The Project Gutenberg eBook ofWaynflete

The Project Gutenberg eBook ofWaynfleteThis ebook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this ebook or online atwww.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this eBook.Title: WaynfleteAuthor: Christabel R. ColeridgeRelease date: July 8, 2013 [eBook #43149]Most recently updated: October 23, 2024Language: EnglishCredits: Produced by Nick Hodson of London, England*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK WAYNFLETE ***

This ebook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this ebook or online atwww.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this eBook.

Title: WaynfleteAuthor: Christabel R. ColeridgeRelease date: July 8, 2013 [eBook #43149]Most recently updated: October 23, 2024Language: EnglishCredits: Produced by Nick Hodson of London, England

Title: Waynflete

Author: Christabel R. Coleridge

Author: Christabel R. Coleridge

Release date: July 8, 2013 [eBook #43149]Most recently updated: October 23, 2024

Language: English

Credits: Produced by Nick Hodson of London, England

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK WAYNFLETE ***

C.R. Coleridge"Waynflete"

Prologue.In 1785.“That the character of the inhabitants of any country has much to do in forming a distinct devil for that country no man can doubt.”From “John Inglesant.”At ten o’clock at night on the 4th of October, 1785, the master of Waynflete Hall sat playing at cards with Mr Maxwell of Ouseley, his neighbour and his enemy. By the fireside sat Waynflete’s brother, the parson of the parish, and over the chimney, in the light of the candle’s on the card-table, was the picture of his eldest son and heir. The squire and the vicar were big, powerful men, with fair, bushy brows, and faces that told of rough riding and coarse living, hard weather and hard drinking, the only mark of their gentle blood that frank expectation of deference and service which marks a ruling class. The keener, thinner face of their visitor had the opposite look, that of a man accustomed to defer, and perhaps to flatter, for his livelihood. The face of the boy in the picture was fair and delicate, with eyes that seemed pleading and entreating for dear life.Outside, all was dark and dreary, a wild autumn wind sweeping over the wide Yorkshire moors, and a noisy river, swelled by recent floods, rushing through the valley in which Waynflete stood. Within, the candles and the fire were reflected in panels of polished oak all round the little octagon-shaped chamber, and showed choice furniture with slender spindle legs and fine inlaying. The common mould candles burnt in heavy silver candlesticks of Corinthian pattern, and the many-times used cards lay on a pattern of thick twining roses worked in finest tent-stitch.On a little side table was placed a shabby leather case, and a small oak chest with iron hasps and hinges. On another, within easy reach of the card-players, was a plentiful supply of port wine and of spirits.Now and again, when the tall clock in the corner struck a quarter or a half-hour, the vicar got up and, opening one of the deep-recessed windows, stared out into the night. Then he flung the casement back again in silence, came back to his chair, and he and his brother filled their glasses full and drank them down. But Mr Maxwell of Ouseley only set his lips to his. At last eleven strokes, quick, sharp, and loud, rang out from the clock in the corner. The squire flung his cards down, and the parson swore a round oath.“Time gets on,” said Maxwell of Ouseley. “I hope Mr Guy’s journey has not been unduly delayed. I hope it sincerely.”“Do you, Mr Maxwell of Ouseley?” said the squire. “Your hope’s very likely to be disappointed, for my son Guy never fulfilled anybody’s hopes in his life. Not his mother’s.”And the squire looked round at the familiar furniture, dropped his rough hand on the delicate needlework, and looked with his frowning brows at the picture, the token of his dead wife’s love for her first-born son.“Time yet, time yet,” said the parson, and got heavily up once more, and flung the window open. The wind rushed in, wailing and howling, and with it a sound as of a horse galloping on the wet ground.“He is coming!” cried Maxwell; but the Waynfletes laughed.“No, no, no!” cried the squire; “that horse never draws bridle. He has galloped ever since Guy Waynflete betrayed his friend to King James the Second, and saved his own dirty skin. Ye’ll hear him, Mr Maxwell, when you sleep under this roof when the wind’s up—and luck’s down. Maybe ye’ll see the traitor’s ghost. My son Guy has seen him—or else he lied, which is like enough. Shut the window, brother Godfrey, and snuff the candles.”“Will you deal again, sir?” said Maxwell of Ouseley.“No,” cried the squire; “cards won’t bring the lad back. Get your book, brother Godfrey, and read us a prayer. Pray, man, pray! and Mr Maxwell can join us.”“With pleasure, sir,” said Maxwell of Ouseley, bowing.“The prayer-book’s in the church, brother,” said the parson.Then the squire got up and opened a drawer in the little side table, and took out a well-worn book with a red cover.“There’s the mother’s book,” he said. “Read on. We’ll fight it out to the last.”Then the parson of the parish turned his heavy chair round towards the light, and knelt up against the back of it, for his bones were something too stiff to reach the floor.“What—what do you want to pray for, brother?” he said.“What?” cried the squire with an oath, “that my fool of a son may get here before the clock strikes twelve, and save his honour and his house. Can’t you find a prayer? Read the first in the book. The Almighty’ll understand it.”The squire leant his elbows on the card-table and his forehead on his hands. Mr Maxwell of Ouseley stood up decorously, and held his three-cornered hat before his face.And the parson turned to the evening service, and read it straight through sonorously. The words implored pardon and peace, and light in darkness; but they carried but one prayer up to the throne of Heaven, “Let him come.”Then the parson began the Litany till he came to the travellers by land and by water, when he rustled over the leaves of his book, and behold there was a mark in the prayer for those at sea, which did not run so ill in a storm of trouble and distress. “Save, Lord, or else we perish,” he said, and the squire groaned and said, “Amen.”And through the storm and the loud rough voice the clock ticked and struck, quarter, half-hour, and three quarters, till at last, with his rough voice shaking and growing thick, and his dull old heart beating fit to choke him, the parson found himself reading the prayer for “All sorts and conditions of men.”“Mind, body and estate—”“Eh-h!” groaned the squire.“And a happy issue out of all—”The first note of twelve clanged out, and the parson flung down his book.“Lord help us!” he cried, and Mr Maxwell of Ouseley took his hat from before his face, and waited till the clock had struck twelve. Then the squire got up from his chair, and took up the oak chest and set it down upon the card-table with a heavy thud. He turned the key in the lock, and took out a bundle of parchments and laid them down on his dead wife’s needlework, among the cards and the wine-glasses, with her prayer-book by their side.Then he drew himself straight up, and bowed. “Mr Maxwell of Ouseley,” he said, “these are the terms on which we stand. This house and estate were to pass to you, my attorney-at-law, in repayment of the loans ye’ve made me, unless my son Guy came back by twelve to-night, ready to sign such other bonds as ye might please, and to marry your girl whom ye’d like to make a lady of quality as well as the heiress of ye’re gains and gettings.”“Yes, Mr Waynflete, those were the terms, and I regret—”The squire turned and swore at him, then went on in the same tone as before, “But my eldest son Guy, who broke his mother’s heart, and was too late for her deathbed, istoo lateto save his father, and himself. I leave him my curse for a coward and a fool. And I leave it for all that come after him to follow in his steps. And for t’other one, brother Godfrey, you’d better take and put him into the Church, if you can; he’s a thickhead, but an honest lad. So there, Attorney Maxwell, take your own, and the luck ye’ve earned go with it!”And Mr Maxwell, still murmuring regrets that he daren’t speak aloud, closed his long fingers over the deeds. And the parson, the son of the house, put his handkerchief over his face and wept, while the wind rose higher and wailed louder, till it seemed as if cries and prayers for mercy mingled with the thud of the hoofs of the horse that never drew bridle at any door.Then Waynflete of Waynflete Hall took up his dead wife’s prayer-book and kissed it, then he walked over to the side table, and stood with his back to the other two. “God have mercy on my soul!” said he, and took something out of the leathern box. And there was a loud noise and a heavy fall, and the old drinking, gambling, hard-living squire never lived to see whether his unlucky son came home too late.But in the gloomy mists of the next morning, while the scared household were watching the body laid out for its last sleep in the room where it had fallen, there staggered into the midst of them the ruined heir, his trim locks wild and wet, his fair face marred and degraded, and his eyes mad with fear.“The traitor’s ghost—or the devil in his shape—stood in my way—I was coming—” he stuttered in thick, shaking tones.“To the devil with your ghost! You’re drunk!” shouted the old parson, and lifted his hand.The boy cowered, stumbled and fell on the threshold. He was indeed too late.That was what happened at Waynflete Hall, in October, 1785.

“That the character of the inhabitants of any country has much to do in forming a distinct devil for that country no man can doubt.”From “John Inglesant.”

“That the character of the inhabitants of any country has much to do in forming a distinct devil for that country no man can doubt.”From “John Inglesant.”

At ten o’clock at night on the 4th of October, 1785, the master of Waynflete Hall sat playing at cards with Mr Maxwell of Ouseley, his neighbour and his enemy. By the fireside sat Waynflete’s brother, the parson of the parish, and over the chimney, in the light of the candle’s on the card-table, was the picture of his eldest son and heir. The squire and the vicar were big, powerful men, with fair, bushy brows, and faces that told of rough riding and coarse living, hard weather and hard drinking, the only mark of their gentle blood that frank expectation of deference and service which marks a ruling class. The keener, thinner face of their visitor had the opposite look, that of a man accustomed to defer, and perhaps to flatter, for his livelihood. The face of the boy in the picture was fair and delicate, with eyes that seemed pleading and entreating for dear life.

Outside, all was dark and dreary, a wild autumn wind sweeping over the wide Yorkshire moors, and a noisy river, swelled by recent floods, rushing through the valley in which Waynflete stood. Within, the candles and the fire were reflected in panels of polished oak all round the little octagon-shaped chamber, and showed choice furniture with slender spindle legs and fine inlaying. The common mould candles burnt in heavy silver candlesticks of Corinthian pattern, and the many-times used cards lay on a pattern of thick twining roses worked in finest tent-stitch.

On a little side table was placed a shabby leather case, and a small oak chest with iron hasps and hinges. On another, within easy reach of the card-players, was a plentiful supply of port wine and of spirits.

Now and again, when the tall clock in the corner struck a quarter or a half-hour, the vicar got up and, opening one of the deep-recessed windows, stared out into the night. Then he flung the casement back again in silence, came back to his chair, and he and his brother filled their glasses full and drank them down. But Mr Maxwell of Ouseley only set his lips to his. At last eleven strokes, quick, sharp, and loud, rang out from the clock in the corner. The squire flung his cards down, and the parson swore a round oath.

“Time gets on,” said Maxwell of Ouseley. “I hope Mr Guy’s journey has not been unduly delayed. I hope it sincerely.”

“Do you, Mr Maxwell of Ouseley?” said the squire. “Your hope’s very likely to be disappointed, for my son Guy never fulfilled anybody’s hopes in his life. Not his mother’s.”

And the squire looked round at the familiar furniture, dropped his rough hand on the delicate needlework, and looked with his frowning brows at the picture, the token of his dead wife’s love for her first-born son.

“Time yet, time yet,” said the parson, and got heavily up once more, and flung the window open. The wind rushed in, wailing and howling, and with it a sound as of a horse galloping on the wet ground.

“He is coming!” cried Maxwell; but the Waynfletes laughed.

“No, no, no!” cried the squire; “that horse never draws bridle. He has galloped ever since Guy Waynflete betrayed his friend to King James the Second, and saved his own dirty skin. Ye’ll hear him, Mr Maxwell, when you sleep under this roof when the wind’s up—and luck’s down. Maybe ye’ll see the traitor’s ghost. My son Guy has seen him—or else he lied, which is like enough. Shut the window, brother Godfrey, and snuff the candles.”

“Will you deal again, sir?” said Maxwell of Ouseley.

“No,” cried the squire; “cards won’t bring the lad back. Get your book, brother Godfrey, and read us a prayer. Pray, man, pray! and Mr Maxwell can join us.”

“With pleasure, sir,” said Maxwell of Ouseley, bowing.

“The prayer-book’s in the church, brother,” said the parson.

Then the squire got up and opened a drawer in the little side table, and took out a well-worn book with a red cover.

“There’s the mother’s book,” he said. “Read on. We’ll fight it out to the last.”

Then the parson of the parish turned his heavy chair round towards the light, and knelt up against the back of it, for his bones were something too stiff to reach the floor.

“What—what do you want to pray for, brother?” he said.

“What?” cried the squire with an oath, “that my fool of a son may get here before the clock strikes twelve, and save his honour and his house. Can’t you find a prayer? Read the first in the book. The Almighty’ll understand it.”

The squire leant his elbows on the card-table and his forehead on his hands. Mr Maxwell of Ouseley stood up decorously, and held his three-cornered hat before his face.

And the parson turned to the evening service, and read it straight through sonorously. The words implored pardon and peace, and light in darkness; but they carried but one prayer up to the throne of Heaven, “Let him come.”

Then the parson began the Litany till he came to the travellers by land and by water, when he rustled over the leaves of his book, and behold there was a mark in the prayer for those at sea, which did not run so ill in a storm of trouble and distress. “Save, Lord, or else we perish,” he said, and the squire groaned and said, “Amen.”

And through the storm and the loud rough voice the clock ticked and struck, quarter, half-hour, and three quarters, till at last, with his rough voice shaking and growing thick, and his dull old heart beating fit to choke him, the parson found himself reading the prayer for “All sorts and conditions of men.”

“Mind, body and estate—”

“Eh-h!” groaned the squire.

“And a happy issue out of all—”

The first note of twelve clanged out, and the parson flung down his book.

“Lord help us!” he cried, and Mr Maxwell of Ouseley took his hat from before his face, and waited till the clock had struck twelve. Then the squire got up from his chair, and took up the oak chest and set it down upon the card-table with a heavy thud. He turned the key in the lock, and took out a bundle of parchments and laid them down on his dead wife’s needlework, among the cards and the wine-glasses, with her prayer-book by their side.

Then he drew himself straight up, and bowed. “Mr Maxwell of Ouseley,” he said, “these are the terms on which we stand. This house and estate were to pass to you, my attorney-at-law, in repayment of the loans ye’ve made me, unless my son Guy came back by twelve to-night, ready to sign such other bonds as ye might please, and to marry your girl whom ye’d like to make a lady of quality as well as the heiress of ye’re gains and gettings.”

“Yes, Mr Waynflete, those were the terms, and I regret—”

The squire turned and swore at him, then went on in the same tone as before, “But my eldest son Guy, who broke his mother’s heart, and was too late for her deathbed, istoo lateto save his father, and himself. I leave him my curse for a coward and a fool. And I leave it for all that come after him to follow in his steps. And for t’other one, brother Godfrey, you’d better take and put him into the Church, if you can; he’s a thickhead, but an honest lad. So there, Attorney Maxwell, take your own, and the luck ye’ve earned go with it!”

And Mr Maxwell, still murmuring regrets that he daren’t speak aloud, closed his long fingers over the deeds. And the parson, the son of the house, put his handkerchief over his face and wept, while the wind rose higher and wailed louder, till it seemed as if cries and prayers for mercy mingled with the thud of the hoofs of the horse that never drew bridle at any door.

Then Waynflete of Waynflete Hall took up his dead wife’s prayer-book and kissed it, then he walked over to the side table, and stood with his back to the other two. “God have mercy on my soul!” said he, and took something out of the leathern box. And there was a loud noise and a heavy fall, and the old drinking, gambling, hard-living squire never lived to see whether his unlucky son came home too late.

But in the gloomy mists of the next morning, while the scared household were watching the body laid out for its last sleep in the room where it had fallen, there staggered into the midst of them the ruined heir, his trim locks wild and wet, his fair face marred and degraded, and his eyes mad with fear.

“The traitor’s ghost—or the devil in his shape—stood in my way—I was coming—” he stuttered in thick, shaking tones.

“To the devil with your ghost! You’re drunk!” shouted the old parson, and lifted his hand.

The boy cowered, stumbled and fell on the threshold. He was indeed too late.

That was what happened at Waynflete Hall, in October, 1785.

Part 1, Chapter I.The Family.The splendid sunset of a late August day in the year 1885 was staining the smoky atmosphere which enveloped the manufacturing district of Ingleby with rich and subtle tints.Margaret Waynflete sat at an upstairs window of a large square stone house, looking across a garden, filled with brilliant flowers and smoke-dulled shrubs, over lovely undulations of wood and field, and unlovely forms of mill and chimney half veiled in tawny, luminous mist, Beyond, hill behind hill, and moor above moor, in endless succession, were lost in grey-gold smoke and fog. She was an old woman, with a line strong face of marked outline, and a tall, strong frame, dressed handsomely in sober and dignified garments suitable to her years and position. Her face was wrinkled and weather-beaten, with the look that comes of facing hard weather through a long life; but it told of perfect health, of unimpaired strength of mind and body.Nevertheless Margaret Waynflete was engaged in the religious duty of “considering her latter end.” So probably she would have expressed herself, for she was a person who always endeavoured to fulfil any duty that she recognised, and such consideration was becoming to a woman of seventy-six. But what she was really considering was her former life, and that, not so much with a view to repenting her sins, or regretting her shortcomings—though if she had such she was truly desirous of repenting and regretting them—as of shaping the future in such a way that her past work should not be undone by those who would come after her.She had had a life work. She had attempted something and had done it. She had lifted her good old name out of the dust, and had restored her fallen family to its natural station. And she was intensely proud both of her family name, of her own success, and of the means by which the success had been obtained. When she thought of the day when she should be laid in the old churchyard at Waynflete, she desired as much that the business, to which the restored fortunes of the family were owing, should be honourably and skilfully managed, as that the family name should be borne with grace and dignity.“We owe the old place to the business,” she said once to her two great-nephews; “and it’s a poor thing to forget the bridge that carries you over.”Sixty years before Margaret Waynflete had been a fine, strong girl, intensely conscious of her good blood, though her father was but a working farmer, and she herself had had a humble education, and spoke with the strongest accent of her native county. The family had fallen so completely that every one but Margaret had forgotten the fact, and it hardly appeared extraordinary, though it might be sad, when her father’s death left her with the choice of going to service or of working in the mills with her little brother.Margaret put her shawl over her head and went to her work every day; a fair, rosy girl with abundant flaxen hair, and large, finely cut features. Her beauty attracted the attention of the mill-owner, Thomas Palmer, a man no longer young, of humbler origin, and not much better education than her own, but of rapidly increasing wealth.He courted Margaret honourably, and she married him on condition that he would send her little brother Godfrey to school. Years passed, of rising fortune which no children came to inherit. Thomas Palmer’s relations were all well established in businesses of their own, and when he died he left everything he possessed to his wife, and Godfrey Waynflete was her natural heir. Already, a little bit of the old Waynflete property, which lay in a moorland valley twenty miles away from Ingleby, had been bought by the wealthy mill-owner, and as time went on, Margaret, in whose hands the mills prospered, recovered it all, and when the house itself came into her possession she took her own name again. Her brother had married well; but he died young, leaving a son who bore the other family name of Guy. He should be the future Waynflete of Waynflete; but again disappointment came, for Guy was killed by an accident three years after his marriage. His young wife died in giving birth to a second son, and the old great-aunt was left with two babies, Guy and Godfrey, on whom to fix her long-deferred hopes.Sixteen years had passed since that day, during which the business had been the duty, and the family name the romance of her life. She loved both now, as people do love the objects of a life’s devotion, with an imperious demand that those who came after her should love them also; and now, as she sat in her armchair, and thought of her age, and of preparing for death, she was really thinking about the two young lads, whose future fate lay in her power.The eldest ought to have Waynflete; but it did not suit with her ideas to make him the squire and his brother the mill-owner, as might have seemed natural. The money that had been made in Ingleby Mills ought not to be diverted from their interests for the support of the Squire of Waynflete. He must be a partner in the business, even if the chief management of it fell to his brother. And the Squire of Waynflete ought to be the eldest son.Such was the view of life maintained by this hard-working old lady, who had never known an idle day, nor a doubt as to the value of her day’s work.But she liked the youngest boy the best, and believed that he was the most likely to follow in her footsteps. Old people do not always regard young ones with blind admiration, and Mrs Waynflete appraised her great-nephews exactly according to her own measure. She did not know that there were other scales in the universe differently weighted.So, as she reviewed her past life, she questioned herself whether all her payments had been fair, whether she had exacted enough, and not too much, work from her subordinates; whether she had spent enough money on improvements, or too much on buying back the last piece of unprofitable moor that had belonged to the old Waynfletes; whether, on the other hand, she had ever sacrificed honesty to gain, or failed honourably to fulfil an obligation. And in all these respects her conscience was clear.And when she thought of the future—she took heaven for granted, as her well-earned portion; but she could picture nothing but Guy and Godfrey in her place, and herself somehow cognisant of their actions. Their young voices, through the open window, disturbed her meditations, as they came across the lawn together.She rapped on the window, and called to them to come up, and in a minute or two, they were in the handsome, heavily furnished drawing-room, in which their white tennis-suits hardly looked at home. They were tall lads of eighteen and sixteen, like each other, and like their great-aunt; Godfrey the younger, remarkably so. He was the taller of the two, with high cheek-bones and prominent features, light flaxen hair and large grey eyes, with a certain direct honesty of expression. He was still only a big boy, while his brother was slighter, and of more finished appearance, and more delicate outlines. His eyes were also of a light grey, but they were softened by dark eyelashes set thickly on the lower lids as well as on the upper, which gave them a wistful, pleading look, quite independent of their owner’s intentions, and inconsistent with his slightly critical smile and reticent manner.“Did you want us, Auntie Waynflete?” said Godfrey, in blunt, boyish tones, and using the old-fashioned form of address, in which he had been trained.“Yes. I’ve an invitation for you, which I’ve a mind you shall accept.”“Are the Rabys giving a dance?” asked Guy, who was becoming an eligible partner.“No; this is from Constance Palmer. Her husband was your great-uncle’s cousin. She wanted to spend some months in bracing air, so I let Waynflete to her. You know the old lease of the house fell in this spring. She asks you two to come there for a visit. You shall go.”“I should like to see Waynflete,” said Guy, with some curiosity, while Godfrey said—“Is it only an old lady? Will there be any other fellows there?”“She isn’t old, young gentleman. There are some little girls—or young ladies, perhaps you’d call them—that she has brought up. She says the neighbours have called on her.”“Is Waynflete much of a place?” asked Guy. “Why have we never seen it?”“No, Guy,” said Mrs Waynflete. “It’s but a poor place, and while the house was let to strangers—as, indeed, a good part of the property is still in the hands of the old tenants—I did not care for you to go there. Now, you can both see what you think of it.”Guy gave a quick glance at her, while Godfrey said—“I don’t suppose it’s jollier than this.”“Before you go,” said the old lady, sitting up in her chair, “there’s something I want to say to you.”“Yes, auntie,” said Godfrey, staring at her, while Guy said, “Yes?” politely.“You both know how Waynflete has been got back for the family. By hard work, and doing of duty, and courage. When my heart is set on a thing, lads, I don’t fear trouble. I don’t fear man, and I’ve no need to fear the devil, since I know I’m in the right. And I never shall fear what folks may say of any course I choose to follow. I’m an old woman, and I tell you that a single aim always hits the mark.”As she spoke in her strong voice, and looked at the lads with her strong eyes, Guy felt that the manifesto had a purpose. Godfrey listened quite simply as to an improving remark.“You know how, bit by bit, your great-uncle Palmer and I have got Waynflete back. And I’ve often told you howmygreat-uncle Guy lost it?”“Oh yes, auntie,” said Godfrey, cheerfully. “He got screwed, and then made up a cock-and-bull story about the family ghost stopping him at the bridge. Awful bad lot he must have been. Then he died, didn’t he, and Maxwell of Ouseley had the place tillhewent to the bad, and had to sell it?”“Yes, he died delirious, and my grandfather was turned out to make his way in the world. So you see, ’twas self-indulgence, drinking and gambling that lost the place, and ruined the family.”“I don’t think my namesake deserves all the blame,” said Guy. “His father, as I understand the story, got him into a pretty tight place.”“He had his chance, Guy, and he lost it by his cowardice—if, as some think, he was stopped by highwaymen, or by his vicious habits, if he was drunk. He was a very fine gentleman, I’ve heard; played the fiddle, Guy, and wrote verses; but that was no stand-by in his hour of need.”“The family ghost, himself,” said Guy, in a slow, dry voice, “seems to have been an unpleasant person to know.”“Ay; there was a young Waynflete who betrayed his friend in Monmouth’s rebellion, to save his own life. He went mad, and shot himself—as the story runs—so ignorant folk say his ghost haunts Waynflete, and think, when the wind blows, they hear his horse galloping.”“That Guy who was too late was an awful duffer, if he wasn’t drunk!” said Godfrey. “I’d have got over the river, ghost or highwayman, or been killed on the spot.”“It’s not a nice story,” said Guy. “I should think Waynflete was haunted by all their ghosts!”“Ghost-stories are very proper for old families,” said Mrs Waynflete; “but of course no one believes them. There, it’s a disgraceful story; take it as a warning. You’d better get ready for dinner.”She rose and walked out of the room as she spoke, with a quick, firm step, while Guy laughed rather scornfully.“What an anachronism the dear old lady is!” he said. “As if all the world depended on Waynflete!”“I don’t know what you mean!” said Godfrey, angrily. “I think she’s an awfully splendid old woman to have stuck to her point all her life and won it. Catch a highwayman stopping me!”“My unlucky namesake said it was a ghost.”“Well, but it wasn’t, you know. There aren’t any.”“You’re the right heir for Aunt Margaret, Godfrey. She ought to leave you Waynflete.”“Why; you’re the eldest,” said Godfrey; “she says interfering with natural laws is wicked.”“If primogenitureisa natural law?”“It’s the law of England,” said Godfrey, as if that settled the point.Guy laughed again.“Ah, Godfrey,” he said, “you’ll always get past the ghosts! Well, the visit will be rather jolly. I’ve a great curiosity about Waynflete, and at least it will be clean. I agree with Ruskin that smoke is sinful.”“There’s a great deal of rot in Ruskin,” said Godfrey, “and you ought not to say things are sinful, when they ain’t. Plenty of things are.”

The splendid sunset of a late August day in the year 1885 was staining the smoky atmosphere which enveloped the manufacturing district of Ingleby with rich and subtle tints.

Margaret Waynflete sat at an upstairs window of a large square stone house, looking across a garden, filled with brilliant flowers and smoke-dulled shrubs, over lovely undulations of wood and field, and unlovely forms of mill and chimney half veiled in tawny, luminous mist, Beyond, hill behind hill, and moor above moor, in endless succession, were lost in grey-gold smoke and fog. She was an old woman, with a line strong face of marked outline, and a tall, strong frame, dressed handsomely in sober and dignified garments suitable to her years and position. Her face was wrinkled and weather-beaten, with the look that comes of facing hard weather through a long life; but it told of perfect health, of unimpaired strength of mind and body.

Nevertheless Margaret Waynflete was engaged in the religious duty of “considering her latter end.” So probably she would have expressed herself, for she was a person who always endeavoured to fulfil any duty that she recognised, and such consideration was becoming to a woman of seventy-six. But what she was really considering was her former life, and that, not so much with a view to repenting her sins, or regretting her shortcomings—though if she had such she was truly desirous of repenting and regretting them—as of shaping the future in such a way that her past work should not be undone by those who would come after her.

She had had a life work. She had attempted something and had done it. She had lifted her good old name out of the dust, and had restored her fallen family to its natural station. And she was intensely proud both of her family name, of her own success, and of the means by which the success had been obtained. When she thought of the day when she should be laid in the old churchyard at Waynflete, she desired as much that the business, to which the restored fortunes of the family were owing, should be honourably and skilfully managed, as that the family name should be borne with grace and dignity.

“We owe the old place to the business,” she said once to her two great-nephews; “and it’s a poor thing to forget the bridge that carries you over.”

Sixty years before Margaret Waynflete had been a fine, strong girl, intensely conscious of her good blood, though her father was but a working farmer, and she herself had had a humble education, and spoke with the strongest accent of her native county. The family had fallen so completely that every one but Margaret had forgotten the fact, and it hardly appeared extraordinary, though it might be sad, when her father’s death left her with the choice of going to service or of working in the mills with her little brother.

Margaret put her shawl over her head and went to her work every day; a fair, rosy girl with abundant flaxen hair, and large, finely cut features. Her beauty attracted the attention of the mill-owner, Thomas Palmer, a man no longer young, of humbler origin, and not much better education than her own, but of rapidly increasing wealth.

He courted Margaret honourably, and she married him on condition that he would send her little brother Godfrey to school. Years passed, of rising fortune which no children came to inherit. Thomas Palmer’s relations were all well established in businesses of their own, and when he died he left everything he possessed to his wife, and Godfrey Waynflete was her natural heir. Already, a little bit of the old Waynflete property, which lay in a moorland valley twenty miles away from Ingleby, had been bought by the wealthy mill-owner, and as time went on, Margaret, in whose hands the mills prospered, recovered it all, and when the house itself came into her possession she took her own name again. Her brother had married well; but he died young, leaving a son who bore the other family name of Guy. He should be the future Waynflete of Waynflete; but again disappointment came, for Guy was killed by an accident three years after his marriage. His young wife died in giving birth to a second son, and the old great-aunt was left with two babies, Guy and Godfrey, on whom to fix her long-deferred hopes.

Sixteen years had passed since that day, during which the business had been the duty, and the family name the romance of her life. She loved both now, as people do love the objects of a life’s devotion, with an imperious demand that those who came after her should love them also; and now, as she sat in her armchair, and thought of her age, and of preparing for death, she was really thinking about the two young lads, whose future fate lay in her power.

The eldest ought to have Waynflete; but it did not suit with her ideas to make him the squire and his brother the mill-owner, as might have seemed natural. The money that had been made in Ingleby Mills ought not to be diverted from their interests for the support of the Squire of Waynflete. He must be a partner in the business, even if the chief management of it fell to his brother. And the Squire of Waynflete ought to be the eldest son.

Such was the view of life maintained by this hard-working old lady, who had never known an idle day, nor a doubt as to the value of her day’s work.

But she liked the youngest boy the best, and believed that he was the most likely to follow in her footsteps. Old people do not always regard young ones with blind admiration, and Mrs Waynflete appraised her great-nephews exactly according to her own measure. She did not know that there were other scales in the universe differently weighted.

So, as she reviewed her past life, she questioned herself whether all her payments had been fair, whether she had exacted enough, and not too much, work from her subordinates; whether she had spent enough money on improvements, or too much on buying back the last piece of unprofitable moor that had belonged to the old Waynfletes; whether, on the other hand, she had ever sacrificed honesty to gain, or failed honourably to fulfil an obligation. And in all these respects her conscience was clear.

And when she thought of the future—she took heaven for granted, as her well-earned portion; but she could picture nothing but Guy and Godfrey in her place, and herself somehow cognisant of their actions. Their young voices, through the open window, disturbed her meditations, as they came across the lawn together.

She rapped on the window, and called to them to come up, and in a minute or two, they were in the handsome, heavily furnished drawing-room, in which their white tennis-suits hardly looked at home. They were tall lads of eighteen and sixteen, like each other, and like their great-aunt; Godfrey the younger, remarkably so. He was the taller of the two, with high cheek-bones and prominent features, light flaxen hair and large grey eyes, with a certain direct honesty of expression. He was still only a big boy, while his brother was slighter, and of more finished appearance, and more delicate outlines. His eyes were also of a light grey, but they were softened by dark eyelashes set thickly on the lower lids as well as on the upper, which gave them a wistful, pleading look, quite independent of their owner’s intentions, and inconsistent with his slightly critical smile and reticent manner.

“Did you want us, Auntie Waynflete?” said Godfrey, in blunt, boyish tones, and using the old-fashioned form of address, in which he had been trained.

“Yes. I’ve an invitation for you, which I’ve a mind you shall accept.”

“Are the Rabys giving a dance?” asked Guy, who was becoming an eligible partner.

“No; this is from Constance Palmer. Her husband was your great-uncle’s cousin. She wanted to spend some months in bracing air, so I let Waynflete to her. You know the old lease of the house fell in this spring. She asks you two to come there for a visit. You shall go.”

“I should like to see Waynflete,” said Guy, with some curiosity, while Godfrey said—

“Is it only an old lady? Will there be any other fellows there?”

“She isn’t old, young gentleman. There are some little girls—or young ladies, perhaps you’d call them—that she has brought up. She says the neighbours have called on her.”

“Is Waynflete much of a place?” asked Guy. “Why have we never seen it?”

“No, Guy,” said Mrs Waynflete. “It’s but a poor place, and while the house was let to strangers—as, indeed, a good part of the property is still in the hands of the old tenants—I did not care for you to go there. Now, you can both see what you think of it.”

Guy gave a quick glance at her, while Godfrey said—

“I don’t suppose it’s jollier than this.”

“Before you go,” said the old lady, sitting up in her chair, “there’s something I want to say to you.”

“Yes, auntie,” said Godfrey, staring at her, while Guy said, “Yes?” politely.

“You both know how Waynflete has been got back for the family. By hard work, and doing of duty, and courage. When my heart is set on a thing, lads, I don’t fear trouble. I don’t fear man, and I’ve no need to fear the devil, since I know I’m in the right. And I never shall fear what folks may say of any course I choose to follow. I’m an old woman, and I tell you that a single aim always hits the mark.”

As she spoke in her strong voice, and looked at the lads with her strong eyes, Guy felt that the manifesto had a purpose. Godfrey listened quite simply as to an improving remark.

“You know how, bit by bit, your great-uncle Palmer and I have got Waynflete back. And I’ve often told you howmygreat-uncle Guy lost it?”

“Oh yes, auntie,” said Godfrey, cheerfully. “He got screwed, and then made up a cock-and-bull story about the family ghost stopping him at the bridge. Awful bad lot he must have been. Then he died, didn’t he, and Maxwell of Ouseley had the place tillhewent to the bad, and had to sell it?”

“Yes, he died delirious, and my grandfather was turned out to make his way in the world. So you see, ’twas self-indulgence, drinking and gambling that lost the place, and ruined the family.”

“I don’t think my namesake deserves all the blame,” said Guy. “His father, as I understand the story, got him into a pretty tight place.”

“He had his chance, Guy, and he lost it by his cowardice—if, as some think, he was stopped by highwaymen, or by his vicious habits, if he was drunk. He was a very fine gentleman, I’ve heard; played the fiddle, Guy, and wrote verses; but that was no stand-by in his hour of need.”

“The family ghost, himself,” said Guy, in a slow, dry voice, “seems to have been an unpleasant person to know.”

“Ay; there was a young Waynflete who betrayed his friend in Monmouth’s rebellion, to save his own life. He went mad, and shot himself—as the story runs—so ignorant folk say his ghost haunts Waynflete, and think, when the wind blows, they hear his horse galloping.”

“That Guy who was too late was an awful duffer, if he wasn’t drunk!” said Godfrey. “I’d have got over the river, ghost or highwayman, or been killed on the spot.”

“It’s not a nice story,” said Guy. “I should think Waynflete was haunted by all their ghosts!”

“Ghost-stories are very proper for old families,” said Mrs Waynflete; “but of course no one believes them. There, it’s a disgraceful story; take it as a warning. You’d better get ready for dinner.”

She rose and walked out of the room as she spoke, with a quick, firm step, while Guy laughed rather scornfully.

“What an anachronism the dear old lady is!” he said. “As if all the world depended on Waynflete!”

“I don’t know what you mean!” said Godfrey, angrily. “I think she’s an awfully splendid old woman to have stuck to her point all her life and won it. Catch a highwayman stopping me!”

“My unlucky namesake said it was a ghost.”

“Well, but it wasn’t, you know. There aren’t any.”

“You’re the right heir for Aunt Margaret, Godfrey. She ought to leave you Waynflete.”

“Why; you’re the eldest,” said Godfrey; “she says interfering with natural laws is wicked.”

“If primogenitureisa natural law?”

“It’s the law of England,” said Godfrey, as if that settled the point.

Guy laughed again.

“Ah, Godfrey,” he said, “you’ll always get past the ghosts! Well, the visit will be rather jolly. I’ve a great curiosity about Waynflete, and at least it will be clean. I agree with Ruskin that smoke is sinful.”

“There’s a great deal of rot in Ruskin,” said Godfrey, “and you ought not to say things are sinful, when they ain’t. Plenty of things are.”

Part 1, Chapter II.The House.Constancy Vyner was sitting at a table, sorting and arranging a little pile of manuscripts, neatly clipped together, and written in the distinct upright hand of the modern high-school girl. She was dressed in a plain, girlish frock, well cut and well put on, her thick brown hair hung on her shoulders, and curled over her square low forehead in vigorous waves, as if every hair was full of elastic life. Her handsome eyes, of a clear shade of hazel, looked out under straight brown eyebrows, from a brown, rosy face with an air of keen and critical observation; while the straight nose and firm round chin added to her purposeful look. She was tall and strongly made for her sixteen years, and the white, well-shaped hands that held the papers looked as if made to carry out the work which the well-shaped head would conceive. The room in which she sat was as old-fashioned as she herself was modern and up to date, with small irregular panels, sloping roof, and tiny casements, through which the evening sun danced in distorted gleams.“IthinkI’m doing well,” said Constancy aloud to herself, as if convincing an opponent. “Ten shillings from theGuide of Youthfor the best essay on Reading. I’m glad I was so careful as to what books I mentioned. One must respect people’s prejudices. I have much the best chance for all those acrostics and search questions. The editor ofThe Children’s Friendhas asked me for another story. This will do. The little delicate boy must catch cold in a thunderstorm when his sister takes him out without leave. Shall he quite die? I think not. The district-visitor shall save his life. And this story forThe Penny Pleasure Giver. There mustn’t be any moral in that at all! Altogether I have got twenty pounds in the last year, and some of the editors write ‘Dear Madam,’ and don’t find out I’m only a little girl! Something ought to come out of this place. It’s beautiful copy!” she continued, leaning back in her chair and glancing round her, while a certain absorbed receptive look came into her keen eyes, altering her whole expression.She jumped up, and swinging herself into the deep high recess of the little casement, pushed it open and looked out.Beneath her lay a wild untrimmed garden divide! by a sunk fence from a large paddock sloping towards a narrow valley, with heathery hills beyond. The sky was blue and still, with long streaks of pearly silvery cloud across the hilltops. A flight of rooks came home to a group of tall elm trees beside the house, filling the still air with sound.“It’s awfully jolly and heavenly!” said Constancy, staring at the dazzling clouds with strong, unfaltering eyes. “It’ll do for a description.”“What will do for a description?” said an answering voice, like a softer echo of her own, as another girl, a year or so younger than herself, came in and stood below the window, lifting up a face of almost exactly the same shape, more delicate and perhaps less forcible.“Rooks—peace—brownish meadows, and blue sky,” said Constancy. “Nice description. What have you been doing, Florella?”“Talking to Aunt Constance about the Waynfletes, and the place. She says she is glad we have come; the house is gloomy, and she has heard odd noises. Oh, Cosy, do you think it could be haunted?”“That would be luck!” said Constancy, jumping down. “Oh, I say, even a little noise would do to begin with! If I could only get a ghost, and the way people behaved with a ghost, it would be beautiful! It would do for thePenny Pleasure. Now, Flo, remember, you are not to tell auntie I read all those novels at Weymouth. One must have lovers, if one writes a novel, and I never can understand going into raptures about anybody, so I must get it at secondhand. Let us come down to tea—the Waynflete boys will be coming. Perhaps they can tell us about the ghost. I shall investigate it thoroughly, and if ever I am interviewed by the Psychical Society, I shall take care to give more lucid answers than most people seem to do.”Constancy and Florella Vyner were the orphan daughters of a man who had never known how to make his considerable talents marketable, or to adapt his style to theGuide of Youth, or to thePenny Pleasure Giver, as self-interest required. He lived and died the vicar of a small town parish, and his two little girls, already motherless and with only a few thousand pounds between them, came under the care of their mother’s sister, Mrs John Palmer, who had married one of Mrs Waynflete’s connections. She was a widow, well off and childless, with a house in London, and she gave all the advantages to Constancy and Florella which she would have bestowed on her own daughters. She was very fond of Florella, and as much so of Constancy as a not very clever aunt was likely to be of a girl who not only thought that she knew better than her elders, but, like Prince Prigio, always did.Constancy did not mean to be the mere society young lady into which her aunt expected the shining light of the high-school to develop. She had definite ambitions, and definite powers to enable her to fulfil them.“What sort of noises did auntie hear, Flo?” she asked as she put away her papers.“She hasn’t heard any. But the servants say there are queer whisperings and rustlings, and the lodge-keeper told them that one of the old Waynflete’s ‘walks.’ Oh! what’s that?”“The ghost,” said Constancy, laughing, and emerging from behind the rustling, fresh calendered chintz of the old-fashioned four-post bed. “You hear a little faint rustle all round you, thencrackgoes a panel! You listen for footsteps, and pit-a-pat up the stairs they come. The door slowly opens—”“Don’t, Cosy; I don’t like it,” said Florella, shrinking.“Stop a moment, I’ll show you,” cried Constancy, opening a door, and running along the narrow polished oak passage beyond it. The younger girl stood still at the head of the dark old staircase, and looked timidly around her. The wind whistled softly round the house, and stirred the neglected creepers outside, so that they creaked on their rusty nails, and tapped with their long arms against the windows. She felt the bygoneness and unusedness of the place, and a feeling of awe stole over her. Suddenly a sound of eerie sobbing and sighing, followed first by a wild, mournful cry and then by a ringing laugh sounded through the house. The next moment Cosy came running down the passage, laughing still.“There! See how easy it is,” she said. “That’s how ghost-stories are hatched. I can make up a beauty for Waynflete, and study the results. Bless me! is it ringing the door-bell? No, that must be the Waynflete boys arriving. Come along, Flo, we’ll be ready to receive them.”Mrs John Palmer, kind, pretty, and easy-mannered, was a charming hostess, and the two lads had not been many minutes in the long, low drawing-room of the ancestral home that was so strange to them before she had set them quite at their ease. She pointed out to them the quaint old furniture, some of which must have been in Waynflete Hall before it was sold, and praised the old panelling and the low ceiling, with big black beams running across it. Then she encouraged them to talk about themselves, found out that they were both at a great public school, but that Guy was just going to Oxford. He was musical, and meant to read for honours, while Godfrey, besides being well up in the school, had done everything in the way of athletics which was possible at sixteen.Then she proposed that the girls should show them round the place; and the four young people went out together, across a lawn cut up by odd-shaped flower-beds, full of old-fashioned flowers, “inconvenient, but unique,” as Constancy said, moving towards the paddock, where they discovered the possibility of making a tennis-ground.The two boys were soon congenially employed in stepping it out, and they all grew intimate over their respective experiences of the game, and of other occupations and amusements. Florella was a kind and cheerful girl, wishful of giving pleasure; and Constancy, though she watched the two Waynfletes keenly, and “studied” them as she talked with spirit, was not at all occupied with her own relations to them; and, as Godfrey remarked afterwards, “was more like a fellow than a girl, except that she talked about the work her form was doing, which a fellow never wanted to do.”The four found their way into the old kitchen garden, with lavender and rosemary bushes nearly as tall as themselves, and wildernesses of untrimmed raspberries, which, in that northern country, were still bearing large specimens of red and white berries. Then, through a gate in the old stone wall, they came out into the stables and farm-buildings, picturesque and woefully tumble-down.“Shabby old place,” said Godfrey, contemptuously; but Guy already knew that the whole scene was fastening itself on his affections. He had never liked any other so much. Constancy watched his soft gazing eyes and satirical little smile as they turned round to the entrance of the farmyard where were a pair of large iron gates with handsome stone gate-posts. Beyond was the remains of an avenue of elms, leading through rough, sunlit fields.“The river is down there,” said Constancy. “I believe this used to be the entrance.” And Guy instantly thought of his unhappy namesake riding up to the gates—too late. A vivid picture presented itself to his eyes.“Is that the church?” asked Godfrey, pointing to a little grey building low down at one side; while Guy said, “Let us go and see where our ‘rude forefathers sleep.’”“Isn’t it like a slug?” said Cosy.The comparison was not romantic, but it was apt. The long, low, moss-grown church seemed to cling to the uneven, heaped-up ground. An old woman was cleaning it, and the young people went in.The church was dark, damp, and cold, but a flood of yellow sunlight streamed through the open door and fell upon a flat stone at the entrance on which was no name, but only a date, “1785,” and two words—“Too Late.”“Cruel!” ejaculated Guy, and caught himself up.“Eh, sir,” said the old woman, coming forward with a curtsey; “there be the last o’ t’owd Waynfletes, him as saw some’at and died raving. Here outside’s fayther, as shot hisself, and could na’ lie in t’kirkyard, so’s brother, t’vicar, laid un here in t’field and pu’d t’wa’ doon, and built ’t oop agen, round ’s tomb. Here a ligs.”She led them out among the heaped-up graves, and showed them a round excrescence in the churchyard wall, within which was an old-fashioned oblong tombstone.A tall, fair-haired, young man, with a lanky figure and stumbling steps, went before them, as if doing the honours of the dreary neglected place.“Yon’s soft Jem Outhwaite,” said the old woman in a whisper. “He’ve seen t’owd genleman—him as walks, sir. He seed un when he wor a laddie, and went silly. He maks a bit o’ brass by fetchin’ and carryin’ fer t’sexton and me.”“Soft” Jem touched his hat and grinned cheerfully. Guy gave him a shilling, and the old woman another, with youthful lordliness but he disliked the sight of these dishonoured graves more than he could have supposed possible, and the poor delighted softy, tying up his shilling in an old spotted handkerchief made a vivid impression on him.

Constancy Vyner was sitting at a table, sorting and arranging a little pile of manuscripts, neatly clipped together, and written in the distinct upright hand of the modern high-school girl. She was dressed in a plain, girlish frock, well cut and well put on, her thick brown hair hung on her shoulders, and curled over her square low forehead in vigorous waves, as if every hair was full of elastic life. Her handsome eyes, of a clear shade of hazel, looked out under straight brown eyebrows, from a brown, rosy face with an air of keen and critical observation; while the straight nose and firm round chin added to her purposeful look. She was tall and strongly made for her sixteen years, and the white, well-shaped hands that held the papers looked as if made to carry out the work which the well-shaped head would conceive. The room in which she sat was as old-fashioned as she herself was modern and up to date, with small irregular panels, sloping roof, and tiny casements, through which the evening sun danced in distorted gleams.

“IthinkI’m doing well,” said Constancy aloud to herself, as if convincing an opponent. “Ten shillings from theGuide of Youthfor the best essay on Reading. I’m glad I was so careful as to what books I mentioned. One must respect people’s prejudices. I have much the best chance for all those acrostics and search questions. The editor ofThe Children’s Friendhas asked me for another story. This will do. The little delicate boy must catch cold in a thunderstorm when his sister takes him out without leave. Shall he quite die? I think not. The district-visitor shall save his life. And this story forThe Penny Pleasure Giver. There mustn’t be any moral in that at all! Altogether I have got twenty pounds in the last year, and some of the editors write ‘Dear Madam,’ and don’t find out I’m only a little girl! Something ought to come out of this place. It’s beautiful copy!” she continued, leaning back in her chair and glancing round her, while a certain absorbed receptive look came into her keen eyes, altering her whole expression.

She jumped up, and swinging herself into the deep high recess of the little casement, pushed it open and looked out.

Beneath her lay a wild untrimmed garden divide! by a sunk fence from a large paddock sloping towards a narrow valley, with heathery hills beyond. The sky was blue and still, with long streaks of pearly silvery cloud across the hilltops. A flight of rooks came home to a group of tall elm trees beside the house, filling the still air with sound.

“It’s awfully jolly and heavenly!” said Constancy, staring at the dazzling clouds with strong, unfaltering eyes. “It’ll do for a description.”

“What will do for a description?” said an answering voice, like a softer echo of her own, as another girl, a year or so younger than herself, came in and stood below the window, lifting up a face of almost exactly the same shape, more delicate and perhaps less forcible.

“Rooks—peace—brownish meadows, and blue sky,” said Constancy. “Nice description. What have you been doing, Florella?”

“Talking to Aunt Constance about the Waynfletes, and the place. She says she is glad we have come; the house is gloomy, and she has heard odd noises. Oh, Cosy, do you think it could be haunted?”

“That would be luck!” said Constancy, jumping down. “Oh, I say, even a little noise would do to begin with! If I could only get a ghost, and the way people behaved with a ghost, it would be beautiful! It would do for thePenny Pleasure. Now, Flo, remember, you are not to tell auntie I read all those novels at Weymouth. One must have lovers, if one writes a novel, and I never can understand going into raptures about anybody, so I must get it at secondhand. Let us come down to tea—the Waynflete boys will be coming. Perhaps they can tell us about the ghost. I shall investigate it thoroughly, and if ever I am interviewed by the Psychical Society, I shall take care to give more lucid answers than most people seem to do.”

Constancy and Florella Vyner were the orphan daughters of a man who had never known how to make his considerable talents marketable, or to adapt his style to theGuide of Youth, or to thePenny Pleasure Giver, as self-interest required. He lived and died the vicar of a small town parish, and his two little girls, already motherless and with only a few thousand pounds between them, came under the care of their mother’s sister, Mrs John Palmer, who had married one of Mrs Waynflete’s connections. She was a widow, well off and childless, with a house in London, and she gave all the advantages to Constancy and Florella which she would have bestowed on her own daughters. She was very fond of Florella, and as much so of Constancy as a not very clever aunt was likely to be of a girl who not only thought that she knew better than her elders, but, like Prince Prigio, always did.

Constancy did not mean to be the mere society young lady into which her aunt expected the shining light of the high-school to develop. She had definite ambitions, and definite powers to enable her to fulfil them.

“What sort of noises did auntie hear, Flo?” she asked as she put away her papers.

“She hasn’t heard any. But the servants say there are queer whisperings and rustlings, and the lodge-keeper told them that one of the old Waynflete’s ‘walks.’ Oh! what’s that?”

“The ghost,” said Constancy, laughing, and emerging from behind the rustling, fresh calendered chintz of the old-fashioned four-post bed. “You hear a little faint rustle all round you, thencrackgoes a panel! You listen for footsteps, and pit-a-pat up the stairs they come. The door slowly opens—”

“Don’t, Cosy; I don’t like it,” said Florella, shrinking.

“Stop a moment, I’ll show you,” cried Constancy, opening a door, and running along the narrow polished oak passage beyond it. The younger girl stood still at the head of the dark old staircase, and looked timidly around her. The wind whistled softly round the house, and stirred the neglected creepers outside, so that they creaked on their rusty nails, and tapped with their long arms against the windows. She felt the bygoneness and unusedness of the place, and a feeling of awe stole over her. Suddenly a sound of eerie sobbing and sighing, followed first by a wild, mournful cry and then by a ringing laugh sounded through the house. The next moment Cosy came running down the passage, laughing still.

“There! See how easy it is,” she said. “That’s how ghost-stories are hatched. I can make up a beauty for Waynflete, and study the results. Bless me! is it ringing the door-bell? No, that must be the Waynflete boys arriving. Come along, Flo, we’ll be ready to receive them.”

Mrs John Palmer, kind, pretty, and easy-mannered, was a charming hostess, and the two lads had not been many minutes in the long, low drawing-room of the ancestral home that was so strange to them before she had set them quite at their ease. She pointed out to them the quaint old furniture, some of which must have been in Waynflete Hall before it was sold, and praised the old panelling and the low ceiling, with big black beams running across it. Then she encouraged them to talk about themselves, found out that they were both at a great public school, but that Guy was just going to Oxford. He was musical, and meant to read for honours, while Godfrey, besides being well up in the school, had done everything in the way of athletics which was possible at sixteen.

Then she proposed that the girls should show them round the place; and the four young people went out together, across a lawn cut up by odd-shaped flower-beds, full of old-fashioned flowers, “inconvenient, but unique,” as Constancy said, moving towards the paddock, where they discovered the possibility of making a tennis-ground.

The two boys were soon congenially employed in stepping it out, and they all grew intimate over their respective experiences of the game, and of other occupations and amusements. Florella was a kind and cheerful girl, wishful of giving pleasure; and Constancy, though she watched the two Waynfletes keenly, and “studied” them as she talked with spirit, was not at all occupied with her own relations to them; and, as Godfrey remarked afterwards, “was more like a fellow than a girl, except that she talked about the work her form was doing, which a fellow never wanted to do.”

The four found their way into the old kitchen garden, with lavender and rosemary bushes nearly as tall as themselves, and wildernesses of untrimmed raspberries, which, in that northern country, were still bearing large specimens of red and white berries. Then, through a gate in the old stone wall, they came out into the stables and farm-buildings, picturesque and woefully tumble-down.

“Shabby old place,” said Godfrey, contemptuously; but Guy already knew that the whole scene was fastening itself on his affections. He had never liked any other so much. Constancy watched his soft gazing eyes and satirical little smile as they turned round to the entrance of the farmyard where were a pair of large iron gates with handsome stone gate-posts. Beyond was the remains of an avenue of elms, leading through rough, sunlit fields.

“The river is down there,” said Constancy. “I believe this used to be the entrance.” And Guy instantly thought of his unhappy namesake riding up to the gates—too late. A vivid picture presented itself to his eyes.

“Is that the church?” asked Godfrey, pointing to a little grey building low down at one side; while Guy said, “Let us go and see where our ‘rude forefathers sleep.’”

“Isn’t it like a slug?” said Cosy.

The comparison was not romantic, but it was apt. The long, low, moss-grown church seemed to cling to the uneven, heaped-up ground. An old woman was cleaning it, and the young people went in.

The church was dark, damp, and cold, but a flood of yellow sunlight streamed through the open door and fell upon a flat stone at the entrance on which was no name, but only a date, “1785,” and two words—“Too Late.”

“Cruel!” ejaculated Guy, and caught himself up.

“Eh, sir,” said the old woman, coming forward with a curtsey; “there be the last o’ t’owd Waynfletes, him as saw some’at and died raving. Here outside’s fayther, as shot hisself, and could na’ lie in t’kirkyard, so’s brother, t’vicar, laid un here in t’field and pu’d t’wa’ doon, and built ’t oop agen, round ’s tomb. Here a ligs.”

She led them out among the heaped-up graves, and showed them a round excrescence in the churchyard wall, within which was an old-fashioned oblong tombstone.

A tall, fair-haired, young man, with a lanky figure and stumbling steps, went before them, as if doing the honours of the dreary neglected place.

“Yon’s soft Jem Outhwaite,” said the old woman in a whisper. “He’ve seen t’owd genleman—him as walks, sir. He seed un when he wor a laddie, and went silly. He maks a bit o’ brass by fetchin’ and carryin’ fer t’sexton and me.”

“Soft” Jem touched his hat and grinned cheerfully. Guy gave him a shilling, and the old woman another, with youthful lordliness but he disliked the sight of these dishonoured graves more than he could have supposed possible, and the poor delighted softy, tying up his shilling in an old spotted handkerchief made a vivid impression on him.

Part 1, Chapter III.The Inheritance.Constancy made Godfrey tell her all the story of the loss of Waynflete, of the traitor’s ghost, and of the Guy who was too late, as they walked home round the paddock, and looked down over Flete Edge to the river Flete at the bottom of the valley. A rough, ill-grown plantation covered the steep descent, while scattered cottages were planted on the equally steep hill opposite to them. Guy studied it with silent interest, while Godfrey compared it unfavourably with the Ingleby valley, and scoffed at the legends which he was repeating.“Ghosts are all bosh,” he said, with decision.“Well, there are some odd noises at Waynflete,” said Constancy, as they reached the house. “Now, come and see a picture. It must be this wretched Guy who was too late.”She took them upstairs to the extreme end of the wing of the house next the stables. Here, with windows looking out three ways, was a little octagon room, with polished oak floor, and scanty old-fashioned furniture. Over the chimney was the head of a handsome fair-faced youth, with the last rays of sun falling on his face.“I declare, Guy,” said Godfrey, “he’s uncommonly like you, especially about the eyes.”“I dare say,” said Guy, but the likeness annoyed him.“He looks very sad, poor fellow,” said Florella, softly; while Constancy looked from one to the other, and thought, “I’ve got a lot of ‘study.’” Rooms had been assigned to the two boys at the other end of this same wing of the house, opening into each other, as was the way of rooms at Waynflete.Godfrey went to bed, thinking that he did not much like these old legends and old scandals; and as for ghosts, the idea was too ridiculous! Still, there were certainly an odd variety of nocturnal noises at Waynflete—scratch, tap—rats and mice? Then a low murmuring and sobbing—the wind? He stuck his candle in the open window, and the flame hardly stirred. There was an interval of silence, and he got into bed and fell asleep as he ran through in his mind all the causes of mysterious noises—distant trains, coughing sheep, scraping creepers, pecking pigeons, whistling wind, scratching mice, etc, etc.He was awakened by a violent clutch on his shoulder, and starting up saw, in the stream of moonlight from the window, his brother, half dressed and deadly pale, who fell on his knees beside him, hiding his face and grasping him so tightly that he was hardly able to move.“Guy—I say! Guy! Good Lord, what’s the matter with you? Ill? Got the nightmare? I say—let go—I can’t stir!”Guy loosened his hold after a moment or two, but he shook from head to foot, and Godfrey, tumbling out of the bed, pushed him up on to it, and stood staring at him as he lay with hidden face.“What the dickens is the matter with you? I say, Guy! Can’t you speak?”There was no answer, and Godfrey bethinking himself that cold water was supposed to be an appropriate remedy for sudden ailments, plunged his sponge into the water-jug, and soused it on his brother’s head. It was so far effectual that Guy began to fetch his breath again, in long sobbing gasps, while Godfrey, to his increased horror, felt that there were tears on the face that was pressed against his hand.“Oh, I say, Guy! I say—what is making you such an awful duffer? Whatisthe matter with you?”Poor Guy shivered and trembled, perhaps not finding Godfrey’s method very helpful; but he came more to himself by degrees, asked for some water to drink, and pulled the coverings round him.“Didn’t you see—him?” he whispered at last. “See—see what? Oh, I say! Guy, you haven’t been dreaming of the ghost? Oh, I say! how can you be such a duffer! You’re as bad as when you used to climb into my crib, and Auntie Waynflete whipped you, after that nursemaid made the bogie and scared you.” What difference it might have made to Guy Waynflete if, at that moment of terrible experience he had had some comprehending friend to soothe and sustain him, it is impossible to say; as it was, his boyish pride and self-consciousness began to revive, under his brother’s rough dealing; he made an effort to pull himself together, laughed in an odd, startling way, and said—“Dreaming! Yes, of course I was dreaming. Don’t you ever say one word about it.”“Not I,” said Godfrey. “A nice story it would be to get about. Now, am I to go into your room, and sleep with the ghost? It’s getting chilly.”Guy raised himself on his arm, and stared out into the moonlight.“No,” he said, “I’ll go back myself. You’ll never hear another word about it.”He got up, still tremulously, and went away,shutting the doorbehind him.Godfrey was but a boy, with all the callous stupidity of his sixteen years. He thought that the incident had been very odd, and rather disgraceful to Guy’s manhood. He was glad it was over, and he tumbled back into bed again, and went to sleep.Guy looked much paler than usual the next morning, but confessed to nothing amiss. As he went out with the others to join in trying the new tennis-ground, he saw Florella, standing a little apart from the others, evidently just getting over a fit of crying.“I say—can I help you about anything?” he said, good naturedly.“No,” said Florella, turning upon him a pair of translucent eyes, almost as steadfast as Constancy’s, and even more candid. “I—I—I’ve been helping to do something wrong—that’s all.”She ran away before he could speak; but, surprised as he was, there remained in his mind the feeling that somehow she was a nice little girl.Godfrey heard no more of Guy’s midnight adventure during the remaining three days of the visit. The time passed pleasantly, and the aged vicar of the parish and one or two of the neighbouring gentlemen called formally on “Mr Waynflete.” The recognition pleased Guy, or at least that part of him which was free to care about it. He had very little to say to his aunt when they came back about Waynflete, speaking of it in a satirical, rather contemptuous fashion, which annoyed her very much; while Godfrey described it fully, though he staunchly declared that he liked Ingleby best.Shortly afterwards Guy had a sharp attack of illness. He had never been quite so strong as his brother, and he did not recover from its effects for some time. Mrs Waynflete had little patience with any ailment less definite than the measles, and thought him fanciful and self-indulgent.She was also much put out by Mrs John Palmer’s complaints of odd and unaccountable noises at Waynflete, which upset her nerves and frightened her servants. But for these, she would have liked to take the house again next summer, as the air suited her, and she was glad to be near her husband’s family. As it was, she did not feel able to settle down comfortably.Mrs Waynflete thought Constance Palmer would have had more sense. She let Waynflete Hall to a working farmer, with directions to look after the house carefully, and keep it dry.Nothing more was heard of mysterious noises, and Guy and Godfrey did not see the place again for nearly five years, when the farmer’s tenancy had come to an end.

Constancy made Godfrey tell her all the story of the loss of Waynflete, of the traitor’s ghost, and of the Guy who was too late, as they walked home round the paddock, and looked down over Flete Edge to the river Flete at the bottom of the valley. A rough, ill-grown plantation covered the steep descent, while scattered cottages were planted on the equally steep hill opposite to them. Guy studied it with silent interest, while Godfrey compared it unfavourably with the Ingleby valley, and scoffed at the legends which he was repeating.

“Ghosts are all bosh,” he said, with decision.

“Well, there are some odd noises at Waynflete,” said Constancy, as they reached the house. “Now, come and see a picture. It must be this wretched Guy who was too late.”

She took them upstairs to the extreme end of the wing of the house next the stables. Here, with windows looking out three ways, was a little octagon room, with polished oak floor, and scanty old-fashioned furniture. Over the chimney was the head of a handsome fair-faced youth, with the last rays of sun falling on his face.

“I declare, Guy,” said Godfrey, “he’s uncommonly like you, especially about the eyes.”

“I dare say,” said Guy, but the likeness annoyed him.

“He looks very sad, poor fellow,” said Florella, softly; while Constancy looked from one to the other, and thought, “I’ve got a lot of ‘study.’” Rooms had been assigned to the two boys at the other end of this same wing of the house, opening into each other, as was the way of rooms at Waynflete.

Godfrey went to bed, thinking that he did not much like these old legends and old scandals; and as for ghosts, the idea was too ridiculous! Still, there were certainly an odd variety of nocturnal noises at Waynflete—scratch, tap—rats and mice? Then a low murmuring and sobbing—the wind? He stuck his candle in the open window, and the flame hardly stirred. There was an interval of silence, and he got into bed and fell asleep as he ran through in his mind all the causes of mysterious noises—distant trains, coughing sheep, scraping creepers, pecking pigeons, whistling wind, scratching mice, etc, etc.

He was awakened by a violent clutch on his shoulder, and starting up saw, in the stream of moonlight from the window, his brother, half dressed and deadly pale, who fell on his knees beside him, hiding his face and grasping him so tightly that he was hardly able to move.

“Guy—I say! Guy! Good Lord, what’s the matter with you? Ill? Got the nightmare? I say—let go—I can’t stir!”

Guy loosened his hold after a moment or two, but he shook from head to foot, and Godfrey, tumbling out of the bed, pushed him up on to it, and stood staring at him as he lay with hidden face.

“What the dickens is the matter with you? I say, Guy! Can’t you speak?”

There was no answer, and Godfrey bethinking himself that cold water was supposed to be an appropriate remedy for sudden ailments, plunged his sponge into the water-jug, and soused it on his brother’s head. It was so far effectual that Guy began to fetch his breath again, in long sobbing gasps, while Godfrey, to his increased horror, felt that there were tears on the face that was pressed against his hand.

“Oh, I say, Guy! I say—what is making you such an awful duffer? Whatisthe matter with you?”

Poor Guy shivered and trembled, perhaps not finding Godfrey’s method very helpful; but he came more to himself by degrees, asked for some water to drink, and pulled the coverings round him.

“Didn’t you see—him?” he whispered at last. “See—see what? Oh, I say! Guy, you haven’t been dreaming of the ghost? Oh, I say! how can you be such a duffer! You’re as bad as when you used to climb into my crib, and Auntie Waynflete whipped you, after that nursemaid made the bogie and scared you.” What difference it might have made to Guy Waynflete if, at that moment of terrible experience he had had some comprehending friend to soothe and sustain him, it is impossible to say; as it was, his boyish pride and self-consciousness began to revive, under his brother’s rough dealing; he made an effort to pull himself together, laughed in an odd, startling way, and said—

“Dreaming! Yes, of course I was dreaming. Don’t you ever say one word about it.”

“Not I,” said Godfrey. “A nice story it would be to get about. Now, am I to go into your room, and sleep with the ghost? It’s getting chilly.”

Guy raised himself on his arm, and stared out into the moonlight.

“No,” he said, “I’ll go back myself. You’ll never hear another word about it.”

He got up, still tremulously, and went away,shutting the doorbehind him.

Godfrey was but a boy, with all the callous stupidity of his sixteen years. He thought that the incident had been very odd, and rather disgraceful to Guy’s manhood. He was glad it was over, and he tumbled back into bed again, and went to sleep.

Guy looked much paler than usual the next morning, but confessed to nothing amiss. As he went out with the others to join in trying the new tennis-ground, he saw Florella, standing a little apart from the others, evidently just getting over a fit of crying.

“I say—can I help you about anything?” he said, good naturedly.

“No,” said Florella, turning upon him a pair of translucent eyes, almost as steadfast as Constancy’s, and even more candid. “I—I—I’ve been helping to do something wrong—that’s all.”

She ran away before he could speak; but, surprised as he was, there remained in his mind the feeling that somehow she was a nice little girl.

Godfrey heard no more of Guy’s midnight adventure during the remaining three days of the visit. The time passed pleasantly, and the aged vicar of the parish and one or two of the neighbouring gentlemen called formally on “Mr Waynflete.” The recognition pleased Guy, or at least that part of him which was free to care about it. He had very little to say to his aunt when they came back about Waynflete, speaking of it in a satirical, rather contemptuous fashion, which annoyed her very much; while Godfrey described it fully, though he staunchly declared that he liked Ingleby best.

Shortly afterwards Guy had a sharp attack of illness. He had never been quite so strong as his brother, and he did not recover from its effects for some time. Mrs Waynflete had little patience with any ailment less definite than the measles, and thought him fanciful and self-indulgent.

She was also much put out by Mrs John Palmer’s complaints of odd and unaccountable noises at Waynflete, which upset her nerves and frightened her servants. But for these, she would have liked to take the house again next summer, as the air suited her, and she was glad to be near her husband’s family. As it was, she did not feel able to settle down comfortably.

Mrs Waynflete thought Constance Palmer would have had more sense. She let Waynflete Hall to a working farmer, with directions to look after the house carefully, and keep it dry.

Nothing more was heard of mysterious noises, and Guy and Godfrey did not see the place again for nearly five years, when the farmer’s tenancy had come to an end.

Part 1, Chapter IV.Hereditary Foes.“Very few people appreciate the feeling of a place. Hardly any one can feel the London atmosphere,” said Constancy Vyner, one Sunday afternoon nearly five years after the events last recorded, as she sat drinking tea on a balcony in a square on the London side of Kensington.“I shouldn’t have thought our atmosphere so ethereal as to be imperceptible to any one,” said a young man who formed one of the party.“That’s a most obvious remark, Mr Staunton; but I didn’t mean fogs. I don’t believe the country ever gives one just such a feel of summer as there is now. Hot air, balcony-flowers, rustling brown trees, they’re drier and more papery than country ones; sunny dust, dusty sun, and people, pavements, and omnibuses, and undergrounds—and smart fashionable clothes. It’s so summery! Nobody’s got the idea exactly,” she said. “Of course Dickens has a London feel; but that’s on another level, ghastly and squalid—or best parlour and hot-buttered toast; nor does it quite belong to the swells, though it has fashion and the season in it, too.”“Your idea is coming?” said Mr Staunton, watching her curiously.“I’ve got it!” said Constancy, sitting up with a broad smile of pleasure. “It’s modern—it’s democratic. It’s life’s fulness, roses, strawberries, sun, summer—got with some trouble, for the many. So there’s a little dust. You have the best of everything—music, parties; but you go by the underground!”When Constancy was present, she always took the stage—or, rather, people gave it to her—she commanded attention. She was now at college, thinking, talking, making friends according to her wont, and though her literary ambitions were necessarily much in abeyance, she wrote, now and then, an article or short story, which had just the distinction that wins acceptance, and was not quite like every one else’s.The youngest Miss Staunton was a college friend, and Constancy was intimate with her family, which consisted of two or three sisters, all busy with various forms of self-help and self-expression, and of the brother now present. The whole party lived harmoniously together, on a conjunction of small incomes, on terms of mutual independence, and, as Constancy epigrammatically put it, “went into society in the underground,” and into very good society too, which is no doubt a modern and democratic development.“Don’t let us collect material for magazine articles,” said Violet Staunton; “but let us settle about the reading party. Cuthbert has heard of a jolly old-fashioned place on the moors up above Rilston, in Yorkshire, within reach of all kinds of fine scenery.”“Rilston!” interposed Constancy. “We stayed once with Aunt Connie, at a place near there—Waynflete.”“How odd!” said Violet. “It was from Mr Waynflete that Cuth heard of the place.”“Guy Waynflete is a friend of mine,” said Mr Staunton. “I stayed with him once at Ingleby. We came upon Moorhead in our walks, and I should think it might suit for the preparation of future double firsts and senior-wranglers.”“Thank you, Mr Staunton,” said Constancy, frankly rising to the bait. “I dare say you would expect to find us crocheting antimacassars!”A little more discussion followed as to ways and means, and as to the number of the party, which was to consist of Constancy and her sister, of the eldest and youngest Miss Stauntons, and of two other college students.“I should like to see Waynflete again,” said Constancy; “it was a lovely old place—haunted, too. The family lost it to a villain called Maxwell, and the old lady who has it now bought it back again.”“I never heard anything of the family history from Waynflete,” said Cuthbert Staunton, “beyond the fact that the old place had been recovered. But I believe we are connected with some Yorkshire Maxwells. Do you know any particulars of the ‘villain,’ Miss Vyner?”“You, descended from the hereditary foe, and friends with Guy Waynflete, without knowing it? How splendid!” said Constancy, sitting upright. “This is the story.”And with exact memory and considerable force she related the legend of the loss of Waynflete as she had heard it five years ago from Godfrey; putting in a vivid description of the eerie old house, and the still more eerie picture of the unhappy heir, concluding with—“The eldest one was so like the picture. He is in the business now, isn’t he? I heard he didn’t take a good degree. And Godfrey was such a big boy.”“Well, he is a very big boy still,” said Cuthbert Staunton, who had listened with much interest. “He is a fine fellow, still at Oxford. Guy is made of rather complex stuff. Perhaps you may see him—he is in London, and I asked him to look in to tell my sisters about this moorland paradise.”As he spoke there was a movement, and a fair, slight young man came in, whom Cuthbert greeted cordially, and introduced as Mr Waynflete.The five years had not greatly changed him. He had the same slightly supercilious manner and the same “pretty” wistful eyes, into which, at the sight of Constancy, there came a startled look.“I remember Waynflete so well,” she said, after the greeting. “Is it as delightful as ever?”“I have never seen it since,” said Guy; “but the lease is out this year, and I believe some of us are to go and inspect it. Moorhead is eight or ten miles off—up on the moors.”“Will you tell us about it, Mr Waynflete,” said the elder Miss Staunton. “We want to go in August. Is it a place where we are likely to be shot, or glared at by indignant keepers, if we walk about? We shouldn’t like to be a grievance—or to be treated as one.”“No,” said Guy, with a smile. “It’s only the fringe of the moor, and there are very few grouse there. I think you’d be tolerated, even if you picked bilberries and had picnics.”“That’s just what we want to do,” said Constancy, “picnics on improved principles. But we shall each have anetna, we shan’t trust to sticks and a gipsy-kettle.”“I don’t know how young ladies amuse themselves when they’re not reading,” said Guy. “But there’s nothing to do at Moorhead. It’s two miles from High Hinton, and four from Kirk Hinton, and nine from Rilston—and it mostly rains up there. But Mrs Shipley’s very good at scones and tea-cakes, and the view is first-class of its kind.”“Then, when it rains, we can put on our mackintoshes, and walk two—or four—miles to buy postage stamps,” said Constancy, rising. “Good-bye, Kitty, I must be going. Mind you look up your duties as chaperon and eldest of the party. Mr Waynflete, I’m sure my aunt will be delighted to see you if you like to call. We are at home on Tuesdays—12, Sumner Square. Mr Staunton, perhaps we shall see you too?”The young men made proper acknowledgments, and when Constancy, with no ladies’ last words, had taken her departure, Guy stated that he wished to hear the evening service at Westminster, and asked his friend to walk there with him by way of the Thames Embankment.

“Very few people appreciate the feeling of a place. Hardly any one can feel the London atmosphere,” said Constancy Vyner, one Sunday afternoon nearly five years after the events last recorded, as she sat drinking tea on a balcony in a square on the London side of Kensington.

“I shouldn’t have thought our atmosphere so ethereal as to be imperceptible to any one,” said a young man who formed one of the party.

“That’s a most obvious remark, Mr Staunton; but I didn’t mean fogs. I don’t believe the country ever gives one just such a feel of summer as there is now. Hot air, balcony-flowers, rustling brown trees, they’re drier and more papery than country ones; sunny dust, dusty sun, and people, pavements, and omnibuses, and undergrounds—and smart fashionable clothes. It’s so summery! Nobody’s got the idea exactly,” she said. “Of course Dickens has a London feel; but that’s on another level, ghastly and squalid—or best parlour and hot-buttered toast; nor does it quite belong to the swells, though it has fashion and the season in it, too.”

“Your idea is coming?” said Mr Staunton, watching her curiously.

“I’ve got it!” said Constancy, sitting up with a broad smile of pleasure. “It’s modern—it’s democratic. It’s life’s fulness, roses, strawberries, sun, summer—got with some trouble, for the many. So there’s a little dust. You have the best of everything—music, parties; but you go by the underground!”

When Constancy was present, she always took the stage—or, rather, people gave it to her—she commanded attention. She was now at college, thinking, talking, making friends according to her wont, and though her literary ambitions were necessarily much in abeyance, she wrote, now and then, an article or short story, which had just the distinction that wins acceptance, and was not quite like every one else’s.

The youngest Miss Staunton was a college friend, and Constancy was intimate with her family, which consisted of two or three sisters, all busy with various forms of self-help and self-expression, and of the brother now present. The whole party lived harmoniously together, on a conjunction of small incomes, on terms of mutual independence, and, as Constancy epigrammatically put it, “went into society in the underground,” and into very good society too, which is no doubt a modern and democratic development.

“Don’t let us collect material for magazine articles,” said Violet Staunton; “but let us settle about the reading party. Cuthbert has heard of a jolly old-fashioned place on the moors up above Rilston, in Yorkshire, within reach of all kinds of fine scenery.”

“Rilston!” interposed Constancy. “We stayed once with Aunt Connie, at a place near there—Waynflete.”

“How odd!” said Violet. “It was from Mr Waynflete that Cuth heard of the place.”

“Guy Waynflete is a friend of mine,” said Mr Staunton. “I stayed with him once at Ingleby. We came upon Moorhead in our walks, and I should think it might suit for the preparation of future double firsts and senior-wranglers.”

“Thank you, Mr Staunton,” said Constancy, frankly rising to the bait. “I dare say you would expect to find us crocheting antimacassars!”

A little more discussion followed as to ways and means, and as to the number of the party, which was to consist of Constancy and her sister, of the eldest and youngest Miss Stauntons, and of two other college students.

“I should like to see Waynflete again,” said Constancy; “it was a lovely old place—haunted, too. The family lost it to a villain called Maxwell, and the old lady who has it now bought it back again.”

“I never heard anything of the family history from Waynflete,” said Cuthbert Staunton, “beyond the fact that the old place had been recovered. But I believe we are connected with some Yorkshire Maxwells. Do you know any particulars of the ‘villain,’ Miss Vyner?”

“You, descended from the hereditary foe, and friends with Guy Waynflete, without knowing it? How splendid!” said Constancy, sitting upright. “This is the story.”

And with exact memory and considerable force she related the legend of the loss of Waynflete as she had heard it five years ago from Godfrey; putting in a vivid description of the eerie old house, and the still more eerie picture of the unhappy heir, concluding with—

“The eldest one was so like the picture. He is in the business now, isn’t he? I heard he didn’t take a good degree. And Godfrey was such a big boy.”

“Well, he is a very big boy still,” said Cuthbert Staunton, who had listened with much interest. “He is a fine fellow, still at Oxford. Guy is made of rather complex stuff. Perhaps you may see him—he is in London, and I asked him to look in to tell my sisters about this moorland paradise.”

As he spoke there was a movement, and a fair, slight young man came in, whom Cuthbert greeted cordially, and introduced as Mr Waynflete.

The five years had not greatly changed him. He had the same slightly supercilious manner and the same “pretty” wistful eyes, into which, at the sight of Constancy, there came a startled look.

“I remember Waynflete so well,” she said, after the greeting. “Is it as delightful as ever?”

“I have never seen it since,” said Guy; “but the lease is out this year, and I believe some of us are to go and inspect it. Moorhead is eight or ten miles off—up on the moors.”

“Will you tell us about it, Mr Waynflete,” said the elder Miss Staunton. “We want to go in August. Is it a place where we are likely to be shot, or glared at by indignant keepers, if we walk about? We shouldn’t like to be a grievance—or to be treated as one.”

“No,” said Guy, with a smile. “It’s only the fringe of the moor, and there are very few grouse there. I think you’d be tolerated, even if you picked bilberries and had picnics.”

“That’s just what we want to do,” said Constancy, “picnics on improved principles. But we shall each have anetna, we shan’t trust to sticks and a gipsy-kettle.”

“I don’t know how young ladies amuse themselves when they’re not reading,” said Guy. “But there’s nothing to do at Moorhead. It’s two miles from High Hinton, and four from Kirk Hinton, and nine from Rilston—and it mostly rains up there. But Mrs Shipley’s very good at scones and tea-cakes, and the view is first-class of its kind.”

“Then, when it rains, we can put on our mackintoshes, and walk two—or four—miles to buy postage stamps,” said Constancy, rising. “Good-bye, Kitty, I must be going. Mind you look up your duties as chaperon and eldest of the party. Mr Waynflete, I’m sure my aunt will be delighted to see you if you like to call. We are at home on Tuesdays—12, Sumner Square. Mr Staunton, perhaps we shall see you too?”

The young men made proper acknowledgments, and when Constancy, with no ladies’ last words, had taken her departure, Guy stated that he wished to hear the evening service at Westminster, and asked his friend to walk there with him by way of the Thames Embankment.

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