Part 1, Chapter V.

Part 1, Chapter V.Interesting.Cuthbert Staunton was a man with a history, and rather a sad one. He had been engaged to be married to a girl who had died within a week of the wedding-day. In the first shock of his trouble, he threw up his appointment, a recorder-ship which had been obtained for him by some legal connections, and went off on an aimless wandering, which greatly exhausted his small means, and put him out of the running for the prizes of life. He quieted down in time, however, his trouble receded into the background, and he came back to the family home, settled down, as his sisters said, into a regular old bachelor, with set little tastes and set little ways, a quiet, contented face, and a very kind heart. He had much cultivation and some literary power, and felt himself more fortunate than he could have hoped in being employed by his University as an Extension lecturer on literature and modern history. In this way he obtained interesting occupation, and a sufficient addition to his income for his very moderate wants.Now, at two and thirty, no one would have suspected him of having had a “Wanderjahr” in his life; but perhaps it was from an under-sense of sympathy with a not very lucky person that he had taken to Guy Waynflete; when he had met him first abroad, and then at Oxford, a year or two before the present occasion.For Guy was a person who did not get on well with life, he experienced and caused a great many disappointments. Once or twice at important examinations some sudden illness had come in his way and spoiled his chances. Such, at least, was his own account of his ill success, when he was pressed to give one. With other engagements he was apt, his friends said, to fail to come up to the scratch. If he undertook to play cricket, sometimes he did not turn up, and sometimes he played badly. He was musical enough to be a coveted member of various clubs and societies, but his performances could never be calculated on, and were sometimes brilliant and sometimes disappointing. There were times when his friends could make nothing of him, and no one felt really to know him. Cuthbert Staunton did not know much about him, he suspected him of more uncertain health than he chose to confess, and had discovered that the home life was not smooth for him. But he did not want to bring his own past into the present, or to inquire into Guy’s. He found him congenial, in spite of the eight or nine years between them, and did not think that his various shortcomings were due to any discreditable cause.“You are doing your London?” he said, as they started.“Yes,” said Guy, “I’ve hardly ever been in town. You know we haven’t many friends who can be said to be in London society. Most of the Ingleby neighbours come up for three weeks to a good hotel, and do pictures and theatres, and visit each other a little. I am sent up now to ‘make my way’ with some of our city business connections.”“By the way,” said Staunton, “what Maxwells were those who seem to have been rather unpleasantly connected with your family history? My mother was a Yorkshire Maxwell.”“Was she?” said Guy.He was quite silent for a noticeable moment, then he said, with the little ring in his voice which people called satirical, “This is very interesting. Did your mother come from the Rilston neighbourhood? When we’ve settled the fact, we can consider of our future relations to each other.”The Stauntons were not people of pedigree; but Cuthbert produced facts enough to prove that his mother had really belonged to a family which had originally owned a small estate called Ouseley, not far from Rilston.“That’s the place,” said Guy.“But as for Waynflete,” said Cuthbert, “my forefather must have had to drop it again pretty quickly. I suppose he played cards too often. I never heard of its having been in the family. My grandfather Maxwell was a country doctor, and didn’t think family traditions consistent with hard work. I never thought about the matter, till Miss Vyner was so much excited at discovering your hereditary foe.”“I don’t myself care about traditions,” said Guy, in a slow, soft, argumentative tone that told of his county. “I don’t, you know, unfortunately share my aunt’s profound respect for the house of Waynflete. She is an ancestor worth having, I grant you I think, if she knew, she’d make a Christian effort to receive you kindly; but we won’t tell her. As for me, I object to feuds and obligations—and—ghosts, and heredity’s a hobby that’s overridden nowadays. We won’t part for ever.”He turned his soft eyes round on his friend, with a smile, but Staunton, who had spoken without a serious thought, saw with surprise that he had thought the avowal necessary.“Well, my dear boy,” he said, “I’m glad you don’t say, ‘Here’s Vauxhall Bridge and there’s Vauxhall Bridge Road—take the tram, I take the ’bus. Farewell.’ But we must hurry up; it’s getting late.”When they came into the Abbey, Guy looked all round him in a searching, attentive way. He joined in the singing with a voice full and sweet enough to do justice to his Yorkshire blood, and when it was over, and they parted, said, as if it was a thing to be thankfully noted, “I have very much enjoyed it.”When, on the Tuesday afternoon, the two young men appeared in Mrs Palmer’s handsome drawing-room, it was full of other visitors, and their entertainment fell at first to Florella’s share. Her figure, as she sat a little apart by a table covered with the usual knick-knacks and flowers, had a harmonious and pictorial effect which caught Guy’s fancy and remained in his memory. She was still very like Constancy, but with softened tints; hair and eyes had not the same bright chestnut hue, but were of a dim shady brown; she was paler, and though her young outlines were plump and full, they had an indescribable grace and softness. She had Constancy’s straight brows and square forehead; but the eyes beneath were of another but equally modern type, seeking, longing, as the eyes of Fiametta or of the Blessed Damozel herself, but with this difference: they were happy as if in faith that a good answer waited their questioning. Florella did not talk, or learn, or do, as much as Constancy; but she knew all about learning and doing, and, in a girlish way, lived in the face of the questions of her time. She had one gift, too, which was likely to bring her much joy, and to this, after a few commonplaces, Cuthbert turned the conversation.“And your painting, Miss Vyner? Has it been getting on?”“Yes,” said Florella, “I have been having lessons.”“May we see?”Florella, without any excuses or shyness, took a little portfolio from the table, and showed some sketches of flowers in water-colour. The execution was slight and not perfectly skilful; but each little drawing had a characteristic suggestiveness which freed it entirely from the inexpressible dulness of most fruit and flower pieces.A bunch of growing sweet peas labelled, “A tiptoe for a flight,” had the summer breeze blowing through them; “Pure lilies of eternal peace,” had a certain dreamy, unearthly fairness that suggested “airs of heaven,” and “A bit of green” was a cheerful, struggling plant of flowering musk, in sooty soil, on a smutty window-sill, with a yellow fog behind it.“Why, that’s just how flowers look against smoke,” said Guy. “Theyglarewith brightness.”“Ah, that’s what I meant!” said Florella, pleased. “Do you draw, Mr Waynflete? You are fond of pictures?”“I can’t draw,” said Guy; “but I canwrite downfaces in pen-and-ink outline. I can’t make pictures. I don’t think I enjoy them.”“Waynflete likes music,” said Cuthbert; “that is more in his line.”“Tunes often put drawings into my head,” said Florella, simply. “The time when I began to do flower pictures was at Waynflete,” she added. “Some of the flowers there looked so wonderfully old; and age is a very difficult sentiment to convey in a flower! I never could manage it.”As she spoke, there was a movement among the guests, and Mrs Palmer caught the name.“Ah, Waynflete!” she said. “It was such a delightful old place, and so bracing. I should have liked to stay there very much, but the noises were such a worry. I declare when I sat in that old drawing-room by myself in a summer evening, I used to feel quite creepy. Mr Waynflete, do tell me if any noises have been heard since?”Some of the company pricked up their ears. There are several aspects under which “ghosts” may be viewed, and there is no question that they are both fashionable and interesting. A haunted house and its owner are not often under notice at once.Guy did not speak very quickly, and Constancy struck in.“Aunt Con,” she said, “the situation would be quite spoiled if Mr Waynflete was willing to talk of his own ghost—or his own noises. Of course he will not. It would not be the thing at all.”“It had not struck me that a ghost was interesting,” said Guy, dryly. “As for the noises—”“Oh,” interposed Florella, decidedly; “the noises were all nonsense.”“My dear Flo,” said Mrs Palmer, “they are not pleasant when you can’t explain them. They might be burglars or the servants’ friends, or anything. But it’s a lovely place.”The conversation now developed into ghost-stories, some of a scientific, others of a romantic type. Mr Staunton remarking that cock-crow would be nothing to ghosts nowadays, since they were accustomed to the searching light of science.Guy stood by the mantelpiece, and fingered a Dresden-china figure in a way that gave Mrs Palmer a distinct presentiment of its downfall.He looked up suddenly, “Did it ever occur to you to wonder,” he said, as a lady concluded a rather ghastly story, of a white lady who brushed by people on the staircase, and left a cold chill behind her, “whether contact with us makes the spooks feel hot?”“Ah, Mr Waynflete,” said Mrs Palmer, as there was a general laugh. “You’re very sceptical, I can see. But you’re behind the age.”She was rather glad to shake hands and say good-bye, as she was anxious to see whether he had damaged the Dresden shepherdess. But it was quite safe, even to the fine edges of its gilt roses.“He is a nice-looking fellow, but his fingers should have been rapped when he was little to cure him of fidgeting,” she said, when they were alone. “But I shouldn’t think old Mrs Waynflete knew much about children.”“He didn’t like to discuss his ghost,” said Constancy; “that was why he fidgeted. Family ghosts are personal.”“Cosy,” said Florella, as her aunt left the room, “I can’t bear to think of the tricks we played at Waynflete. We ought to tell. It’s far too serious a thing to give a place the name of being haunted.”“It was a very curious study,” said Cosy; “but, somehow, it did not frighten people nearly as much as we expected. And we did not make nearly all the noises that people fancied they heard.”“We may have set them fancying,” said Florella. “I could have fancied things myself, after you had been whispering and scuttering about those passages. And, remember, I don’t feel bound to keep up the idea.”“It was rather disappointing,” said Cosy, reflectively; “because the boys never took any notice. I don’t believe they heard us, the walls are so thick. But there, Flo,” she added, laughing, “it was just a bit of fun. And there are times when I feel as if Imust—well—kick up a shindy. It’s the shape in which I feel the fires of youth.”“That’s all very well,” said Florella. “You kick up a good many shindies. But I don’t like making fun of what I don’t understand.”“I don’t see all the new pseudo-science,” returned Constancy. “I think it’s all a delusion.”“I wonder if Guy Waynflete thinks so,” said Florella, thoughtfully, as she went to dress.

Cuthbert Staunton was a man with a history, and rather a sad one. He had been engaged to be married to a girl who had died within a week of the wedding-day. In the first shock of his trouble, he threw up his appointment, a recorder-ship which had been obtained for him by some legal connections, and went off on an aimless wandering, which greatly exhausted his small means, and put him out of the running for the prizes of life. He quieted down in time, however, his trouble receded into the background, and he came back to the family home, settled down, as his sisters said, into a regular old bachelor, with set little tastes and set little ways, a quiet, contented face, and a very kind heart. He had much cultivation and some literary power, and felt himself more fortunate than he could have hoped in being employed by his University as an Extension lecturer on literature and modern history. In this way he obtained interesting occupation, and a sufficient addition to his income for his very moderate wants.

Now, at two and thirty, no one would have suspected him of having had a “Wanderjahr” in his life; but perhaps it was from an under-sense of sympathy with a not very lucky person that he had taken to Guy Waynflete; when he had met him first abroad, and then at Oxford, a year or two before the present occasion.

For Guy was a person who did not get on well with life, he experienced and caused a great many disappointments. Once or twice at important examinations some sudden illness had come in his way and spoiled his chances. Such, at least, was his own account of his ill success, when he was pressed to give one. With other engagements he was apt, his friends said, to fail to come up to the scratch. If he undertook to play cricket, sometimes he did not turn up, and sometimes he played badly. He was musical enough to be a coveted member of various clubs and societies, but his performances could never be calculated on, and were sometimes brilliant and sometimes disappointing. There were times when his friends could make nothing of him, and no one felt really to know him. Cuthbert Staunton did not know much about him, he suspected him of more uncertain health than he chose to confess, and had discovered that the home life was not smooth for him. But he did not want to bring his own past into the present, or to inquire into Guy’s. He found him congenial, in spite of the eight or nine years between them, and did not think that his various shortcomings were due to any discreditable cause.

“You are doing your London?” he said, as they started.

“Yes,” said Guy, “I’ve hardly ever been in town. You know we haven’t many friends who can be said to be in London society. Most of the Ingleby neighbours come up for three weeks to a good hotel, and do pictures and theatres, and visit each other a little. I am sent up now to ‘make my way’ with some of our city business connections.”

“By the way,” said Staunton, “what Maxwells were those who seem to have been rather unpleasantly connected with your family history? My mother was a Yorkshire Maxwell.”

“Was she?” said Guy.

He was quite silent for a noticeable moment, then he said, with the little ring in his voice which people called satirical, “This is very interesting. Did your mother come from the Rilston neighbourhood? When we’ve settled the fact, we can consider of our future relations to each other.”

The Stauntons were not people of pedigree; but Cuthbert produced facts enough to prove that his mother had really belonged to a family which had originally owned a small estate called Ouseley, not far from Rilston.

“That’s the place,” said Guy.

“But as for Waynflete,” said Cuthbert, “my forefather must have had to drop it again pretty quickly. I suppose he played cards too often. I never heard of its having been in the family. My grandfather Maxwell was a country doctor, and didn’t think family traditions consistent with hard work. I never thought about the matter, till Miss Vyner was so much excited at discovering your hereditary foe.”

“I don’t myself care about traditions,” said Guy, in a slow, soft, argumentative tone that told of his county. “I don’t, you know, unfortunately share my aunt’s profound respect for the house of Waynflete. She is an ancestor worth having, I grant you I think, if she knew, she’d make a Christian effort to receive you kindly; but we won’t tell her. As for me, I object to feuds and obligations—and—ghosts, and heredity’s a hobby that’s overridden nowadays. We won’t part for ever.”

He turned his soft eyes round on his friend, with a smile, but Staunton, who had spoken without a serious thought, saw with surprise that he had thought the avowal necessary.

“Well, my dear boy,” he said, “I’m glad you don’t say, ‘Here’s Vauxhall Bridge and there’s Vauxhall Bridge Road—take the tram, I take the ’bus. Farewell.’ But we must hurry up; it’s getting late.”

When they came into the Abbey, Guy looked all round him in a searching, attentive way. He joined in the singing with a voice full and sweet enough to do justice to his Yorkshire blood, and when it was over, and they parted, said, as if it was a thing to be thankfully noted, “I have very much enjoyed it.”

When, on the Tuesday afternoon, the two young men appeared in Mrs Palmer’s handsome drawing-room, it was full of other visitors, and their entertainment fell at first to Florella’s share. Her figure, as she sat a little apart by a table covered with the usual knick-knacks and flowers, had a harmonious and pictorial effect which caught Guy’s fancy and remained in his memory. She was still very like Constancy, but with softened tints; hair and eyes had not the same bright chestnut hue, but were of a dim shady brown; she was paler, and though her young outlines were plump and full, they had an indescribable grace and softness. She had Constancy’s straight brows and square forehead; but the eyes beneath were of another but equally modern type, seeking, longing, as the eyes of Fiametta or of the Blessed Damozel herself, but with this difference: they were happy as if in faith that a good answer waited their questioning. Florella did not talk, or learn, or do, as much as Constancy; but she knew all about learning and doing, and, in a girlish way, lived in the face of the questions of her time. She had one gift, too, which was likely to bring her much joy, and to this, after a few commonplaces, Cuthbert turned the conversation.

“And your painting, Miss Vyner? Has it been getting on?”

“Yes,” said Florella, “I have been having lessons.”

“May we see?”

Florella, without any excuses or shyness, took a little portfolio from the table, and showed some sketches of flowers in water-colour. The execution was slight and not perfectly skilful; but each little drawing had a characteristic suggestiveness which freed it entirely from the inexpressible dulness of most fruit and flower pieces.

A bunch of growing sweet peas labelled, “A tiptoe for a flight,” had the summer breeze blowing through them; “Pure lilies of eternal peace,” had a certain dreamy, unearthly fairness that suggested “airs of heaven,” and “A bit of green” was a cheerful, struggling plant of flowering musk, in sooty soil, on a smutty window-sill, with a yellow fog behind it.

“Why, that’s just how flowers look against smoke,” said Guy. “Theyglarewith brightness.”

“Ah, that’s what I meant!” said Florella, pleased. “Do you draw, Mr Waynflete? You are fond of pictures?”

“I can’t draw,” said Guy; “but I canwrite downfaces in pen-and-ink outline. I can’t make pictures. I don’t think I enjoy them.”

“Waynflete likes music,” said Cuthbert; “that is more in his line.”

“Tunes often put drawings into my head,” said Florella, simply. “The time when I began to do flower pictures was at Waynflete,” she added. “Some of the flowers there looked so wonderfully old; and age is a very difficult sentiment to convey in a flower! I never could manage it.”

As she spoke, there was a movement among the guests, and Mrs Palmer caught the name.

“Ah, Waynflete!” she said. “It was such a delightful old place, and so bracing. I should have liked to stay there very much, but the noises were such a worry. I declare when I sat in that old drawing-room by myself in a summer evening, I used to feel quite creepy. Mr Waynflete, do tell me if any noises have been heard since?”

Some of the company pricked up their ears. There are several aspects under which “ghosts” may be viewed, and there is no question that they are both fashionable and interesting. A haunted house and its owner are not often under notice at once.

Guy did not speak very quickly, and Constancy struck in.

“Aunt Con,” she said, “the situation would be quite spoiled if Mr Waynflete was willing to talk of his own ghost—or his own noises. Of course he will not. It would not be the thing at all.”

“It had not struck me that a ghost was interesting,” said Guy, dryly. “As for the noises—”

“Oh,” interposed Florella, decidedly; “the noises were all nonsense.”

“My dear Flo,” said Mrs Palmer, “they are not pleasant when you can’t explain them. They might be burglars or the servants’ friends, or anything. But it’s a lovely place.”

The conversation now developed into ghost-stories, some of a scientific, others of a romantic type. Mr Staunton remarking that cock-crow would be nothing to ghosts nowadays, since they were accustomed to the searching light of science.

Guy stood by the mantelpiece, and fingered a Dresden-china figure in a way that gave Mrs Palmer a distinct presentiment of its downfall.

He looked up suddenly, “Did it ever occur to you to wonder,” he said, as a lady concluded a rather ghastly story, of a white lady who brushed by people on the staircase, and left a cold chill behind her, “whether contact with us makes the spooks feel hot?”

“Ah, Mr Waynflete,” said Mrs Palmer, as there was a general laugh. “You’re very sceptical, I can see. But you’re behind the age.”

She was rather glad to shake hands and say good-bye, as she was anxious to see whether he had damaged the Dresden shepherdess. But it was quite safe, even to the fine edges of its gilt roses.

“He is a nice-looking fellow, but his fingers should have been rapped when he was little to cure him of fidgeting,” she said, when they were alone. “But I shouldn’t think old Mrs Waynflete knew much about children.”

“He didn’t like to discuss his ghost,” said Constancy; “that was why he fidgeted. Family ghosts are personal.”

“Cosy,” said Florella, as her aunt left the room, “I can’t bear to think of the tricks we played at Waynflete. We ought to tell. It’s far too serious a thing to give a place the name of being haunted.”

“It was a very curious study,” said Cosy; “but, somehow, it did not frighten people nearly as much as we expected. And we did not make nearly all the noises that people fancied they heard.”

“We may have set them fancying,” said Florella. “I could have fancied things myself, after you had been whispering and scuttering about those passages. And, remember, I don’t feel bound to keep up the idea.”

“It was rather disappointing,” said Cosy, reflectively; “because the boys never took any notice. I don’t believe they heard us, the walls are so thick. But there, Flo,” she added, laughing, “it was just a bit of fun. And there are times when I feel as if Imust—well—kick up a shindy. It’s the shape in which I feel the fires of youth.”

“That’s all very well,” said Florella. “You kick up a good many shindies. But I don’t like making fun of what I don’t understand.”

“I don’t see all the new pseudo-science,” returned Constancy. “I think it’s all a delusion.”

“I wonder if Guy Waynflete thinks so,” said Florella, thoughtfully, as she went to dress.

Part 1, Chapter VI.Good Comrades.Under a great copper-beech on the lawn at Ingleby one hot afternoon, Godfrey Waynflete was enjoying the “summer feeling” on which Constancy Vyner had expatiated in London, and was spending an idle hour in teaching his young Skye terrier to jump over a stick. Rawdon Crawley, a name appropriate to the creature’s hairy simplicity, was a long grey object, like a caterpillar, with huge pricked black ears, and an expression which combined guileless innocence and philosophic power. Nevertheless, when he was coaxed, he ran under the stick, and when he was threatened, he sat still and sulked, for the perverseness of his race is fathomless.“You confounded little obstinate beggar,” cried Godfrey, shaking the stick at him; “you’ll have to learn who’s master.”Rawdon Crawley wriggled away to some distance, like a snake, then lay with his face on his paws, looking at his owner.“Eh, Godfrey, ye’re letting that pup get the better of ye!”“He’d die rather than give in,” said Godfrey, as his old aunt came across the lawn towards him.The last five years had increased Mrs Waynflete’s wrinkles, but she was still upright, slim, and vigorous, enjoying the presence of her younger nephew, and, possibly also, the elder one’s absence. The expression is rather strong; but Guy was so uncongenial to her that his presence could not be said to add to her happiness.“Eh, well,” she said; “I like a man that can speak up to you, and has got some grit. I’ve no opinion of limp characters.”“Things generally settle themselves if a fellow looks them in the face,” said Godfrey, cheerfully.“Ay, but they don’t always settle themselves to our liking. I’d like, maybe, to look myself back into a young woman; but I’m in my eighty-two, and there’s no help for it.”“Eh, what, auntie? You’re as young as the best of us,” said Godfrey, warmly.“Why, I’ve no cause of complaint. The Lord’s given me a long life, and I’ve kept my health and my faculties through it all. But, all the same, I’m an aged woman, and I might be struck down any day. So I’ve asked Susan Joshua, my cousin Joshua Palmer’s widow, to come here and make her home for a time, and bring Sarah Jane with her. She was poorly left, poor thing; and then, if I should have a stroke, there’ll be some one to look after the maids, and make you lads comfortable.”Godfrey was much taken aback, but before he could interpose, she went on—“And I’ve another reason for sending for her, Godfrey. I’ve made up my mind to spend some time at Waynflete before I die. So she can attend to the house here while I’m absent.”“At Waynflete, auntie? But it’s not in any sort of order. Have you ever seen it?”“Once, my lad, once,” said the old lady, face and voice softening. “I made your good uncle take me there for a honeymoon trip, and I said to him, as we stood on the bridge, and looked up and down the bonnie valley, ‘Eh, Mr Thomas, ye’ll be wanting a bit of land, as the money comes in to ye. Ye wedded me with my shawl over my head, but ye might be Waynflete of Waynflete yet, if ye liked to try.’ And he said, ‘Margaret, if I can give ye your will, my lass, ye shall have it.’ So I educated myself for this, and I kept his house well, and was as saving as was fitting for him and me. But there, Mr Thomas never owned but Upper Flete Farm before the Lord took him, and it was a lonesome thing for an old woman like me to set up in a fine house alone; besides that, I had the mill to attend to. But now, it’s time I took my place before I die. Guy can go and see what’s wanting.”“Let me go, auntie. Guy does not care about Waynflete,” said Godfrey, thoughtlessly.“Eh?” said his aunt. But here a rapturous bark from Rawdon Crawley, who had been penitently licking the blacking off his master’s boots, directed attention to Guy’s figure at the house door.He had had a long, hot journey from London, and now threw himself into a garden-chair, exclaiming with delight at the coolness and shade.“So you’ve seen the Miss Vyners again?” said Godfrey, referring to a note previously received from his brother.“Yes; they and two of Staunton’s sisters are coming down to Moorhead for a reading party in their vacation.”“A reading party,” said Mrs Waynflete. “Young ladies?”“That’s all quite correct, auntie,” said Godfrey. “Girls go to college nowadays, and of course they must read for their exams. Theydo, generally.”“Eh, well,” said the old lady. “I see no reason against it. I never doubted that a woman’s brains were as good as a man’s. I could have taken a degree myself. I’ll ask Constance Palmer to bring them here before we go to Waynflete. They can pursue their studies afterwards.”“Waynflete?” said Guy, with a start.“Yes. I’ve been telling your brother,”—here she recapitulated her two proposals. “I’ll get you to go over, and see if the place is in order.”“Oh yes, Aunt Margaret, if you wish; but I’ve been some time away from the mill, and there are one or two matters—”“I hope you’ve brought back no new-fangled notions from town,” interrupted the old lady, sharply.“Well, I’ve acquired a few ideas in conversation,” said Guy, slowly. “John Cooper, no doubt, will show me the fallacy of them.”“You’ll have to live a long time before you’re wiser than John Cooper. Tea?” as the servant appeared with some for which Guy had asked as he came through the house. “I never take tea between meals myself.”“It’s new-fangled,” said Guy, meekly, “orwasonce.”“Eh, Godfrey,” said Mrs Waynflete, “there’s a plant broken in the ribbon border. That’s Crawley, I’ll be bound. He needs a whipping.” But her tone, as she walked over to the border, had lost all its asperity. Godfrey and his dog were privileged offenders.“Going to Waynflete is a jolly idea,” said Godfrey; “but Cousin Susan and Sarah Jane will be confounded bores, if they’re to stay here for good.”“They will so,” said Guy. “As for Waynflete, it’s a great move for my aunt at her age.”“Oh, she’s up to anything. I say, do you remember waking me up because you had the nightmare. You ate too many raspberries with those jolly girls in the old fruit-garden. That story would be a fortune to the fellows whogoin for spooks. Do you ever see ghosts now?”“If I do, I shall not come to you for protection. You threw too much cold water on that early effort of my subliminal self to rise into consciousness.”“I say, I don’t go in for that jargon. Give me a good square ghost with a sheet and a turnip, not all that psychical rot.”“If ever you do see a ghost, my boy, it will certainly be a sheet and a turnip, and by George, how it’ll frighten you!”Godfrey was boy enough to rise to this bait; though he did not like his brother very much nor get on very smoothly with him, his growls were not much more serious than those of Rawdie at the end of a stick. He was too prosperous to be discontented with his surroundings.When Constancy came down with her aunt to the Mill House—Florella had a previous engagement, and did not accept the invitation—she found plenty of contrasts to study, and she studied each with equal zest.She was never tired and never bored, she was ready to play tennis from four till eight, and then, after supper, as was customary at Ingleby parties, to dance from nine to twelve. She waltzed with Godfrey as untiringly as if all her brains were in her feet. She made him coach her up in all the ways of grouse shooting, and then she roused him to fury, by wondering how long the barbaric desire to kill something would survive in the English gentleman. She made much of Rawdie, till a certain proverb occurred frequently to the mind of his master. But she also went over the mills with Guy, and learned how to tell good wool from bad, and what were the processes of conversion into broadcloth and tweed. She picked his brains about her own special subjects, or his. She had been writing an article on English musical instruments, she had worked it all up from books, but there was a bit about music itself.“What it does for humanity,” she said; “as it does nothing for me, I have to guess it all. You are musical, have I got it right? I don’t have these experiences, you know. There are such a splendid lot of things to do and to think of, I can’t tell how people have time for feelings.”Guy was apparently as willing to discuss music as Godfrey to defend the game laws, and it was impossible to say whether Constancy preferred his languid, satirical courtesy and soft, preoccupied eyes, or Godfrey’s overflowing vitality, and look as of a vigorous young Viking, with his exaggeration of the high, marked family features, and of the family fairness, so that his old school nickname of “Towhead” was still extremely appropriate. The rosy, round-faced Sarah Jane, who desired to be called Jeanie, and blushed whenever Guy or Godfrey spoke to her, and was always wondering how familiar she ought to be with so-called cousins, looked on in amaze. When Constancy called Godfrey a Philistine, Jeanie thought that a flippant allusion was being made to Scripture characters, and when she talked of writing an article, as simply as of making a pincushion, the allusion appeared as a socialfaux pasto Jeanie’s idea of propriety. If Constancy was so unlucky as to possess an unpopular taste, she had better have said nothing about it. But the young men did not appear to be repelled, and were both of them on most friendly terms with the visitor, while they regulated their conduct to Jeanie with a propriety and skill which any chaperon might have envied. They were aware of a crowded background of Palmer aunts and cousins, and, though they did not think it becoming to make objections to her introduction to the family, they were agreed on the point of their relations towards her. Jeanie was a good little girl; but she knew quite well which “cousin’s” attention to Constancy meant as she called it, “something particular;” she knew quite well which of the two was the most interesting to herself.But Constancy took the young men much for granted. She was more struck with Mrs Waynflete than with either of them.Cousin Susan Joshua—it was the custom in the Palmer family to call the wives by their Christian names attached to those of their husbands—limited her intercourse with “Aunt Waynflete,” to receiving her commands; “Constance John,” as she submitted to be called with a shrug, to sympathetic and polite commonplaces, Jeanie was far too much afraid of her hostess to say anything but, “Yes, aunt,” and “Very well, aunt;” but Constancy talked and listened by the hour together. Her imagination was caught by the stately, flaxen-haired old woman whose strong personality was impressed on every detail of the life around her, whose household must breakfast at eight, and go to bed at ten, go to church on Sunday afternoon, and stay at home on Sunday evening, as by the law of the Medes and Persians. She heard, more than any one else had ever done, of old Margaret’s early struggles, of her strong purpose, and of how the only birthright of which she had been actively conscious had been won at last, since of that she was more than worthy. Constancy noted keenly how impatient she was of any change in the methods of her prime; she saw plainly how Guy’s indifferent manner irritated her, and how Godfrey was the kind of youth that pleased her. It was to Constancy’s credit that she could bridge over sixty years, and see a point of view so alien to her young modern spirit; and Mrs Waynflete was flattered by her preference as age must be by the admiration of brilliant youth.Godfrey looked on delighted, and drew quite false conclusions; for, if Constancy loved Rawdie, and admired Mrs Waynflete, it was for their own sakes and not for his.The hour and the maiden had come for the happy, prosperous youth. The vigorous inspiring companionship filled him with delight, the roses of that summer were redder and its sun warmer than he had ever known. Love came upon him with a rush of joyful hope, and, as was natural to him, his passion became a purpose, which he expected to fulfil. He would work hard for a degree, for she would scout a failure. He must win her; but Guy— He was furiously jealous when Guy obtained a monograph on the “Music of the Greeks,” and presented it to Miss Vyner, though it was given openly in the family circle. Godfrey could not dare to give her a bunch of the dark red dog roses of the north country, which he had heard her admire.He was “over head and ears in love,”—no other expression could express his condition—and when she went to join her friends at Moorhead, and her aunt tired, as she said in private, of making talk for Mrs Joshua, betook herself to Harrogate, only hopes of speedy meetings modified his despair.The girls’ reading party must come over both to Ingleby and to Waynflete, and Cousin Susan and Jeanie would both want to see the spinster housekeeping at Moorhead.But before these visits took place, the situation, already strained, between Guy and his aunt was intensified in an unexpected manner.

Under a great copper-beech on the lawn at Ingleby one hot afternoon, Godfrey Waynflete was enjoying the “summer feeling” on which Constancy Vyner had expatiated in London, and was spending an idle hour in teaching his young Skye terrier to jump over a stick. Rawdon Crawley, a name appropriate to the creature’s hairy simplicity, was a long grey object, like a caterpillar, with huge pricked black ears, and an expression which combined guileless innocence and philosophic power. Nevertheless, when he was coaxed, he ran under the stick, and when he was threatened, he sat still and sulked, for the perverseness of his race is fathomless.

“You confounded little obstinate beggar,” cried Godfrey, shaking the stick at him; “you’ll have to learn who’s master.”

Rawdon Crawley wriggled away to some distance, like a snake, then lay with his face on his paws, looking at his owner.

“Eh, Godfrey, ye’re letting that pup get the better of ye!”

“He’d die rather than give in,” said Godfrey, as his old aunt came across the lawn towards him.

The last five years had increased Mrs Waynflete’s wrinkles, but she was still upright, slim, and vigorous, enjoying the presence of her younger nephew, and, possibly also, the elder one’s absence. The expression is rather strong; but Guy was so uncongenial to her that his presence could not be said to add to her happiness.

“Eh, well,” she said; “I like a man that can speak up to you, and has got some grit. I’ve no opinion of limp characters.”

“Things generally settle themselves if a fellow looks them in the face,” said Godfrey, cheerfully.

“Ay, but they don’t always settle themselves to our liking. I’d like, maybe, to look myself back into a young woman; but I’m in my eighty-two, and there’s no help for it.”

“Eh, what, auntie? You’re as young as the best of us,” said Godfrey, warmly.

“Why, I’ve no cause of complaint. The Lord’s given me a long life, and I’ve kept my health and my faculties through it all. But, all the same, I’m an aged woman, and I might be struck down any day. So I’ve asked Susan Joshua, my cousin Joshua Palmer’s widow, to come here and make her home for a time, and bring Sarah Jane with her. She was poorly left, poor thing; and then, if I should have a stroke, there’ll be some one to look after the maids, and make you lads comfortable.”

Godfrey was much taken aback, but before he could interpose, she went on—

“And I’ve another reason for sending for her, Godfrey. I’ve made up my mind to spend some time at Waynflete before I die. So she can attend to the house here while I’m absent.”

“At Waynflete, auntie? But it’s not in any sort of order. Have you ever seen it?”

“Once, my lad, once,” said the old lady, face and voice softening. “I made your good uncle take me there for a honeymoon trip, and I said to him, as we stood on the bridge, and looked up and down the bonnie valley, ‘Eh, Mr Thomas, ye’ll be wanting a bit of land, as the money comes in to ye. Ye wedded me with my shawl over my head, but ye might be Waynflete of Waynflete yet, if ye liked to try.’ And he said, ‘Margaret, if I can give ye your will, my lass, ye shall have it.’ So I educated myself for this, and I kept his house well, and was as saving as was fitting for him and me. But there, Mr Thomas never owned but Upper Flete Farm before the Lord took him, and it was a lonesome thing for an old woman like me to set up in a fine house alone; besides that, I had the mill to attend to. But now, it’s time I took my place before I die. Guy can go and see what’s wanting.”

“Let me go, auntie. Guy does not care about Waynflete,” said Godfrey, thoughtlessly.

“Eh?” said his aunt. But here a rapturous bark from Rawdon Crawley, who had been penitently licking the blacking off his master’s boots, directed attention to Guy’s figure at the house door.

He had had a long, hot journey from London, and now threw himself into a garden-chair, exclaiming with delight at the coolness and shade.

“So you’ve seen the Miss Vyners again?” said Godfrey, referring to a note previously received from his brother.

“Yes; they and two of Staunton’s sisters are coming down to Moorhead for a reading party in their vacation.”

“A reading party,” said Mrs Waynflete. “Young ladies?”

“That’s all quite correct, auntie,” said Godfrey. “Girls go to college nowadays, and of course they must read for their exams. Theydo, generally.”

“Eh, well,” said the old lady. “I see no reason against it. I never doubted that a woman’s brains were as good as a man’s. I could have taken a degree myself. I’ll ask Constance Palmer to bring them here before we go to Waynflete. They can pursue their studies afterwards.”

“Waynflete?” said Guy, with a start.

“Yes. I’ve been telling your brother,”—here she recapitulated her two proposals. “I’ll get you to go over, and see if the place is in order.”

“Oh yes, Aunt Margaret, if you wish; but I’ve been some time away from the mill, and there are one or two matters—”

“I hope you’ve brought back no new-fangled notions from town,” interrupted the old lady, sharply.

“Well, I’ve acquired a few ideas in conversation,” said Guy, slowly. “John Cooper, no doubt, will show me the fallacy of them.”

“You’ll have to live a long time before you’re wiser than John Cooper. Tea?” as the servant appeared with some for which Guy had asked as he came through the house. “I never take tea between meals myself.”

“It’s new-fangled,” said Guy, meekly, “orwasonce.”

“Eh, Godfrey,” said Mrs Waynflete, “there’s a plant broken in the ribbon border. That’s Crawley, I’ll be bound. He needs a whipping.” But her tone, as she walked over to the border, had lost all its asperity. Godfrey and his dog were privileged offenders.

“Going to Waynflete is a jolly idea,” said Godfrey; “but Cousin Susan and Sarah Jane will be confounded bores, if they’re to stay here for good.”

“They will so,” said Guy. “As for Waynflete, it’s a great move for my aunt at her age.”

“Oh, she’s up to anything. I say, do you remember waking me up because you had the nightmare. You ate too many raspberries with those jolly girls in the old fruit-garden. That story would be a fortune to the fellows whogoin for spooks. Do you ever see ghosts now?”

“If I do, I shall not come to you for protection. You threw too much cold water on that early effort of my subliminal self to rise into consciousness.”

“I say, I don’t go in for that jargon. Give me a good square ghost with a sheet and a turnip, not all that psychical rot.”

“If ever you do see a ghost, my boy, it will certainly be a sheet and a turnip, and by George, how it’ll frighten you!”

Godfrey was boy enough to rise to this bait; though he did not like his brother very much nor get on very smoothly with him, his growls were not much more serious than those of Rawdie at the end of a stick. He was too prosperous to be discontented with his surroundings.

When Constancy came down with her aunt to the Mill House—Florella had a previous engagement, and did not accept the invitation—she found plenty of contrasts to study, and she studied each with equal zest.

She was never tired and never bored, she was ready to play tennis from four till eight, and then, after supper, as was customary at Ingleby parties, to dance from nine to twelve. She waltzed with Godfrey as untiringly as if all her brains were in her feet. She made him coach her up in all the ways of grouse shooting, and then she roused him to fury, by wondering how long the barbaric desire to kill something would survive in the English gentleman. She made much of Rawdie, till a certain proverb occurred frequently to the mind of his master. But she also went over the mills with Guy, and learned how to tell good wool from bad, and what were the processes of conversion into broadcloth and tweed. She picked his brains about her own special subjects, or his. She had been writing an article on English musical instruments, she had worked it all up from books, but there was a bit about music itself.

“What it does for humanity,” she said; “as it does nothing for me, I have to guess it all. You are musical, have I got it right? I don’t have these experiences, you know. There are such a splendid lot of things to do and to think of, I can’t tell how people have time for feelings.”

Guy was apparently as willing to discuss music as Godfrey to defend the game laws, and it was impossible to say whether Constancy preferred his languid, satirical courtesy and soft, preoccupied eyes, or Godfrey’s overflowing vitality, and look as of a vigorous young Viking, with his exaggeration of the high, marked family features, and of the family fairness, so that his old school nickname of “Towhead” was still extremely appropriate. The rosy, round-faced Sarah Jane, who desired to be called Jeanie, and blushed whenever Guy or Godfrey spoke to her, and was always wondering how familiar she ought to be with so-called cousins, looked on in amaze. When Constancy called Godfrey a Philistine, Jeanie thought that a flippant allusion was being made to Scripture characters, and when she talked of writing an article, as simply as of making a pincushion, the allusion appeared as a socialfaux pasto Jeanie’s idea of propriety. If Constancy was so unlucky as to possess an unpopular taste, she had better have said nothing about it. But the young men did not appear to be repelled, and were both of them on most friendly terms with the visitor, while they regulated their conduct to Jeanie with a propriety and skill which any chaperon might have envied. They were aware of a crowded background of Palmer aunts and cousins, and, though they did not think it becoming to make objections to her introduction to the family, they were agreed on the point of their relations towards her. Jeanie was a good little girl; but she knew quite well which “cousin’s” attention to Constancy meant as she called it, “something particular;” she knew quite well which of the two was the most interesting to herself.

But Constancy took the young men much for granted. She was more struck with Mrs Waynflete than with either of them.

Cousin Susan Joshua—it was the custom in the Palmer family to call the wives by their Christian names attached to those of their husbands—limited her intercourse with “Aunt Waynflete,” to receiving her commands; “Constance John,” as she submitted to be called with a shrug, to sympathetic and polite commonplaces, Jeanie was far too much afraid of her hostess to say anything but, “Yes, aunt,” and “Very well, aunt;” but Constancy talked and listened by the hour together. Her imagination was caught by the stately, flaxen-haired old woman whose strong personality was impressed on every detail of the life around her, whose household must breakfast at eight, and go to bed at ten, go to church on Sunday afternoon, and stay at home on Sunday evening, as by the law of the Medes and Persians. She heard, more than any one else had ever done, of old Margaret’s early struggles, of her strong purpose, and of how the only birthright of which she had been actively conscious had been won at last, since of that she was more than worthy. Constancy noted keenly how impatient she was of any change in the methods of her prime; she saw plainly how Guy’s indifferent manner irritated her, and how Godfrey was the kind of youth that pleased her. It was to Constancy’s credit that she could bridge over sixty years, and see a point of view so alien to her young modern spirit; and Mrs Waynflete was flattered by her preference as age must be by the admiration of brilliant youth.

Godfrey looked on delighted, and drew quite false conclusions; for, if Constancy loved Rawdie, and admired Mrs Waynflete, it was for their own sakes and not for his.

The hour and the maiden had come for the happy, prosperous youth. The vigorous inspiring companionship filled him with delight, the roses of that summer were redder and its sun warmer than he had ever known. Love came upon him with a rush of joyful hope, and, as was natural to him, his passion became a purpose, which he expected to fulfil. He would work hard for a degree, for she would scout a failure. He must win her; but Guy— He was furiously jealous when Guy obtained a monograph on the “Music of the Greeks,” and presented it to Miss Vyner, though it was given openly in the family circle. Godfrey could not dare to give her a bunch of the dark red dog roses of the north country, which he had heard her admire.

He was “over head and ears in love,”—no other expression could express his condition—and when she went to join her friends at Moorhead, and her aunt tired, as she said in private, of making talk for Mrs Joshua, betook herself to Harrogate, only hopes of speedy meetings modified his despair.

The girls’ reading party must come over both to Ingleby and to Waynflete, and Cousin Susan and Jeanie would both want to see the spinster housekeeping at Moorhead.

But before these visits took place, the situation, already strained, between Guy and his aunt was intensified in an unexpected manner.

Part 1, Chapter VII.The Cupboard in the Wall.Guy had really returned from London with a “new-fangled idea,” or, rather, with plans for carrying out one long entertained, and with more courage than usual for putting it forward. He liked the business, and had no lack of ideas concerning it; but during the two years that he had been at work in the mill his position there had become more and more difficult. He could not feel himself a nobody, and he knew what ought to be done; but his aunt had given him no place and no authority; to use the idiom of his county, “he had no say in the work,” and Mrs Waynflete thought so little of his powers or of his character that she never received his suggestions with favour. She distrusted him, and he knew it, and to a certain extent he knew why. But he was quite sure of his ground now, and as soon as the visitors had departed, he proceeded to unfold his mind.He told her, with as much delicacy as he could, but with something of her own tenacity, that in his opinion the two faithful old managers were hardly up to the requirements of the day. He thought that more pains should be taken to follow the changes of fashion, and that besides producing broadcloth and plain tweed, certain classes of fancy goods should be undertaken. This would involve an outlay for machinery suited for weaving patterns, and it might also be necessary to engage an overseer who could superintend the production of this class of goods; some extension of the premises might also be required. If his aunt disliked the notion of alterations in the old mills, there was a little mill near which had been worked in a small and unsuccessful way by a man without sufficient capital to carry it on, who would gladly let it to “Palmer Brothers,” as the Ingleby firm was still called, from Mr Thomas’s father and uncle. Guy adduced facts and figures, and made it plain that he knew what he was talking about; and, in short, showed more of the old lady’s own faculty for business than she had ever given him credit for.But one of the principles of Palmer Brothers had always been that it was a risky and unsound way of doing business to follow the changes and chances of fashion. People would always want broadcloth and tweed, but fancy goods might lie on hand, and fail to find a market; and, in short, did not suit with Palmer’s way of doing business.Old Mrs Waynflete sat in her chair in what was called the library at the Mill House, though it contained very few books. She watched the pale, slight youth before her with the most absolute want of respect for his personality, with an innate distrust for his facts and figures, and yet feeling with the first painful pangs of old age that she could not entirely grasp the argument. Guy was talking of conditions unknown to her. Surely the day had not come when she and her good old servants were unable to judge what was the best for the business. Surely this lad could not have pointed out to her what she had failed to see for herself. Surely he could not be in the right.“Is there any other matter you want to find fault with?” she said. “I’d like to hear your true opinion.”Guy hesitated a little; but, quiet as he looked, he had the obstinacy of his race, and he could not resist giving his true opinion.“Well,” he said, “I don’t think the mills are as popular with the work-people as they were once. There are modern ways of attending to their health and their comfort, in which we’re deficient. Ventilation, and so on. But a small outlay would set all that to rights. One must move with the times.”“So you think John Cooper and Jos Howarth are past their work?”“Not exactly. I think Cooper’s a good old fellow. Howarth I’m not so sure of.”“You seem very sure of yourself, Guy. Late hours and days away from business were not the way to make a fortune in my time.”Guy flushed up.“I should do my best,” he said; “and I believe—I am sure—that I am not incapable of carrying out these plans. And one thing more I wish to say, Aunt Waynflete. After Christmas, Godfrey will be coming in to the business. As things are now, there is no scope for both of us. With the scheme I propose, there would be plenty to do—if you allow us to do it.”“You need not to think that all the ideas come first into your head, my lad. I have thought of that. There’ll be an agent wanted for Waynflete.”Now, this was a remark which it was nearly impossible for Guy to answer. He was the natural heir of Waynflete, but Waynflete was in the old lady’s own power, and she had never dropped a word as to her intentions regarding it. He could not assume that Waynflete concerned him rather than Godfrey; and yet, if it did not, the whole principle of his aunt’s life would be falsified. Besides, the idea was most distasteful to him. He said hurriedly and unwisely—“Waynflete is hardly enough of a place to occupy a man’s whole time, in any case.”“Well,” said Mrs Waynflete, “you have said your say, and I’ll consider my answer. But I’ve known the business forty years before you were born, my lad, after all.”It was the way of the Waynfletes to hide their real selves from each other as carefully as if each one had been plotting treason. They erected quickset hedges round their hearts and souls, as if to be misunderstood was needful to their self-respect. Guy said no more, and withdrew, and he never spoke a word to Godfrey of what had passed between his aunt and himself.The next day, just before luncheon, Jeanie was gathering flowers on the lawn, when a door in the wall that led to the mills opened, and Guy dashed in, with so white and wild a look, and a step at once so hurried and so faltering, that she ran up to him, exclaiming—“Guy! Are you ill? What is the matter?” Guy looked at her, as she said afterwards, as if he did not see her, and hurried in and upstairs without a word, and as she followed, scared and puzzled, she heard him shut and lock his bedroom door behind him. Turning away in distress and alarm, she met Godfrey strolling along in the sunshine, with Rawdie at his heels, and a book under his arm, a picture of idle holiday enjoyment.“Oh,” he said, in answer to her appeal, “Guy is like that if he has a headache. He likes to be let alone; he never wants anything.”Jeanie still looked doubtful.“People don’t generally look so with a headache,” she said. “Does he often have such bad ones?”“No,” said Godfrey; “only once in a way. He’ll be all right in an hour or two. Let him alone.”Jeanie thought it a very odd headache; but no more was said, though, from Mrs Waynflete’s face when Guy did not appear at luncheon, it might have been argued that his sudden illness told against his plans.She put on her bonnet, and took her way down to the mill with a step that was still firm, though slower than of old, and asked for John Cooper. She was no unusual visitor, and had never let her hold of the business drop; and as she sat down in the little office, and cast her still keen blue eyes round her, it was more than ever difficult to believe, more than ever distasteful to feel, that her day was almost done. The two old men who had long managed the business, though some years younger than herself, now seemed like contemporaries. She had worked under their fathers in her girlhood, she had seen them rise in office under her husband, she had now worked with them for many years, and with them she felt at one.Partly from this, and partly, perhaps, from the incautiousness of old age, before many minutes had passed, she had made John Cooper aware, both of Guy’s plans and of his strictures. It was so natural to discuss the crude ideas of the youth with her experienced old friend.John Cooper was very much taken by surprise. The reticent and cautious Guy had never betrayed how carefully he had been “takin’ notes.” Had this lad really put his finger on the weak places? John Cooper was much too careful to commit himself to a direct contradiction.“Well, Mrs Waynflete,” he said; “Mr Guy is young, and young folks like to have something to show for their opinions. But, there’s been many new fashions since you and I began to work the business. The old master never held with following the fashion.”“You can be making changes every year if you do.”“So you can do, Mrs Waynflete; so you can. Eh, but I’ve seen changes.”“Mr Guy has a notion of business, too,” said the old lady.“Did ye see Mr Guy when he came home, ma’am?” said John Cooper, suddenly.“No; he had a bit of headache, and went to his room. Young men aren’t as tough as they used to be.”There was a silence. The old man watched the lady over the writing-table between them. He, too, was a vigorous old grey-head, with a hard mouth and keen eyes wrinkled up close. The little room was full of bills and letters and safes. A stray ray of afternoon sun shot through the small-paned window, and showed the dusty air and the dusty floor, and the well-arranged contents of the dusty shelves.John Cooper crossed the little room, and stood in the streak of sunshine. It shone upon his well-known grey hair, on his shrewd, weather-beaten face, and glittered on a small key left in a little oak cupboard in the wall. John Cooper opened the cupboard, and the sun shot in and sparkled with sudden brilliant reflections on something inside.“Eh, what have you there?” said Mrs Waynflete.John Cooper took out a tall brandy-bottle, nearly empty, and a glass still containing some drops of spirit, and set them on the table.“Mr Guy left the key by mistake,” he said.“John Cooper! What do you mean?”No asseveration could have added to the abrupt force of the intonation, as Mrs Waynflete sat upright, grasping the arms of her wooden chair, and looking straight at the manager.“Mr Guy keeps that cupboard close locked. But to-day he left it swinging open, when he went home—with a headache.”“Did ye see him go?”“I came in at the door here, Mrs Waynflete, and Mr Guy staggered past me, and never saw me. He went stumbling out and up the lane. Hurrying and reeling as he went—as once and again I’ve seen him before.”Mrs Waynflete’s brown old face grew a shade paler, she still held by the arms of the chair, as she rapidly weighed what had been said.It seemed to her that the fact of the young man’s possessing a bottle of spirits was as nothing compared with the secrecy with which he had concealed it. Nor would he be the first in the house of Waynflete to fall a victim to such a temptation.On the one hand, Mrs Waynflete had seen it in her father, and feared it for her brother; on the other, there was nothing in Guy’s look or ways to suggest it, save the occasional attacks of illness, as to which he was always mysterious and secretive.“Lock up the cupboard,” she said, “and give me the key. And ye’ll not say a word of this matter.”“Nay, not to Joshua Howarth, nor to young Jos, nor to my own John Henry. It’s no matter for talking of.”Mrs Waynflete put the key in her pocket, rose, and standing at her full height, said—“Good day to you,” and walked away with firm, unfaltering step, across the paved entrance, up the bit of lane that led to the garden wall. She went in through the gate and across the garden, and upstairs to Guy’s room, at which she knocked sharply.“Guy, I wish to come in.”The door was unfastened, and Guy stood there in great surprise.“Aunt Margaret!” he said. “What is it? I am much better. I am coming down for some tea.”Mrs Waynflete put him aside with her hand, entered the room, and shut the door.It was a large, comfortable room, with a bookcase and a good supply of books, a writing-table, a sofa and an armchair, besides the little iron bed in the corner, and it was brilliantly light, for there was not a curtain or a hanging of any sort in the room. Such was Guy’s taste. He looked pale still, but quite himself, and there was nothing peculiar in his manner, as he repeated—“What is it, Aunt Margaret?”“This,” said his aunt, as she sat down in the armchair, and held out the key.“What is it that you mean?” said Guy, with a sudden look of being on his guard, and much in the tone of her own question to John Cooper.“You left your cupboard open, Guy, and John Cooper, very properly, locked it up, and gave me the key. What should a lad of your age do with a bottle of brandy?”“Confound John Cooper’s meddling impertinence!” said Guy, passionately. “It is nothing to him or to any one what I choose to keep there.”“That depends upon the use you make of it.”“Has John Cooper been setting it about that I’ve been drinking?” said Guy, with an angry laugh. “Is that—isthatwhat it looks like?”He caught himself up with a start, and turning away to the window, stood staring out of it, while his aunt said—“It’s a matter I’ll have cleared up, Guy, before I answer all your questions of this morning. I’ve known many young fellows take a drop too much in company. That wasn’t thought so much of when I was young. But it’s different nowadays; and what that bottle of brandy means, if it means anything at all, is a very different matter again.”Whether Guy was struggling with temper or embarrassment, or whether he really did not know what to say, he was silent for some time. At last he turned round, and said ungraciously—“On my word and honour, I don’t drink. I have never been drunk in my life—yet.”“Then what does this mean?” still holding out the key.“Sometimes—very seldom—I get faint or dizzy—with a headache—I hate a fuss, and I can set myself right with a little brandy.” There was something in the extreme reluctance with which the answer was given that justified suspicion.“You ought to see a doctor, if that is so,” said Mrs Waynflete, with much reason; “and when I hear what he says, I’ll think of what you say.”“As you please, Aunt Margaret,” said Guy. “If my word is not to be taken, I don’t care in the least to be cleared by another person’s.”“You ought to care how your character stands in my eyes,” said Mrs Waynflete. “Take back your key. I shall judge for myself.”She looked keenly at the young man standing in the sunlight. It was obvious that now, at any rate, he was fully master of himself, and Mrs Waynflete had lived too much with men, and knew their ways too well, not to perceive that there was nothing in his look to substantiate the charge against him.Suddenly he looked round at her, in a curious, furtive way—a look which he withdrew at once as she met it, but which startled her. She had caught the glance of fear and suspicion.“Time will show,” she said, as she left the room. “But I’ll have it all made clear to me, before I trust matters in your hands.”When left alone, Guy hastily locked his door again, then flung himself down on the sofa.“Oh, I am a fool, a fool!” he cried to himself. “God knows what will become of me!”He turned his face downwards with a gesture of despair. There was no one to help him, and he could not help himself.

Guy had really returned from London with a “new-fangled idea,” or, rather, with plans for carrying out one long entertained, and with more courage than usual for putting it forward. He liked the business, and had no lack of ideas concerning it; but during the two years that he had been at work in the mill his position there had become more and more difficult. He could not feel himself a nobody, and he knew what ought to be done; but his aunt had given him no place and no authority; to use the idiom of his county, “he had no say in the work,” and Mrs Waynflete thought so little of his powers or of his character that she never received his suggestions with favour. She distrusted him, and he knew it, and to a certain extent he knew why. But he was quite sure of his ground now, and as soon as the visitors had departed, he proceeded to unfold his mind.

He told her, with as much delicacy as he could, but with something of her own tenacity, that in his opinion the two faithful old managers were hardly up to the requirements of the day. He thought that more pains should be taken to follow the changes of fashion, and that besides producing broadcloth and plain tweed, certain classes of fancy goods should be undertaken. This would involve an outlay for machinery suited for weaving patterns, and it might also be necessary to engage an overseer who could superintend the production of this class of goods; some extension of the premises might also be required. If his aunt disliked the notion of alterations in the old mills, there was a little mill near which had been worked in a small and unsuccessful way by a man without sufficient capital to carry it on, who would gladly let it to “Palmer Brothers,” as the Ingleby firm was still called, from Mr Thomas’s father and uncle. Guy adduced facts and figures, and made it plain that he knew what he was talking about; and, in short, showed more of the old lady’s own faculty for business than she had ever given him credit for.

But one of the principles of Palmer Brothers had always been that it was a risky and unsound way of doing business to follow the changes and chances of fashion. People would always want broadcloth and tweed, but fancy goods might lie on hand, and fail to find a market; and, in short, did not suit with Palmer’s way of doing business.

Old Mrs Waynflete sat in her chair in what was called the library at the Mill House, though it contained very few books. She watched the pale, slight youth before her with the most absolute want of respect for his personality, with an innate distrust for his facts and figures, and yet feeling with the first painful pangs of old age that she could not entirely grasp the argument. Guy was talking of conditions unknown to her. Surely the day had not come when she and her good old servants were unable to judge what was the best for the business. Surely this lad could not have pointed out to her what she had failed to see for herself. Surely he could not be in the right.

“Is there any other matter you want to find fault with?” she said. “I’d like to hear your true opinion.”

Guy hesitated a little; but, quiet as he looked, he had the obstinacy of his race, and he could not resist giving his true opinion.

“Well,” he said, “I don’t think the mills are as popular with the work-people as they were once. There are modern ways of attending to their health and their comfort, in which we’re deficient. Ventilation, and so on. But a small outlay would set all that to rights. One must move with the times.”

“So you think John Cooper and Jos Howarth are past their work?”

“Not exactly. I think Cooper’s a good old fellow. Howarth I’m not so sure of.”

“You seem very sure of yourself, Guy. Late hours and days away from business were not the way to make a fortune in my time.”

Guy flushed up.

“I should do my best,” he said; “and I believe—I am sure—that I am not incapable of carrying out these plans. And one thing more I wish to say, Aunt Waynflete. After Christmas, Godfrey will be coming in to the business. As things are now, there is no scope for both of us. With the scheme I propose, there would be plenty to do—if you allow us to do it.”

“You need not to think that all the ideas come first into your head, my lad. I have thought of that. There’ll be an agent wanted for Waynflete.”

Now, this was a remark which it was nearly impossible for Guy to answer. He was the natural heir of Waynflete, but Waynflete was in the old lady’s own power, and she had never dropped a word as to her intentions regarding it. He could not assume that Waynflete concerned him rather than Godfrey; and yet, if it did not, the whole principle of his aunt’s life would be falsified. Besides, the idea was most distasteful to him. He said hurriedly and unwisely—

“Waynflete is hardly enough of a place to occupy a man’s whole time, in any case.”

“Well,” said Mrs Waynflete, “you have said your say, and I’ll consider my answer. But I’ve known the business forty years before you were born, my lad, after all.”

It was the way of the Waynfletes to hide their real selves from each other as carefully as if each one had been plotting treason. They erected quickset hedges round their hearts and souls, as if to be misunderstood was needful to their self-respect. Guy said no more, and withdrew, and he never spoke a word to Godfrey of what had passed between his aunt and himself.

The next day, just before luncheon, Jeanie was gathering flowers on the lawn, when a door in the wall that led to the mills opened, and Guy dashed in, with so white and wild a look, and a step at once so hurried and so faltering, that she ran up to him, exclaiming—

“Guy! Are you ill? What is the matter?” Guy looked at her, as she said afterwards, as if he did not see her, and hurried in and upstairs without a word, and as she followed, scared and puzzled, she heard him shut and lock his bedroom door behind him. Turning away in distress and alarm, she met Godfrey strolling along in the sunshine, with Rawdie at his heels, and a book under his arm, a picture of idle holiday enjoyment.

“Oh,” he said, in answer to her appeal, “Guy is like that if he has a headache. He likes to be let alone; he never wants anything.”

Jeanie still looked doubtful.

“People don’t generally look so with a headache,” she said. “Does he often have such bad ones?”

“No,” said Godfrey; “only once in a way. He’ll be all right in an hour or two. Let him alone.”

Jeanie thought it a very odd headache; but no more was said, though, from Mrs Waynflete’s face when Guy did not appear at luncheon, it might have been argued that his sudden illness told against his plans.

She put on her bonnet, and took her way down to the mill with a step that was still firm, though slower than of old, and asked for John Cooper. She was no unusual visitor, and had never let her hold of the business drop; and as she sat down in the little office, and cast her still keen blue eyes round her, it was more than ever difficult to believe, more than ever distasteful to feel, that her day was almost done. The two old men who had long managed the business, though some years younger than herself, now seemed like contemporaries. She had worked under their fathers in her girlhood, she had seen them rise in office under her husband, she had now worked with them for many years, and with them she felt at one.

Partly from this, and partly, perhaps, from the incautiousness of old age, before many minutes had passed, she had made John Cooper aware, both of Guy’s plans and of his strictures. It was so natural to discuss the crude ideas of the youth with her experienced old friend.

John Cooper was very much taken by surprise. The reticent and cautious Guy had never betrayed how carefully he had been “takin’ notes.” Had this lad really put his finger on the weak places? John Cooper was much too careful to commit himself to a direct contradiction.

“Well, Mrs Waynflete,” he said; “Mr Guy is young, and young folks like to have something to show for their opinions. But, there’s been many new fashions since you and I began to work the business. The old master never held with following the fashion.”

“You can be making changes every year if you do.”

“So you can do, Mrs Waynflete; so you can. Eh, but I’ve seen changes.”

“Mr Guy has a notion of business, too,” said the old lady.

“Did ye see Mr Guy when he came home, ma’am?” said John Cooper, suddenly.

“No; he had a bit of headache, and went to his room. Young men aren’t as tough as they used to be.”

There was a silence. The old man watched the lady over the writing-table between them. He, too, was a vigorous old grey-head, with a hard mouth and keen eyes wrinkled up close. The little room was full of bills and letters and safes. A stray ray of afternoon sun shot through the small-paned window, and showed the dusty air and the dusty floor, and the well-arranged contents of the dusty shelves.

John Cooper crossed the little room, and stood in the streak of sunshine. It shone upon his well-known grey hair, on his shrewd, weather-beaten face, and glittered on a small key left in a little oak cupboard in the wall. John Cooper opened the cupboard, and the sun shot in and sparkled with sudden brilliant reflections on something inside.

“Eh, what have you there?” said Mrs Waynflete.

John Cooper took out a tall brandy-bottle, nearly empty, and a glass still containing some drops of spirit, and set them on the table.

“Mr Guy left the key by mistake,” he said.

“John Cooper! What do you mean?”

No asseveration could have added to the abrupt force of the intonation, as Mrs Waynflete sat upright, grasping the arms of her wooden chair, and looking straight at the manager.

“Mr Guy keeps that cupboard close locked. But to-day he left it swinging open, when he went home—with a headache.”

“Did ye see him go?”

“I came in at the door here, Mrs Waynflete, and Mr Guy staggered past me, and never saw me. He went stumbling out and up the lane. Hurrying and reeling as he went—as once and again I’ve seen him before.”

Mrs Waynflete’s brown old face grew a shade paler, she still held by the arms of the chair, as she rapidly weighed what had been said.

It seemed to her that the fact of the young man’s possessing a bottle of spirits was as nothing compared with the secrecy with which he had concealed it. Nor would he be the first in the house of Waynflete to fall a victim to such a temptation.

On the one hand, Mrs Waynflete had seen it in her father, and feared it for her brother; on the other, there was nothing in Guy’s look or ways to suggest it, save the occasional attacks of illness, as to which he was always mysterious and secretive.

“Lock up the cupboard,” she said, “and give me the key. And ye’ll not say a word of this matter.”

“Nay, not to Joshua Howarth, nor to young Jos, nor to my own John Henry. It’s no matter for talking of.”

Mrs Waynflete put the key in her pocket, rose, and standing at her full height, said—“Good day to you,” and walked away with firm, unfaltering step, across the paved entrance, up the bit of lane that led to the garden wall. She went in through the gate and across the garden, and upstairs to Guy’s room, at which she knocked sharply.

“Guy, I wish to come in.”

The door was unfastened, and Guy stood there in great surprise.

“Aunt Margaret!” he said. “What is it? I am much better. I am coming down for some tea.”

Mrs Waynflete put him aside with her hand, entered the room, and shut the door.

It was a large, comfortable room, with a bookcase and a good supply of books, a writing-table, a sofa and an armchair, besides the little iron bed in the corner, and it was brilliantly light, for there was not a curtain or a hanging of any sort in the room. Such was Guy’s taste. He looked pale still, but quite himself, and there was nothing peculiar in his manner, as he repeated—

“What is it, Aunt Margaret?”

“This,” said his aunt, as she sat down in the armchair, and held out the key.

“What is it that you mean?” said Guy, with a sudden look of being on his guard, and much in the tone of her own question to John Cooper.

“You left your cupboard open, Guy, and John Cooper, very properly, locked it up, and gave me the key. What should a lad of your age do with a bottle of brandy?”

“Confound John Cooper’s meddling impertinence!” said Guy, passionately. “It is nothing to him or to any one what I choose to keep there.”

“That depends upon the use you make of it.”

“Has John Cooper been setting it about that I’ve been drinking?” said Guy, with an angry laugh. “Is that—isthatwhat it looks like?”

He caught himself up with a start, and turning away to the window, stood staring out of it, while his aunt said—

“It’s a matter I’ll have cleared up, Guy, before I answer all your questions of this morning. I’ve known many young fellows take a drop too much in company. That wasn’t thought so much of when I was young. But it’s different nowadays; and what that bottle of brandy means, if it means anything at all, is a very different matter again.”

Whether Guy was struggling with temper or embarrassment, or whether he really did not know what to say, he was silent for some time. At last he turned round, and said ungraciously—“On my word and honour, I don’t drink. I have never been drunk in my life—yet.”

“Then what does this mean?” still holding out the key.

“Sometimes—very seldom—I get faint or dizzy—with a headache—I hate a fuss, and I can set myself right with a little brandy.” There was something in the extreme reluctance with which the answer was given that justified suspicion.

“You ought to see a doctor, if that is so,” said Mrs Waynflete, with much reason; “and when I hear what he says, I’ll think of what you say.”

“As you please, Aunt Margaret,” said Guy. “If my word is not to be taken, I don’t care in the least to be cleared by another person’s.”

“You ought to care how your character stands in my eyes,” said Mrs Waynflete. “Take back your key. I shall judge for myself.”

She looked keenly at the young man standing in the sunlight. It was obvious that now, at any rate, he was fully master of himself, and Mrs Waynflete had lived too much with men, and knew their ways too well, not to perceive that there was nothing in his look to substantiate the charge against him.

Suddenly he looked round at her, in a curious, furtive way—a look which he withdrew at once as she met it, but which startled her. She had caught the glance of fear and suspicion.

“Time will show,” she said, as she left the room. “But I’ll have it all made clear to me, before I trust matters in your hands.”

When left alone, Guy hastily locked his door again, then flung himself down on the sofa.

“Oh, I am a fool, a fool!” he cried to himself. “God knows what will become of me!”

He turned his face downwards with a gesture of despair. There was no one to help him, and he could not help himself.

Part 1, Chapter VIII.The Skeleton in the Cupboard.After a few moments Guy recalled himself from his despair, and, turning his face to the light of the open window, began, with what courage he might, to consider the situation. A shameful charge had been brought against him, and an untrue one, and yet the truth was so inexpressibly galling to him that he could hardly bring himself to contradict the falsehood.Drinking, especially in secret, was a degrading vice; but, however sinful, it was natural, being shared by thousands of poor miserable fellows. But the secret curse of Guy’s life was, he thought, peculiar to himself, alien from and repugnant to happier folk. It was worse than wicked, it was abnormal. He himself would have pitied, but he would not have liked, certainly not have respected, another man who— Even to himself he would not think the fact in quotable words. That he could and did bear his hard fate in secret was all that preserved for him a shadow of self-respect.A crisis had now, however, come, and his instinctive decisions must be reconsidered. He got up, and, unlocking his desk, took from its most secret corner a little pen-and-ink drawing, and, laying it on the table, sat down, and leaning on his elbows, looked it full in the face. For it was a face “written down,” as he had phrased it to Florella Vyner,—a face almost identical with his own, and with the picture of his unhappy namesake, but neither framed by the close-cut hair of the present day nor by the powdered peruke of the Guy who was too late, but set in wild, fair locks that hung loosely round it, while, through the misery of the large, mournful eyes, there was a look of malice, fitting the Guy Waynflete who had betrayed his friend, and whose apparition had, by tradition, caused the second Guy to die disgraced and ruined. The present Guy sat and gazed at it, till the likeness grew in his own face, and he tried to force his trembling lips into the contemptuous smile which he felt himself to deserve. Once, as he believed, he had seen this fatal face with his bodily eyes, and since then the fear of it, the sense of its unseen presence, the influence of it, was enough to shake his manhood and shatter his nerves, was altogether irresistible to him. He never knew when he might wake from sleep with this awful dread upon him. Never had he been able to stand up against it.The code of the British schoolboy, backed by the reserve of proud and canny Yorkshire, is not calculated to deal with an abnormal strain on a delicate nervous system.When Guy first “saw the ghost,” if it may be so phrased, at Waynflete, he had felt its effect upon him simply as a disgrace; and, though he knew somewhat better now, his instincts had never allowed him to treat it otherwise. A reasonable man might have consulted a doctor, and found out how to deal with his own nerves; but down below all Guy’s opinions on the subject, all the explanations which he gave himself, there was an awful conviction of the personality and reality of this thing, which seemed half his double and half his evil genius; and what could any doctor do for that?—while he entertained the most utter disbelief in the genuineness of all modern scientific inquiries into such matters. What! analyse this frightful thing for other people’s benefit?—have his experiences printed?—be regarded as a person possessing an enviable faculty denied to others? No; no one who knew what “seeing a ghost” was like could undergo such torture! They were all humbugs. While, as for religious help or consolation, Guy feared spiritual impressions or spiritual efforts; and whether his trouble was the work of his own fancy, a possession of the devil, or a revelation from the unseen, it put him in a different relation to all supernatural questions to that of his fellows. He kept altogether apart from the subject, never joined in religious discussions, nor let himself speculate on religious questions. He feared, also, all his finer impulses; they touched on the terrible and tender point.As he was liable to nervous headaches on other occasions than when the fear of a spiritual presence overwhelmed him, he usually attributed all disturbance that he could not conceal to such a cause. Nobody troubled about a headache. Fainting or palpitations might lead to questions, and be supposed to be dangerous. Of course all this was crude and young and foolish in the extreme; but it was instinctive to a nature, one part of which was so antagonistic to the other. It never could have continued if he had belonged to people of ordinary insight or experience; but the spiritual terrors, to which he was subject, were very uncertain in their recurrence, and, in fact, were usually apt to come upon him at some crisis which excited his nerves; and, in his ordinary life at college, he had suffered less from them than at home, when, certainly, his grand-aunt and his brother were not likely to suspect them.But what was he to do now? If he told, if he could so far oppose his instincts, his aunt would think him a liar, like the other Guy—or mad? That last might be. It was a view of the matter which had not escaped him. As for drinking, well, he might be driven to that before the end. There were times when the brandy was tempting. That was another ancestral ghost that might be more dreadful than the first.But he could not confute the charge, and, besides—here a much simpler part of the Waynflete nature came into play—he was not going to notice such confounded insolence on Cooper’s part, or such suspicious mistrust on that of his great-aunt.He locked up the picture, and then, perceiving that it was still only five o’clock, and that the mill had not yet “loosed,” he took up his hat and went down there, walking in upon the astonished John Cooper, with as cool a manner as if nothing had passed.“Step into my room, will you?” he said. “There are two or three letters that I left this morning.”Then, as the old manager took up and turned over the letters indicated, not knowing what to say, and feeling his statements to Mrs Waynflete considerably invalidated by the young gentleman’s look and manner, Guy deliberately unlocked the cupboard, took out the brandy-bottle, and held it up to the light.“Nearly empty,” he said, in his soft, mocking voice. “Here, Joe Cass,” to the office boy, “just run down to the Lion, and ask for a bottle of the best French brandy—for me. Bring it back with you.”“Lord! sir!” exclaimed Cooper, as the boy departed staring; “if youdowant brandy, you’d a deal better bring it down from the house yourself, than send the boy on such errands!”“Perhaps Mrs Waynflete wouldn’t give it to me; and you see, I like to have it, to ‘put to my lips, when I feel so dispoged.’ Take half a glass of the remains of this? No? Then I will. Now, as to that colonial contract—”Guy poured out the remainder of the brandy and drank it off. He felt revived by it, and went on with the details of the colonial contract with the most accurate clearness, till the boy came back, when he took the bottle, locked it up, put the key in his pocket, and gave Joe the old bottle to throw away.“Well, Mr Guy,” said Cooper, desperately; “I ask your pardon if I mistook your condition; but I’d as soon see my own son with a locked-up brandy-bottle as you—at your age. Eh, my lad, it’s a grand mistake ye’re making.”“I shan’t let the business go to the dogs in consequence, if I’ve ever a hand in it,” said Guy, but with more softness; “but just make up your mind that I don’t care a—” Here Guy used an expression which appeared to Cooper almost as bad a breach of business propriety as the brandy, and added with much bathos, “I don’t care a brass farthing what any one thinks.”This act of schoolboy defiance was the refuge of Guy’s manhood, which had not learned a better mode of self-assertion. His soft eyes had a somewhat evil look as he watched his routed enemy, and then went back to the house, where he was unusually lively at dinner, and through the evening.But either the brandy or the excitement revenged itself next day with a real headache, so violent that he could not lift up his head, and which left him pale and languid and without spirits for any more defiance of consequences. Moreover, Mrs Waynflete decreed that he was to go with her to Waynflete.Guy resented the proposal as an act of mistrust, and dreaded it from the bottom of his soul. He resisted it, and offended his aunt more bitterly than he had ever done before, since he could only put forward indifference to and contempt of Waynflete and its interests.And after all, Howarth, the second manager, had a violent attack of gout, and Guy’s presence at Ingleby could hardly be dispensed with. So he remained, in semi-disgrace, with Cousin Susan Joshua to keep house for him. Jeanie went up to Waynflete with the rest of the party.He had got no answer to his proposals, and no definite authority for the mill. Nevertheless, he made his presence felt there, and people began to feel that he was master.

After a few moments Guy recalled himself from his despair, and, turning his face to the light of the open window, began, with what courage he might, to consider the situation. A shameful charge had been brought against him, and an untrue one, and yet the truth was so inexpressibly galling to him that he could hardly bring himself to contradict the falsehood.

Drinking, especially in secret, was a degrading vice; but, however sinful, it was natural, being shared by thousands of poor miserable fellows. But the secret curse of Guy’s life was, he thought, peculiar to himself, alien from and repugnant to happier folk. It was worse than wicked, it was abnormal. He himself would have pitied, but he would not have liked, certainly not have respected, another man who— Even to himself he would not think the fact in quotable words. That he could and did bear his hard fate in secret was all that preserved for him a shadow of self-respect.

A crisis had now, however, come, and his instinctive decisions must be reconsidered. He got up, and, unlocking his desk, took from its most secret corner a little pen-and-ink drawing, and, laying it on the table, sat down, and leaning on his elbows, looked it full in the face. For it was a face “written down,” as he had phrased it to Florella Vyner,—a face almost identical with his own, and with the picture of his unhappy namesake, but neither framed by the close-cut hair of the present day nor by the powdered peruke of the Guy who was too late, but set in wild, fair locks that hung loosely round it, while, through the misery of the large, mournful eyes, there was a look of malice, fitting the Guy Waynflete who had betrayed his friend, and whose apparition had, by tradition, caused the second Guy to die disgraced and ruined. The present Guy sat and gazed at it, till the likeness grew in his own face, and he tried to force his trembling lips into the contemptuous smile which he felt himself to deserve. Once, as he believed, he had seen this fatal face with his bodily eyes, and since then the fear of it, the sense of its unseen presence, the influence of it, was enough to shake his manhood and shatter his nerves, was altogether irresistible to him. He never knew when he might wake from sleep with this awful dread upon him. Never had he been able to stand up against it.

The code of the British schoolboy, backed by the reserve of proud and canny Yorkshire, is not calculated to deal with an abnormal strain on a delicate nervous system.

When Guy first “saw the ghost,” if it may be so phrased, at Waynflete, he had felt its effect upon him simply as a disgrace; and, though he knew somewhat better now, his instincts had never allowed him to treat it otherwise. A reasonable man might have consulted a doctor, and found out how to deal with his own nerves; but down below all Guy’s opinions on the subject, all the explanations which he gave himself, there was an awful conviction of the personality and reality of this thing, which seemed half his double and half his evil genius; and what could any doctor do for that?—while he entertained the most utter disbelief in the genuineness of all modern scientific inquiries into such matters. What! analyse this frightful thing for other people’s benefit?—have his experiences printed?—be regarded as a person possessing an enviable faculty denied to others? No; no one who knew what “seeing a ghost” was like could undergo such torture! They were all humbugs. While, as for religious help or consolation, Guy feared spiritual impressions or spiritual efforts; and whether his trouble was the work of his own fancy, a possession of the devil, or a revelation from the unseen, it put him in a different relation to all supernatural questions to that of his fellows. He kept altogether apart from the subject, never joined in religious discussions, nor let himself speculate on religious questions. He feared, also, all his finer impulses; they touched on the terrible and tender point.

As he was liable to nervous headaches on other occasions than when the fear of a spiritual presence overwhelmed him, he usually attributed all disturbance that he could not conceal to such a cause. Nobody troubled about a headache. Fainting or palpitations might lead to questions, and be supposed to be dangerous. Of course all this was crude and young and foolish in the extreme; but it was instinctive to a nature, one part of which was so antagonistic to the other. It never could have continued if he had belonged to people of ordinary insight or experience; but the spiritual terrors, to which he was subject, were very uncertain in their recurrence, and, in fact, were usually apt to come upon him at some crisis which excited his nerves; and, in his ordinary life at college, he had suffered less from them than at home, when, certainly, his grand-aunt and his brother were not likely to suspect them.

But what was he to do now? If he told, if he could so far oppose his instincts, his aunt would think him a liar, like the other Guy—or mad? That last might be. It was a view of the matter which had not escaped him. As for drinking, well, he might be driven to that before the end. There were times when the brandy was tempting. That was another ancestral ghost that might be more dreadful than the first.

But he could not confute the charge, and, besides—here a much simpler part of the Waynflete nature came into play—he was not going to notice such confounded insolence on Cooper’s part, or such suspicious mistrust on that of his great-aunt.

He locked up the picture, and then, perceiving that it was still only five o’clock, and that the mill had not yet “loosed,” he took up his hat and went down there, walking in upon the astonished John Cooper, with as cool a manner as if nothing had passed.

“Step into my room, will you?” he said. “There are two or three letters that I left this morning.”

Then, as the old manager took up and turned over the letters indicated, not knowing what to say, and feeling his statements to Mrs Waynflete considerably invalidated by the young gentleman’s look and manner, Guy deliberately unlocked the cupboard, took out the brandy-bottle, and held it up to the light.

“Nearly empty,” he said, in his soft, mocking voice. “Here, Joe Cass,” to the office boy, “just run down to the Lion, and ask for a bottle of the best French brandy—for me. Bring it back with you.”

“Lord! sir!” exclaimed Cooper, as the boy departed staring; “if youdowant brandy, you’d a deal better bring it down from the house yourself, than send the boy on such errands!”

“Perhaps Mrs Waynflete wouldn’t give it to me; and you see, I like to have it, to ‘put to my lips, when I feel so dispoged.’ Take half a glass of the remains of this? No? Then I will. Now, as to that colonial contract—”

Guy poured out the remainder of the brandy and drank it off. He felt revived by it, and went on with the details of the colonial contract with the most accurate clearness, till the boy came back, when he took the bottle, locked it up, put the key in his pocket, and gave Joe the old bottle to throw away.

“Well, Mr Guy,” said Cooper, desperately; “I ask your pardon if I mistook your condition; but I’d as soon see my own son with a locked-up brandy-bottle as you—at your age. Eh, my lad, it’s a grand mistake ye’re making.”

“I shan’t let the business go to the dogs in consequence, if I’ve ever a hand in it,” said Guy, but with more softness; “but just make up your mind that I don’t care a—” Here Guy used an expression which appeared to Cooper almost as bad a breach of business propriety as the brandy, and added with much bathos, “I don’t care a brass farthing what any one thinks.”

This act of schoolboy defiance was the refuge of Guy’s manhood, which had not learned a better mode of self-assertion. His soft eyes had a somewhat evil look as he watched his routed enemy, and then went back to the house, where he was unusually lively at dinner, and through the evening.

But either the brandy or the excitement revenged itself next day with a real headache, so violent that he could not lift up his head, and which left him pale and languid and without spirits for any more defiance of consequences. Moreover, Mrs Waynflete decreed that he was to go with her to Waynflete.

Guy resented the proposal as an act of mistrust, and dreaded it from the bottom of his soul. He resisted it, and offended his aunt more bitterly than he had ever done before, since he could only put forward indifference to and contempt of Waynflete and its interests.

And after all, Howarth, the second manager, had a violent attack of gout, and Guy’s presence at Ingleby could hardly be dispensed with. So he remained, in semi-disgrace, with Cousin Susan Joshua to keep house for him. Jeanie went up to Waynflete with the rest of the party.

He had got no answer to his proposals, and no definite authority for the mill. Nevertheless, he made his presence felt there, and people began to feel that he was master.

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