THE GHOST ON THE DYKE
Somehow, Faith and Carl and Una could not shake off the hold which the
story of Henry Warren’s ghost had taken upon their imaginations. They
had never believed in ghosts. Ghost tales they had heard a-plenty—Mary
Vance had told some far more blood-curdling than this; but those tales
were all of places and people and spooks far away and unknown. After
the first half-awful, half-pleasant thrill of awe and terror they
thought of them no more. But this story came home to them. The old
Bailey garden was almost at their very door—almost in their beloved
Rainbow Valley. They had passed and repassed it constantly; they had
hunted for flowers in it; they had made short cuts through it when they
wished to go straight from the village to the valley. But never again!
After the night when Mary Vance told them its gruesome tale they would
not have gone through or near it on pain of death. Death! What was
death compared to the unearthly possibility of falling into the
clutches of Henry Warren’s grovelling ghost?
One warm July evening the three of them were sitting under the Tree
Lovers, feeling a little lonely. Nobody else had come near the valley
that evening. Jem Blythe was away in Charlottetown, writing on his
entrance examinations. Jerry and Walter Blythe were off for a sail on
the harbour with old Captain Crawford. Nan and Di and Rilla and Shirley
had gone down the harbour road to visit Kenneth and Persis Ford, who
had come with their parents for a flying visit to the little old House
of Dreams. Nan had asked Faith to go with them, but Faith had declined.
She would never have admitted it, but she felt a little secret jealousy
of Persis Ford, concerning whose wonderful beauty and city glamour she
had heard a great deal. No, she wasn’t going to go down there and play
second fiddle to anybody. She and Una took their story books to Rainbow
Valley and read, while Carl investigated bugs along the banks of the
brook, and all three were happy until they suddenly realized that it
was twilight and that the old Bailey garden was uncomfortably near by.
Carl came and sat down close to the girls. They all wished they had
gone home a little sooner, but nobody said anything.
Great, velvety, purple clouds heaped up in the west and spread over the
valley. There was no wind and everything was suddenly, strangely,
dreadfully still. The marsh was full of thousands of fire-flies. Surely
some fairy parliament was being convened that night. Altogether,
Rainbow Valley was not a canny place just then.
Faith looked fearfully up the valley to the old Bailey garden. Then, if
anybody’s blood ever did freeze, Faith Meredith’s certainly froze at
that moment. The eyes of Carl and Una followed her entranced gaze and
chills began gallopading up and down their spines also. For there,
under the big tamarack tree on the tumble-down, grass-grown dyke of the
Bailey garden, was something white—shapelessly white in the gathering
gloom. The three Merediths sat and gazed as if turned to stone.
“It’s—it’s the—calf,” whispered Una at last.
“It’s—too—big—for the calf,” whispered Faith. Her mouth and lips were
so dry she could hardly articulate the words.
Suddenly Carl gasped,
“It’s coming here.”
The girls gave one last agonized glance. Yes, it was creeping down over
the dyke, as no calf ever did or could creep. Reason fled before
sudden, over-mastering panic. For the moment every one of the trio was
firmly convinced that what they saw was Henry Warren’s ghost. Carl
sprang to his feet and bolted blindly. With a simultaneous shriek the
girls followed him. Like mad creatures they tore up the hill, across
the road and into the manse. They had left Aunt Martha sewing in the
kitchen. She was not there. They rushed to the study. It was dark and
tenantless. As with one impulse, they swung around and made for
Ingleside—but not across Rainbow Valley. Down the hill and through the
Glen street they flew on the wings of their wild terror, Carl in the
lead, Una bringing up the rear. Nobody tried to stop them, though
everybody who saw them wondered what fresh devilment those manse
youngsters were up to now. But at the gate of Ingleside they ran into
Rosemary West, who had just been in for a moment to return some
borrowed books.
She saw their ghastly faces and staring eyes. She realized that their
poor little souls were wrung with some awful and real fear, whatever
its cause. She caught Carl with one arm and Faith with the other. Una
stumbled against her and held on desperately.
“Children, dear, what has happened?” she said. “What has frightened
you?”
“Henry Warren’s ghost,” answered Carl, through his chattering teeth.
“Henry—Warren’s—ghost!” said amazed Rosemary, who had never heard the
story.
“Yes,” sobbed Faith hysterically. “It’s there—on the Bailey dyke—we saw
it—and it started to—chase us.”
Rosemary herded the three distracted creatures to the Ingleside
veranda. Gilbert and Anne were both away, having also gone to the House
of Dreams, but Susan appeared in the doorway, gaunt and practical and
unghostlike.
“What is all this rumpus about?” she inquired.
Again the children gasped out their awful tale, while Rosemary held
them close to her and soothed them with wordless comfort.
“Likely it was an owl,” said Susan, unstirred.
An owl! The Meredith children never had any opinion of Susan’s
intelligence after that!
“It was bigger than a million owls,” said Carl, sobbing—oh, how ashamed
Carl was of that sobbing in after days—“and it—it _grovelled_ just as
Mary said—and it was crawling down over the dyke to get at us. Do owls
_crawl?_”
Rosemary looked at Susan.
“They must have seen something to frighten them so,” she said.
“I will go and see,” said Susan coolly. “Now, children, calm
yourselves. Whatever you have seen, it was not a ghost. As for poor
Henry Warren, I feel sure he would be only too glad to rest quietly in
his peaceful grave once he got there. No fear of _him_ venturing back,
and that you may tie to. If you can make them see reason, Miss West, I
will find out the truth of the matter.”
Susan departed for Rainbow Valley, valiantly grasping a pitchfork which
she found leaning against the back fence where the doctor had been
working in his little hay-field. A pitchfork might not be of much use
against “ha’nts,” but it was a comforting sort of weapon. There was
nothing to be seen in Rainbow Valley when Susan reached it. No white
visitants appeared to be lurking in the shadowy, tangled old Bailey
garden. Susan marched boldly through it and beyond it, and rapped with
her pitchfork on the door of the little cottage on the other side,
where Mrs. Stimson lived with her two daughters.
Back at Ingleside Rosemary had succeeded in calming the children. They
still sobbed a little from shock, but they were beginning to feel a
lurking and salutary suspicion that they had made dreadful geese of
themselves. This suspicion became a certainty when Susan finally
returned.
“I have found out what your ghost was,” she said, with a grim smile,
sitting down on a rocker and fanning herself. “Old Mrs. Stimson has had
a pair of factory cotton sheets bleaching in the Bailey garden for a
week. She spread them on the dyke under the tamarack tree because the
grass was clean and short there. This evening she went out to take them
in. She had her knitting in her hands so she hung the sheets over her
shoulders by way of carrying them. And then she must have dropped one
of her needles and find it she could not and has not yet. But she went
down on her knees and crept about to hunt for it, and she was at that
when she heard awful yells down in the valley and saw the three
children tearing up the hill past her. She thought they had been bit by
something and it gave her poor old heart such a turn that she could not
move or speak, but just crouched there till they disappeared. Then she
staggered back home and they have been applying stimulants to her ever
since, and her heart is in a terrible condition and she says she will
not get over this fright all summer.”
The Merediths sat, crimson with a shame that even Rosemary’s
understanding sympathy could not remove. They sneaked off home, met
Jerry at the manse gate and made remorseful confession. A session of
the Good-Conduct Club was arranged for next morning.
“Wasn’t Miss West sweet to us to-night?” whispered Faith in bed.
“Yes,” admitted Una. “It is such a pity it changes people so much to be
made stepmothers.”
“I don’t believe it does,” said Faith loyally.