Part 2, Chapter II.Crossing the Flete.Almost before the waggonette had driven away from the door, Godfrey turned, round to his brother.“I shall catch the last train,” he said.“The last train! Now? How do you mean to get from Kirk Hinton?”“I can walk.”“In this weather? You’ll reduce Rawdie to a mass of pulp.”“He can stop with you. Good night,” said Godfrey, ramming on his hat, and marching off through the driving rain, while Guy shrugged his shoulders, and detained Rawdie.“Ha, ha! you poor little beggar, you’re nowhere,” he said. “You’ll have to put up with me.”Kirk Hinton was a little station on the branch line which connected Rilston with the junction for Ingleby. It was four miles from Moorhead, and six from Waynflete, and as it contained no sort of conveyance, it was necessary for travellers to make arrangements beforehand if they desired to be carried to their destination.Godfrey had ordered a trap to meet him on the next morning; but now there was nothing for it but to walk up hill and down dale through the pouring rain, and chew the cud of his bitter thoughts as he went.The field path to Waynflete was of the roughest, and led over rain washed stony tracks, through copse-wood and thicket, down to the bottom of Flete Dale, where the Flete beck was crossed by a rough wooden bridge near which was the Dragon, the little old public-house which had been there from time immemorial. On the other side of the river a steep ascent led up to Flete Edge, beyond which lay the Hall. The road from Kirk Hinton took a much more gradual route, and crossed the Flete by another bridge at the end of the old avenue at the back of the house.Godfrey was way-wise; but he had never taken the walk before, and he was confused by the storm and the darkness, and by his own miserable thoughts.He had not given up his point. No; he was not defeated. He would neither avoid Constancy nor cease to recommend himself to her. He would meet her on every possible opportunity; he would not give way an inch. He would succeed unless—other fellows—? There were other fellows, of course. There was Guy.Godfrey stumbled through a great clump of brambles and bushes, over a low wall and down a rough field to the riverside, where he dimly saw the bridge in the uncertain light. He felt chilled and miserable; his resolute hope failed him. There was Guy. She always liked Guy, and he always roused himself to talk and laugh with her. Godfrey’s angry spirit exaggerated these memories of friendly intercourse. His heart sank lower and lower. He paused on the bridge, and listened to the dreary roar of the wind through the wide plantations, and to the swirling rush of the stream beneath him. He could not see anything distinctly, but driving mist and swaying trees; but he came up out of the gloomy hollow as much convinced of his brother’s imaginary rivalry as if the fiend, or the spirit, who had stood in the path of his unlucky ancestor, and so wrecked the fortunes of succeeding generations, had whispered the deluding suggestion into his ear.How he reached the house he hardly knew, and then he wondered how he could account to his aunt for his sudden return.Mrs Waynflete, however, kept no count of his movements; she took no notice till the first train the next morning brought over the Ingleby stable-boy with Rawdie, Godfrey’s bag, and a note from Guy, in which he stated that he would not be able to come to Waynflete at present, as he was going on “a little outing” with Staunton. Godfrey felt certain that the little outing was to Moorhead, and when he read as a conclusion, “Cheer up, old boy; there’s worse luck in the world than yours,” he felt as if Guy was mocking his trouble.Mrs Waynflete was angry at the message. She thought Guy neglectful and indifferent to the place she loved so well. In those days, when the novelty of her surroundings destroyed her sense of accustomed comfort, she thought much. She was too good a woman of business to have left the future unprovided for, and she had long ago made a will in which the Waynflete property, together with certain investments, and half the share in the profits of Palmer Brothers was left to Guy, while the other half share made a fair younger son’s portion for Godfrey.But now, how could she trust Guy, either with the property or with the business? Was he not too likely to ruin both? Could she rely on him to carry on the work she had so bravely begun? She distrusted him deeply, and he did nothing to remove her distrust. She had always kept her will in her own hands; it would be easy to destroy it. But then, if anything happened to her, everything would be in confusion. An idea occurred to her, which in its simplicity and independence attracted her strongly. She would have another will made, in which Godfrey’s name was substituted for that of Guy, and then she would keep both at hand. At any moment it would be easy to destroy one of them, much easier than to alter it, or to draw out a new one in a hurry, and she would put Guy to certain tests, and judge him accordingly. She would drive into Rilston and see the solicitor there this very afternoon, for it struck her that she did not wish to explain the workings of her mind to the old family man of business who had made the will now in force.At luncheon-time she was unusually silent, while Jeanie questioned Godfrey as to the events of the day before, and at last remarked, as she cut up her peach, “How funny it is that Guy should be such friends with Mr Staunton!”“Why?” said Mrs Waynflete, abruptly. “Mr Staunton seems a very well-conducted young man.”“Oh yes, aunt; but don’t you know that he is descended from the wicked old Maxwell who ruined the Waynfletes. Constancy Vyner told us all about it. She said it was so interesting—to be friends with your hereditary foe.”“What’s that?” said the old lady. “I ought to have been told, Godfrey; it’s a very singular fancy on the part of your brother.”“Oh, I dare say Guy has very good reasons for the friendship,” said Godfrey, sulkily.Mrs Waynflete made no reply. She released Jeanie from the duty of accompanying her on her afternoon drive, and before she started, she wrote a note to Guy.She drove into Rilston, gave her directions to the solicitor, and arranged to have the new will made out, and brought for her signature on the next day. Then she went back, and, dismissing her carriage at the bridge, prepared to inspect the needful repairs that were being made in the farm-buildings and stables.Godfrey, hanging listlessly about, saw her tall, upright figure, walking steadily over the bridge, and then, whether she caught her foot in a stone, or lost her balance, suddenly she tripped and fell.With a shout of dismay he rushed towards her.“Auntie! Auntie Waynflete! Are you hurt?”“No, my dear, no; gently, don’t be in such a hurry,” she said imperatively, having already got up on her hands and knees.Godfrey put his strong young arms round her, and lifted her on to her feet, holding her carefully, and entreating her to tell him if she was hurt; while she told him sharply not to make a fuss about nothing, even though, to her own great vexation, she was so tremulous as to be obliged to lean on his arm, and let him lead her back to the house.“No,” she said. “No, I don’t want to lie down, and I don’t want a glass of brandy and water, and I don’t want the doctor. I want to sit down in my chair, and see if my bones are in their right places.”Jeanie now appeared, fussing about, and very anxious to do the right thing, but the old lady would not even have her bonnet taken off, and hunted the two young people out of sight, asking them if they thought she had had a stroke, just as they were whispering to each other that, at any rate, it was nothing of that sort. They peeped at her from behind the creepers through the open window, and discussed whether they ought to send for the doctor. But, as Godfrey said, he didn’t know if there was a doctor to send for, such a person having rarely been seen within the walls of the Mill House; and, besides, to act for Aunt Waynflete was a new departure which neither dared undertake.In the mean time, old Margaret, to her own great annoyance, found herself shedding tears. She was more shaken than she had guessed. She dried them rapidly, and then walked cautiously round the room, to see whether she was really herself and unhurt.“The Lord be praised, there’s no harm done!” she said. “But I’ve had a warning; and, please God, I’ll take it, and prepare for my latter end. I’m an old woman, and should mind my steps, and not be mooning over the future or the past, when I should be picking my way. If my nephew Guy, like others before him, is but poor stuff, Godfrey’s a different sort. I’ll keep my eyes open.”She appeared to be none the worse for her accident in the anxious if inexperienced eyes of Godfrey and Jeanie, who scarcely dared to ask her how she felt.The new will was brought to her, and was duly signed and witnessed. She locked it away with the former one, and with other business papers, in a table-drawer in her bedroom. She was prepared now for any emergency; but, in her heart, she was far from satisfied, and, in the solitude of the thoughts of age, she weighed the two young men against each other with a sincere desire to judge them aright. All the settled convictions, and all the saddest experiences of her life, told against Guy. All her affection, all her inclination, swayed towards Godfrey. And yet, angry as she was with her elder nephew, the tones of his voice, the set of his mouth when he had spoken his mind to her, recurred to her keen judgment, and she doubted still.On the day after the signing of the new will, she received the following answer to her note to Guy.“Mill House, Ingleby,—“September 16.“Dear Aunt Margaret,—“I shall not, of course, invite my friend to stay in your house again, now that I am aware of your sentiments on the subject; but I will avail myself of your permission to leave matters as they stand for the present, as I should be unwilling to involve myself in so ludicrous an explanation. Family feuds appear to me entirely out of date. I fear I shall not be able to come over to Waynflete at present, as I cannot leave Staunton, and you probably will not care to see him there.“Your affectionate nephew,—“Guy Waynflete.”This judicious and conciliatory epistle was put away by Mrs Waynflete, with the two wills in her table-drawer.It appeared to her that Guy, with a frivolity not new in her experience, scorned the sentiments and the convictions which had ruled her life.
Almost before the waggonette had driven away from the door, Godfrey turned, round to his brother.
“I shall catch the last train,” he said.
“The last train! Now? How do you mean to get from Kirk Hinton?”
“I can walk.”
“In this weather? You’ll reduce Rawdie to a mass of pulp.”
“He can stop with you. Good night,” said Godfrey, ramming on his hat, and marching off through the driving rain, while Guy shrugged his shoulders, and detained Rawdie.
“Ha, ha! you poor little beggar, you’re nowhere,” he said. “You’ll have to put up with me.”
Kirk Hinton was a little station on the branch line which connected Rilston with the junction for Ingleby. It was four miles from Moorhead, and six from Waynflete, and as it contained no sort of conveyance, it was necessary for travellers to make arrangements beforehand if they desired to be carried to their destination.
Godfrey had ordered a trap to meet him on the next morning; but now there was nothing for it but to walk up hill and down dale through the pouring rain, and chew the cud of his bitter thoughts as he went.
The field path to Waynflete was of the roughest, and led over rain washed stony tracks, through copse-wood and thicket, down to the bottom of Flete Dale, where the Flete beck was crossed by a rough wooden bridge near which was the Dragon, the little old public-house which had been there from time immemorial. On the other side of the river a steep ascent led up to Flete Edge, beyond which lay the Hall. The road from Kirk Hinton took a much more gradual route, and crossed the Flete by another bridge at the end of the old avenue at the back of the house.
Godfrey was way-wise; but he had never taken the walk before, and he was confused by the storm and the darkness, and by his own miserable thoughts.
He had not given up his point. No; he was not defeated. He would neither avoid Constancy nor cease to recommend himself to her. He would meet her on every possible opportunity; he would not give way an inch. He would succeed unless—other fellows—? There were other fellows, of course. There was Guy.
Godfrey stumbled through a great clump of brambles and bushes, over a low wall and down a rough field to the riverside, where he dimly saw the bridge in the uncertain light. He felt chilled and miserable; his resolute hope failed him. There was Guy. She always liked Guy, and he always roused himself to talk and laugh with her. Godfrey’s angry spirit exaggerated these memories of friendly intercourse. His heart sank lower and lower. He paused on the bridge, and listened to the dreary roar of the wind through the wide plantations, and to the swirling rush of the stream beneath him. He could not see anything distinctly, but driving mist and swaying trees; but he came up out of the gloomy hollow as much convinced of his brother’s imaginary rivalry as if the fiend, or the spirit, who had stood in the path of his unlucky ancestor, and so wrecked the fortunes of succeeding generations, had whispered the deluding suggestion into his ear.
How he reached the house he hardly knew, and then he wondered how he could account to his aunt for his sudden return.
Mrs Waynflete, however, kept no count of his movements; she took no notice till the first train the next morning brought over the Ingleby stable-boy with Rawdie, Godfrey’s bag, and a note from Guy, in which he stated that he would not be able to come to Waynflete at present, as he was going on “a little outing” with Staunton. Godfrey felt certain that the little outing was to Moorhead, and when he read as a conclusion, “Cheer up, old boy; there’s worse luck in the world than yours,” he felt as if Guy was mocking his trouble.
Mrs Waynflete was angry at the message. She thought Guy neglectful and indifferent to the place she loved so well. In those days, when the novelty of her surroundings destroyed her sense of accustomed comfort, she thought much. She was too good a woman of business to have left the future unprovided for, and she had long ago made a will in which the Waynflete property, together with certain investments, and half the share in the profits of Palmer Brothers was left to Guy, while the other half share made a fair younger son’s portion for Godfrey.
But now, how could she trust Guy, either with the property or with the business? Was he not too likely to ruin both? Could she rely on him to carry on the work she had so bravely begun? She distrusted him deeply, and he did nothing to remove her distrust. She had always kept her will in her own hands; it would be easy to destroy it. But then, if anything happened to her, everything would be in confusion. An idea occurred to her, which in its simplicity and independence attracted her strongly. She would have another will made, in which Godfrey’s name was substituted for that of Guy, and then she would keep both at hand. At any moment it would be easy to destroy one of them, much easier than to alter it, or to draw out a new one in a hurry, and she would put Guy to certain tests, and judge him accordingly. She would drive into Rilston and see the solicitor there this very afternoon, for it struck her that she did not wish to explain the workings of her mind to the old family man of business who had made the will now in force.
At luncheon-time she was unusually silent, while Jeanie questioned Godfrey as to the events of the day before, and at last remarked, as she cut up her peach, “How funny it is that Guy should be such friends with Mr Staunton!”
“Why?” said Mrs Waynflete, abruptly. “Mr Staunton seems a very well-conducted young man.”
“Oh yes, aunt; but don’t you know that he is descended from the wicked old Maxwell who ruined the Waynfletes. Constancy Vyner told us all about it. She said it was so interesting—to be friends with your hereditary foe.”
“What’s that?” said the old lady. “I ought to have been told, Godfrey; it’s a very singular fancy on the part of your brother.”
“Oh, I dare say Guy has very good reasons for the friendship,” said Godfrey, sulkily.
Mrs Waynflete made no reply. She released Jeanie from the duty of accompanying her on her afternoon drive, and before she started, she wrote a note to Guy.
She drove into Rilston, gave her directions to the solicitor, and arranged to have the new will made out, and brought for her signature on the next day. Then she went back, and, dismissing her carriage at the bridge, prepared to inspect the needful repairs that were being made in the farm-buildings and stables.
Godfrey, hanging listlessly about, saw her tall, upright figure, walking steadily over the bridge, and then, whether she caught her foot in a stone, or lost her balance, suddenly she tripped and fell.
With a shout of dismay he rushed towards her.
“Auntie! Auntie Waynflete! Are you hurt?”
“No, my dear, no; gently, don’t be in such a hurry,” she said imperatively, having already got up on her hands and knees.
Godfrey put his strong young arms round her, and lifted her on to her feet, holding her carefully, and entreating her to tell him if she was hurt; while she told him sharply not to make a fuss about nothing, even though, to her own great vexation, she was so tremulous as to be obliged to lean on his arm, and let him lead her back to the house.
“No,” she said. “No, I don’t want to lie down, and I don’t want a glass of brandy and water, and I don’t want the doctor. I want to sit down in my chair, and see if my bones are in their right places.”
Jeanie now appeared, fussing about, and very anxious to do the right thing, but the old lady would not even have her bonnet taken off, and hunted the two young people out of sight, asking them if they thought she had had a stroke, just as they were whispering to each other that, at any rate, it was nothing of that sort. They peeped at her from behind the creepers through the open window, and discussed whether they ought to send for the doctor. But, as Godfrey said, he didn’t know if there was a doctor to send for, such a person having rarely been seen within the walls of the Mill House; and, besides, to act for Aunt Waynflete was a new departure which neither dared undertake.
In the mean time, old Margaret, to her own great annoyance, found herself shedding tears. She was more shaken than she had guessed. She dried them rapidly, and then walked cautiously round the room, to see whether she was really herself and unhurt.
“The Lord be praised, there’s no harm done!” she said. “But I’ve had a warning; and, please God, I’ll take it, and prepare for my latter end. I’m an old woman, and should mind my steps, and not be mooning over the future or the past, when I should be picking my way. If my nephew Guy, like others before him, is but poor stuff, Godfrey’s a different sort. I’ll keep my eyes open.”
She appeared to be none the worse for her accident in the anxious if inexperienced eyes of Godfrey and Jeanie, who scarcely dared to ask her how she felt.
The new will was brought to her, and was duly signed and witnessed. She locked it away with the former one, and with other business papers, in a table-drawer in her bedroom. She was prepared now for any emergency; but, in her heart, she was far from satisfied, and, in the solitude of the thoughts of age, she weighed the two young men against each other with a sincere desire to judge them aright. All the settled convictions, and all the saddest experiences of her life, told against Guy. All her affection, all her inclination, swayed towards Godfrey. And yet, angry as she was with her elder nephew, the tones of his voice, the set of his mouth when he had spoken his mind to her, recurred to her keen judgment, and she doubted still.
On the day after the signing of the new will, she received the following answer to her note to Guy.
“Mill House, Ingleby,—“September 16.“Dear Aunt Margaret,—“I shall not, of course, invite my friend to stay in your house again, now that I am aware of your sentiments on the subject; but I will avail myself of your permission to leave matters as they stand for the present, as I should be unwilling to involve myself in so ludicrous an explanation. Family feuds appear to me entirely out of date. I fear I shall not be able to come over to Waynflete at present, as I cannot leave Staunton, and you probably will not care to see him there.“Your affectionate nephew,—“Guy Waynflete.”
“Mill House, Ingleby,—“September 16.“Dear Aunt Margaret,—“I shall not, of course, invite my friend to stay in your house again, now that I am aware of your sentiments on the subject; but I will avail myself of your permission to leave matters as they stand for the present, as I should be unwilling to involve myself in so ludicrous an explanation. Family feuds appear to me entirely out of date. I fear I shall not be able to come over to Waynflete at present, as I cannot leave Staunton, and you probably will not care to see him there.“Your affectionate nephew,—“Guy Waynflete.”
This judicious and conciliatory epistle was put away by Mrs Waynflete, with the two wills in her table-drawer.
It appeared to her that Guy, with a frivolity not new in her experience, scorned the sentiments and the convictions which had ruled her life.
Part 2, Chapter III.Ministers of Grace.Cuthbert Staunton took Guy up to London to the house in Kensington to be inspected by a well-known doctor, who was also a personal friend of his own.Guy despatched his petulant little note to his aunt before he started, and, perhaps, it was edged by his own discomfort, for he could hardly endure to be the subject of discussion and inquiry, and, the immediate effect of the night at Waynflete having passed off, held himself with difficulty to his resolution.“You may trust me to tell him nothing against your wish,” said Staunton, beforehand.“I don’t think you could tell him much,” said Guy, oddly. “But,” he added, “I wish to tell him that I am afraid of the brandy.”The man of science, when told that he suffered from palpitations and exhaustion after any “nervous strain,” the expression substituted by Cuthbert for Guy’s straightforward “when I am frightened,” and also of this means of remedy, made due examination of him, and asked various questions, eliciting that he was easily tired, and that his heart did throb sometimes after over-fatigue or over-hurry, “but not to signify at all, that didn’t matter.”And could he foretell when periods of nervous excitement were likely to occur, so as to avoid them?“No,” said Guy; and then he added, while his lips grew a little white, “I want to be told how to deal with the effects of it so that the remedy mayn’t be worse than the thing itself. No one can help me as to the cause.”“Ah!” said the doctor, thoughtfully. Then he gave various directions as to avoiding fatigue, worry, or excitement. A winter abroad would be good, change of scene and occupation. There was no serious mischief at work at present; but there was need of great care and consideration. And with a gravity showing that he understood one part of the matter, severe restrictions were laid on the use of brandy and everything analogous to it, and other prescriptions substituted. “Mr Waynflete mustn’t be alarmed about himself; care for a year or two would make all the difference. He would grow stronger, and the nervous strain would lessen in proportion.”Guy looked back at him, but said nothing; and as he took leave, Cuthbert remained for a minute or two.“That young fellow is a good deal out of health,” said the doctor. “Hasn’t he a mother or any one to look after him?”“Not a soul capable, except me,” said Staunton. “I’m going to do it as well as I can, and he will let me.”“Well, remember this: whether he can avoid nervous shocks or no,he must not have them. And he can’t be too much afraid of the brandy. Get him out of whatever oppresses him. It’s the only plan. The heart is weak, and the brain—excitable.”“Should you like a spell abroad?” said Staunton, as they sat at luncheon at his club.“I could not go,” said Guy. “That would mean giving up having any concern with the business. And I haven’t enough money.”“But if Mrs Waynflete knew that it was a matter of health—You must really let your friends know that you have to be careful.”It was a new idea to Guy that the effects of his attacks were of importance in themselves, and naturally an unwelcome one. He looked rather obstinate, and went on eating his salad. After a minute or two, he said—“I will do what I come to think is right. No one else can quite know.”“No; but don’t you see, my dear boy, that whatever strengthens your constitution altogether will help you to—to—contend with your trouble—and make it less likely to attack you?”“Yes,” said Guy, slowly. “What other people say does help one to think.”“Well, there’s no hurry to decide,” said Cuthbert. “You still think you would like to go down to-night? Certainly, there isn’t much on at present here. What shall we do this afternoon?”A friend of Staunton’s here turned up and pressed on their acceptance some tickets for a morning performance of Hamlet, in which he was interested.“Should you like to go, Guy?” said Cuthbert; “there would be plenty of time to dine afterwards, and get our train.”Guy thought that he would like it, and it was not till they were sitting in the stalls that it struck his friend that Hamlet was not calculated to divert his mind from the subject that engrossed it. Still, it must be familiar to him.But Cuthbert failed to realise that, though Guy believed himself to have “read Shakespeare,” it is possible for a country-bred youth, brought up in an unliterary and non-play-going family, to bring an extremely fresh interest to bear on our great dramatist, and though Guy was not quite in the condition of the lady who, in the middle of the murder scene in Macbeth, observed tearfully to her friend, “Oh dear, I am afraid this cannot end well!” he was but dimly prepared for what he was going to see. He gave an odd little laugh as the ghost crossed the stage, but watched intently and quietly.“What do you think of it?” said Cuthbert, in a pause. “He’s not so bad, is he?”“He says some very remarkable things,” said Guy, seriously. “Things that seem true; but I never thought of them. Don’t you suppose the ghost wasthere, watching for him to act, often though he couldn’t see him?”“Well, really,” said Cuthbert; “I do think you have made a new remark on Hamlet. I never heard that suggestion. We can go, you know, if you’re bored, any time.”“No,” said Guy; “I like it.”Guy had the faculty of calling up distinct mental pictures. It was the method by which he thought, and the moving scene stamped itself, as plays sometimes will, both on his eyes and on his memory. When they came out into the daylight he felt bewildered as if the world outside was the unreal one.“The ghost didn’t do much good,” he said; while Cuthbert, wishing he had had more forethought, talked lightly and critically about the acting, concerning which Guy was not critical at all.When they set off on their night journey, Guy grew quiet, and presently fell asleep. He looked tired, and the heavy eyelashes and the wistfulness, which, in sleep, his mouth seemed to share, made him seem younger than usual, and more in need of help. Suddenly he moved and started, while a look of shrinking terror came into his face. Cuthbert roused him, and he opened his eyes and caught his breath.“Dreaming of the play?” said Cuthbert, lightly.“No,” said Guy. He leant back in his corner, and seemed slowly to master himself, for presently he gave a little smile, and said, “I’m all right, thank you.”Cuthbert thought that he could see exactly what the sort of thing was now, and how it came about. Presently Guy began to talk about Hamlet, asking many well-worn questions, and a few more unexpected ones. Cuthbert, who had been working up all the criticisms for a set of lectures, felt as he answered him rather like an orthodox, but personally inexperienced professor of religion in the presence of an earnest young inquirer.After a little while, Guy said reflectively, “It is odd that he found it so hard to obey the ghost, rather than to resist him. I don’t much think Shakespeare ever felt one himself.”This tone of calm consideration of the psychological truth of Hamlet nearly made Cuthbert laugh, even while he was thinking of how to manage the young visionary beside him. It was years since his easy life had been invaded by so much anxiety for any one, years since he had had so lively an interest.Guy fished out the right volume of “Shakespeare” from among the books that played propriety in a glass bookcase in the dining-room at Ingleby, when he had finished his supper at two o’clock in the morning, and took it upstairs with him.On the next afternoon, perhaps happily to change the current of his thoughts, they were engaged to Mrs Raby’s garden party at Kirkton Hall, a big house between Ingleby and Kirk Hinton, and the source of much of the gaiety of the neighbourhood. On arriving, after the long drive, they beheld Godfrey’s flaxen head towering above the other tennis players as he prepared to play a match with Miss Raby, who was the champion lady-player of the district, against her brother and Constancy Vyner, who turned to Guy with a cordial and friendly greeting. She looked fresh and bright, and quite at her ease in Godfrey’s presence. Indeed, she had told her sister that she came on purpose to show that she could “manage the situation.” She had written Godfrey, instead of Geoffrey of Monmouth, three times in her Modern History notes that morning, and she spent much time in telling herself that she could never return his feelings.And now, with boy and girl defiance, and yet with instincts old as the earth on which they stood, the one thing for which each of the pair longed was to conquer the other.The play in that notable set was discussed by tennis-lovers for all the rest of the season, and the players never heeded the darkening of the sky, and the increasing weight of the air. Cosy’s hand was as steady and her aim as direct as if no inner consciousness existed, she put into her skilled play every atom of force that she possessed. As for Godfrey, he was as mad as a Berserker, and he looked like one.The game, owing to the equality of the players, was very long, and it by-and-by became evident to Florella that Miss Raby was getting tired, and was no longer playing at her best.They were playing the last game of the set. “Thirty all” was called as, without a moment’s warning, down fell a torrent of thunder, rain, and hail, enough to stop the most ardent players. Yet half a dozen more strokes—Miss Raby stepped back, exclaimed, “Oh, what a pity; we must declare the match drawn,” and fled to the house, while Mr Raby snatched up and held over her a lovely and useless white lace parasol.Constancy and Godfrey stood opposite each other for a moment in the drenching rain, both at once exclaiming, “Too bad!”Then she laughed and scudded off with lifted skirt, while Godfrey felt a sense of baffled anger which even defeat would not have brought to him.Then he had to walk rationally back to the house, and change his things, for the notes of a waltz suddenly sprang up. A big hall with a polished floor was cleared for dancing, fruit and ice were being handed round, and nobody cared very much for the thunderstorm.Guy, looked out for the harebell blue gown, which he always associated with Florella. It did not occur to him that she had very few smart frocks at Moorhead. He asked her to dance, and it was not till they had spun two or three times round the dark polished floor that his heart began to throb and flutter, and that it struck him that this was probably the sort of “exertion” forbidden to him. He felt miserable, and wished, not for the first time, that he had never spoken of his troubles. It was more endurable, locked up as it were in the cupboard in the wall, than now when it mixed itself up with his ordinary life. But the slight discomfort could not signify, the chief thing was to conceal it. He would go on dancing, and presently get some champagne. Florella, however, stopped of her own accord in the deep recess of a window.“I’m not a very good dancer,” she said, in her composed way. “You know I haven’t been out very much yet.”“Don’t you care for it?” said Guy, rather breathlessly.“I like it a little,” she said; “and it is lovely to watch, especially on a dark floor—crumb-cloths have no beauty.”The light was streaming in under the storm-clouds through the narrow windows in dull yellowish rays, the flying figures passed in and out of the shadow, against a background of polished oak.“I suppose,” said Guy, “that you like painting better than dancing?”“Oh, well,” said Florella, in a tone that showed her to be Cosy’s sister; “to say that is either a truism or a very priggish remark. You might as well ask if one liked strawberry ice best or poetry. But I like looking on best of all—feeling pictures.”“Do tell me what you mean?” said Guy, eagerly.Florella was always impelled to talk, or, perhaps more truly, to think by Guy. She was drifting again into talk that belonged only to him, and that she would not have held with any one else.“I don’t quite know what else to say,” she answered. “It is not exactly seeing things or noticing them. It is feeling the picture in them. This dance has a picture in it. Often I don’t feel so about things that are very beautiful.”“Did you ever see Hamlet?” said Guy, apparently with an abrupt change of subject.“Oh yes, more than once. Have you seen the new Hamlet?”“I saw it yesterday. I wish you’d tell me the meaning—what you see inside that.”“Oh,” said Florella, laughing. “That’s what many people have tried to see.”“I have read it all through to-day,” said Guy, naïvely. “What puzzles me is how, as the ghost was real, Hamlet had any doubt about him.”“Why, you see he thought that it might be an evil spirit taking his father’s shape.”“But if he had reallyfeltit, he must have known whether it was good or evil. Seeing a ghost isn’t like seeing a person outside you. Didn’t you know that the other day when you spoke of the only thing that could have helped—Guy Waynflete?”She flushed a deep crimson. There was something overwhelming to her in the conversation, and she could hardly speak. “That came into my mind,” she said. “I never thought of it before.”“But you believe it?”“Yes.”The rain was ceasing, and the dusty, misty light grew clearer and more radiant. The waltz finished in a glow of sunshine. Somehow the ghost and his own condition went right out of Guy’s head. He took Florella to eat peaches, and began to talk to her in a more ordinary way, while the strain of their previous intercourse lifted itself from her spirit. They felt quite intimate and at home with each other, so much so that Guy explained why he did not ask her to waltz again, quite simply and without effort, admitting that he had been told to be careful. It seemed quite natural to tell her what he had been unwilling to own to himself.He had hardly ever felt so happy, and when he was at ease, there was something sweet and bright in his face and manner which had a great charm.Constancy, who paid him a gratifying amount of attention, told herself many times that he was much more agreeable than his brother. Certainly Godfrey looked neither sweet nor bright. He danced with Jeanie because there was no occasion to make conversation for her, and glowered at Constancy, and when Guy, certainly in rather an off-hand way, told him of his visit to London, and of the doctor’s opinion, he only looked savage, and said—“You don’t seem as if there was much the matter with you to-day;” an answer which Cuthbert thought brutal, but which did not strike Guy as at all singular.Godfrey had intended to say much to Guy about the advisability of coming to Waynflete, and taking his place as the elder brother, but he was unable to express it amiably, so his honourable scruples took the form of remarking—“I can’t think why you’re such a fool as to annoy Aunt Waynflete by having Staunton with you. You ought to come over, and of course she doesn’t want to see him.”“I am not going to make myself absurd,” said Guy, coldly. “What do I care who Staunton’s great-grandfather was? He has been very kind to me.”“There’s a great deal in bad blood,” said Godfrey, obstinately. “It’s sure to come out. He’ll come across you somehow.”“There’s not much to choose between our great-grandfathers,” said Guy. “I’d just as soon have his as ours.”The agreeable little discussion was interrupted, and Guy only laughed as Godfrey was called away.But it might have been a different person who said suddenly to Staunton, as they drove back to Ingleby in the moonlight—“Cuthbert, the doctor thought I should get well, if I do take care, didn’t he?”“Oh yes, certainly. But you mustn’t play tricks with yourself.”“Well,” said Guy, seriously and cheerfully, “I mean to try; and, somehow, I think there’s a chance for me, altogether.”Guy slept that night without dream or disturbance; but for Florella there was no sleep for a long time. A whole rush of thoughts filled her mind; of ghosts and demons, black spirits and white, bad and good angels. She did not feel “creepy,” or in any way personally concerned, but she mentally realised, or, as she called it, “saw” all sorts of eerie situations. Guy Waynflete—she did not try in her thoughts to separate the generations—seemed to have been pursued by an evil power. Was there no good angel to help him?Florella saw—as she saw the thought in her pictures—the radiant image, all light and wings and glory, the instinctive presentment of a heavenly being which was her spiritual and artistic inheritance. Perhaps, in the light of that fair fancy, she fell asleep; but suddenly there was no outward vision any more, but a great awe and a passionate yearning within. A voice seemed to cry from the depths, “Oh, helping is so hard—sohard! There is noangelnessleft. It takes it all. My wings can’t be smooth and tidy!” Florella woke right up in the morning sunshine. The vision was over, but she did not forget it.
Cuthbert Staunton took Guy up to London to the house in Kensington to be inspected by a well-known doctor, who was also a personal friend of his own.
Guy despatched his petulant little note to his aunt before he started, and, perhaps, it was edged by his own discomfort, for he could hardly endure to be the subject of discussion and inquiry, and, the immediate effect of the night at Waynflete having passed off, held himself with difficulty to his resolution.
“You may trust me to tell him nothing against your wish,” said Staunton, beforehand.
“I don’t think you could tell him much,” said Guy, oddly. “But,” he added, “I wish to tell him that I am afraid of the brandy.”
The man of science, when told that he suffered from palpitations and exhaustion after any “nervous strain,” the expression substituted by Cuthbert for Guy’s straightforward “when I am frightened,” and also of this means of remedy, made due examination of him, and asked various questions, eliciting that he was easily tired, and that his heart did throb sometimes after over-fatigue or over-hurry, “but not to signify at all, that didn’t matter.”
And could he foretell when periods of nervous excitement were likely to occur, so as to avoid them?
“No,” said Guy; and then he added, while his lips grew a little white, “I want to be told how to deal with the effects of it so that the remedy mayn’t be worse than the thing itself. No one can help me as to the cause.”
“Ah!” said the doctor, thoughtfully. Then he gave various directions as to avoiding fatigue, worry, or excitement. A winter abroad would be good, change of scene and occupation. There was no serious mischief at work at present; but there was need of great care and consideration. And with a gravity showing that he understood one part of the matter, severe restrictions were laid on the use of brandy and everything analogous to it, and other prescriptions substituted. “Mr Waynflete mustn’t be alarmed about himself; care for a year or two would make all the difference. He would grow stronger, and the nervous strain would lessen in proportion.”
Guy looked back at him, but said nothing; and as he took leave, Cuthbert remained for a minute or two.
“That young fellow is a good deal out of health,” said the doctor. “Hasn’t he a mother or any one to look after him?”
“Not a soul capable, except me,” said Staunton. “I’m going to do it as well as I can, and he will let me.”
“Well, remember this: whether he can avoid nervous shocks or no,he must not have them. And he can’t be too much afraid of the brandy. Get him out of whatever oppresses him. It’s the only plan. The heart is weak, and the brain—excitable.”
“Should you like a spell abroad?” said Staunton, as they sat at luncheon at his club.
“I could not go,” said Guy. “That would mean giving up having any concern with the business. And I haven’t enough money.”
“But if Mrs Waynflete knew that it was a matter of health—You must really let your friends know that you have to be careful.”
It was a new idea to Guy that the effects of his attacks were of importance in themselves, and naturally an unwelcome one. He looked rather obstinate, and went on eating his salad. After a minute or two, he said—
“I will do what I come to think is right. No one else can quite know.”
“No; but don’t you see, my dear boy, that whatever strengthens your constitution altogether will help you to—to—contend with your trouble—and make it less likely to attack you?”
“Yes,” said Guy, slowly. “What other people say does help one to think.”
“Well, there’s no hurry to decide,” said Cuthbert. “You still think you would like to go down to-night? Certainly, there isn’t much on at present here. What shall we do this afternoon?”
A friend of Staunton’s here turned up and pressed on their acceptance some tickets for a morning performance of Hamlet, in which he was interested.
“Should you like to go, Guy?” said Cuthbert; “there would be plenty of time to dine afterwards, and get our train.”
Guy thought that he would like it, and it was not till they were sitting in the stalls that it struck his friend that Hamlet was not calculated to divert his mind from the subject that engrossed it. Still, it must be familiar to him.
But Cuthbert failed to realise that, though Guy believed himself to have “read Shakespeare,” it is possible for a country-bred youth, brought up in an unliterary and non-play-going family, to bring an extremely fresh interest to bear on our great dramatist, and though Guy was not quite in the condition of the lady who, in the middle of the murder scene in Macbeth, observed tearfully to her friend, “Oh dear, I am afraid this cannot end well!” he was but dimly prepared for what he was going to see. He gave an odd little laugh as the ghost crossed the stage, but watched intently and quietly.
“What do you think of it?” said Cuthbert, in a pause. “He’s not so bad, is he?”
“He says some very remarkable things,” said Guy, seriously. “Things that seem true; but I never thought of them. Don’t you suppose the ghost wasthere, watching for him to act, often though he couldn’t see him?”
“Well, really,” said Cuthbert; “I do think you have made a new remark on Hamlet. I never heard that suggestion. We can go, you know, if you’re bored, any time.”
“No,” said Guy; “I like it.”
Guy had the faculty of calling up distinct mental pictures. It was the method by which he thought, and the moving scene stamped itself, as plays sometimes will, both on his eyes and on his memory. When they came out into the daylight he felt bewildered as if the world outside was the unreal one.
“The ghost didn’t do much good,” he said; while Cuthbert, wishing he had had more forethought, talked lightly and critically about the acting, concerning which Guy was not critical at all.
When they set off on their night journey, Guy grew quiet, and presently fell asleep. He looked tired, and the heavy eyelashes and the wistfulness, which, in sleep, his mouth seemed to share, made him seem younger than usual, and more in need of help. Suddenly he moved and started, while a look of shrinking terror came into his face. Cuthbert roused him, and he opened his eyes and caught his breath.
“Dreaming of the play?” said Cuthbert, lightly.
“No,” said Guy. He leant back in his corner, and seemed slowly to master himself, for presently he gave a little smile, and said, “I’m all right, thank you.”
Cuthbert thought that he could see exactly what the sort of thing was now, and how it came about. Presently Guy began to talk about Hamlet, asking many well-worn questions, and a few more unexpected ones. Cuthbert, who had been working up all the criticisms for a set of lectures, felt as he answered him rather like an orthodox, but personally inexperienced professor of religion in the presence of an earnest young inquirer.
After a little while, Guy said reflectively, “It is odd that he found it so hard to obey the ghost, rather than to resist him. I don’t much think Shakespeare ever felt one himself.”
This tone of calm consideration of the psychological truth of Hamlet nearly made Cuthbert laugh, even while he was thinking of how to manage the young visionary beside him. It was years since his easy life had been invaded by so much anxiety for any one, years since he had had so lively an interest.
Guy fished out the right volume of “Shakespeare” from among the books that played propriety in a glass bookcase in the dining-room at Ingleby, when he had finished his supper at two o’clock in the morning, and took it upstairs with him.
On the next afternoon, perhaps happily to change the current of his thoughts, they were engaged to Mrs Raby’s garden party at Kirkton Hall, a big house between Ingleby and Kirk Hinton, and the source of much of the gaiety of the neighbourhood. On arriving, after the long drive, they beheld Godfrey’s flaxen head towering above the other tennis players as he prepared to play a match with Miss Raby, who was the champion lady-player of the district, against her brother and Constancy Vyner, who turned to Guy with a cordial and friendly greeting. She looked fresh and bright, and quite at her ease in Godfrey’s presence. Indeed, she had told her sister that she came on purpose to show that she could “manage the situation.” She had written Godfrey, instead of Geoffrey of Monmouth, three times in her Modern History notes that morning, and she spent much time in telling herself that she could never return his feelings.
And now, with boy and girl defiance, and yet with instincts old as the earth on which they stood, the one thing for which each of the pair longed was to conquer the other.
The play in that notable set was discussed by tennis-lovers for all the rest of the season, and the players never heeded the darkening of the sky, and the increasing weight of the air. Cosy’s hand was as steady and her aim as direct as if no inner consciousness existed, she put into her skilled play every atom of force that she possessed. As for Godfrey, he was as mad as a Berserker, and he looked like one.
The game, owing to the equality of the players, was very long, and it by-and-by became evident to Florella that Miss Raby was getting tired, and was no longer playing at her best.
They were playing the last game of the set. “Thirty all” was called as, without a moment’s warning, down fell a torrent of thunder, rain, and hail, enough to stop the most ardent players. Yet half a dozen more strokes—Miss Raby stepped back, exclaimed, “Oh, what a pity; we must declare the match drawn,” and fled to the house, while Mr Raby snatched up and held over her a lovely and useless white lace parasol.
Constancy and Godfrey stood opposite each other for a moment in the drenching rain, both at once exclaiming, “Too bad!”
Then she laughed and scudded off with lifted skirt, while Godfrey felt a sense of baffled anger which even defeat would not have brought to him.
Then he had to walk rationally back to the house, and change his things, for the notes of a waltz suddenly sprang up. A big hall with a polished floor was cleared for dancing, fruit and ice were being handed round, and nobody cared very much for the thunderstorm.
Guy, looked out for the harebell blue gown, which he always associated with Florella. It did not occur to him that she had very few smart frocks at Moorhead. He asked her to dance, and it was not till they had spun two or three times round the dark polished floor that his heart began to throb and flutter, and that it struck him that this was probably the sort of “exertion” forbidden to him. He felt miserable, and wished, not for the first time, that he had never spoken of his troubles. It was more endurable, locked up as it were in the cupboard in the wall, than now when it mixed itself up with his ordinary life. But the slight discomfort could not signify, the chief thing was to conceal it. He would go on dancing, and presently get some champagne. Florella, however, stopped of her own accord in the deep recess of a window.
“I’m not a very good dancer,” she said, in her composed way. “You know I haven’t been out very much yet.”
“Don’t you care for it?” said Guy, rather breathlessly.
“I like it a little,” she said; “and it is lovely to watch, especially on a dark floor—crumb-cloths have no beauty.”
The light was streaming in under the storm-clouds through the narrow windows in dull yellowish rays, the flying figures passed in and out of the shadow, against a background of polished oak.
“I suppose,” said Guy, “that you like painting better than dancing?”
“Oh, well,” said Florella, in a tone that showed her to be Cosy’s sister; “to say that is either a truism or a very priggish remark. You might as well ask if one liked strawberry ice best or poetry. But I like looking on best of all—feeling pictures.”
“Do tell me what you mean?” said Guy, eagerly.
Florella was always impelled to talk, or, perhaps more truly, to think by Guy. She was drifting again into talk that belonged only to him, and that she would not have held with any one else.
“I don’t quite know what else to say,” she answered. “It is not exactly seeing things or noticing them. It is feeling the picture in them. This dance has a picture in it. Often I don’t feel so about things that are very beautiful.”
“Did you ever see Hamlet?” said Guy, apparently with an abrupt change of subject.
“Oh yes, more than once. Have you seen the new Hamlet?”
“I saw it yesterday. I wish you’d tell me the meaning—what you see inside that.”
“Oh,” said Florella, laughing. “That’s what many people have tried to see.”
“I have read it all through to-day,” said Guy, naïvely. “What puzzles me is how, as the ghost was real, Hamlet had any doubt about him.”
“Why, you see he thought that it might be an evil spirit taking his father’s shape.”
“But if he had reallyfeltit, he must have known whether it was good or evil. Seeing a ghost isn’t like seeing a person outside you. Didn’t you know that the other day when you spoke of the only thing that could have helped—Guy Waynflete?”
She flushed a deep crimson. There was something overwhelming to her in the conversation, and she could hardly speak. “That came into my mind,” she said. “I never thought of it before.”
“But you believe it?”
“Yes.”
The rain was ceasing, and the dusty, misty light grew clearer and more radiant. The waltz finished in a glow of sunshine. Somehow the ghost and his own condition went right out of Guy’s head. He took Florella to eat peaches, and began to talk to her in a more ordinary way, while the strain of their previous intercourse lifted itself from her spirit. They felt quite intimate and at home with each other, so much so that Guy explained why he did not ask her to waltz again, quite simply and without effort, admitting that he had been told to be careful. It seemed quite natural to tell her what he had been unwilling to own to himself.
He had hardly ever felt so happy, and when he was at ease, there was something sweet and bright in his face and manner which had a great charm.
Constancy, who paid him a gratifying amount of attention, told herself many times that he was much more agreeable than his brother. Certainly Godfrey looked neither sweet nor bright. He danced with Jeanie because there was no occasion to make conversation for her, and glowered at Constancy, and when Guy, certainly in rather an off-hand way, told him of his visit to London, and of the doctor’s opinion, he only looked savage, and said—
“You don’t seem as if there was much the matter with you to-day;” an answer which Cuthbert thought brutal, but which did not strike Guy as at all singular.
Godfrey had intended to say much to Guy about the advisability of coming to Waynflete, and taking his place as the elder brother, but he was unable to express it amiably, so his honourable scruples took the form of remarking—
“I can’t think why you’re such a fool as to annoy Aunt Waynflete by having Staunton with you. You ought to come over, and of course she doesn’t want to see him.”
“I am not going to make myself absurd,” said Guy, coldly. “What do I care who Staunton’s great-grandfather was? He has been very kind to me.”
“There’s a great deal in bad blood,” said Godfrey, obstinately. “It’s sure to come out. He’ll come across you somehow.”
“There’s not much to choose between our great-grandfathers,” said Guy. “I’d just as soon have his as ours.”
The agreeable little discussion was interrupted, and Guy only laughed as Godfrey was called away.
But it might have been a different person who said suddenly to Staunton, as they drove back to Ingleby in the moonlight—
“Cuthbert, the doctor thought I should get well, if I do take care, didn’t he?”
“Oh yes, certainly. But you mustn’t play tricks with yourself.”
“Well,” said Guy, seriously and cheerfully, “I mean to try; and, somehow, I think there’s a chance for me, altogether.”
Guy slept that night without dream or disturbance; but for Florella there was no sleep for a long time. A whole rush of thoughts filled her mind; of ghosts and demons, black spirits and white, bad and good angels. She did not feel “creepy,” or in any way personally concerned, but she mentally realised, or, as she called it, “saw” all sorts of eerie situations. Guy Waynflete—she did not try in her thoughts to separate the generations—seemed to have been pursued by an evil power. Was there no good angel to help him?
Florella saw—as she saw the thought in her pictures—the radiant image, all light and wings and glory, the instinctive presentment of a heavenly being which was her spiritual and artistic inheritance. Perhaps, in the light of that fair fancy, she fell asleep; but suddenly there was no outward vision any more, but a great awe and a passionate yearning within. A voice seemed to cry from the depths, “Oh, helping is so hard—sohard! There is noangelnessleft. It takes it all. My wings can’t be smooth and tidy!” Florella woke right up in the morning sunshine. The vision was over, but she did not forget it.
Part 2, Chapter IV.Throwing Down the Gauntlet.Shortly after this day at the Rabys, Mrs Joshua Palmer went up to Waynflete ostensibly because she thought that she could be of some use to Aunt Waynflete in getting comfortably settled in there, and in finally arranging her household if, as seemed likely, she remained there for the winter, but really moved by something in her daughter’s letters which excited her anxiety. It would not do at all to have “anything” between Godfrey and Jeanie, at their age. By-and-by, if anything really came of the fancy, things might be different.Guy and his friend were therefore left alone at Ingleby, and two or three weeks passed without much outward event, but of much inward importance.Guy, whether wisely or unwisely, plunged into the study of such experiences as his own, and their possible explanations. He had no difficulty in these days in finding material, and he brought to bear on the subject an amount of acute intelligence and reasoning power for which Staunton had hardly given him credit. He puzzled him a good deal by his ridicule of some recorded stories, and his keen interest in others. He mastered the point of the various theories, stating and criticising them with much force, and the discussions were certainly so far good for him that he lost some of his sense of unique and shameful experience. But Cuthbert saw that he tested everything by an incommunicable and inexplicable sense, and he never uttered any definite conviction as regarded himself. He had no “nervous attacks” as Cuthbert called them; but whether the terrible night at Waynflete had done him permanent harm, or whether the strain was more continuous than appeared, he was certainly far from strong, and suffered from any extra exertion, so that the need of care was evident enough.“I believe I was a fool to set you upon all this reading,” said Cuthbert, one day. “You’ll wear yourself out with it when I have to leave you.”“It would be very difficult to be alone,” said Guy, thoughtfully.“It’s out of the question. You’re not fit for the mill or for the hard winter here. You ought to have a sea-voyage, or something of that sort. Or, at any rate, come and stay on the south coast somewhere where I could make my headquarters while I’m lecturing, and see you now and then.”“There are a great many things I can’t quite tell you,” said Guy, after a pause, “and they don’t only concern myself. It’s all right about the reading, but I’ve got something to do to-day. It’s quite simple, only rather hard. And I know ‘he’ doesn’t want me to do it.”Guy had said nothing so personal since his first confession, and, as he got up languidly, and prepared to return to the mill for his afternoon work, giving his friend an odd, half-smiling look, as he moved away, Cuthbert felt an uncomfortable thrill.It startled him to feel that Guy’s conviction lay absolutely untouched by all his recent study. There was something inscrutable behind the pathetic eyes, and what was it? Was the boy “mad north-north west?” or would he at last compel belief in the incredible? Horatio, Cuthbert thought, had a great advantage in having actually seen the ghost that haunted Hamlet.Then he remembered making some remark to Guy on the “objective” character of this famous apparition, and Guy had answered, “But they only saw it, as you see a house or a tree. I don’t suppose it made much difference to them.”Guy betook himself to the mill, and called John Cooper into the room where the bottle of brandy was still locked up in the cupboard in the wall. He had often been as conscious of its presence there, as he could have been of that of the ghost; every morning he thought about it more and more persistently, and every evening when he went away he knew that the day’s victory had left him with less strength for the morrow’s conflict.Now, when he went up to the cupboard, and turned the key in the lock, and, with his keen ears heard the old manager’s step crossing the court—it was to him as if another hand pushed the lock back—and another than himself suggested a different reason for the summons. But he stood still, leaning against the wall, till the old man came into the room.Then he put up his hand, and let the door swing open.“John Cooper,” he said, “take that out, and take it away with you. I’ll own you had right on your side. But you shouldn’t have cackled about it to Mrs Waynflete.”“Well now,” said Cooper, in a rougher echo of the young man’s slow, musical voice, “I’ve thought of that myself. I’m glad you’ve come to a better mind about it, Mr Guy, for I’d not be willing to see the old missus disappointed in your future.”“She don’t expect much,” said Guy. “Now then,” after Cooper had taken the brandy-bottle out of the cupboard, and set it beside a file of bills. “Now that you see I’m not going to send the business and myself to the dogs, shut the door, I’ve something to say.”John Cooper obeyed, and Guy sat down by the table.“Now then,” he repeated, “we are going to the dogs, and you know it. Let’s look it in the face.”“Eh, Mr Guy, trade’s fluctuating. We’ll pull round without letting th’ owd lady know there’s aught wrong.”“Look here,” said Guy, opening a paper, “d’ye think I’ve no brains in my head? Look at the number of orders for this year, and last year, and ten years back. Look at the receipts. What’s the use of spending money on setting all those out-of-date old looms in order? Where’s the sense of manufacturing the sort of goods people don’t want, instead of what they do? Is that the way these mills were run sixty years ago, when old Mr Thomas managed the business?”“He got the new looms, sir.”“Exactly so; and wouldn’t he have seen long ago that they were worn out. Look here, John, we’ll have to pull up, and put our shoulders to the wheel, or we’ll have Palmer Brothers down among the failures before many months are over.”“Eh, Mr Guy, for the Lord’s sake don’t say so. Don’t mention such a thing. ’Tis those new mills over Rilston way—and the price of coals—and trade being bad ever since the Government— Eh, my lad, just think of your old auntie, seeing all her life work undone, and having to sell the property she’s so proud over.”Here Guy started slightly, as the old man’s voice choked.“But we’re not going to fail,” he said. “We’re going to fight it out and pull through; that is, if you back me up.”John Cooper stared at him incredulously. Besides his natural surprise that this “laddie” was old enough to have a say in the matter, and besides his not unjustifiable suspicions of him, Guy’s delicate outlines and look of ill-health—in fact, his whole air—was so unlike that of the powerful old woman who had so long held the reins, that the identical form of the lines into which his lips set, was unperceived, and the sudden, keen glance that came through the silky black lashes, from the usually absent eyes, was startling.“You know well enough, sir,” said Cooper shakily, “that there’s nought I wouldn’t do for the old lady and the business. She’s been a grand character all her days, and if there’s a curse on the Waynfletes, she set her teeth against it when she was but a slip of a lass, with rosy cheeks and eyes that could look the sun down.”“Ay?” said Guy. “What d’ye mean by a curse on the Waynfletes?”“Well, sir, of course it’s only a manner of speech; but there were plenty to say that Margaret Waynflete’d bring Palmers her own ill luck. Now, I say, Margaret never brought ill luck to any man; and Mr Thomas had the best of good fortune when he took her with her shawl over her head and without a penny. Bad luck’ll never overtake her now in her old age.”“It will, unless we set our teeth against it pretty hard. I’m going to tight. Now, look here, it all depends on what money or credit can be produced now. In a few months it will be too late. I’m going to make my aunt attend to what I have to say; and, if I can, get her to trust me. For she’ll have to trust me with all she has, and make me the master, or down we shall go. And what you’ve got to do, is to tell her honestly, from the bottom of your soul, thatyoutrust me, and know I’ve got her own grit in me. So now, I give you my solemn word of honour that I’ll never touch a drop of strong drink till ‘Palmer Brothers’ is itself again, and Waynflete safe; and, if I fail, may I become part of the curse myself. So here goes!”He took up the brandy-bottle, and threw it out of the window, down into the shallow, dark-dyed stream below. They heard it crack against the stony bottom.“Now then,” said Guy, “will you back me up?”“Lord, Mr Guy! That was unnecessary behaviour,” said the bewildered Cooper; “and very strong language to use. But I’ll go along with you. You’ve brought me to look the Lord’s will in the face—which isn’t easy at seventy-eight—for there’s not a matter of four years between me and the missus. But I’ll serve you faithful, Mr Guy; and if the Almighty means us to fail—”“But He don’t,” said Guy. “It’s quite another sort of person that means it. Now sit down, and we’ll talk business.”As Guy marshalled his figures and his facts, asked penetrating questions, and prepared the statement to which Mrs Waynflete must at all costs be made to hearken, Cooper, who had a hard enough head of his own, silently gave in and yielded his whole allegiance. Only when the interview was over, he said, pleadingly—“You’ll be gentle, Mr Guy? For it don’t come easy to old folks to turn their minds upside down. It is easy for a young lad like you to act.”“Think so?” said Guy, with a queer, sad look. “Well, I’ll do what I can.”He was much more tired than was good for him, as he came in to the study, in the rapidly increasing darkness of the autumn afternoon. Cuthbert was not there, and all his sense of courage and energy failed him; for, the more resolutely a nervous strain is encountered, the less power of resistance is left. He grew drowsy in the dusk, then roused up suddenly to the agony of panic-fear, to the intolerable sense of his enemy within him. He might cover eyes and ears, but it entered by no such avenues—anything to drown—to bury it. There was whisky in the cupboard. He staggered to his feet, and the next moment Cuthbert’s hand was on his shoulder.“Steady, my boy, steady. What is it? Lie down again. I am here; you’ll be better in a minute.”Guy clung to the hand of flesh and blood as if he had been drowning. He hid his face, not hearing one word that Cuthbert said. He was not merely suffering terror, but struggling, fighting to free himself, to escape, toseparatehimself from the influence that seemed to be upon him, resisting and opposing it with all his strength. “Oh, help—help!” he gasped.“Yes—yes, my dear boy. Lie still. It will pass off directly.”And very soon, in two or three minutes, as Cuthbert counted time, the agony seemed to cease, and Guy dropped back, deadly faint, but with closed eyes and smooth brow.Cuthbert brought him, as soon as he let go his desperate hold, some of the remedy provided by the doctor, and tended him with a care and kindness altogether new to him.“It’smuchbetter with you here,” said Guy, presently, as if half-surprised.“Of course it is. You were so tired; no wonder a bad dream upset you.”Guy lifted his heavy eyes for a moment, and looked at him.“Averybad dream,” he said drily. “It’s over now.”“Tell me what it was?”“He came, that’s all. No, I can’t tell you. You don’t understand; but you help.”Cuthbert did not think him fit for an argument, and sat by him in silence. He felt that the sight of Guy’s agony had tried his own nerves somewhat. It was an odd turn of fate, he thought, that brought a quiet, everyday person like himself, to whom no great heights or depths, either of character or of fortune, were likely to come, who held steady, unexciting opinions, and expected no revelations about anything, to be guide, philosopher, and friend, to this strange being, for whom the balance swung with such frightful oscillations.Guy was very quiet all the evening, submitting with a little surprise to his friend’s precautions, but evidently finding it comfortable to have done with concealment.Only, the last thing of all, he looked at Cuthbert with his mocking smile on his lip—“What a ‘softy’ I should be,” he said, “if this was what you think it!”
Shortly after this day at the Rabys, Mrs Joshua Palmer went up to Waynflete ostensibly because she thought that she could be of some use to Aunt Waynflete in getting comfortably settled in there, and in finally arranging her household if, as seemed likely, she remained there for the winter, but really moved by something in her daughter’s letters which excited her anxiety. It would not do at all to have “anything” between Godfrey and Jeanie, at their age. By-and-by, if anything really came of the fancy, things might be different.
Guy and his friend were therefore left alone at Ingleby, and two or three weeks passed without much outward event, but of much inward importance.
Guy, whether wisely or unwisely, plunged into the study of such experiences as his own, and their possible explanations. He had no difficulty in these days in finding material, and he brought to bear on the subject an amount of acute intelligence and reasoning power for which Staunton had hardly given him credit. He puzzled him a good deal by his ridicule of some recorded stories, and his keen interest in others. He mastered the point of the various theories, stating and criticising them with much force, and the discussions were certainly so far good for him that he lost some of his sense of unique and shameful experience. But Cuthbert saw that he tested everything by an incommunicable and inexplicable sense, and he never uttered any definite conviction as regarded himself. He had no “nervous attacks” as Cuthbert called them; but whether the terrible night at Waynflete had done him permanent harm, or whether the strain was more continuous than appeared, he was certainly far from strong, and suffered from any extra exertion, so that the need of care was evident enough.
“I believe I was a fool to set you upon all this reading,” said Cuthbert, one day. “You’ll wear yourself out with it when I have to leave you.”
“It would be very difficult to be alone,” said Guy, thoughtfully.
“It’s out of the question. You’re not fit for the mill or for the hard winter here. You ought to have a sea-voyage, or something of that sort. Or, at any rate, come and stay on the south coast somewhere where I could make my headquarters while I’m lecturing, and see you now and then.”
“There are a great many things I can’t quite tell you,” said Guy, after a pause, “and they don’t only concern myself. It’s all right about the reading, but I’ve got something to do to-day. It’s quite simple, only rather hard. And I know ‘he’ doesn’t want me to do it.”
Guy had said nothing so personal since his first confession, and, as he got up languidly, and prepared to return to the mill for his afternoon work, giving his friend an odd, half-smiling look, as he moved away, Cuthbert felt an uncomfortable thrill.
It startled him to feel that Guy’s conviction lay absolutely untouched by all his recent study. There was something inscrutable behind the pathetic eyes, and what was it? Was the boy “mad north-north west?” or would he at last compel belief in the incredible? Horatio, Cuthbert thought, had a great advantage in having actually seen the ghost that haunted Hamlet.
Then he remembered making some remark to Guy on the “objective” character of this famous apparition, and Guy had answered, “But they only saw it, as you see a house or a tree. I don’t suppose it made much difference to them.”
Guy betook himself to the mill, and called John Cooper into the room where the bottle of brandy was still locked up in the cupboard in the wall. He had often been as conscious of its presence there, as he could have been of that of the ghost; every morning he thought about it more and more persistently, and every evening when he went away he knew that the day’s victory had left him with less strength for the morrow’s conflict.
Now, when he went up to the cupboard, and turned the key in the lock, and, with his keen ears heard the old manager’s step crossing the court—it was to him as if another hand pushed the lock back—and another than himself suggested a different reason for the summons. But he stood still, leaning against the wall, till the old man came into the room.
Then he put up his hand, and let the door swing open.
“John Cooper,” he said, “take that out, and take it away with you. I’ll own you had right on your side. But you shouldn’t have cackled about it to Mrs Waynflete.”
“Well now,” said Cooper, in a rougher echo of the young man’s slow, musical voice, “I’ve thought of that myself. I’m glad you’ve come to a better mind about it, Mr Guy, for I’d not be willing to see the old missus disappointed in your future.”
“She don’t expect much,” said Guy. “Now then,” after Cooper had taken the brandy-bottle out of the cupboard, and set it beside a file of bills. “Now that you see I’m not going to send the business and myself to the dogs, shut the door, I’ve something to say.”
John Cooper obeyed, and Guy sat down by the table.
“Now then,” he repeated, “we are going to the dogs, and you know it. Let’s look it in the face.”
“Eh, Mr Guy, trade’s fluctuating. We’ll pull round without letting th’ owd lady know there’s aught wrong.”
“Look here,” said Guy, opening a paper, “d’ye think I’ve no brains in my head? Look at the number of orders for this year, and last year, and ten years back. Look at the receipts. What’s the use of spending money on setting all those out-of-date old looms in order? Where’s the sense of manufacturing the sort of goods people don’t want, instead of what they do? Is that the way these mills were run sixty years ago, when old Mr Thomas managed the business?”
“He got the new looms, sir.”
“Exactly so; and wouldn’t he have seen long ago that they were worn out. Look here, John, we’ll have to pull up, and put our shoulders to the wheel, or we’ll have Palmer Brothers down among the failures before many months are over.”
“Eh, Mr Guy, for the Lord’s sake don’t say so. Don’t mention such a thing. ’Tis those new mills over Rilston way—and the price of coals—and trade being bad ever since the Government— Eh, my lad, just think of your old auntie, seeing all her life work undone, and having to sell the property she’s so proud over.”
Here Guy started slightly, as the old man’s voice choked.
“But we’re not going to fail,” he said. “We’re going to fight it out and pull through; that is, if you back me up.”
John Cooper stared at him incredulously. Besides his natural surprise that this “laddie” was old enough to have a say in the matter, and besides his not unjustifiable suspicions of him, Guy’s delicate outlines and look of ill-health—in fact, his whole air—was so unlike that of the powerful old woman who had so long held the reins, that the identical form of the lines into which his lips set, was unperceived, and the sudden, keen glance that came through the silky black lashes, from the usually absent eyes, was startling.
“You know well enough, sir,” said Cooper shakily, “that there’s nought I wouldn’t do for the old lady and the business. She’s been a grand character all her days, and if there’s a curse on the Waynfletes, she set her teeth against it when she was but a slip of a lass, with rosy cheeks and eyes that could look the sun down.”
“Ay?” said Guy. “What d’ye mean by a curse on the Waynfletes?”
“Well, sir, of course it’s only a manner of speech; but there were plenty to say that Margaret Waynflete’d bring Palmers her own ill luck. Now, I say, Margaret never brought ill luck to any man; and Mr Thomas had the best of good fortune when he took her with her shawl over her head and without a penny. Bad luck’ll never overtake her now in her old age.”
“It will, unless we set our teeth against it pretty hard. I’m going to tight. Now, look here, it all depends on what money or credit can be produced now. In a few months it will be too late. I’m going to make my aunt attend to what I have to say; and, if I can, get her to trust me. For she’ll have to trust me with all she has, and make me the master, or down we shall go. And what you’ve got to do, is to tell her honestly, from the bottom of your soul, thatyoutrust me, and know I’ve got her own grit in me. So now, I give you my solemn word of honour that I’ll never touch a drop of strong drink till ‘Palmer Brothers’ is itself again, and Waynflete safe; and, if I fail, may I become part of the curse myself. So here goes!”
He took up the brandy-bottle, and threw it out of the window, down into the shallow, dark-dyed stream below. They heard it crack against the stony bottom.
“Now then,” said Guy, “will you back me up?”
“Lord, Mr Guy! That was unnecessary behaviour,” said the bewildered Cooper; “and very strong language to use. But I’ll go along with you. You’ve brought me to look the Lord’s will in the face—which isn’t easy at seventy-eight—for there’s not a matter of four years between me and the missus. But I’ll serve you faithful, Mr Guy; and if the Almighty means us to fail—”
“But He don’t,” said Guy. “It’s quite another sort of person that means it. Now sit down, and we’ll talk business.”
As Guy marshalled his figures and his facts, asked penetrating questions, and prepared the statement to which Mrs Waynflete must at all costs be made to hearken, Cooper, who had a hard enough head of his own, silently gave in and yielded his whole allegiance. Only when the interview was over, he said, pleadingly—
“You’ll be gentle, Mr Guy? For it don’t come easy to old folks to turn their minds upside down. It is easy for a young lad like you to act.”
“Think so?” said Guy, with a queer, sad look. “Well, I’ll do what I can.”
He was much more tired than was good for him, as he came in to the study, in the rapidly increasing darkness of the autumn afternoon. Cuthbert was not there, and all his sense of courage and energy failed him; for, the more resolutely a nervous strain is encountered, the less power of resistance is left. He grew drowsy in the dusk, then roused up suddenly to the agony of panic-fear, to the intolerable sense of his enemy within him. He might cover eyes and ears, but it entered by no such avenues—anything to drown—to bury it. There was whisky in the cupboard. He staggered to his feet, and the next moment Cuthbert’s hand was on his shoulder.
“Steady, my boy, steady. What is it? Lie down again. I am here; you’ll be better in a minute.”
Guy clung to the hand of flesh and blood as if he had been drowning. He hid his face, not hearing one word that Cuthbert said. He was not merely suffering terror, but struggling, fighting to free himself, to escape, toseparatehimself from the influence that seemed to be upon him, resisting and opposing it with all his strength. “Oh, help—help!” he gasped.
“Yes—yes, my dear boy. Lie still. It will pass off directly.”
And very soon, in two or three minutes, as Cuthbert counted time, the agony seemed to cease, and Guy dropped back, deadly faint, but with closed eyes and smooth brow.
Cuthbert brought him, as soon as he let go his desperate hold, some of the remedy provided by the doctor, and tended him with a care and kindness altogether new to him.
“It’smuchbetter with you here,” said Guy, presently, as if half-surprised.
“Of course it is. You were so tired; no wonder a bad dream upset you.”
Guy lifted his heavy eyes for a moment, and looked at him.
“Averybad dream,” he said drily. “It’s over now.”
“Tell me what it was?”
“He came, that’s all. No, I can’t tell you. You don’t understand; but you help.”
Cuthbert did not think him fit for an argument, and sat by him in silence. He felt that the sight of Guy’s agony had tried his own nerves somewhat. It was an odd turn of fate, he thought, that brought a quiet, everyday person like himself, to whom no great heights or depths, either of character or of fortune, were likely to come, who held steady, unexciting opinions, and expected no revelations about anything, to be guide, philosopher, and friend, to this strange being, for whom the balance swung with such frightful oscillations.
Guy was very quiet all the evening, submitting with a little surprise to his friend’s precautions, but evidently finding it comfortable to have done with concealment.
Only, the last thing of all, he looked at Cuthbert with his mocking smile on his lip—“What a ‘softy’ I should be,” he said, “if this was what you think it!”
Part 2, Chapter V.The Mother’s Book.Some few days before the stay at Moorhead came to an end, Kitty Staunton received a letter, which surprised her greatly, as it came from a person of whose existence she had never previously heard. It was signed “Catherine Maxwell,” and began, “My dear young cousin,” and stated that the writer had heard from her old friend Mrs Raby that the Miss Stauntons were staying at Moorhead, and that, as she believed them to be her cousin George Maxwell’s grandchildren, it would give her great pleasure to make their acquaintance; would they come over and spend the day with her at her little cottage at Ousel well, bringing with them any of their young friends who cared for the drive?Kitty and Violet being curious and interested, and Florella being inclined for the expedition, the three set off one fine brisk morning; over the moors on the opposite side to Kirk Hinton, and came to a little cold, fresh village, high up on the side of a narrow valley. Here in a cold, fresh little house, with latched doors painted with thin white paint, and deeply recessed windows looking into a little garden full of hardy plants, now turning brown and yellow with the autumn frosts, they found an apple-cheeked old lady dressed in a shot-silk gown of so old a style that it was just about to come again into fashion. She spoke with so strong a northern accent that the London girls caught what she said with difficulty; but she made them most heartily welcome, gave them some very thin and long-legged fowls for dinner, followed up by curds and red-currant jelly. Then she showed them sundry curiosities, which they knew how to admire. There was a filigree basket, like to the one which Rosamond of the Purple Vase made for her cousin’s birthday, and for which she was so unmercifully snubbed by the common sense of her unfeeling parents. There were engravings in oval frames, bits of Leeds china, an old spinning-wheel, and finally, a quaintly shaped card-table, which on being opened, displayed, instead of green cloth, an exquisitely worked pattern of faded roses in the very finest tent-stitch.“And that, cousin love,” she said, “was in Waynflete Hall when it belonged to my great-grandfather Maxwell.”“Really!” said Kitty, with much interest. “Our brother Cuthbert is staying with Mr Guy Waynflete at Ingleby now. It was through him that we came to Moorhead.”Miss Maxwell looked quite awestruck.“Well, well,” she said, “young people’s ways are different. I should never have made myself known to Mrs Waynflete, nor should I think of calling at Waynflete, even if I visited at that distance. Not that I keep up old grudges, my love, but there’s a delicacy in such matters.”“Cuthbert knew Mr Waynflete a long time before they knew about any former connection. I don’t think it troubles them, they are great friends.”“Ah!” said Miss Maxwell. “Guy, too, I hope—”“Cousin Catherine,” said Violet, boldly; “I am sure you can tell us delightful old stories of the two families. Do! Tell us about the ghost and the Guy Waynflete who never got back in time. Have we got a ghost as well as the Waynfletes?”“Oh no, love,” said Miss Maxwell, “our family was never of that kind; and indeed, when there’s so much drinking and dissipation as there was among the Waynfletes, there’s no need of ghosts to bring ruin. And I’m sure your brother will always remember, that it was all in the way of business my great-grandfather obtained the place.”“And how did he lose it again?” asked Violet.“My dear, through business misfortunes,” said Miss Maxwell, with dignity. “And Ouseley, which is only a few miles up the valley, was sold in my father’s time. But I’ve been thinking, there are no Ouseley Maxwells left but me. And I have a few old letters which perhaps your brother ought to have.”“I’m sure Cuthbert would be delighted to come and see them and you,” said Kitty.“Oh no, Cousin Catherine,” interposed Violet; “do let us see them. We can tell Cuth, or give them to him; but old family letters, especially about Waynflete and the ghosts, would be quite too awfully jolly.”Miss Maxwell looked at the blooming girl with her outspoken voice and her straight-looking eyes, her sailor hat, and her boyish jacket, as if she had never thought of any one like her before; she sighed and looked solemn, but pulled out the drawer of the card-table, and took therefrom, with great mystery, two or three yellow-looking letters, an old Prayer-book, and a very dirty pack of cards, and on one of these she pointed out a dark stain. “My loves,” she whispered; “this was stained on that fatal night with Squire Waynflete’s life blood.”Violet became suddenly serious, and Florella could hardly help crying out in protest against touching these things which seemed to her full of a living trouble.Miss Maxwell opened the Prayer-book which was bound in red morocco, most delicately tooled and gilt. On the title-page was written “Margaret Waynflete” and the dates of the births of her two sons. “Guy Waynflete, born June 19th, 1760,” and then “My Pretty Baby;” then “Godfrey Waynflete, 1764,” and then in the same pointed, careful hand—“The angel of the Lord encampeth round about them that fear Him.”Florella could not speak a word, and when the book was handed to her to look at, she laid her hand on it with a soft, reverent touch.Then Miss Maxwell with some ceremony opened the two papers, and begged Kitty to read them aloud.The first was in the hand of this long dead Margaret Waynflete, and was evidently the brief commencement of a journal or diary.February 10th, 1785.—My son Guy has gone to London.February 12th.—We have killed another little Pig.February 13th.—Attorney Maxwell is more Obliging than I like to See.February 14th.—My Brother Godfrey did begin by Mistake the Funeral Service instead of the Marriage, for an honest couple. This Comes of Carousing. Alas!March 25th.—My Chittyprat Hen has a Fine Brood. There be no letter from my son Guy, which angers his Father. My poor Boy. He is better even in Town than Here. Does God indeed permit the Spirit of His wicked Ancestor to Trouble Him? Alas! there is Wickedness Enough Alive.April 15th.—The Pain at my Heart is great, I have nigh Swooned with it. N.B.—To distil lavender and drop Into it Cloves, for a Cordial. Death would be No evil, but for my two Sons, but this House would be no Home.Here the brief record suddenly stopped, only lower down on the page were faintly and unsteadily written the words, “My dear son.”“Therewasthe ghost then, you see,” said Violet, in awestruck tones. “Oh, go on, Kitty. Itisinteresting.”“There’s no more,” said Kitty. “The other paper is quite different.”This was dated October 10th, 1785, and began—“I, George Maxwell, Attorney-at-law, feel it incumbent upon me for the Establishment of my Character as an Honest Man, to state in writing what passed after the Shocking and Lamentable Suicide of Guy Waynflete, Esquire, of Waynflete Hall, which Property is legally mine by the Terms of the Bond between Us. Since there be not wanting envious Persons to say that! Took advantage of young Mr Waynflete’s Illness, which Prevented his Return at the Given Date. When he Arrived in the Early Morning, he was Undoubtedly in liquor, which was his Custom, therefore His Statement that the Spirit of his Ancestor, Guy Waynflete, Who Betrayed his Friend, and the Father of his Future wife, and so Disgraced his Family at the Time of the Lamentable Rebellion of the Duke of Monmouth, stood in his Path, and Prevented Him from Crossing the River Flete, hath no Credit with Reasonable Men. There be Some that say Highwaymen are Plentiful, but Lies, in the mouth of this Young Gentleman, are more Plentiful still. At the sight of His Father’s Corpse he fell into a swoon and Awoke Raving, in which Condition he Died This Morning. The Lad Godfrey is but a Loutish Youth, but I am Willing to Assist Parson Godfrey to put Him to some Honest Calling. I do not Hold with Country superstitions, and I shall Instruct my Wife and Daughters that the Gallopping of the Horse Round the House be nothing but the Wind in the Plantations.”“Well!” said Violet, with calm emphasis, “whatever the Waynfletes were, our ancestor was a beast, and I hope the Stauntons were more respectable.”Florella sat quite still. She knew the sound that was called the gallopping of a horse, and had once or twice been taken in by it, as a child at Waynflete, and she felt as sure as if she had herself experienced it, that whatever the evil was, inward or outward, which had defeated this unhappy Guy Waynflete a hundred years ago, it was alive and at work still. And she knew, too, that she had ranged herself on the other side, and entered into definite conflict with it.The result of this visit was that a post-card from his sister summoned Cuthbert Staunton up to Moorhead on the day after Guy’s interview with John Cooper.He was shown his old cousin’s treasures, which she had entrusted to Kitty for the purpose, as soon as he arrived, and studied them with a grave face, and with a far deeper interest than his sisters guessed.“I think,” he said, “that these things ought to be given back to the Waynfletes. I shall go and see this old lady, and see what her view is.”“Oh yes,” exclaimed Florella, suddenly, “Mr Staunton, I am sure they ought to have them.”“In any case,” said Cuthbert, “I will take them and let Waynflete see them. And I say, I think you had better drop joking about the ghost. It was a great tragedy, and they might not like it.”“Well, but it’s all nonsense, and dead and done for,” said Violet.“It happened,” said Cuthbert.He looked so serious, that Constancy’s keen eyes noticed him with inquiry, and Florella, oh, how much she wondered what he knew.They all walked out together to see the departing purple of the autumn moor, now fading into russet, and as they went down the road, a boy trotted up on a pony, and put a telegram into Cuthbert’s hand.“From Guy Waynflete, Ingleby Station. My aunt has sent for me. I must go, excuse me. Make yourself comfortable. Will telegraph when to expect me back, but not to-day.”Cuthbert uttered a dismayed exclamation which frightened the girls, and obliged him to read the telegram aloud.“Why, how very polite, and how very extravagant to telegraph up here! You would have heard when you got back. He must have paid five shillings for it!” said Kitty.“He is rather punctilious,” answered Cuthbert. “But I hope nothing is wrong. He is not well, and I am sorry he has had to go off in this way. He meant to go to-morrow.”The words expressed Cuthbert’s anxiety very inadequately; he fell silent, and Violet said—“Well, he’ll have a more comfortable journey than the old Guy, and there won’t be quite so much depending on his getting there by a particular moment.”“I told you to let all that subject drop, Vi,” said Cuthbert, sharply.When the visitor was gone, Florella walked aside, and, in the late afternoon, she went away by herself over the withering heather to the rock where she had shown Guy the harebells.There was no blue now, either in flowers or sky; the wind was driving a heavy, smoky mist before it, and the air was, as Dante calls it, “brown.”Could it be possible that Guy had meantherto know what he was doing?She knew, she saw, that the old story was not “dead and done for!” There came upon her an awful, formless dread that Guy would never reach Waynflete “safe.” She stood quite still, with her eyes wide open, and one hand holding by the jagged rock beside her. Her soul was alive within her, and wrestled with the angel—whether of light or of darkness, she did not know. She held Guy’s soul with hers as with her hand she might have held his, giving him all her strength, and her spirit stretched and strained as the muscles might have done in a struggle for dear life. There were at first no words within her. It was a shapeless foe; but gradually as she pitted all the force of her soul against it, there came into her the sense, not only of fear and peril, but of evil—images, thoughts, words, flashed into her innocent soul. Hitherto she had had no consciousness of prayer, only of struggle, but now she cried out to the Presence that was with him and her to reinforce her strength. And happily, blessedly, that Presence within her was not without form and void, she dropped on her knees, sobbing out over and over again the prayers of her earliest childhood. For the form that was within her was that of the Son of God.When Florella came back to the outer world, and felt the wet mist on her face, and the wind blowing through her hair, and pulled at the damp heather with her hand, there was scarcely any daylight left. She could hardly recall at first what had passed within her, nothing remained clear, but a picture in her mind of the Flete beck, and of the woody hollow through which it ran, such a picture as she “saw” when she was going to make a sketch. She felt silly and confused, as if she did not quite know where she was, and as if she had worked herself up into an agony that had no cause or meaning.Then she thought of Guy Waynflete, and she knew that the unconscious child-heart, with which she had entered that valley, had gone for ever, and that, whatever else she had given him in that mysterious hour, her love had gone out to him beyond recall. Interest, helpfulness, sympathy? These he had in a manner asked for, and in giving them, she had given how much more? She had flung herself out of herself to help him, and behold, she had come back to herself, with yearnings and longings and hopes and fears, that seemed full of selfish passion. The poor angel had fallen out of the sky!The wet wind stung her hot cheeks with its cold blast. Suddenly she moved, and climbing up the rock, peered anxiously into the bunch of withered harebells, which had once stood up so brave and blue in the heavenly blue around them. There was—yes, there was one little living bud at the tip of a withering stem.Florella did not pick it or take it to herself. She was going away to-morrow; she would never know if it came into flower. Perhaps she would never know how Guy had reached Waynflete.She kissed the little bud, and then pulled her cloak straight and went home to supper, shutting up the new burden tight in her breast.Constancy, meanwhile, was sitting comfortably by the fire, when there was a crack of wheels on the wet gravel, a deep voice outside, an opening door, and Godfrey Waynflete’s tall figure and flaxen head in the doorway.“Why, this is a surprise!” exclaimed Cosy. “Then there is nothing amiss at Waynflete, though your brother was sent for.”“Then Guy has been here? I knew it—”“Not at all. But Mr Staunton has, and your brother telegraphed to him to say that Mrs Waynflete wanted him, and he had to go over.”“Guy had to go to Waynflete? My aunt sent for him?”“So it appeared. Did you come here to look for him—so late?”Godfrey stood still, confused and unable to put two and two together so as to see what had taken place. He had posted some letters for his aunt yesterday, in his careless preoccupation, half an hour too late, and to-day he had had a telegram from Guy.“Constancy!” he cried, “I see, think, feel, no one but you. I was determined that Guy should not spoil my one chance of a last word with you.”“But what made you suppose your brother was here?” interrupted Constancy.“He sent a telegram about a trap—at Kirk Hinton. I tore it up. I wasn’t going to let him interfere with my last word with you. He might get a trap for himself.”“And you didn’t send it? Then you had better go after him as quick as you can; Mrs Waynflete wanted him, and I wouldn’t have her disappointed for the world. Is she ill, dear old lady? Why did you come away? And oh, if I was your brother, wouldn’t I give it you when you got home again!”Cosy stood up by the mantelpiece. Her eyes glittered mischievously. She enjoyed seeing Godfrey out of countenance.But Godfrey, after the first moment of surprise, felt nothing but that he was with her and alone. He came close up to her, and stood towering over her.“Constancy, I’d do a good deal more than that to buy this five minutes. Won’t you give me a little hope? You’ll never have another fellow give himself, heart and soul and body, to you as I do. I love you.”“And I love fifty other things and other people. I haven’t got a bit of feeling for you!” cried Cosy, desperately. “Why, I’m making a story out of you as you stand there before me. Is that caring anything about you?”“I don’t know, and I don’t care. I only know that I want you. Give me a chance. Without you I shall never come to good.”“I don’t think you will,” said Constancy, suddenly and keenly. “I have said no, and there’s an end of it. You seem to have played a very mean sort of trick on your brother, and you can’t expect to get any good out of it. You certainly won’t from me.”“Constancy—”“If you were a little older and wiser, you would know what an impossible sort of way you have behaved in. But I suppose you must be excused, because you are a boy, and know no better.”He turned white with anger.“I don’t know if I love you, or hate you,” he said. “But you shall never say that to me again.”He was gone in a moment, leaving Constancy stirred, upset, and frightened, so strong was the contest between his boyish and foolish behaviour, and the impression of strength and passion made upon her by himself. She was quite sure that she hated him.Godfrey sprang into his dog-cart, and drove down the rough, stony hillside, at a break-neck pace. He was mad with anger at Constancy and at himself, while stings of conscience and vague alarm pierced the tumult of wrath, and added to its heat. He thought neither of ghost nor ancestor, as he drove madly along the stony lanes that led through the valley of the Flete; but he pressed on, as though driven by furies, fear of what he might find gradually forcing itself upon him, till, as he reached the bridge, and looked towards the house, he saw that the windows of the octagon room were full of light. In sudden alarm, he dashed on up the old avenue to the stable door.
Some few days before the stay at Moorhead came to an end, Kitty Staunton received a letter, which surprised her greatly, as it came from a person of whose existence she had never previously heard. It was signed “Catherine Maxwell,” and began, “My dear young cousin,” and stated that the writer had heard from her old friend Mrs Raby that the Miss Stauntons were staying at Moorhead, and that, as she believed them to be her cousin George Maxwell’s grandchildren, it would give her great pleasure to make their acquaintance; would they come over and spend the day with her at her little cottage at Ousel well, bringing with them any of their young friends who cared for the drive?
Kitty and Violet being curious and interested, and Florella being inclined for the expedition, the three set off one fine brisk morning; over the moors on the opposite side to Kirk Hinton, and came to a little cold, fresh village, high up on the side of a narrow valley. Here in a cold, fresh little house, with latched doors painted with thin white paint, and deeply recessed windows looking into a little garden full of hardy plants, now turning brown and yellow with the autumn frosts, they found an apple-cheeked old lady dressed in a shot-silk gown of so old a style that it was just about to come again into fashion. She spoke with so strong a northern accent that the London girls caught what she said with difficulty; but she made them most heartily welcome, gave them some very thin and long-legged fowls for dinner, followed up by curds and red-currant jelly. Then she showed them sundry curiosities, which they knew how to admire. There was a filigree basket, like to the one which Rosamond of the Purple Vase made for her cousin’s birthday, and for which she was so unmercifully snubbed by the common sense of her unfeeling parents. There were engravings in oval frames, bits of Leeds china, an old spinning-wheel, and finally, a quaintly shaped card-table, which on being opened, displayed, instead of green cloth, an exquisitely worked pattern of faded roses in the very finest tent-stitch.
“And that, cousin love,” she said, “was in Waynflete Hall when it belonged to my great-grandfather Maxwell.”
“Really!” said Kitty, with much interest. “Our brother Cuthbert is staying with Mr Guy Waynflete at Ingleby now. It was through him that we came to Moorhead.”
Miss Maxwell looked quite awestruck.
“Well, well,” she said, “young people’s ways are different. I should never have made myself known to Mrs Waynflete, nor should I think of calling at Waynflete, even if I visited at that distance. Not that I keep up old grudges, my love, but there’s a delicacy in such matters.”
“Cuthbert knew Mr Waynflete a long time before they knew about any former connection. I don’t think it troubles them, they are great friends.”
“Ah!” said Miss Maxwell. “Guy, too, I hope—”
“Cousin Catherine,” said Violet, boldly; “I am sure you can tell us delightful old stories of the two families. Do! Tell us about the ghost and the Guy Waynflete who never got back in time. Have we got a ghost as well as the Waynfletes?”
“Oh no, love,” said Miss Maxwell, “our family was never of that kind; and indeed, when there’s so much drinking and dissipation as there was among the Waynfletes, there’s no need of ghosts to bring ruin. And I’m sure your brother will always remember, that it was all in the way of business my great-grandfather obtained the place.”
“And how did he lose it again?” asked Violet.
“My dear, through business misfortunes,” said Miss Maxwell, with dignity. “And Ouseley, which is only a few miles up the valley, was sold in my father’s time. But I’ve been thinking, there are no Ouseley Maxwells left but me. And I have a few old letters which perhaps your brother ought to have.”
“I’m sure Cuthbert would be delighted to come and see them and you,” said Kitty.
“Oh no, Cousin Catherine,” interposed Violet; “do let us see them. We can tell Cuth, or give them to him; but old family letters, especially about Waynflete and the ghosts, would be quite too awfully jolly.”
Miss Maxwell looked at the blooming girl with her outspoken voice and her straight-looking eyes, her sailor hat, and her boyish jacket, as if she had never thought of any one like her before; she sighed and looked solemn, but pulled out the drawer of the card-table, and took therefrom, with great mystery, two or three yellow-looking letters, an old Prayer-book, and a very dirty pack of cards, and on one of these she pointed out a dark stain. “My loves,” she whispered; “this was stained on that fatal night with Squire Waynflete’s life blood.”
Violet became suddenly serious, and Florella could hardly help crying out in protest against touching these things which seemed to her full of a living trouble.
Miss Maxwell opened the Prayer-book which was bound in red morocco, most delicately tooled and gilt. On the title-page was written “Margaret Waynflete” and the dates of the births of her two sons. “Guy Waynflete, born June 19th, 1760,” and then “My Pretty Baby;” then “Godfrey Waynflete, 1764,” and then in the same pointed, careful hand—
“The angel of the Lord encampeth round about them that fear Him.”
Florella could not speak a word, and when the book was handed to her to look at, she laid her hand on it with a soft, reverent touch.
Then Miss Maxwell with some ceremony opened the two papers, and begged Kitty to read them aloud.
The first was in the hand of this long dead Margaret Waynflete, and was evidently the brief commencement of a journal or diary.
February 10th, 1785.—My son Guy has gone to London.
February 12th.—We have killed another little Pig.
February 13th.—Attorney Maxwell is more Obliging than I like to See.
February 14th.—My Brother Godfrey did begin by Mistake the Funeral Service instead of the Marriage, for an honest couple. This Comes of Carousing. Alas!
March 25th.—My Chittyprat Hen has a Fine Brood. There be no letter from my son Guy, which angers his Father. My poor Boy. He is better even in Town than Here. Does God indeed permit the Spirit of His wicked Ancestor to Trouble Him? Alas! there is Wickedness Enough Alive.
April 15th.—The Pain at my Heart is great, I have nigh Swooned with it. N.B.—To distil lavender and drop Into it Cloves, for a Cordial. Death would be No evil, but for my two Sons, but this House would be no Home.
Here the brief record suddenly stopped, only lower down on the page were faintly and unsteadily written the words, “My dear son.”
“Therewasthe ghost then, you see,” said Violet, in awestruck tones. “Oh, go on, Kitty. Itisinteresting.”
“There’s no more,” said Kitty. “The other paper is quite different.”
This was dated October 10th, 1785, and began—
“I, George Maxwell, Attorney-at-law, feel it incumbent upon me for the Establishment of my Character as an Honest Man, to state in writing what passed after the Shocking and Lamentable Suicide of Guy Waynflete, Esquire, of Waynflete Hall, which Property is legally mine by the Terms of the Bond between Us. Since there be not wanting envious Persons to say that! Took advantage of young Mr Waynflete’s Illness, which Prevented his Return at the Given Date. When he Arrived in the Early Morning, he was Undoubtedly in liquor, which was his Custom, therefore His Statement that the Spirit of his Ancestor, Guy Waynflete, Who Betrayed his Friend, and the Father of his Future wife, and so Disgraced his Family at the Time of the Lamentable Rebellion of the Duke of Monmouth, stood in his Path, and Prevented Him from Crossing the River Flete, hath no Credit with Reasonable Men. There be Some that say Highwaymen are Plentiful, but Lies, in the mouth of this Young Gentleman, are more Plentiful still. At the sight of His Father’s Corpse he fell into a swoon and Awoke Raving, in which Condition he Died This Morning. The Lad Godfrey is but a Loutish Youth, but I am Willing to Assist Parson Godfrey to put Him to some Honest Calling. I do not Hold with Country superstitions, and I shall Instruct my Wife and Daughters that the Gallopping of the Horse Round the House be nothing but the Wind in the Plantations.”
“Well!” said Violet, with calm emphasis, “whatever the Waynfletes were, our ancestor was a beast, and I hope the Stauntons were more respectable.”
Florella sat quite still. She knew the sound that was called the gallopping of a horse, and had once or twice been taken in by it, as a child at Waynflete, and she felt as sure as if she had herself experienced it, that whatever the evil was, inward or outward, which had defeated this unhappy Guy Waynflete a hundred years ago, it was alive and at work still. And she knew, too, that she had ranged herself on the other side, and entered into definite conflict with it.
The result of this visit was that a post-card from his sister summoned Cuthbert Staunton up to Moorhead on the day after Guy’s interview with John Cooper.
He was shown his old cousin’s treasures, which she had entrusted to Kitty for the purpose, as soon as he arrived, and studied them with a grave face, and with a far deeper interest than his sisters guessed.
“I think,” he said, “that these things ought to be given back to the Waynfletes. I shall go and see this old lady, and see what her view is.”
“Oh yes,” exclaimed Florella, suddenly, “Mr Staunton, I am sure they ought to have them.”
“In any case,” said Cuthbert, “I will take them and let Waynflete see them. And I say, I think you had better drop joking about the ghost. It was a great tragedy, and they might not like it.”
“Well, but it’s all nonsense, and dead and done for,” said Violet.
“It happened,” said Cuthbert.
He looked so serious, that Constancy’s keen eyes noticed him with inquiry, and Florella, oh, how much she wondered what he knew.
They all walked out together to see the departing purple of the autumn moor, now fading into russet, and as they went down the road, a boy trotted up on a pony, and put a telegram into Cuthbert’s hand.
“From Guy Waynflete, Ingleby Station. My aunt has sent for me. I must go, excuse me. Make yourself comfortable. Will telegraph when to expect me back, but not to-day.”
Cuthbert uttered a dismayed exclamation which frightened the girls, and obliged him to read the telegram aloud.
“Why, how very polite, and how very extravagant to telegraph up here! You would have heard when you got back. He must have paid five shillings for it!” said Kitty.
“He is rather punctilious,” answered Cuthbert. “But I hope nothing is wrong. He is not well, and I am sorry he has had to go off in this way. He meant to go to-morrow.”
The words expressed Cuthbert’s anxiety very inadequately; he fell silent, and Violet said—
“Well, he’ll have a more comfortable journey than the old Guy, and there won’t be quite so much depending on his getting there by a particular moment.”
“I told you to let all that subject drop, Vi,” said Cuthbert, sharply.
When the visitor was gone, Florella walked aside, and, in the late afternoon, she went away by herself over the withering heather to the rock where she had shown Guy the harebells.
There was no blue now, either in flowers or sky; the wind was driving a heavy, smoky mist before it, and the air was, as Dante calls it, “brown.”
Could it be possible that Guy had meantherto know what he was doing?
She knew, she saw, that the old story was not “dead and done for!” There came upon her an awful, formless dread that Guy would never reach Waynflete “safe.” She stood quite still, with her eyes wide open, and one hand holding by the jagged rock beside her. Her soul was alive within her, and wrestled with the angel—whether of light or of darkness, she did not know. She held Guy’s soul with hers as with her hand she might have held his, giving him all her strength, and her spirit stretched and strained as the muscles might have done in a struggle for dear life. There were at first no words within her. It was a shapeless foe; but gradually as she pitted all the force of her soul against it, there came into her the sense, not only of fear and peril, but of evil—images, thoughts, words, flashed into her innocent soul. Hitherto she had had no consciousness of prayer, only of struggle, but now she cried out to the Presence that was with him and her to reinforce her strength. And happily, blessedly, that Presence within her was not without form and void, she dropped on her knees, sobbing out over and over again the prayers of her earliest childhood. For the form that was within her was that of the Son of God.
When Florella came back to the outer world, and felt the wet mist on her face, and the wind blowing through her hair, and pulled at the damp heather with her hand, there was scarcely any daylight left. She could hardly recall at first what had passed within her, nothing remained clear, but a picture in her mind of the Flete beck, and of the woody hollow through which it ran, such a picture as she “saw” when she was going to make a sketch. She felt silly and confused, as if she did not quite know where she was, and as if she had worked herself up into an agony that had no cause or meaning.
Then she thought of Guy Waynflete, and she knew that the unconscious child-heart, with which she had entered that valley, had gone for ever, and that, whatever else she had given him in that mysterious hour, her love had gone out to him beyond recall. Interest, helpfulness, sympathy? These he had in a manner asked for, and in giving them, she had given how much more? She had flung herself out of herself to help him, and behold, she had come back to herself, with yearnings and longings and hopes and fears, that seemed full of selfish passion. The poor angel had fallen out of the sky!
The wet wind stung her hot cheeks with its cold blast. Suddenly she moved, and climbing up the rock, peered anxiously into the bunch of withered harebells, which had once stood up so brave and blue in the heavenly blue around them. There was—yes, there was one little living bud at the tip of a withering stem.
Florella did not pick it or take it to herself. She was going away to-morrow; she would never know if it came into flower. Perhaps she would never know how Guy had reached Waynflete.
She kissed the little bud, and then pulled her cloak straight and went home to supper, shutting up the new burden tight in her breast.
Constancy, meanwhile, was sitting comfortably by the fire, when there was a crack of wheels on the wet gravel, a deep voice outside, an opening door, and Godfrey Waynflete’s tall figure and flaxen head in the doorway.
“Why, this is a surprise!” exclaimed Cosy. “Then there is nothing amiss at Waynflete, though your brother was sent for.”
“Then Guy has been here? I knew it—”
“Not at all. But Mr Staunton has, and your brother telegraphed to him to say that Mrs Waynflete wanted him, and he had to go over.”
“Guy had to go to Waynflete? My aunt sent for him?”
“So it appeared. Did you come here to look for him—so late?”
Godfrey stood still, confused and unable to put two and two together so as to see what had taken place. He had posted some letters for his aunt yesterday, in his careless preoccupation, half an hour too late, and to-day he had had a telegram from Guy.
“Constancy!” he cried, “I see, think, feel, no one but you. I was determined that Guy should not spoil my one chance of a last word with you.”
“But what made you suppose your brother was here?” interrupted Constancy.
“He sent a telegram about a trap—at Kirk Hinton. I tore it up. I wasn’t going to let him interfere with my last word with you. He might get a trap for himself.”
“And you didn’t send it? Then you had better go after him as quick as you can; Mrs Waynflete wanted him, and I wouldn’t have her disappointed for the world. Is she ill, dear old lady? Why did you come away? And oh, if I was your brother, wouldn’t I give it you when you got home again!”
Cosy stood up by the mantelpiece. Her eyes glittered mischievously. She enjoyed seeing Godfrey out of countenance.
But Godfrey, after the first moment of surprise, felt nothing but that he was with her and alone. He came close up to her, and stood towering over her.
“Constancy, I’d do a good deal more than that to buy this five minutes. Won’t you give me a little hope? You’ll never have another fellow give himself, heart and soul and body, to you as I do. I love you.”
“And I love fifty other things and other people. I haven’t got a bit of feeling for you!” cried Cosy, desperately. “Why, I’m making a story out of you as you stand there before me. Is that caring anything about you?”
“I don’t know, and I don’t care. I only know that I want you. Give me a chance. Without you I shall never come to good.”
“I don’t think you will,” said Constancy, suddenly and keenly. “I have said no, and there’s an end of it. You seem to have played a very mean sort of trick on your brother, and you can’t expect to get any good out of it. You certainly won’t from me.”
“Constancy—”
“If you were a little older and wiser, you would know what an impossible sort of way you have behaved in. But I suppose you must be excused, because you are a boy, and know no better.”
He turned white with anger.
“I don’t know if I love you, or hate you,” he said. “But you shall never say that to me again.”
He was gone in a moment, leaving Constancy stirred, upset, and frightened, so strong was the contest between his boyish and foolish behaviour, and the impression of strength and passion made upon her by himself. She was quite sure that she hated him.
Godfrey sprang into his dog-cart, and drove down the rough, stony hillside, at a break-neck pace. He was mad with anger at Constancy and at himself, while stings of conscience and vague alarm pierced the tumult of wrath, and added to its heat. He thought neither of ghost nor ancestor, as he drove madly along the stony lanes that led through the valley of the Flete; but he pressed on, as though driven by furies, fear of what he might find gradually forcing itself upon him, till, as he reached the bridge, and looked towards the house, he saw that the windows of the octagon room were full of light. In sudden alarm, he dashed on up the old avenue to the stable door.