Part 22 (1/2)

”But I want them for a _month_,” I expostulated.

The landlady was firm; she could not disappoint these people after promising to take them in.

In spite of my disappointment, I admired her so much for this strict sense of honour that I determined to look at the rooms in case of requiring any at a future date.

We went upstairs. The rooms were exactly what I required, and very clean and well furnished, so it ended by my agreeing to take them for a week later, although at a considerable inconvenience.

It was in this casual way that I entered the house about the middle of May 1896. My friend was not able to join me until the morning after my arrival, so I spent the first evening alone, and retired to bed rather early. I slept well enough during the earlier part of the night, but awoke about two A.M., having had a tiresome, worrying dream about the very man I have mentioned, who had certainly not been in my thoughts for many months, or possibly years.

Even when fully awake, his influence was still in the room with me, and falling asleep again, there he was once more in my dream, twitting me with my want of appreciation of him in the past, and suggesting what a much more successful career I might have had through marrying him. This sort of thing went on for the rest of the night. Either I woke up with a disagreeable start, still feeling the man's influence in the room, or sank into a troubled sleep, to be once more at the mercy of his reproaches!

When morning came I was only too thankful to get up, and when my friend arrived on her bicycle about noon, and asked me how I had slept in the strange house, I was forced to confess that my night had been much troubled by dreams about an old friend, of whom she had never heard, by-the-by.

”Oh, well, we all dream about old friends sometimes,” she said, ”but I'm afraid in this case your dreams were not pleasant; you look tired out!

Anyway, it is a mercy that it was not F----'s!”

And so with a joke the matter dropped.

But the following night the trouble was renewed. Even then I did not in any way connect it with the room in which I was sleeping, and I said nothing next day to my friend on the subject.

But the _third_ night matters had gone beyond a joke. The influence was stronger than ever, the gibes and reproaches more accentuated, and, in addition to these, there was on my side the exasperation engendered by three sleepless nights.

Instead of feeling depressed--as on the two previous occasions--the ”worm turned” at last!

I spoke out loud in my vexation, as though the man himself were there listening to me.

”Well,” I said, ”I have no unkindly feeling towards _you_ of any kind.

If you have nothing better to do than to come worrying me and keeping me awake in this way, it just shows how wise I was _not_ to marry you! You have nothing to do with my life now. And YOU CAN GO.”

”Standing up” in this way to the ghost of the living had a most excellent effect, upon my mind at anyrate. I felt intensely relieved, and soon fell into a long and dreamless sleep.

This last experience first suggested the idea that this old friend _must have some special connection with that house_. In the morning I confessed to my friend that my second night had been as disturbed as the first, and the last the worst of all, adding: ”That man is simply haunting the place. I am determined to try and find out if he ever lodged here.”

This was by no means easy, as it turned out. His College career was already buried in the snows of some twenty-five years. Moreover, when I questioned the young daughter of our landlady as to how long her parents had lived in the house, she said at once: ”Just seventeen years, ma'am.

Father and mother came here the year I was born.”

This did not help me much. I asked who had rented the house previously.

Referring this question to her mother, she told me it had been taken from some people who had left Cambridge, and ”_Mother thought they were both dead now_.”

This was a second _cul-de-sac_ for me!

But I was determined to go on with my investigations, simply grounded upon the strong conviction that such repeated experiences _must_ have some foundation in fact.

The girl saw I looked disappointed. ”Did you want to know about anyone who lived here long ago?” she ventured timidly.

”Yes; I wanted to find out whether an old friend of mine ever lodged here; he belonged to Peterhouse,” was my answer.

”Ah, then, I am sure he would not have lodged here,” said the girl confidently. ”None of the Peterhouse gentlemen come here. It is always the Pembroke men who come to this house.”