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."