Best Short Stories Omnibus - Volume 3

Chapter Four

Chapter Four

––––––––

At the end of little more than three years from the date of his marriage, it might have been truly said of Doctor Jones that his last state was worse than his first. How many demons eventually took up their habitation within him it would be impossible to say; but the doings of the Jones' household, more particularly the doings of its master, became a terror and reproach to the neighbourhood.

How the case really stood no one ever exactly knew; all sorts of rumours and stories passed from mouth to mouth. She would not give him a shilling of her money, so gossip averred. He had stood over her with a cutting whip to compel her to sign papers, and then she would not; a mode of proceeding on the part of Doctor Jones to practise before witnesses, which was, to say the least of the matter, unlikely. Popular report asserted he starved her; but as she generally answered the street-door herself, was free to walk in and out if she pleased, and could have told any tradesmen to bring her anything she fancied, this was evidently a libel. At one time an idea got abroad that the whole tale of her fortune had been a myth; that the Doctor had been taken in, and that there were dreadful quarrels between them in consequence; but the boastings of various servants who declared they had seen her with “rolls on rolls” of banknotes and with such diamonds and rubies as the “Queen of Sheba or Solomon himself could have had nothing more splendid,” negatived the truth of this statement.

Money or no money, however, the Jones, were a miserable couple. Mrs. Jones could not and would not endure a female servant about the house; as fast as they were engaged they went: a fortnight was a long time for any woman, young or old, to stop in the situation, and so ere long the house acquired that look of dirt and neglect some houses seem especially able to assume at the shortest notice. Little more than three years married and already the grass growing between the stones in the stableyard was nearly a foot high. The high-stepping horse had long been sold, and the brougham also; the new piano, never opened, followed suit; and about the same time Doctor Jones, giving up all idea of reformation and practice, and abandoning the role of a repentant prodigal, returned to his swine and his husks on the Middlesex side of the river; for he could not enjoy even such companionship and diet on his own side of the water, for fear Mrs. Jones might take it in her head to mar with her presence the delights of an evening in some low public house or lower music hall, or lower depth still; for, if all stories were to be believed, the Doctor went down very low indeed. Accordingly, when Christmas, for the fourth time after that inauspicious and, as some people went so far as to say, unchristian marriage, was approaching, people felt Doctor Jones had run about the length of his tether.

A change of some sort seemed imminent. He was in debt in the neighbourhood, a thing he had never been known to be in before. Even the few things sent into that evil house were not paid for, and hitherto the Doctor's credit had been so good that he owed in the neighbourhood more than might otherwise have been the case.

Mrs. Jones said she would not pay, and the Doctor said he could not. Nevertheless, after some parley, he promised to do what he could after Christmas—this was remembered afterwards—and the British tradesman, easily irritated, easily appeased, departed.

No joint, no turkey, no anything was ordered in for the 25th of that December. “Let him get his Christmas dinner where he gets his other dinners,” said Mrs. Jones, in answer to a feeble remonstrance from the crone who came in daily to “put the place a bit to rights,” a woman so old, so wrinkled, so ugly, so dirty, and so shabby that even Doctor Jones, his wife felt, was unlikely to chuck her under the chin, or exchange with her repartees more remarkable for wit than refinement. Apprised in due time of the fare he might expect at home, the once again unreformed prodigal announced his intention of accepting an invitation he said he had received to dine at a friend's house on Christmas Day.

Mrs. Jones tried hard to ascertain where this friend lived, but in vain, and still firm to her intention of providing no feast, even for herself, she told Mrs. Jubb, the charwoman, to bring in the tea tray and the kettle, and then to go.

About the events of that day and evening and the following morning Mrs. Jubb had afterwards much to tell, and she told it.

'As I come up from the kitchen,” she was wont to observe, “and an awful kitchen that was too, full of black-beetles and slugs—just as I got on the top of the stairs, I saw the master, with his thick coat on, brushing his hat. He put it on and he took his umbrella, and he opened the door and slammed it after him, and that was the last I ever see of Doctor Jones. I took the tea-things into the drawing-room, and set the kettle on the hob, and I asked Mrs. Jones if she was sure I could not do anything else before I went.”

“She said, 'Quite sure, Mrs. Jubb; good evening.'

“I had a sort of feeling on me, I did not like to leave her, though I knew John's children would be crying for me at home; and so I made believe to be putting the cup and saucer and plate nearer to her hand, and she looked round in her quick way, and asked sharp, as if I had angered her:

“'Didn't you hear me say “good evening,” Mrs. Jubb? You can go.'

“So I went, and that was the last I ever saw of her. Goodness only knows where they both went to. It was not the next day, but the next day but one, the police got into the house through a window at the back that was left half an inch open (for I went down to the station, and told the inspector I was sure as sure murder had been done, for I could not make anybody hear, and the gas was burning, and the cat, poor thing, mewing in the area, and not another sign of life about the place); and there they found the tray just as I'd left it, and the fire out and the kettle on the hob, and high or low, in garret or cellar, not a trace of Doctor or Mrs. Jones.”

There was nothing which gratified Mrs. Jubb's numerous friends and acquaintances more than to get her started on this theme.

The story was one which, properly managed, lasted for hours. Mrs. Jubb's feelings, Mrs. Jubb's doings, Mrs. Jubb's sayings, the remarks of the police, the fury and dismay of the tradespeople, and the many observations of the sprightly youth and beauty and strength of the neighbourhood, enabled the narrative to be spun out almost to the length of a three-volume novel.

“And after all, where did Doctor and Mrs. Jones go?” once asked an impatient and inquisitive auditor, who chanced to be listening for the first time to the oft-told tale.

“That'll never be known on this earth,” answered Mrs. Jubb; “my own notion is, she started to follow him—”

“Then she can't be buried in the cellars,” interposed another.

“You don't know what a man like that could do,” said Mrs. Jubb; “why, even now, poor as I am, I wouldn't live in the house as them Tippenses are doing, no, not if you paved the hall with golden guineas.”

“There's nobody going to tempt you, mother,” remarked an incredulous youth; “I'd chance meeting all the ghosts out of the churchyard, let alone old Mrs. Jones, for a ten-pound note.”

“You don't know what you are talking about, Jim,” retorted Mrs. Jubb.

“Well, it was a queer start anyway,” returned the undaunted Jim; “the Kilkenny cats left their tails behind them, but the Doctor and his wife took away every bit of their bodies.

“And left clothes, and furniture, and bedding, and china, and plate, and linen, and all, just as if they had walked out of the house to spend a day at a friend's.”

Which statement was, indeed, literally true; when the police entered the house they found no corpse, no confusion, no symptom of murder or premeditated departure. Nothing seemed to have been removed except the master and mistress, who had not taken with them even the typical “comb and toothbrush.”

They were gone. Doctor Jones' creditors drew their own conclusions; the wealthy and respectable inhabitants did not know what to believe or think; the police felt disposed to consider the whole affair a make-up between the doctor and his wife; the general public, as usual, were not to be convinced by argument, or confounded by facts, they preferred to believe old Mrs. Jones had been murdered and her body what they called “put away” somewhere about the premises. Shortly after there followed a rumour of hidden treasure, then it was known for certain that the house was haunted, and, further, that no one who tried to live in it but was visited by some misfortune.

When the wind howled outside her dwelling, and shook the casements, and whistled through the keyholes, and the rain beat against the windows with a noise like slapping with an open hand, it was a dear delight to gossips to gather round Mrs. Jubb's fire, to which most who came contributed a billet and hear the whole story again, with additions of what had happened to those venturesome enough to try conclusions with old Mrs. Jones, out of the flesh.

“She was an awful woman to have much to say to when living,” said Mrs. Jubb; “dead, she'll be a thousand times worse.”

“I wonder what she wants wandering about the old house,” said the irrepressible Jim; “if all accounts are true, she was none so happy in it.

“Ah, she knows that best herself, and she's not going to tell,” returned Mrs. Jubb. “I wouldn't like to see her, that's all.”