The Old House in Vauxhall Walk by Charlotte Riddell

“The Old House in Vauxhall Walk” is a short story that was first published in Riddell’s short story anthology Weird Stories (1882). It has also appeared in many additional anthologies, including The Mammoth Book of Haunted House Stories(2000) and Gaslit Nightmares (2006).

Although “The Old House in Vauxhall Walk” is predominantly a haunted house story, it also contains elements of mystery because, in addition to enduring a ghostly encounter, the central character also gets to the bottom of an unsolved murder.

About Charlotte Riddell

Charlotte Eliza Lawson Riddell(nee Cowan) was an Irish writer, from Carrickfergus, who was very popular during the Victorian era. She published her first novel The Moors and the Fens in 1858 under the pseudonym F. G. Trafford, switching to her own name for copies published from 1864 onward. Many novels and short stories followed.

Although Riddell was not strictly a writer of genre fiction, she wrote an impressive number of ghost stories, with five of her novels featuring haunted buildings, The Open Door standing out as a fine example.

The Old House in Vauxhall Walk

By Charlotte Riddell

(Online Text)

CHAPTER ONE

‘Houseless—homeless—hopeless!’

Many a one who had before him trodden that same street must have uttered the same words—-the weary, the desolate, the hungry, the forsaken, the waifs and strays of struggling humanity that are always coming and going, cold, starving and miserable, over the pavements of Lambeth Parish; but it is open to question whether they were ever previously spoken with a more thorough conviction of their truth, or with a feeling of keener self-pity, than by the young man who hurried along Vauxhall Walk one rainy winter’s night, with no overcoat on his shoulders and no hat on his head.

A strange sentence for one-and-twenty to give expression to—and it was stranger still to come from the lips of a person who looked like and who was a gentleman. He did not appear either to have sunk very far down in the good graces of Fortune. There was no sign or token which would have induced a passer-by to imagine he had been worsted after a long fight with calamity. His boots were not worn down at the heels or broken at the toes, as many, many boots were which dragged and shuffled and scraped along the pavement. His clothes were good and fashionably cut, and innocent of the rents and patches and tatters that slunk wretchedly by, crouched in doorways, and held out a hand mutely appealing for charity. His face was not pinched with famine or lined with wicked wrinkles, or brutalised by drink and debauchery, and yet he said and thought he was hopeless, and almost in his young despair spoke the words aloud.

It was a bad night to be about with such a feeling in one’s heart. The rain was cold, pitiless and increasing. A damp, keen wind blew down the cross streets leading from the river. The fumes of the gas works seemed to fall with the rain. The roadway was muddy; the pavement greasy; the lamps burned dimly; and that dreary district of London looked its very gloomiest and worst.

Certainly not an evening to be abroad without a home to go to, or a sixpence in one’s pocket, yet this was the position of the young gentleman who, without a hat, strode along Vauxhall Walk, the rain beating on his unprotected head.

Upon the houses, so large and good—once inhabited by well-to-do citizens, now let out for the most part in floors to weekly tenants—he looked enviously. He would have given much to have had a room, or even part of one. He had been walking for a long time, ever since dark in fact, dark falls soon in December. He was tired and cold and hungry, and he saw no prospect save of pacing the streets all night.

As he passed one of the lamps, the light falling on his face revealed handsome young features, a noble, sensitive mouth, and that particular formation of the eyebrows—not a frown exactly, but a certain draw of the brows—often considered to bespeak genius, but which more surely accompanies an impulsive organisation easily pleased, easily depressed, capable of suffering very keenly or of enjoying fully. In his short life he had not enjoyed much, and he had suffered a good deal. That night, when he walked bareheaded through the rain, affairs had come to a crisis.

So far as he in his despair felt able to see or reason, the best thing he could do was to die. The world did not want him; he would be better out of it.

The door of one of the houses stood open, and he could see in the dimly lighted hall some few articles of furniture waiting to be removed. A van stood beside the curb, and two men were lifting a table into it as he, for a second, paused.

‘Ah,’ he thought, ‘even those poor people have some place to go to, some shelter provided, while I have not a roof to cover my head, or a shilling to get a night’s lodging.’ And he went on fast, as if memory were spurring him, so fast that a man running after had some trouble to overtake him.

‘Master Graham! Master Graham!’ this man exclaimed, breathlessly; and, thus addressed, the young fellow stopped as if he had been shot.

‘Who are you that know me?’ he asked, facing round.

‘I’m William; don’t you remember William, Master Graham? And, Lord’s sake, sir, what are you doing out a night like this without your hat?’

‘I forgot it,’ was the answer; ‘and I did not care to go back and fetch it.’

‘Then why don’t you buy another, sir? You’ll catch your death of cold; and besides, you’ll excuse me, sir, but it does look odd.’

‘I know that,’ said Master Graham grimly; ‘but I haven’t a halfpenny in the world.’

‘Have you and the master, then—’ began the man, but there he hesitated and stopped.

‘Had a quarrel? Yes, and one that will last us our lives,’ finished the other, with a bitter laugh.

‘And where are you going now?’

‘Going! Nowhere, except to seek out the softest paving stone, or the shelter of an arch.’

‘You are joking, sir.’

‘I don’t feel much in a mood for jesting either.’

‘Will you come back with me, Master Graham? We are just at the last of our moving, but there is a spark of fire still in the grate, and it would be better talking out of this rain. Will you come, sir?’

‘Come! Of course I will come,’ said the young fellow, and, turning, they retraced their steps to the house he had looked into as he passed along.

An old, old house, with long, wide hall, stairs low, easy of ascent, with deep cornices to the ceilings, and oak floorings, and mahogany doors, which still spoke mutely of the wealth and stability of the original owner, who lived before the Tradescants and Ashmoles were thought of, and had been sleeping far longer than they, in St Mary’s churchyard, hard by the archbishop’s palace.

‘Step upstairs, sir,’ entreated the departing tenant; ‘it’s cold down here, with the door standing wide.’

‘Had you the whole house, then, William?’ asked Graham Coulton, in some surprise.

‘The whole of it, and right sorry I, for one, am to leave it; but nothing else would serve my wife. This room, sir,’ and with a little conscious pride, William, doing the honours of his late residence, asked his guest into a spacious apartment occupying the full width of the house on the first floor.

Tired though he was, the young man could not repress an exclamation of astonishment.

‘Why, we have nothing so large as this at home, William,’ he said.

‘It’s a fine house,’ answered William, raking the embers together as he spoke and throwing some wood upon them; ‘but, like many a good family, it has come down in the world.’

There were four windows in the room, shuttered close; they had deep, low seats, suggestive of pleasant days gone by; when, well-curtained and well-cushioned, they formed snug retreats for the children, and sometimes for adults also; there was no furniture left, unless an oaken settle beside the hearth, and a large mirror let into the panelling at the opposite end of the apartment, with a black marble console table beneath it, could be so considered; but the very absence of chairs and tables enabled the magnificent proportions of the chamber to be seen to full advantage, and there was nothing to distract the attention from the ornamented ceiling, the panelled walls, the old-world chimney-piece so quaintly carved, and the fireplace lined with tiles, each one of which contained a picture of some scriptural or allegorical subject.

‘Had you been staying on here, William,’ said Coulton, flinging himself wearily on the settle, ‘I’d have asked you to let me stop where I am for the night.’

‘If you can make shift, sir, there is nothing as I am aware of to prevent you stopping,’ answered the man, fanning the wood into a flame. ‘I shan’t take the key back to the landlord till tomorrow, and this would be better for you than the cold streets at any rate.’

‘Do you really mean what you say?’ asked the other eagerly. ‘I should be thankful to lie here; I feel dead beat.’

‘Then stay, Master Graham, and welcome. I’ll fetch a basket of coals I was going to put in the van, and make up a good fire, so that you can warm yourself then I must run round to the other house for a minute or two, but it’s not far, and I’ll be back as soon as ever I can.’

‘Thank you, William; you were always good to me,’ said the young man gratefully. ‘This is delightful,’ and he stretched his numbed hands over the blazing wood, and looked round the room with a satisfied smile.

‘I did not expect to get into such quarters,’ he remarked, as his friend reappeared, carrying a half-bushel basket full of coals, with which he proceeded to make up a roaring fire. ‘I am sure the last thing I could have imagined was meeting with anyone I knew in Vauxhall Walk.’

‘Where were you coming from, Master Graham?’ asked William curiously.

‘From old Melfield’s. I was at his school once, you know, and he has now retired, and is living upon the proceeds of years of robbery in Kennington Oval. I thought, perhaps he would lend me a pound, or offer me a night’s lodging, or even a glass of wine; but, oh dear, no. He took the moral tone, and observed he could have nothing to say to a son who defied his father’s authority.

He gave me plenty of advice, but nothing else, and showed me out into the rain with a bland courtesy, for which I could have struck him.’

William muttered something under his breath which was not a blessing, and added aloud:

‘You are better here, sir, I think, at any rate. I’ll be back in less than half an hour.’

Left to himself, young Coulton took off his coat, and shifting the settle a little, hung it over the end to dry. With his handkerchief he rubbed some of the wet out of his hair; then, perfectly exhausted, he lay down before the fire and, pillowing his head on his arm, fell fast asleep.

He was awakened nearly an hour afterwards by the sound of someone gently stirring the fire and moving quietly about the room. Starting into a sitting posture, he looked around him, bewildered for a moment, and then, recognising his humble friend, said laughingly:

‘I had lost myself; I could not imagine where I was.’

‘I am sorry to see you here, sir,’ was the reply; ‘but still this is better than being out of doors. It has come on a nasty night. I brought a rug round with me that, perhaps, you would wrap yourself in.’

‘I wish, at the same time, you had brought me something to eat,’ said the young man, laughing.

‘Are you hungry, then, sir?’ asked William, in a tone of concern.

‘Yes; I have had nothing to eat since breakfast. The governor and I commenced rowing the minute we sat down to luncheon, and I rose and left the table. But hunger does not signify; I am dry and warm, and can forget the other matter in sleep.’

‘And it’s too late now to buy anything,’ soliloquized the man; ‘the shops are all shut long ago.

Do you think, sir,’ he added, brightening, ‘you could manage some bread and cheese?’

‘Do I think—I should call it a perfect feast,’ answered Graham Coulton. ‘But never mind about food tonight, William; you have had trouble enough, and to spare, already.’

William’s only answer was to dart to the door and run downstairs. Presently he reappeared, carrying in one hand bread and cheese wrapped up in paper, and in the other a pewter measure full of beer.

‘It’s the best I could do, sir,’ he said apologetically. ‘I had to beg this from the landlady.’

‘Here’s to her good health!’ exclaimed the young fellow gaily, taking a long pull at the tankard. ‘That tastes better than champagne in my father’s house.’

‘Won’t he be uneasy about you?’ ventured William, who, having by this time emptied the coals, was now seated on the inverted basket, looking wistfully at the relish with which the son of the former master was eating his bread and cheese.

‘No,’ was the decided answer. ‘When he hears it pouring cats and dogs he will only hope I am out in the deluge, and say a good drenching will cool my pride.’

‘I do not think you are right there,’ remarked the man.

‘But I am sure I am. My father always hated me, as he hated my mother.’

‘Begging your pardon, sir; he was over fond of your mother.’

‘If you had heard what he said about her today, you might find reason to alter your opinion. He told me I resembled her in mind as well as body; that I was a coward, a simpleton, and a hypocrite.’

‘He did not mean it, sir.’

‘He did, every word. He does think I am a coward, because I—I—’ And the young fellow broke into a passion of hysterical tears.

‘I don’t half like leaving you here alone,’ said William, glancing round the room with a quick trouble in his eyes; ‘but I have no place fit to ask you to stop, and I am forced to go myself, because I am night watchman, and must be on at twelve o’clock.’

‘I shall be right enough,’ was the answer. ‘Only I mustn’t talk any more of my father. Tell me about yourself, William. How did you manage to get such a big house, and why are you leaving it?’

‘The landlord put me in charge, sir; and it was my wife’s fancy not to like it.’

‘Why did she not like it?’

‘She felt desolate alone with the children at night,’ answered William, turning away his head; then added, next minute: ‘Now, sir, if you think I can do no more for you, I had best be off.

Time’s getting on. I’ll look round tomorrow morning.’

‘Good night,’ said the young fellow, stretching out his hand, which the other took as freely and frankly as it was offered. ‘What should I have done this evening if I had not chanced to meet you?’

‘I don’t think there is much chance in the world, Master Graham,’ was the quiet answer. ‘I do hope you will rest well, and not be the worse for your wetting.’

‘No fear of that,’ was the rejoinder, and the next minute the young man found himself all alone in the Old House in Vauxhall Walk.

CHAPTER TWO

Lying on the settle, with the fire burnt out, and the room in total darkness, Graham Coulton dreamed a curious dream. He thought he awoke from deep slumber to find a log smouldering away upon the hearth, and the mirror at the end of the apartment reflecting fitful gleams of light.

He could not understand how it came to pass that, far away as he was from the glass, he was able to see everything in it; but he resigned himself to the difficulty without astonishment, as people generally do in dreams.

Neither did he feel surprised when he beheld the outline of a female figure seated beside the fire, engaged in picking something out of her lap and dropping it with a despairing gesture.

He heard the mellow sound of gold, and knew she was lifting and dropping sovereigns, lie turned a little so as to see the person engaged in such a singular and meaningless manner, and found that, where there had been no chair on the previous night, there was a chair now, on which was seated an old, wrinkled hag, her clothes poor and ragged, a mob cap barely covering her scant white hair, her cheeks sunken, her nose hooked, her fingers more like talons than aught else as they dived down into the heap of gold, portions of which they lifted but to scatter mournfully.

‘Oh! my lost life,’ she moaned, in a voice of the bitterest anguish. ‘Oh! my lost life—for one day, for one hour of it again!’

Out of the darkness—out of the corner of the room where the shadows lay deepest—out from the gloom abiding near the door—out from the dreary night, with their sodden feet and wet dripping from their heads, came the old men and the young children, the worn women and the weary hearts, whose misery that gold might have relieved, but whose wretchedness it mocked.

Round that miser, who once sat gloating as she now sat lamenting, they crowded—all those pale, sad shapes—the aged of days, the infant of hours, the sobbing outcast, honest poverty, repentant vice; but one low cry proceeded from those pale lips—a cry for help she might have given, but which she withheld.

They closed about her, all together, as they had done singly in life; they prayed, they sobbed, they entreated; with haggard eyes the figure regarded the poor she had repulsed, the children against whose cry she had closed her ears, the old people she had suffered to starve and die for want of what would have been the merest trifle to her; then, with a terrible scream, she raised her lean arms above her head, and sank down—down—the gold scattering as it fell out of her lap, and rolling along the floor, till its gleam was lost in the outer darkness beyond.

Then Graham Coulton awoke in good earnest, with the perspiration oozing from every pore, with a fear and an agony upon him such as he had never before felt in all his existence, and with the sound of the heart-rending cry—’Oh! my lost life’—still ringing in his ears.

Mingled with all, too, there seemed to have been some lesson for him which he had forgotten, that, try as he would, eluded his memory, and which, in the very act of waking, glided away.

He lay for a little thinking about all this, and then, still heavy with sleep, retraced his way into dreamland once more.

It was natural, perhaps, that, mingling with the strange fantasies which follow in the train of night and darkness, the former vision should recur, and the young man ere long found himself toiling through scene after scene wherein the figure of the woman he had seen seated beside a dying fire held principal place.

He saw her walking slowly across the floor munching a dry crust—she who could have purchased all the luxuries wealth can command; on the hearth, contemplating her, stood a man of commanding presence, dressed in the fashion of long ago. In his eyes there was a dark look of anger, on his lips a curling smile of disgust, and somehow, even in his sleep, the dreamer understood it was the ancestor to the descendant he beheld—that the house put to mean uses in which he lay had never so far descended from its high estate, as the woman possessed of so pitiful a soul, contaminated with the most despicable and insidious vice poor humanity knows, for all other vices seem to have connection with the flesh, but the greed of the miser eats into the very soul.

Filthy of person, repulsive to look at, hard of heart as she was, he yet beheld another phantom, which, coming into the room, met her almost on the threshold, taking her by the hand, and pleading, as it seemed, for assistance. He could not hear all that passed, but a word now and then fell upon his ear. Some talk of former days; some mention of a fair young mother—an appeal, as it seemed, to a time when they were tiny brother and sister, and the accursed greed for gold had not divided them. All in vain; the hag only answered him as she had answered the children, and the young girls, and the old people in his former vision. Her heart was as invulnerable to natural affection as it had proved to human sympathy. He begged, as it appeared, for aid to avert some bitter misfortune or terrible disgrace, and adamant might have been found more yielding to his prayer. Then the figure standing on the hearth changed to an angel, which folded its wings mournfully over its face, and the man, with bowed head, slowly left the room.

Even as he did so the scene changed again; it was night once more, and the miser wended her way upstairs. From below, Graham Coulton fancied he watched her toiling wearily from step to step. She had aged strangely since the previous scenes. She moved with difficulty; it seemed the greatest exertion for her to creep from step to step, her skinny hand traversing the balusters with slow and painful deliberateness. Fascinated, the young man’s eyes followed the progress of that feeble, decrepit woman. She was solitary in a desolate house, with a deeper blackness than the darkness of night waiting to engulf her.

It seemed to Graham Coulton that after that he lay for a time in a still, dreamless sleep, upon awaking from which he found himself entering a chamber as sordid and unclean in its appointments as the woman of his previous vision had been in her person. The poorest labourer’s wife would have gathered more comforts around her than that room contained. A four-poster bedstead without hangings of any kind—a blind drawn up awry—an old carpet covered with dust, and dirt on the floor—a rickety washstand with all the paint worn off it—an ancient mahogany dressing-table, and a cracked glass spotted all over—were all the objects he could at first discern, looking at the room through that dim light which oftentimes obtains in dreams.

By degrees, however, he perceived the outline of someone lying huddled on the bed. Drawing nearer, he found it was that of the person whose dreadful presence seemed to pervade the house.

What a terrible sight she looked, with her thin white locks scattered over the pillow, with what were mere remnants of blankets gathered about her shoulders, with her claw-like fingers clutching the clothes, as though even in sleep she was guarding her gold!

An awful and a repulsive spectacle, but not with half the terror in it of that which followed.

Even as the young man looked he heard stealthy footsteps on the stairs. Then he saw first one man and then his fellow steal cautiously into the room. Another second, and the pair stood beside the bed, murder in their eyes.

Graham Coulton tried to shout—tried to move, but the deterrent power which exists in dreams only tied his tongue and paralysed his limbs. He could but hear and look, and what he heard and saw was this: aroused suddenly from sleep, the woman started, only to receive a blow from one of the ruffians, whose fellow followed his lead by plunging a knife into her breast.

Then, with a gurgling scream, she fell back on the bed, and at the same moment, with a cry, Graham Coulton again awoke, to thank heaven it was but an illusion.

CHAPTER THREE

‘I hope you slept well, sir.’ It was William, who, coming into the hall with the sunlight of a fine bright morning streaming after him, asked this question: ‘Had you a good night’s rest?’

Graham Coulton laughed, and answered:

‘Why, faith, I was somewhat in the case of Paddy, “who could not slape for dhraming”. I slept well enough, I suppose, but whether it was in consequence of the row with my dad, or the hard bed, or the cheese—most likely the bread and cheese so late at night—I dreamt all the night long, the most extraordinary dreams. Some old woman kept cropping up, and I saw her murdered.’

‘You don’t say that, sir?’ said William nervously.

‘I do, indeed,’ was the reply. ‘However, that is all gone and past. I have been down in the kitchen and had a good wash, and I am as fresh as a daisy, and as hungry as a hunter; and, oh, William, can you get me any breakfast?’

‘Certainly, Master Graham. I have brought round a kettle, and I will make the water boil immediately. I suppose, sir’—this tentatively—’you’ll be going home today?’

‘Home!’ repeated the young man. ‘Decidedly not. I’ll never go home again till I return with some medal hung to my coat, or a leg or arm cut off. I’ve thought it all out, William. I’ll go and enlist. There’s a talk of war; and, living or dead, my father shall have reason to retract his opinion about my being a coward.’

‘I am sure the admiral never thought you anything of the sort, sir,’ said William. ‘Why, you have the pluck of ten!’

‘Not before him,’ answered the young fellow sadly.

‘You’ll do nothing rash, Master Graham; you won’t go ‘listing, or aught of that sort, in your anger?’

‘If I do not, what is to become of me?’ asked the other. ‘I cannot dig—to beg I am ashamed. Why, but for you, I should not have had a roof over my head last night.’

‘Not much of a roof, I am afraid, sir.’

‘Not much of a roof!’ repeated the young man. ‘Why, who could desire a better? What a capital room this is,’ he went on, looking around the apartment, where William was now kindling a fire; ‘one might dine twenty people here easily!’

‘If you think so well of the place, Master Graham, you might stay here for a while, till you have made up your mind what you are going to do. The landlord won’t make any objection, I am very sure.’

‘Oh! nonsense; he would want a long rent for a house like this.’

‘I dare say; if he could get it,’ was William’s significant answer.

‘What do you mean? Won’t the place let?’

‘No, sir. I did not tell you last night, but there was a murder done here, and people are shy of the house ever since.’

‘A murder! What sort of a murder? Who was murdered?’

‘A woman, Master Graham—the landlord’s sister; she lived here all alone, and was supposed to have money. Whether she had or hot, she was found dead from a stab in her breast, and if there ever was any money, it must have been taken at the same time, for none ever was found in the house from that day to this.’

‘Was that the reason your wife would not stop here?’ asked the young man, leaning against the mantelshelf, and looking thoughtfully down on William.

‘Yes, sir. She could not stand it any longer; she got that thin and nervous one wouldn’t have believed it possible; she never saw anything, but she said she heard footsteps and voices, and then when she walked through the hall, or up the staircase, someone always seemed to be following her. We put the children to sleep in that big room you had last night, and they declared they often saw an old woman sitting by the hearth. Nothing ever came my way, finished William, with a laugh; ‘I was always ready to go to sleep the minute my head touched the pillow.’

‘Were not the murderers discovered?’ asked Graham Coulton.

‘No, sir; the landlord, Miss Tynan’s brother, had always lain under the suspicion of it—quite wrongfully, I am very sure—but he will never clear himself now. It was known he came and asked her for help a day or two before the murder, and it was also known he was able within a week or two to weather whatever trouble had been harassing him. Then, you see, the money was never found; and, altogether, people scarce knew what to think.’

‘Humph!’ ejaculated Graham Coulton, and he took a few turns up and down the apartment.

‘Could I go and see this landlord?’

‘Surely, sir, if you had a hat,’ answered William, with such a serious decorum that the young man burst out laughing.

‘That is an obstacle, certainly,’ he remarked, ‘and I must make a note do instead. I have a pencil in my pocket, so here goes.’

Within half an hour from the dispatch of that note William was back again with a sovereign; the landlord’s compliments, and he would be much obliged if Mr Coulton could ‘step round’.

‘You’ll do nothing rash, sir,’ entreated William.

‘Why, man,’ answered the young fellow, ‘one may as well be picked off by a ghost as a bullet. What is there to be afraid of?’

William only shook his head. He did not think his young master was made of the stuff likely to remain alone in a haunted house and solve the mystery it assuredly contained by dint of his own unassisted endeavours. And yet when Graham Coulton came out of the landlord’s house he looked more bright and gay than usual, and walked up the Lambeth road to the place where William awaited his return, humming an air as he paced along.

‘We have settled the matter,’ he said. ‘And now if the dad wants his son for Christmas, it will trouble him to find him.’

‘Don’t say that, Master Graham, don’t,’ entreated the man, with a shiver; ‘maybe after all it would have been better if you had never happened to chance upon Vauxhall Walk.’

‘Don’t croak, William,’ answered the young man; ‘if it was not the best day’s work I ever did for myself I’m a Dutchman.’

During the whole of that forenoon and afternoon, Graham Coulton searched diligently for the missing treasure Mr Tynan assured him had never been discovered. Youth is confident and self-opinionated, and this fresh explorer felt satisfied that, though others had failed, he would be successful. On the second floor he found one door locked, but he did not pay much attention to that at the moment, as he believed if there was anything concealed it was more likely to be found in the lower than the upper part of the house. Late into the evening he pursued his researches in the kitchen and cellars and old-fashioned cupboards, of which the basement had an abundance.

It was nearly eleven, when, engaged in poking about amongst the empty bins of a wine cellar as large as a family vault, he suddenly felt a rush of cold air at his back. Moving, his candle was instantly extinguished, and in the very moment of being left in darkness he saw, standing in the doorway, a woman, resembling her who had haunted his dreams overnight.

He rushed with outstretched hands to seize her, but clutched only air. He relit his candle, and closely examined the basement, shutting off communication with the ground floor ere doing so.

All in vain. Not a trace could he find of living creature—not a window was open—not a door unbolted.

‘It is very odd,’ he thought, as, after securely fastening the door at the top of the staircase, he searched the whole upper portion of the house, with the exception of the one room mentioned.

‘I must get the key of that tomorrow,’ he decided, standing gloomily with his back to the fire and his eyes wandering about the drawing-room, where he had once again taken up his abode.

Even as the thought passed through his mind, he saw standing in the open doorway a woman with white dishevelled hair, clad in mean garments, ragged and dirty. She lifted her hand and shook it at him with a menacing gesture, and then, just as he was darting towards her, a wonderful thing occurred.

From behind the great mirror there glided a second female figure, at the sight of which the first turned and fled, littering piercing shrieks as the other followed her from storey to storey.

Sick almost with terror, Graham Coulton watched the dreadful pair as they fled upstairs past the locked room to the top of the house.

It was a few minutes before he recovered his self-possession. When he did so, and searched the upper apartments, he found them totally empty.

That night, ere lying down before the fire, he carefully locked and bolted the drawing-room door; before he did more he drew the heavy settle in front of it, so that if the lock were forced no entrance could be effected without considerable noise.

For some time he lay awake, then dropped into a deep sleep, from which he was awakened suddenly by a noise as if of something scuffling stealthily behind the wainscot. He raised himself on his elbow and listened, and, to his consternation, beheld seated at the opposite side of the hearth the same woman he had seen before in his dreams, lamenting over her gold.

The fire was not quite out, and at that moment shot up a last tongue of flame. By the light, transient as it was, he saw that the figure pressed a ghostly finger to its lips, and by the turn of its head and the attitude of its body seemed to be listening.

He listened also—indeed, he was too much frightened to do aught else; more and more distinct grew the sounds which had aroused him, a stealthy rustling coming nearer and nearer—up and up it seemed, behind the wainscot.

‘It is rats,’ thought the young man, though, indeed, his teeth were almost chattering in his head with fear. But then in a moment he saw what disabused him of that idea—the gleam of a candle or lamp through a crack in the panelling. He tried to rise, he strove to shout—all in vain; and, sinking down, remembered nothing more till he awoke to find the grey light of an early morning stealing through one of the shutters he had left partially unclosed.

For hours after his breakfast, which he scarcely touched, long after William had left him at mid-day, Graham Coulton, having in the morning made a long and close survey of the house, sat thinking before the fire, then, apparently having made up his mind, he put on the hat he had bought, and went out.

When he returned the evening shadows were darkening down, but the pavements were full of people going marketing, for it was Christmas Eve, and all who had money to spend seemed bent on shopping.

It was terribly dreary inside the old house that night. Through the deserted rooms Graham could feel that ghostly semblance was wandering mournfully. When he turned his back he knew she was flitting from the mirror to the fire, from the fire to the mirror; but he was not afraid of her now—he was far more afraid of another matter he had taken in hand that day.

The horror of the silent house grew and grew upon him. He could hear the beating of his own heart in the dead quietude which reigned from garret to cellar.

At last William came; but the young man said nothing to him of what was in his mind. He talked to him cheerfully and hopefully enough—wondered where his father would think he had got to, and hoped Mr Tynan might send him some Christmas pudding. Then the man said it was time for him to go, and, when Mr Coulton went downstairs to the hall-door, remarked the key was not in it.

‘No,’ was the answer, ‘I took it out today, to oil it.’

‘It wanted oiling,’ agreed William, ‘for it worked terribly stiff.’ Having uttered which truism he departed.

Very slowly the young man retraced his way to the drawing-room, where he only paused to lock the door on the outside; then taking off his boots he went up to the top of the house, where, entering the front attic, he waited patiently in darkness and in silence.

It was a long time, or at least it seemed long to him, before he heard the same sound which had aroused him on the previous night—a stealthy rustling—then a rush of cold air—then cautious footsteps—then the quiet opening of a door below.

It did not take as long in action as it has required to tell. In a moment the young man was out on the landing and had closed a portion of the panelling on the wall which stood open; noiselessly he crept back to the attic window, unlatched it, and sprung a rattle, the sound of which echoed far and near through the deserted streets, then rushing down the stairs, he encountered a man who, darting past him, made for the landing above; but perceiving the way of escape closed, fled down again, to find Graham struggling desperately with his fellow.

‘Give him the knife—come along,’ he said savagely; and next instant Graham felt something like a hot iron through his shoulder, and then heard a thud, as one of the men, tripping in his rapid flight, fell from the top of the stairs to the bottom.

At the same moment there came a crash, as if the house was falling, and faint, sick, and bleeding, young Coulton lay insensible on the threshold of the room where Miss Tynan had been murdered.

When he recovered he was in the dining-room, and a doctor was examining his wound.

Near the door a policeman stiffly kept guard. The hall was full of people; all the misery and vagabondism the streets contain at that hour was crowding in to see what had happened.

Through the midst two men were being conveyed to the station-house; one, with his head dreadfully injured, on a stretcher, the other handcuffed, uttering frightful imprecations as he went.

After a time the house was cleared of the rabble, the police took possession of it, and Mr Tynan was sent for.

‘What was that dreadful noise?’ asked Graham feebly, now seated on the floor, with his back resting against the wall.

‘I do not know. Was there a noise?’ said Mr Tynan, humouring his fancy, as he thought.

‘Yes, in the drawing-room, I think; the key is in my pocket.’

Still humouring the wounded lad, Mr Tynan took the key and ran upstairs.

When he unlocked the door, what a sight met his eyes! The mirror had fallen—it was lying all over the floor shivered into a thousand pieces; the console table had been borne down by its weight, and the marble slab was shattered as well. But this was not what chained his attention.

Hundreds, thousands of gold pieces were scattered about, and an aperture behind the glass contained boxes filled with securities amid deeds amid bonds, the possession of which had cost his sister her life.

‘Well, Graham, and what do you want?’ asked Admiral Coulton that evening as his eldest born appeared before him, looking somewhat pale but otherwise unchanged.

‘I want nothing,’ was the answer, ‘but to ask your forgiveness. William has told me all the story I never knew before; and, if you let me, I will try to make it up to you for the trouble you have had. I am provided for,’ went on the young fellow, with a nervous laugh; ‘I have made my fortune since I left you, and another man’s fortune as well.’

‘I think you are out of your senses,’ said the Admiral shortly.

‘No, sir, I have found them,’ was the answer; ‘and I mean to strive and make a better thing of my life than I should ever have done had I not gone to the Old House in Vauxhall Walk.’

‘Vauxhall Walk! What is the lad talking about?’

‘I will tell you, sir, if I may sit down,’ was Graham Coulton’s answer, and then he told his story.

Charlotte Riddell (1832 – 1906)