a sick animal which exhaled

from the rotting plaster of the aged building. But the modern wing

was bright and the garden was well kept. No house could be dismal

which had a pretty girl inside it and such a show of roses in

front.



Apart from a very complete staff of servants there were only

four of us in the household. These were Miss Witherton, who was at

that time four-and-twenty and as pretty--well, as pretty as Mrs.

Colmore is now--myself, Frank Colmore, aged thirty, Mrs. Stevens,

the housekeeper, a dry, silent woman, and Mr. Richards, a tall

military-looking man, who acted as steward to the Bollamore

estates. We four always had our meals together, but Sir John had

his usually alone in the library. Sometimes he joined us at

dinner, but on the whole we were just as glad when he did not.



For he was a very formidable person. Imagine a man six feet

three inches in height, majestically built, with a high-nosed,

aristocratic face, brindled hair, shaggy eyebrows, a small, pointed

Mephistophelian beard, and lines upon his brow and round his eyes

as deep as if they had been carved with a penknife. He had grey

eyes, weary, hopeless-looking eyes, proud and yet pathetic, eyes

which claimed your pity and yet dared you to show it. His back was

rounded with study, but otherwise he was as fine a looking man of

his age--five-and-fifty perhaps--as any woman would wish to look

upon.



But his presence was not a cheerful one. He was always

courteous, always refined, but singularly silent and retiring. I

have never lived so long with any man and known so little of him.

If he were indoors he spent his time either in his own small study

in the Eastern Tower, or in the library in the modern wing. So

regular was his routine that one could always say at any hour

exactly where he would be. Twice in the day he would visit his

study, once after breakfast, and once about ten at night. You

might set your watch by the slam of the heavy door. For the rest

of the day he would be in his library--save that for an hour or two

in the afternoon he would take a walk or a ride, which was solitary

like the rest of his existence. He loved his children, and was

keenly interested in the progress of their studies, but they were

a little awed by the silent, shaggy-browed figure, and they avoided

him as much as they could. Indeed, we all did that.



It was some time before I came to know anything about the

circumstances of Sir John Bollamore's life, for Mrs. Stevens, the

housekeeper, and Mr. Richards, the land-steward, were too loyal to

talk easily of their employer's affairs. As to the governess, she

knew no more than I did, and our common interest was one of the

causes which drew us together. At last, however, an incident

occurred which led to a closer acquaintance with Mr. Richards and

a fuller knowledge of the life of the man whom I served.



The immediate cause of this was no less than the falling of

Master Percy, the youngest of my pupils, into the mill-race, with

imminent danger both to his life and to mine, since I had to risk

myself in order to save him. Dripping and exhausted--for I

was far more spent than the child--I was making for my room when

Sir John, who had heard the hubbub, opened the door of his little

study and asked me what was the matter. I told him of the

accident, but assured him that his child was in no danger, while he

listened with a rugged, immobile face, which expressed in its

intense eyes and tightened lips all the emotion which he tried to

conceal.



"One moment! Step in here! Let me have the details!" said he,

turning back through the open door.



And so I found myself within that little sanctum, inside which,

as I afterwards learned, no other foot had for three years been set

save that of the old servant who cleaned it out. It was a round

room, conforming to the shape of the tower in which it was

situated, with a low ceiling, a single narrow, ivy-wreathed window,

and the simplest of furniture. An old carpet, a single chair, a

deal table, and a small shelf of books made up the whole contents.

On the table stood a full-length photograph of a woman--I took no

particular notice of the features, but I remember, that a certain

gracious gentleness was the prevailing impression. Beside it were

a large black japanned box and one or two bundles of letters or

papers fastened together with elastic bands.



Our interview was a short one, for Sir John Bollamore perceived

that I was soaked, and that I should change without delay. The

incident led, however, to an instructive talk with Richards, the

agent, who had never penetrated into the chamber which chance had

opened to me. That very afternoon he came to me, all curiosity,

and walked up and down the garden path with me, while my two

charges played tennis upon the lawn beside us.



"You hardly realize the exception which has been made in your

favour," said he. "That room has been kept such a mystery, and Sir

John's visits to it have been so regular and consistent, that an

almost superstitious feeling has arisen about it in the household.

I assure you that if I were to repeat to you the tales which are

flying about, tales of mysterious visitors there, and of voices

overheard by the servants, you might suspect that Sir John had

relapsed into his old ways."



"Why do you say relapsed?" I asked.



He looked at me in surprise.



"Is it possible," said he, "that Sir John Bollamore's previous

history is unknown to you?"



"Absolutely."



"You astound me. I thought that every man in England knew

something of his antecedents. I should not mention the matter if

it were not that you are now one of ourselves, and that the facts

might come to your ears in some harsher form if I were silent upon

them. I always took it for granted that you knew that you were in

the service of `Devil' Bollamore."



"But why `Devil'?" I asked.



"Ah, you are young and the world moves fast, but twenty

years ago the name of `Devil' Bollamore was one of the best

known in London. He was the leader of the fastest set, bruiser,

driver, gambler, drunkard--a survival of the old type, and as bad

as the worst of them."



I stared at him in amazement.



"What!" I cried, "that quiet, studious, sad-faced man?"



"The greatest rip and debauchee in England! All between

ourselves, Colmore. But you understand now what I mean when I say

that a woman's voice in his room might even now give rise to

suspicions."



"But what can have changed him so?"



"Little Beryl Clare, when she took the risk of becoming his

wife. That was the turning point. He had got so far that his own

fast set had thrown him over. There is a world of difference, you

know, between a man who drinks and a drunkard. They all drink, but

they taboo a drunkard. He had become a slave to it--hopeless and

helpless. Then she stepped in, saw the possibilities of a fine man

in the wreck, took her chance in marrying him though she might have

had the pick of a dozen, and, by devoting her life to it, brought

him back to manhood and decency. You have observed that no liquor

is ever kept in the house. There never has been any since her foot

crossed its threshold. A drop of it would be like blood to a tiger

even now."



"Then her influence still holds him?"



"That is the wonder of it. When she died three years ago, we

all expected and feared that he would fall back into his old ways.

She feared it herself, and the thought gave a terror to death, for

she was like a guardian angel to that man, and lived only for

the one purpose. By the way, did you see a black japanned box in

his room?"



"Yes."



"I fancy it contains her letters. If ever he has occasion to

be away, if only for a single night, he invariably takes his black

japanned box with him. Well, well, Colmore, perhaps I have told

you rather more than I should, but I shall expect you to

reciprocate if anything of interest should come to your knowledge."



I could see that the worthy man was consumed with curiosity and

just a little piqued that I, the newcomer, should have been the

first to penetrate into the untrodden chamber. But the fact raised

me in his esteem, and from that time onwards I found myself upon

more confidential terms with him.



And now the silent and majestic figure of my employer became an

object of greater interest to me. I began to understand that

strangely human look in his eyes, those deep lines upon his care-

worn face. He was a man who was fighting a ceaseless battle,

holding at arm's length, from morning till night, a horrible

adversary who was forever trying to close with him--an adversary

which would destroy him body and soul could it but fix its claws

once more upon him. As I watched the grim, round-backed figure

pacing the corridor or walking in the garden, this imminent danger

seemed to take bodily shape, and I could almost fancy that I saw

this most loathsome and dangerous of all the fiends crouching

closely in his very shadow, like a half-cowed beast which slinks

beside its keeper, ready at any unguarded moment to spring at his

throat. And the dead woman, the woman who had spent her life in

warding off this danger, took shape also to my imagination, and I

saw her as a shadowy but beautiful presence which intervened for

ever with arms uplifted to screen the man whom she loved.



In some subtle way he divined the sympathy which I had for him,

and he showed in his own silent fashion that he appreciated it. He

even invited me once to share his afternoon walk, and although no

word passed between us on this occasion, it was a mark of

confidence which he had never shown to anyone before. He asked me

also to index his library (it was one of the best private libraries

in England), and I spent many hours in the evening in his

presence, if not in his society, he reading at his desk and I

sitting in a recess by the window reducing to order the chaos which

existed among his books. In spite of these close relations I was



never again asked to enter the chamber in the turret.



And then came my revulsion of feeling. A single incident

changed all my sympathy to loathing, and made me realize that my

employer still remained all that he had ever been, with the

additional vice of hypocrisy. What happened was as follows.



One evening Miss Witherton had gone down to Broadway, the

neighbouring village, to sing at a concert for some charity, and I,

according to my promise, had walked over to escort her back. The

drive sweeps round under the eastern turret, and I observed as I

passed that the light was lit in the circular room. It was a

summer evening, and the window, which was a little higher than our

heads, was open. We were, as it happened, engrossed in our own

conversation at the moment and we had paused upon the lawn which

skirts the old turret, when suddenly something broke in upon our

talk and turned our thoughts away from our own affairs.



It was a voice--the voice undoubtedly of a woman. It was low--

so low that it was only in that still night air that we could have

heard it, but, hushed as it was, there was no mistaking its

feminine timbre. It spoke hurriedly, gaspingly for a few

sentences, and then was silent--a piteous, breathless, imploring

sort of voice. Miss Witherton and I stood for an instant staring

at each other. Then we walked quickly in the direction of the

hall-door.



"It came through the window," I said.



"We must not play the part of eavesdroppers," she answered.

"We must forget that we have ever heard it."



There was an absence of surprise in her manner which suggested

a new idea to me.



"You have heard it before," I cried.



"I could not help it. My own room is higher up on the same

turret. It has happened frequently."



"Who can the woman be?"



"I have no idea. I had rather not discuss it."



Her voice was enough to show me what she thought. But granting

that our employer led a double and dubious life, who could she be,

this mysterious woman who kept him company in the old tower?

I knew from my own inspection how bleak and bare a room it was.

She certainly did not live there. But in that case where did she

come from? It could not be anyone of the household. They were all

under the vigilant eyes of Mrs. Stevens. The visitor must come

from without. But how?



And then suddenly I remembered how ancient this building was,

and how probable that some mediaeval passage existed in it. There

is hardly an old castle without one. The mysterious room was the

basement of the turret, so that if there were anything of the sort

it would open through the floor. There were numerous cottages in

the immediate vicinity. The other end of the secret passage might

lie among some tangle of bramble in the neighbouring copse. I said

nothing to anyone, but I felt that the secret of my employer lay

within my power.



And the more convinced I was of this the more I marvelled at

the manner in which he concealed his true nature. Often as I

watched his austere figure, I asked myself if it were indeed

possible that such a man should be living this double life, and I

tried to persuade myself that my suspicions might after all prove

to be ill-founded. But there was the female voice, there was the

secret nightly rendezvous in the turret-chamber--how could such

facts admit of an innocent interpretation. I conceived a horror of

the man. I was filled with loathing at his deep, consistent

hypocrisy.



Only once during all those months did I ever see him without

that sad but impassive mask which he usually presented towards his

fellow-man. For an instant I caught a glimpse of those volcanic

fires which he had damped down so long. The occasion was an

unworthy one, for the object of his wrath was none other than the

aged charwoman whom I have already mentioned as being the one

person who was allowed within his mysterious chamber. I was

passing the corridor which led to the turret--for my own room lay

in that direction--when I heard a sudden, startled scream, and

merged in it the husky, growling note of a man who is inarticulate

with passion. It was the snarl of a furious wild beast. Then I

heard his voice thrilling with anger. "You would dare!" he cried.

"You would dare to disobey my directions!" An instant later the

charwoman passed me, flying down the passage, white-faced and

tremulous, while the terrible voice thundered behind her. "Go to

Mrs. Stevens for your money! Never set foot in Thorpe Place

again!" Consumed with curiosity, I could not help following the

woman, and found her round the corner leaning against the wall and

palpitating like a frightened rabbit.



"What is the matter, Mrs. Brown?" I asked.



"It's master!" she gasped. "Oh, 'ow 'e frightened me! If you

had seen 'is eyes, Mr. Colmore, sir. I thought 'e would 'ave been

the death of me."



"But what had you done?"



"Done, sir! Nothing. At least nothing to make so much of.

Just laid my 'and on that black box of 'is--'adn't even opened it,

when in 'e came and you 'eard the way 'e went on. I've lost my

place, and glad I am of it, for I would never trust myself within

reach of 'im again."



So it was the japanned box which was the cause of this

outburst--the box from which he would never permit himself to be

separated. What was the connection, or was there any connection

between this and the secret visits of the lady whose voice I had

overheard? Sir John Bollamore's wrath was enduring as well as

fiery, for from that day Mrs. Brown, the charwoman, vanished from

our ken, and Thorpe Place knew her no more.



And now I wish to tell you the singular chance which solved all

these strange questions and put my employer's secret in my

possession. The story may leave you with some lingering doubts as

to whether my curiosity did not get the better of my honour, and

whether I did not condescend to play the spy. If you choose to

think so I cannot help it, but can only assure you that, improbable

as it may appear, the matter came about exactly as I describe it.



The first stage in this denouement was that the small room

in the turret became uninhabitable. This occurred through the fall

of the worm-eaten oaken beam which supported the ceiling. Rotten

with age, it snapped in the middle one morning, and brought down a

quantity of plaster with it. Fortunately Sir John was not in the

room at the time. His precious box was rescued from amongst the

debris and brought into the library, where, henceforward, it was

locked within his bureau. Sir John took no steps to repair the

damage, and I never had an opportunity of searching for that secret

passage, the existence of which I had surmised. As to the lady, I

had thought that this would have brought her visits to an end, had

I not one evening heard Mr. Richards asking Mrs. Stevens who the

woman was whom he had overheard talking to Sir John in the library.

I could not catch her reply, but I saw from her manner that it was

not the first time that she had had to answer or avoid the same

question.



"You've heard the voice, Colmore?" said the agent.



I confessed that I had.



"And what do YOU think of it?"



I shrugged my shoulders, and remarked that it was no business

of mine.



"Come, come, you are just as curious as any of us. Is it a

woman or not?"



"It is certainly a woman."



"Which room did you hear it from?"



"From the turret-room, before the ceiling fell."



"But I heard it from the library only last night. I passed the

doors as I was going to bed, and I heard something wailing and

praying just as plainly as I hear you. It may be a woman----"



"Why, what else COULD it be?"



He looked at me hard.



"There are more things in heaven and earth," said he. "If it

is a woman, how does she get there?"



"I don't know."



"No, nor I. But if it is the other thing--but there, for a

practical business man at the end of the nineteenth century this is

rather a ridiculous line of conversation." He turned away, but I

saw that he felt even more than he had said. To all the old ghost

stories of Thorpe Place a new one was being added before our very

eyes. It may by this time have taken its permanent place, for

though an explanation came to me, it never reached the others.



And my explanation came in this way. I had suffered a

sleepless night from neuralgia, and about midday I had taken a

heavy dose of chlorodyne to alleviate the pain. At that time I was

finishing the indexing of Sir John Bollamore's library, and it was

my custom to work there from five till seven. On this particular

day I struggled against the double effect of my bad night and the

narcotic. I have already mentioned that there was a recess in the

library, and in this it was my habit to work. I settled down

steadily to my task, but my weariness overcame me and, falling

back upon the settee, I dropped into a heavy sleep.



How long I slept I do not know, but it was quite dark when I

awoke. Confused by the chlorodyne which I had taken, I lay

motionless in a semi-conscious state. The great room with its high

walls covered with books loomed darkly all round me. A dim

radiance from the moonlight came through the farther window, and

against this lighter background I saw that Sir John Bollamore was

sitting at his study table. His well-set head and clearly cut

profile were sharply outlined against the glimmering square behind

him. He bent as I watched him, and I heard the sharp turning of a

key and the rasping of metal upon metal. As if in a dream I was

vaguely conscious that this was the japanned box which stood in

front of him, and that he had drawn something out of it, something

squat and uncouth, which now lay before him upon the table. I

never realized--it never occurred to my bemuddled and torpid brain

that I was intruding upon his privacy, that he imagined himself to

be alone in the room. And then, just as it rushed upon my

horrified perceptions, and I had half risen to announce my

presence, I heard a strange, crisp, metallic clicking, and then the

voice.



Yes, it was a woman's voice; there could not be a doubt of it.

But a voice so charged with entreaty and with yearning love, that

it will ring for ever in my ears. It came with a curious faraway

tinkle, but every word was clear, though faint--very faint, for

they were the last words of a dying woman.



"I am not really gone, John," said the thin, gasping voice. "I

am here at your very elbow, and shall be until we meet once more.

I die happy to think that morning and night you will hear my voice.

Oh, John, be strong, be strong, until we meet again."



I say that I had risen in order to announce my presence, but I

could not do so while the voice was sounding. I could only remain

half lying, half sitting, paralysed, astounded, listening to those

yearning distant musical words. And he--he was so absorbed that

even if I had spoken he might not have heard me. But with the

silence of the voice came my half articulated apologies and

explanations. He sprang across the room, switched on the electric

light, and in its white glare I saw him, his eyes gleaming

with anger, his face twisted with passion, as the hapless

charwoman may have seen him weeks before.



"Mr. Colmore!" he cried. "You here! What is the meaning of

this, sir?"



With halting words I explained it all, my neuralgia, the

narcotic, my luckless sleep and singular awakening. As he listened

the glow of anger faded from his face, and the sad, impassive mask

closed once more over his features.



"My secret is yours, Mr. Colmore," said he. "I have only

myself to blame for relaxing my precautions. Half confidences are

worse than no confidences, and so you may know all since you know

so much. The story may go where you will when I have passed away,

but until then I rely upon your sense of honour that no human soul

shall hear it from your lips. I am proud still--God help me!--or,

at least, I am proud enough to resent that pity which this story

would draw upon me. I have smiled at envy, and disregarded hatred,

but pity is more than I can tolerate.



"You have heard the source from which the voice comes--that

voice which has, as I understand, excited so much curiosity in my

household. I am aware of the rumours to which it has given rise.

These speculations, whether scandalous or superstitious, are such

as I can disregard and forgive. What I should never forgive would

be a disloyal spying and eavesdropping in order to satisfy an

illicit curiosity. But of that, Mr. Colmore, I acquit you.



"When I was a young man, sir, many years younger than you are

now, I was launched upon town without a friend or adviser, and with

a purse which brought only too many false friends and false

advisers to my side. I drank deeply of the wine of life--if there

is a man living who has drunk more deeply he is not a man whom I

envy. My purse suffered, my character suffered, my constitution

suffered, stimulants became a necessity to me, I was a creature

from whom my memory recoils. And it was at that time, the time of

my blackest degradation, that God sent into my life the gentlest,

sweetest spirit that ever descended as a ministering angel from

above. She loved me, broken as I was, loved me, and spent her life

in making a man once more of that which had degraded itself to the

level of the beasts.



"But a fell disease struck her, and she withered away before

my eyes. In the hour of her agony it was never of herself, of

her own sufferings and her own death that she thought. It was all

of me. The one pang which her fate brought to her was the fear

that when her influence was removed I should revert to that which

I had been. It was in vain that I made oath to her that no drop of

wine would ever cross my lips. She knew only too well the hold

that the devil had upon me--she who had striven so to loosen it--

and it haunted her night and day the thought that my soul might

again be within his grip.



"It was from some friend's gossip of the sick room that she

heard of this invention--this phonograph--and with the quick

insight of a loving woman she saw how she might use it for her

ends. She sent me to London to procure the best which money could

buy. With her dying breath she gasped into it the words which have

held me straight ever since. Lonely and broken, what else have I

in all the world to uphold me? But it is enough. Please God, I

shall face her without shame when He is pleased to reunite us!

That is my secret, Mr. Colmore, and whilst I live I leave it in

your keeping."



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