THE FERNHALL GHOST
For a week after the reprieve recorded in the last chapter Snap and
Towzer went about like cats who had been whipped for stealing cream.
They honestly desired not to be led into temptation, and hoped that
no one would leave the jug on the floor. For a week, perhaps, even
if this had happened, these two penitent kittens would have made
believe that they did not see it.
The holidays were now rapidly approaching, and the glorious July
weather seemed expressly sent for the gorgeous frocks and sweetly
pretty faces which would soon adorn playground and chapel during
'prize week.'
Snap and Towzer were in Frank Winthrop's study, Towzer getting his
big brother's tea ready, and Snap looking on. After a while the
conversation turned upon a subject of immense interest, just then, to
all Fernhall boys.
'Major,' said Snap to Winthrop the elder, 'what do you fellows think
of the ghost?'
'Think!' replied the monitor with wonderful dignity, 'why, that you
lower school fellows have been getting out of your dormitories and
playing tunes upon combs, jew's-harps, and other instruments of
music, when you ought to have been asleep, with a lump of yellow soap
between your jaws to keep you quiet.'
'Oh, stow that,' replied Snap, 'fellows don't play such tunes as the
Head has heard for the last week on jew's-harps and combs. Either
those fellows who belong to the "concert lot" had a hand in it, or
there is something fishy about it. I say, Frank, be a good chap and
tell us, are the Sixth in it?'
'The Sixth in it, I should think not,' replied Winthrop; 'but I can't
answer for all the monitors, even if I wanted to.'
Snap winked at Towzer at this rather cautious denial, remarking:
'Well, it is a good thing the ghost has not forgotten his music. He
has been here every year since Fernhall was a school.'
'Yes,' broke in Billy, lifting his snub nose from the depths of an
empty coffee-cup, 'and to-night is the night of the Ninth; the night,
you know, on which it walks round the Nix's garden and across the
lawn.'
'Does it?' quoth Frank. 'Well, if it is wise, it won't walk across
that lawn to-night. If it does, it will get snuff, I can tell you.'
'Why, Major, why should it get "bottled" to-night more than any other
night, and who is to "bottle" a ghost?' inquired Snap indignantly.
'Never you mind, young 'un, but you may bet your bottom dollar that
if the ghost walks to-night it will be walking in the quad at
punishment drill for the rest of this term.'
As this was all the boys could get from their senior, they had to be
content with it, and before long took their departure. At the bottom
of the stairs Snap took Billy's arm, and conferred earnestly with him
as to what the great man's prophecy might mean.
'Well, you see,' said Towzer, looking abnormally wise, 'old Frank is
precious thick with the Beauty' (a daughter of 'the Head'), 'and
after the match the other day I saw them having a long talk together,
and, unless I am mistaken, he was showing her just the way the ghost
ought to come.'
'By Jove, Towzer,' cried Snap, 'Scotland Yard won't have a chance
with you when you grow up. One of the "Shilling Shocker" detectives
would be a fool to you. You've got it, my lad; there is a deep-laid
and terrible plot on foot, as the papers say, and one aimed at a
time-honoured and respected institution, our friend the ghost. Let's
go and see Elizabeth.'
Now Elizabeth was a lady, if a kind heart and gentle ways with small
boys could make her one, although the humble office which she held
was that of needlewoman at Fernhall. In these degenerate days a
maid-servant and a wife together are supposed to mend me, tend me,
and attach the fickle button to the too often deserted shirt. But
they are only supposed to. They don't as a matter of fact, and
indeed the manner of life of my buttons is decidedly loose. But in
those old days the ancient needle-woman of Fernhall wielded no idle
weapon. Her needle and thimble were the sword and shield with which
she attacked and overcame the untidiness of four hundred boys, and in
spite of the wild tugging at buttons and collars as the Irishman of
the dormitory sang out 'Bell fast,' 'Double in,' while the last of
the chapel chimes were in the air, no clean shirt at any rate came
buttonless to the scratch.
To Elizabeth, then, the boys betook themselves, and, being special
favourites, she took them into her own little snuggery, and they had
tea again. Oh no, don't feel alarmed, gentle reader: two teas, ten
teas if you like, matter nothing to Fernhall boys--their hides are
elastic, and even the pancakes of Shrove Tuesday merely cause a
slight depression of spirits for the next twenty-four hours.
'Now, 'Lizabeth, you dear old brick, we want you to tell us
something. What's up to-night at "the house"?'
'Nothing that I know of, Master Winthrop, except that some of them
officers is a coming up from their barracks to dinner with Miss
Beauty and the other young ladies as is staying here.'
'Oh! o--o--oh, as the man said when the brickbat hit him where he'd
meant to put his dinner; and what, Lizzie darling, may they be going
to do after dinner?'
'Piano-punching, I suppose, dear, and a little chess with the
governor; and then what----?'
'Bed? It will be slow for them, won't it?'
'No, Master Hales, piano-punching indeed, when Miss Beauty plays
sweet enough to wake the blessed dead.'
'Did wake them, "Grannie," the other night, didn't she, and they seem
to have taken an active share in the musical part of the
entertainment?'
'There's no talking with such a random boy as you, but there, if you
want to know, that's just what they have all come about. They say
that when Miss Beauty was going to bed the other night she heard that
soft, wailing music, like what we hear here every year just about
this time, and she was so sure that there was something really
unnatural about it that the Professor has given her leave to sit up
with the other guests, and Captain Lowndes, and the rest in the
monitors' common room, to see if they can catch the ghost, and for
goodness sake don't you say as I told you, but if you knows the ghost
tell him not to walk to-night, as the Professor says such nonsense
must be stamped out for good. There now!'
Poor old Elizabeth looked as if she had committed a crime, and puffed
and blew and pulled at her two little chin tufts (for, alas, she was
bearded like the pard) in a way that nearly sent the boys into
convulsions at her own tea-table. But they contained themselves (and
about three plates full of muffins), and by-and-by departed.
There was a long and earnest conversation in a certain study that
night. There was a surplice missing from amongst the properties of
the choir, and then the four hundred wended sleepily from chapel to
their dormitories.
In half an hour the lights were out in all windows save those of the
head-master's house; stillness fell upon Fernhall; a big bright moon
came out upon the scene and made those long grass meadows gleam like
the silver sea just beyond them; a bat or two whirled about above the
master's orchard, and but for them, and the merry party up at the
house, Fernhall, once the smuggler's home, now the busy public
school, slept to the lullaby of the summer waves.
* * * * * *
Fernhall slept, its busy brain as quiet as if no memories of an evil
past hung thickly round that grey old house by the sea. Could it be
that such evil deeds were done there in the storied days of old? At
least there was some ground for the country folks' legends and
superstitions. Not a rood of ground under or around the 'House' was
solid; it was all a great warren, only that the tunnelling and
burrowing had been done by men and not by conies.
Under the basement of the head-master's house were huge cellars, such
cellars as would have appeared a world too wide even for the most
bibulous of scholars. A cupboard of very tiny dimensions would have
held all the strong liquors which our Head drank in a year. These
cellars had two entrances, one from the house, and the other half a
mile away, below what was now low-water mark. For year by year the
waves encroach upon Fernhall, and in time those old smugglers who
made and used these vaults will get their own again. They, no doubt,
many of them, have gone to Davy Jones's locker, but their chief
sleeps sound on shore, in a stately vault, which blazons his name and
his virtues to the world. In his day smuggling was a remunerative
and genteel profession, and he and all his race were past masters in
the craft. Living far from the great centres of life, upon a bleak
and dangerous coast, little notice was taken of the quiet old squire
who yearly added acre to acre and whiled away the cheerless days with
such innocent pursuits as sea-fishing and yachting.
Fernhall yokels say that the last squire and his wife did not agree.
She was not a native of the Fernhall moorland, but a soft
south-country thing with a laugh in her eye and bright clothes on her
back when she first came amongst them; a parson's daughter, some
said, but no one knew and few cared. Very soon she grew, like the
rest of the people round her, silent, serious, or sad--a quiet grey
shadow, with the laugh and bright clothes stored away perhaps
somewhere with her memories of that sunny south. All at once her
face was missed from church and market, but no one cared to ask
whither she had gone. Someone, with grim Fernhall humour, suggested
that the Squire had added to the 'spirits' in his subterranean vaults.
That was all, then, and to-night was the anniversary of her strange
disappearance. There are nights when the world is still and you can
feel that she is resting. There are other nights when the stillness
is as deep, nay, deeper; but it is not the stillness of rest. The
silence is throbbing and alive with some sad secret, and the
listening earth is straining to catch it. This was such a night.
The whitely gleaming grass stretched away until it reached a vague
land of moonlit shadows. The waves were almost articulate in their
meanings. The leaves of the poplars kept showing their white
underside in the moonlight, until the whole trees swung in the night
breeze, a grove of sheeted spectres. Anyone watching the scene was
at once seized with the idea that something was going to happen, and,
like the watchful stars and bending trees, strained every nerve to
listen.
At last it came, faint and far off, sad but unutterably sweet, a low
wail of plaintive music--so low that at first it seemed the mere
coinage of an overwrought fancy. Nearer it came, and nearer, now
growing into a full wave of sound, now ebbing away--the mere echo of
a sigh, but always coming nearer and nearer, until it seemed to pause
irresolutely by the gate which divides the master's garden from the
monitors' lawn. Was it another fancy, or were there for a moment a
crowd of white, eager faces pressed against the window which looks
upon that lawn? Fancy assuredly, for the moon now gleamed back
blankly from the glass. For a moment a little cloud no bigger than a
man's hand passed over the moon, and as it cleared away a deep-drawn
sigh attracted the watcher's eyes to the garden gate. The moon was
full upon it; you could see it shake if it shook ever so little. In
that listening midnight you could almost hear the flowers whispering
to each other, but the gate neither creaked nor shook, and yet
someone had passed through it, someone with bent head, and slow,
tired feet, who sighed and told the beads of her rosary as she
passed. The moonlight played strange tricks that night; it seemed to
cling to and follow that silent figure, leaving a white track on the
dew-laden grass. And now it paused for one moment before that
window, through which those tear-dimmed eyes had so often and so
longingly turned towards her own loved south, and as she paused the
silence broke, the window was dashed open, and three athletic
figures, figures of men who feared neither man nor devil, sprang out
with shouts of laughter, surrounded that white figure, still so
strangely quiet, and demanded--its name! At the open window from
which the three had issued were now gathered half a dozen ladies,
looking half amused, half frightened. Among them was Beauty, the
Head's daughter.
With boisterous laughter, that jarred harshly upon the stillness of
that midsummer night, the three had dashed upon their prey. Why,
then, do they pause? It seemed to those who watched that some
whisper had reached their ears and chilled their courage. For one
moment the figure's arms were raised aloft, and then the men
recoiled, and it passed on as if unconscious of these things of clay,
steady and stately, with head bent, slow feet, and hands which still
told the rosary beads. For a moment it stood large and luminous on
the skyline of that hill which overhangs the sea, the favourite
'look-out' of the old lords of Fernhall; for a moment it raised its
sheeted arms as if calling down a curse upon the fated mansion, and
then floated seaward and was gone.
The chapel-bell tolled one, and again the Fernhall ghost had baffled
the inquisitive investigations of disbelieving men, and had asserted
itself in spite of the nineteenth century, the --th Regiment, and the
new Head-master. In vain Beauty sought an explanation from her
discomfited cavaliers; all she could elicit was that there was
something uncanny about it, something not fit for ladies to hear, and
she had better go to bed and think no more about it. It would not
come again for a year, anyway. So, at last, mightily dissatisfied,
the ladies went, and when the men were driving home to barracks long
and heartily pealed their laughter and gallant Captain Lowndes vowed
again and again that 'That boy would make a right good soldier, sir,
hang me if he wouldn't! What was it he said again, the young
scoundrel? "I've not a rag on except this surplice, Captain, and, by
Jove, if you don't take your hands off I'll drop that. If the ladies
don't like me in the spirit, I must appear in the flesh."'