‘I would wager a large sum he is consuming another of his heavy-wets in the tap rather!’ replied John.
The door opened as he spoke, and Miss Gateshead’s nervous start was infectious enough to make him look round sharply. But it was only the landlady who came into the room, with a tray, on which she began to pile the plates and cutlery. She remarked that it was a foggy night, so that she had tightly closed the shutters in the bedrooms.
‘Get a lot of fog hereabouts, we do,’ she said, wiping a spoon on her apron, and casting it into a drawer in the sideboard. ‘Like a blanket it’ll be before morning, but it’ll clear off. I come from Norfolk myself, but a body gets used to anything. It’s the clay.’
‘Who is our fellow-guest?’ asked John.
‘Mr Waggleswick? He’s an agent of some sort: I don’t rightly know. Travels all over, by what he tells me. We’ve had him here two-three times before. He’s not much to look at, but he don’t give no trouble. I’ll bring your candles in presently. Your room is at the end of the passage, sir: turn to the right at the top of the stairs, and you’ll come to it. Fyton took your bags up.’
2
Waggleswick did not return to the coffee-room, and as no other visitors, other than the local inhabitants, who crowded into the tap-room across the passage, came to the Pelican, Miss Gateshead and Mr Cranbrook were left to sit on either side of the fire, chatting cosily together. Miss Gateshead was most interested to hear about Portugal, and as John, like so many young travellers, had filled a fat sketch-book with his impressions of an unknown countryside, it was not long before she had persuaded him to fetch down from his room this treasure.
The landlord was busy in the tap, and Mrs Fyton was nowhere to be seen, so John went upstairs unescorted, trusting to the landlady’s directions.
Another of the hanging oil-lamps lit the staircase, and rather feebly cast a certain amount of light a little way along the passage above, but beyond its radius all was in darkness. For a moment John hesitated, half-inclined to go back for a candle, but as his eyes grew more accustomed to the murk he thought that he could probably grope his way along the corridor to the room at the end of it. He did this, not entirely without mishap, since he tripped down one irrelevant step in the passage, and up two others, slightly ricking his ankle in the process, and uttering an exasperated oath. However, he reached the end of the passage, and found that there was a door confronting him. He opened it, and peeped in, and saw, by the light of a fire burning in the high barred grate, his two valises, standing in the centre of the room. As he knelt before them, tugging at the strap round the larger of them, he glanced cursorily round the apartment. It was of a respectable size, and boasted a very large bed, hung with ancient curtains, and bearing upon it a quilt so thick as to present more the appearance of a feather-mattress than of a coverlet. The rest of the furniture was commonplace and old-fashioned, and comprised several chairs, a dressing-table, a washstand, a huge mahogany wardrobe, a table by the bed, and a wall-cupboard on the same side of the room as the fireplace. A pair of dingy blinds imperfectly concealed the warped shutters bolted across the window. Some attempt to embellish the room had been made, for a singularly hideous china group stood in the middle of the mantelpiece, and a religious engraving hung above it. Mr Cranbrook hoped that Miss Gateshead’s room might be less gloomy: for himself he cared little for his surroundings, but he could imagine that a lady might find such an apartment comfortless, and even rather daunting.
The sketch-book was easily found, and he went off with it, shutting the door of the room behind him. He remembered the treacherous steps in the corridor, and went more carefully, putting out a hand to feel his way by touching the wall. It encountered not the wall, but something warm and furry.
He snatched it back, his eyes straining in the darkness, his heart suddenly hammering. Whatever he had touched was living and silent, and quite motionless. ‘Who’s that?’ he said quickly, an absurd, nameless dread knocking in his chest.
There was a slight pause, as though of hesitation, and then a voice said in a grumbling tone: ‘Why can’t you take care where you’re a-going, young master?’
Mr Cranbrook recognized the voice, which he had heard speaking to the landlord, and knew that what he had touched was a moleskin waistcoat. ‘What are you doing here?’ he demanded, relieved, yet suspicious.
‘What’s that to you?’ retorted Waggleswick. ‘I suppose a cove can go to his room without axing your leave!’
‘I didn’t mean—But why were you spying on me?’
‘Spying on you? That’s a loud one! What would I want to do that for?’ said Waggleswick scornfully.
John could think of no reason, and was silent. He heard a movement, and guessed that Waggleswick was walking away from him. A moment later a door opened farther down the passage, and the glow of firelight within the room silhouetted Waggleswick’s figure for a brief instant before he went in, and shut the door behind him.
John hesitated, on the brink of retracing his steps to lock his own door. Then he recollected that he carried his money on his person, and had packed nothing of value in his valises, and he shrugged, and proceeded on his way.
Miss Gateshead was seated where he had left her. She greeted him with a smile that held some relief, and confided to him that she hated foggy nights.
‘There’s not much fog in the house,’ he replied reassuringly.
‘No, but it muffles all the noises, and makes one think the world outside dead!’ she said. She perceived that he did not quite appreciate this, and coloured. ‘It is only a foolish fancy, of course! I don’t think I like this house. A rat has been gnawing in the wainscoting in that corner, and a few minutes ago I heard the stairs creak, and quite thought it must be you. Do you believe in ghosts?’
‘No, certainly not,’ said John firmly, resolving to make no mention of his encounter with Mr Waggleswick.
‘Well, I didn’t think I did,’ confessed Miss Gateshead, ‘but I have the horridest feeling all the time that there is someone just behind me!’
Mr Cranbrook did not feel quite comfortable about the Pelican himself, but since it was plainly his part to comfort Miss Gateshead he adopted a bracing tone, saying that she was perhaps tired after her journey, and was suffering from an irritation of the nerves. She accepted this explanation meekly, and came to sit at the table, so that she could more clearly see Mr Cranbrook’s Peninsular sketches.
Shortly after ten o’clock the landlady came in with two tallow candles, stuck into pewter holders. She offered to escort Miss Gateshead up to bed, and since John thought he might as well go to bed too as sit on a settle beside a dying fire, he said that he would also go upstairs. He and Miss Gateshead had reached an excellent understanding by this time, and although nothing so blunt had passed between them as a declaration on Mr Cranbrook’s part that he meant to follow up this chance acquaintanceship with a view to extending it rather considerably, his intention was as patent as it was unavowed. Nor did Miss Gateshead make any attempt to discourage him in his resolve. She was even much inclined to think there was a good deal to be said for his vehemently expressed opinion that the life of a governess would not at all suit her.
They took up their candles, and followed Mrs Fyton upstairs. The noise had died down in the tap; Mrs Fyton said that they kept early hours in these parts, besides that folks were anxious to get home before the fog came down really thick. The light of the candle she carried threw wavering, grotesque shadows on the walls, and disclosed, upstairs, two other passages, leading off at right-angles from the one which ran the length of the house.