In Ghostly Company (Tales of Mystery & The Supernatural) (13 page)

She smiled slightly, and said: ‘Mr M., perhaps you will decline at once, when I must try elsewhere, but I will tell you now frankly that I am not able to give you any sittings at all.’

‘What?’ I cried. ‘Why, I cannot paint you without your sitting to me.’

‘Well,’ she answered, ‘that cannot be done. All I can do is to sit here now for half an hour or so and let you look at me and sketch me, and then leave this little portrait of myself with you.’

She took from her pocket a little watercolour of herself, which had apparently been torn from some book. It had been taken when she was about eighteen, and before the strange expression had come into her face; it was, however, very like her, only the colouring was fresh and rosy.

‘Well,’ I said as I took it, ‘I will see what I can do in so short a time, though I am afraid I shall make a poor job of it.’

So saying, I sat down and sketched her as carefully and as rapidly as possible though I found great difficulty in catching the various expressions of her face.

In about half an hour she rose, saying: ‘I must go now, Mr M., many thanks for your kindness, here is the price you named for the picture. You see I can trust you, and will pay in advance.’ With these words she counted out a sum of money in banknotes on the table, and gave me an address to which she wished the picture to be sent. ‘Now,’ she added, ‘I know I have asked you to undertake a very difficult piece of work, but I am not mistress of my own movements. If at any time I find myself able to give you another sitting I will certainly do so; if not,’ she went on pleadingly, ‘I beg you will do your best to try and make a likeness of me; it is important, most important. Goodbye.’

And before I could move or speak she was out of the room. I rang for the servant to show her out, but on his arrival he said he had not seen the lady, and supposed that she must have left the house in a hurry. I put the two sketches away intending to commence work on them as soon as I had leisure, but, an important commission coming in next day, they slipped my memory entirely for some little time.

About three months after the above events, I found a note awaiting me on the breakfast table one morning from my old friend Arthur Van C. inviting me to come and visit him and his wife at their house about twenty miles from Ipswich. As I had no pressing work to do at that time, and felt that I needed a rest, I decided to accept their invitation, more especially as the Van C.’s had only recently returned from a five years’ sojourn in India, and I was anxious to see him again.

Two or three hours saw me complete my arrangements in London, and found me landed at the Liverpool Street terminus, seeking in that vast labyrinth the express for Ipswich. I found my train at length, and ensconced myself in an empty first-class carriage which, with the aid of a couple of shillings, I proposed to keep to myself all the way down. But I was doomed to disappointment. Just before the train started, the door of my carriage was opened, a porter’s voice said ‘Here, y’are, ma’am,’ and a tall lady dressed in deep mourning entered the compartment. There was something about her which appeared familiar to me, but I did not recognise her till, soon after the train had left the station, she raised her veil, and disclosed my fair visitor of three months before. I was at first startled, and then a feeling of shame rushed over me. I had taken this lady’s money and promised to paint her picture at once, and here at the expiration of three months not a brush had been laid to canvas. I did not know what to say, but finally bowed and murmured a greeting. She responded, and promptly asked: ‘Well, Mr M., when will you finish my picture?’

This completely disconcerted me; I inwardly vowed I would work incessantly on that portrait till it was finished, while aloud I said: ‘My dear madam, I have been so busy that really I have had but little time.’

‘I feared as much,’ she interrupted me, ‘but I do beg, Mr M., that you will take the matter up in earnest when you return to town. You don’t know, you can’t guess, what a weight will be off my mind when that picture is finished.’

‘I promise you,’ I replied, ‘that I will have it done very quickly. I will give it precedence over all other work.’

‘I hope you will,’ she said, and then added, ‘I am glad to have this opportunity afforded me to let you look at my face and gather some ideas for the picture.’

I replied that I also was pleased to have the chance, and added: ‘And also to have the pleasure of travelling down with you into Suffolk.’ She smiled, and we had a pleasant conversation during our journey to Ipswich, though I found that my companion’s part in it was at all times tinged with a certain sadness. At Ipswich station I lost sight of her in the confusion incidental on changing trains, and it was not till I was seated in the little branch railway that I bethought myself that I had forgotten to ask her name or ascertain her destination.

However, I dismissed the subject, and on my arrival at Pocklington, the station nearest Van C.’s house, I found myself so busy hunting up luggage and a conveyance that I completely forgot my fellow traveller. After a drive of some three miles, I arrived about half-past seven at Van C.’s house, and on the door being opened was greeted by the butler, who said: ‘Dinner will soon be ready, Mr M. The family is upstairs dressing. I will show you to your room at once, sir, if you please.’

I went up, therefore, immediately, and with the assistance of the butler rapidly unpacked and dressed for dinner. I mention these comparatively trivial circumstances to show what good ground for surprise I had at what next befell me. Upon descending to the library, where I expected to find my host and hostess, I saw, standing with her back towards me, a tall lady dressed in a black evening gown. On hearing me enter she turned round, and for an instant I was struck dumb with amazement, for she was none other than my late travelling companion. I had never seen Mrs Van C. and I at once concluded that this must be she, but how in the name of wonder had she got here, and why had she not introduced herself to me in the train?

‘Well, this is an unexpected pleasure, Mrs Van C.,’ I exclaimed. ‘I never dreamed it was my future hostess I was talking to this afternoon.’

‘I am not Mrs Van C.,’ she answered.

But before she had time to say more the door opened, and Van C., accompanied by a lady, came in. He shook hands with me heartily, and introduced the lady with him as his wife, but I was a little surprised to notice that neither of them spoke to my companion. However, I at once concluded that she was some governess or lady companion of Mrs Van C. and seeing that they ignored her presence I decided it might be proper for me to do so also. At this moment dinner was announced, and Van C. asked his wife if she expected Mr Brixham, to which she replied that she had had a place set for him but did not know if he would come.

‘At any rate,’ she concluded, ‘we won’t wait. Will you take me in, Mr M?’ And as we went in to dinner she explained to me that Mr Brixham was the clergyman of the parish, and had a standing invitation to dine with them.

We entered the dining-room, and I saw the table was set for four persons. I led Mrs Van C. to the head of the table, and while seating herself she dropped her handkerchief; I stooped to pick it up, and by the time I regained my seat saw Van C. and the lady of the train in their respective places, Van. C. opposite his wife, and the mysterious lady opposite to myself. In the centre of the table was a large vase supporting a basket of flowers, and decked with hanging garlands, which effectually shut off my view of all but the top of the head of my opposite neighbour. Dinner commenced, and I found Van C., as he had always been, one of the most jovial and talkative of men, whilst his wife, also, was by no means lacking in conversational powers. Van C. kept me pretty busy all through dinner talking about old times, and though I could not help noticing that neither he nor his wife ever spoke to the strange lady, yet I did not have an opportunity of addressing myself directly to her. I am not much of an observer and, as I say, my attention was pretty constantly taken up, yet it was my impression that my opposite neighbour partook of the good things set before her, and I became at last firmly impressed with the idea that she must be Mrs Van C.’s companion.

At the end of dinner Van C. opened the door to the retiring ladies, and as soon as he had resumed his seat I determined to satisfy my curiosity as to my fair client, and said: ‘By the way, Van C., I wish you would introduce me to that lady who has just gone out. I travelled part of the way from London with her today, and have engaged myself to paint her portrait also.’

I shall never be able to paint such surprise as overspread Van C.’s face. ‘What?’ he said. ‘You travelled from London today with my wife, and are going to paint her picture?’

‘No, no,’ I said, ‘not your wife, I mean the other lady, the one who sat opposite to me.’

‘The one who sat opposite to you?’ Van C. repeated. ‘Why, my dear fellow, the seat opposite to you was empty.’

‘Empty?’ I cried. ‘Are you blind, Van C., or are you joking? I tell you I mean the seat on the opposite side of the table to myself that was occupied by that striking-looking woman in black.’

‘You are mad,’ retorted Van C. ‘No one sat opposite to you. There was a seat there for Mr Brixham, but he didn’t come, and there was no one in the room all through dinner except ourselves, my wife, and the servants.’

‘But I saw her,’ I persisted.

‘You can’t have seen her,’ he said, ‘because she wasn’t there. Come into the drawing-room and we’ll ask my wife, if you don’t believe me.’

‘Well,’ I said, ‘here is some extraordinary mistake. Let’s go and ask Mrs Van C. to decide it.’ So to the drawing-room we adjourned, and on entering it I saw that Mrs Van C. was alone.

‘Now, Emily,’ cried her husband, ‘M. and I have had a dispute and we are going to leave it to you to decide. Was there or was there not a handsome lady dressed in black sitting opposite M. at dinner tonight?’

‘No,’ answered Mrs Van C. in surprise, ‘there was nothing but Mr Brixham’s vacant place.’

‘There, I told you so,’ cried Van C. ‘Now if you like we’ll have the servants up and ask them.’

‘I wish you would, Van. C.,’ I answered, ‘there’s some strange mystery here which I should like to have cleared up.’

So the servants were summoned, and Van C. told me to ask what questions I liked.

‘Was there,’ I began, ‘any lady at table tonight besides Mrs Van C.?’

The butler and footman stared at me in great astonishment, and then said, ‘No, sir.’

‘And there was no one at all opposite to me?’ I continued.

And the answer again came, ‘No, sir.’

‘There was a place set?’ I queried.

‘Yes, sir, for Mr Brixham, but he didn’t come, so we took it down,’ replied the butler.

I thanked the men and let them go. I asked Mr and Mrs Van C. if a person such as I described had lived in the house at any time, but though I gave a lengthy and I am sure an accurate description, they utterly failed to recognise her. Finding therefore that I had evidently been the subject of some strange hallucination, I determined to endeavour to think no more of it. I decided to paint the picture of the mysterious lady at once and send it to the address in Ipswich she had given me, accompanying it by a note begging her to favour me with some explanation as to how and why she had caused, if she indeed knew the reason, an image of herself to appear to me.

The chief point of difficulty I met with, in my endeavours to solve the mystery, was the impossibility of deciding
when
the hallucination commenced. Was the whole affair a hallucination, or did the deception begin in the railway train or not until I arrived at Van C.’s house? And another point was, why had the deception been practised at all? Finally I came to the conclusion that I had really travelled with the lady from London, principally because I heard and saw the porter usher her into the train in London, and that during the journey her figure and face had impressed itself so strongly upon me, as indeed she must have wished it to do, that I had imagined the scene at dinner. Curiously enough, I was not during the whole of this time in the least degree alarmed, but only looked forward to another meeting with my friend, intending to wring some sort of explanation from her.

Full of this determination I fell asleep, and passed a perfectly uneventful night. In the morning the Van C.’s rallied me a good deal about my friend of the night before, and when I explained to them my theories listened to me with evident incredulity.

My visit to the Van C.’s passed off very pleasantly, and I was heartily sorry to return to London. I was not again visited by my strange acquaintance’s
eidolon
, and in fact began to believe she had lost her power to appear to me.

On the day of my return to London, I somehow missed the connecting train at Ipswich, and found myself with several hours to spare in that not particularly interesting town. But determined to make the best use I could of my time, I took my portfolio of sketches, and with a few pencils strolled forth from the station in quest of some object of interest. These, however, were rare, and I quickly found myself in great danger of boredom when I suddenly remembered that an old friend, whom I had lost sight of for many, many years, lived in Ipswich, and I at once determined to look him up. I enquired for Mr J.’s house, to which I was directed, and soon found myself knocking at the door. It was opened by a young and rather pretty girl, whose face I somehow seemed to know though I had never seen her to my knowledge. I enquired for Mr J. and mentioned my name.