Best Short Stories Omnibus - Volume 3

Was it an illusion?-2

Mr Wolstenholme, sir, is the Lord of the Manor,’ said a soft, obsequious voice.

I turned, and found the speaker at my elbow, a square-built, sallow man, all in black, with a bundle of copy-books under his arm.

‘You are the-the schoolmaster?’ I said; unable to remember his name, and puzzled by a vague recollection of his face.

‘Just so, sir. I conclude I have the honour of addressing Mr Frazer?’

It was a singular face, very pallid and anxious-looking. The eyes, too, had a watchful, almost a startled, look in them, which struck me as peculiarly unpleasant.

‘Yes,’ I replied, still wondering where and when I had seen him. ‘My name is Frazer. Yours, I believe, is-is-,’ and I put my hand into my pocket for my examination papers.

‘Skelton-Ebenezer Skelton. Will you please to take the boys first, sir?’

The words were commonplace enough, but the man’s manner was studiously, disagreeably deferential; his very name being given, as it were, under protest, as if too insignificant to be mentioned.

I said I would begin with the boys; and so moved on. Then, for we had stood still till now, I saw that the schoolmaster was lame. In that moment I remembered him. He was the man I met in the fog.

‘I met you yesterday afternoon, Mr Skelton,’ I said, as we went into the school-mom.

‘Yesterday afternoon, sir?’ he repeated.

‘You did not seem to observe me,’ I said, carelessly. ‘I spoke to you, in fact; but you did not reply to me.’

‘But-indeed, I beg your pardon, sir-it must have been someone else,’ said the schoolmaster, ‘I did not go out yesterday afternoon.’

How could this be anything but a falsehood? I might have been mistaken as to the man’s face; though it was such a singular face, and I had seen it quite plainly. But how could I be mistaken as to his lameness? Besides, that curious trailing of the right foot, as if the ankle was broken, was not an ordinary lameness.

I suppose I looked incredulous, for he added, hastily:.‘Even if I had not been preparing the boys for inspection, sir, I should not have gone out yesterday afternoon. It was too damp and foggy. I am obliged to be careful-I have a very delicate chest.’

My dislike to the man increased with every word he uttered. I did not ask myself with what motive he went on heaping lie upon lie; it was enough that, to serve his own ends, whatever those ends might be, he did lie with unparallelled audacity.

‘We will proceed to the examination, Mr Skelton,’ I said, contemptuously.

He turned, if possible, a shade paler than before, bent his head silently, and called up the scholars in their order.

I soon found that, whatever his shortcomings as to veracity, Mr Ebenezer Skelton was a capital schoolmaster. His boys were uncommonly well taught, and as regarded attendance, good conduct, and the like, left nothing to be desired. When, therefore, at the end of the examination, he said he hoped I would recommend the Pit End Boys’ School for the Government grant, I at once assented. And now I thought I had done with Mr Skelton for, at all events, the space of one year. Not so, however. When I came out from the Girls’ School, I found him waiting at the door.

Profusely apologizing, he begged leave to occupy five minutes of my valuable time. He wished, under correction, to suggest a little improvement. The boys, he said, were allowed to play in the quadrangle, which was too small, and in various ways inconvenient; but round at the back there was a piece of waste land, half an acre of which, if enclosed, would admirably answer the purpose. So saying, he led the way to the back of the building, and I followed him.

‘To whom does this ground belong?’ I asked.

‘To Mr Wolstenholme, sir.’

‘Then why not apply to Mr Wolstenholme? He gave the schools, and I dare say he would be equally willing to give the ground.’

‘I beg your pardon, sir. Mr Wolstenholme has not been over here since his return, and it is quite possible that he may leave Pit End without honouring us with a visit. I could not take the liberty of writing to him, sir.’

‘Neither could I in my report suggest that the Government should offer to purchase a portion of Mr Wolstenholme’s land for a playground to schools of Mr Wolstenholme’s own building.’ I replied. ‘Under other circumstances’.

I stopped and looked round.

The schoolmaster repeated my last words.

‘You were saying, sir-under other circumstances?’

I looked round again.

‘It seemed to me that there was someone here,’ I said; ‘some third person, not a moment ago.’

‘I beg your pardon, sir-a third person?’

‘I saw his shadow on the ground, between yours and mine.’

The schools faced due north, and we were standing immediately behind the buildings, with our backs to the sun. The place was bare, and open, and high; and our shadows, sharply defined, lay stretched before our feet.

‘A-a shadow?’ he faltered. ‘Impossible.’

There was not a bush or a tree within half a mile. There was not a cloud in the sky. There was nothing, absolutely nothing, that could have cast a shadow.

I admitted that it was impossible, and that I must have fancied it; and so went back to the matter of the playground..‘Should you see Mr Wolstenholme,’ I said, ‘you are at liberty to say that I thought it a desirable improvement.’

‘I am much obliged to you, sir. Thank you-thank you very much,’ he said, cringing at every word. ‘But-but I had hoped that you might perhaps use your influence’-‘Look there!’ I interrupted. ‘Is that fancy?’

We were now close under the blank wall of the boys’ schoolroom. On this wall, lying to the full sunlight, our shadows-mine and the schoolmaster’s-were projected. And there, too-no longer between his and mine, but a little way apart, as if the intruder were standing back-there, as sharply defined as if cast by lime-light on a prepared background, I again distinctly saw, though but for a moment, that third shadow. As I spoke, as I looked round, it was gone!

‘Did you not see it?’ I asked.

He shook his head.

‘I-I saw nothing,’ he said, faintly. ‘What was it?’

His lips were white. He seemed scarcely able to stand.

‘But you must have seen it!’ I exclaimed. ‘It fell just there-where that bit of ivy grows. There must be some boy hiding-it was a boy’s shadow, I am confident.’

‘A boy’s shadow!’ he echoed, looking round in a wild, frightened way. ‘There is no place-for a boy-to hide.’

‘Place or no place,’ I said, angrily, ‘if I catch him, he shall feel the weight of my cane!’

I searched backwards and forwards in event direction, the schoolmaster, with his scared face, limping at my heels; but, rough and irregular as the ground was, there was not a hole in it big enough to shelter a rabbit.

‘But what was it?’ I said, impatiently.

‘An-an illusion. Begging your pardon, sir-an illusion.’

He looked so like a beaten hound, so frightened, so fawning, that I felt I could with lively satisfaction have transferred the threatened caning to his own shoulders.

‘But you saw it?’ I said again.

‘No, sir. Upon my honour, no, sir. I saw nothing-nothing whatever.’

His looks belied his words. I felt positive that he had not only seen the shadow, but that he knew more about it than he chose to tell. I was by this time really angry. To be made the object of a boyish trick, and to be hoodwinked by the connivance of the schoolmaster, was too much. It was an insult to myself and my office.

I scarcely knew what I said; something short and stern at all events. Then, having said it, I turned my back upon Mr Skelton and the schools, and walked rapidly back to the village.

As I neared the bottom of the hill, a dog-cart drawn by a high-stepping chestnut dashed up to the door of the ‘Greyhound’, and the next moment I was shaking hands with Wolstenholme, of Balliol. Wolstenholme, of Balliol, as handsome as ever, dressed with the same careless dandyism, looking not a day older than when I last saw him at Oxford! He gripped me by both hands, vowed that I was his guest for the next three days, and insisted on carrying me off at once to Backwater Chase. In vain I urged that I had two schools to inspect tomorrow ten miles the other side of Drumley; that I had a horse and trap waiting; and that my room was ordered at the ‘Feathers’. Wolstenholme laughed away my objections.

My dear fellow,’ he said, ‘you will simply send your horse and trap back with a message to the “Feathers”, and a couple of telegrams to be dispatched to the two schools from Drumley station.

Unforeseen circumstances compel you to defer those inspections till next week!’.And with this, in his masterful way, he shouted to the landlord to send my portmanteau up to the manor-house, pushed me up before him into the dog-cart, gave the chestnut his head, and rattled me off to Backwater Chase.

It was a gloomy old barrack of a place, standing high in the midst of a sombre deer-park some six or seven miles in circumference. An avenue of oaks, now leafless, led up to the house; and a mournful heron-haunted tarn in the loneliest part of the park gave to the estate its name of Blackwater Chase. The place, in fact, was more like a border fastness than an English north-country mansion. Wolstenholme took me through the picture gallery and reception rooms after luncheon, and then for a canter round the park; and in the evening we dined at the upper end of a great oak hall hung with antlers, and armour, and antiquated weapons of warfare and sport.

‘Now, tomorrow,’ said my host, as we sat over our claret in front of a blazing log-fire; ‘tomorrow, if we have decent weather, you shall have a day’s shooting on the moors; and on Friday, if you will but be persuaded to stay a day longer, I will drive you over to Broomhead and give you a run with the Duke’s hounds. Not hunt? My dear fellow, what nonsense! All our parsons hunt in this part of the world. By the way, have you ever been down a coal pit? No?

Then a new experience awaits you. I’ll take you down Carshalton shaft, and show you the home of the gnomes and trolls.’

‘Is Carshalton one of your own mines?’ I asked.

‘All these pits are mine,’ he replied. ‘I am king of Hades, and rule the under world as well as the upper. There is coal everywhere underlying these moors. The whole place is honeycombed with shafts and galleries. One of our richest seams runs under this house, and there are upwards of forty men at work in it a quarter of a mile below our feet here every day. Another leads right away under the park, heaven only knows how far! My father began working it five-and-twenty years ago, and we have gone on working it ever since; yet it shows no sign of failing.’

‘You must be as rich as a prince with a fairy godmother!’

He shrugged his shoulders.

‘Well,’ he said, lightly, ‘I am rich enough to commit what follies I please; and that is saying a good deal. But then, to be always squandering money-always rambling about the world—always gratifying the impulse of the moment-is that happiness? I have been trying the experiment for the last ten years; and with what result? Would you like to see?’

He snatched up a lamp and led the way through a long suite of unfurnished rooms, the floors of which were piled high with packing cases of all sizes and shapes, labelled with the names of various foreign ports and the addresses of foreign agents innumerable. What did they contain?

Precious marbles from Italy and Greece and Asia Minor; priceless paintings by old and modern masters; antiquities from the Nile, the Tigris, and the Euphrates; enamels from Persia, porcelain from China, bronzes from Japan, strange sculptures from Peru; arms, mosaics, ivories, wood-carvings, skins, tapestries, old Italian cabinets, painted bride-chests, Etruscan terracottas; treasures of all countries, of all ages, never even unpacked since they crossed that threshold which the master’s foot had crossed but twice during the ten years it had taken to buy them!

Should he ever open them, ever arrange them, ever enjoy them? Perhaps-if he became weary of wandering-if he married-if he built a gallery to receive them. If not-well, he might found and endow a museum; or leave the things to the nation. What did it matter? Collecting was like fox-hunting; the pleasure was in the pursuit, and ended with it!