‘In her is highe beauty without pride,
And youth withoute greenhood or folly.
To all her workes virtue is her guide.
Humbless hath slain in her all tyranny:
She is the mirror of all courtesy,
Her heart a very chamber of holiness,
Her hand minister of freedom for almess.’
CHAUCER.
‘No!’ says Susan. The word is not a denial; it is merely an ejaculative
expression of the most extreme astonishment, largely mingled with
disbelief.
The sun is glinting through the trees in the old orchard right down on
her head, striking a light from the glancing knitting-needles she has
now let fall into her lap. This old orchard is the happy hunting-ground
of the Barry children old and young—the place which they rush to in
their joyous moments, the place which they crawl to with their griefs
and woes. To-day neither joys nor griefs are near them, and it is out of
sheer love alone for its mossy old apple-trees and its sunlit corners
that Susan had tripped in here a while ago with a dilapidated old novel
tucked into her apron pocket, and the eternal sock with the heel half
turned between her pretty fingers. After her had straggled Betty, a
slender creature of sixteen, and Tom, the baby. Tom was five, but he was
always the baby, there having been no more babies after him, principally
because his mother died when he was born. And last of all came Bonnie,
the little cripple, hopping sadly on his crutches, until Susan saw him,
and ran back to him and caught him in her arms, and placed him beside
her on the warm soft grass, putting out her much-washed cotton skirt
that he might sit upon it, and so be protected from even an imaginary
damp, and had cuddled him up to her, to the many droppings of the
stitches of the long-suffering heel.
Carew, who came between Betty and Susan, was away, fishing somewhere in
the Crosby river, and Jacky had not put in an appearance since
breakfast. How on earth his lessons are going to be prepared between
this—two o’clock—and five, makes Susan wonder anxiously. Why doesn’t he
come home? What can he be doing?
She has hardly got further than this in her thoughts of the truant, when
suddenly he appears upon the scene, a very rosy, bright-eyed rascal, big
with news. Indeed, it was the coming of Jacky, and the astounding
revelation in his opening sentence—that he had sprung upon them in a
most unprincipled way, without a word of warning—that had drawn from
Susan that heavily emphasized ‘No!’
She speaks again now.
‘I don’t believe it,’ she says.
‘Oh, Susan, why not?’ asks Betty, who is sitting with her hands folded
behind her head, perhaps because if she brought them forward she might
find some knitting to do, too. Idle hands they are, only made for
mischief; so is the face to which they belong.
‘Because it’s nonsense,’ says Susan, shrugging her shoulders, and
drawing Bonnie closer to her. ‘And, besides, I don’t want to believe
it.’
‘Oh, I do!’ says Betty, with a little grin from under her big sun-hat.
‘Go on, Jacky.’
‘I saw her, I saw her plain,’ says Jacky, his rosy round face fired with
joy at the thought of being for once the bearer of important news. ‘She
was walking about in the garden.’
‘In,’ from Susan, in a severe tone, ‘Mr. Wyndham’s garden?’
‘Yes, in there.’ Jacky now looks as though he is going to burst. ‘Why
don’t you believe me? I saw her, I tell you. I saw her quite plain. An’
her hair is dark, a lot darker than yours, an she’s got a blue frock
like your Sunday one, only better.’
Susan interrupts him with dignity.
‘I don’t see how Mrs. Denis’s——’ Denis’s wife was always called Mrs.
Denis; if she had any other name, it was sunk beneath insuperable
barriers. Mr. and Mrs. Denis she and her husband had been since the
priest poured his blessing down upon them and made them one in the old
chapel built on the rock at the end of the village. This rock gave the
parish priest a distinct crow over the Protestant clergyman.
‘Ye would quote me the Scriptures, would ye?’ Father McFane would call
to Mr. Barry as the latter drove by the chapel in his Norwegian on his
way to the church beyond. ‘An’ what did St. Paul say? “Like a house
founded upon a rock.” Why, here’s the rock, man. Come in! come in! where
are ye going?’
It occurred every Sunday, and Mr. Barry would smile back at Father
McFane, and nod his head, for the two, indeed, were great friends, as
the Protestants and Roman Catholics often are in small places, until
someone comes in to them with wild news and absurd tidings from
incendiaries outside to upset the loving work of years.
‘I don’t see how Mrs. Denis’s niece or cousin, or whatever she is,
should have a better gown than mine,’ says she.
‘But she isn’t Mrs. Denis’s cousin, she’s too young,’ says Jacky. ‘She’s
a girl, and she was pulling the flowers like anything, and if she
belonged to Mrs. Denis she wouldn’t be let do that.’
Jacky’s English is always horrible.
‘Oh, you’ve dreamt the whole thing!’ says Susan contemptuously. ‘Run
away and play.’ She has forgotten about the lessons.
‘Oh, you are a marplot! I am going to believe in Jacky for once in my
life. Don’t go, Jacky! Jacky, come back! If you don’t, Aunt Jemima will
make you do your lessons.’
This has a magical effect. Jacky swerves round.
‘She is there,’ says he indignantly. ‘I did see her.’ He seems to dwell
on this fact with gusto. ‘An’ she’s not Mrs. Denis’s niece. An’ old
Meany down by the mill says she’s been there for four weeks.’
‘The plot is thickening,’ says Betty lazily. ‘’Tis a clever villain,
whoever she is; fancy her being here for four weeks without the very
size of her shoes being known throughout the length and breadth of
Curraghcloyne! Four days ought to have done it. Go on, Jacky! Had she a
cloven foot by any chance?’
‘No; but’—and Jacky’s eyes widen, and he seems to swell—‘Meany says
she’s a prisoner.’
‘A what?’
‘Yes, a real prisoner. She’s not let go out of the place. Mrs. Denis
never opens the front-gate now, but comes out by the little green one we
can see from the hall-door, an’ even that’s locked when she comes out
an’ goes back again, Meany says.’
‘Mrs. Denis very seldom comes out by any other,’ says Susan.
‘But she doesn’t always lock it behind her,’ puts in Betty, who is
evidently beginning to enjoy herself.
‘Now she locks the front-gate too,’ says Jacky triumphantly.
‘It’s perfectly thrilling,’ declares Betty, sitting up and growing
openly interested. Betty is frivolous. ‘A prisoner, and a young girl.
Can she be the long-lost princess of our infancy? And imprisoned by Mr.
Wyndham! Oh, the terrible man!’
‘She is of course a friend of Mrs. Denis’s,’ says Susan, with the grand
air of one who will have the truth at any price, and who is bent on
dismissing all theories save the practical one. ‘It’s the most natural
thing in the world. We all know Mr. Wyndham told her he wouldn’t come
down for a month or two, and so she is entertaining a niece or a cousin,
or something.’
‘She isn’t a niece of Mrs. Denis’s, any way,’ persists Jacky
obstinately; ‘she’—with a hopeful, yet doubtful glance at Betty, whose
latest idea has struck him—‘she is much more like a—a princess.’ Again
he looks at Betty, as if expecting her to bring him through this
difficulty of her own making; but Betty fails him, as she fails most
people.
‘After all, I dismiss the romantic element,’ says she, nursing her knees
and swaying herself indolently to and fro in the warm sunshine. ‘I
incline now towards the supernatural. Susan,’ addressing her elder
sister with due solemnity, ‘perhaps she is a ghost.’ Her face thus
uplifted is sufficiently like Susan’s to let all the world know they are
of kin; but Betty’s face, piquante, provocative, as it is, lacks the
charm of Susan’s. Betty is pretty, nay, perhaps something more, for the
Barrys are a handsome race; but Susan—Susan is lovely. It is useless
saying her nose is not pure Greek, that her mouth wants this or that,
that her forehead is a trifle too low. Susan, when all is said, when
long argument has been used, remains what she was before—lovely. The
smiling, earnest lips, the liquid eyes, the rippling, sunny hair—all
these might be another girl’s, but yet that other girl would not be
Susan. Oh, beauteous Susan! with your youthful, starry eyes and tender,
mirthful, timid air, I would that a brush, and not a pen, might paint
you!
‘A ghost! Nonsense,’ says she, now contemptuously.
‘But’—thoughtfully—‘what a queer story!’ And again, with a wrathful
glance at Jacky: ‘After all, I don’t believe a word of it.’
‘Oh, I do! I want to,’ says Betty, who revels in sensations. ‘And the
ghost development is beautiful. I’d rather see a ghost than anything. As
you looked, Jacky, did she vanish into thin air?’
‘No; only round the corner,’ says Jacky reluctantly. He would evidently
have liked the vanishing trick.
‘Very disappointing! But perhaps that’s her way of doing it. Corners are
always so convenient.’
‘If the gates are all locked,’ says Susan, turning suddenly a
magisterial eye upon her brother, ‘may I ask how you saw her?’
‘Ah, that’s part of it! That,’ says Betty, ‘is where the fire and
brimstone come in. That’s what makes her a ghost. It isn’t everybody can
see through stone walls,’ says she, lowering her voice mysteriously, and
glancing at the staring Jacky. ‘She had evidently the power to turn Mrs.
Denis’s walls into glass! It’s very unlucky, Jacky, for ghosts to fall
in love with people, and I’m sorry to say I think this one has developed
a mad fancy for you.’
‘She hasn’t!’ says Jacky, who is now extremely pale.
‘Circumstances point to it,’ says Betty, who is nothing if not a tease.
‘And when ghosts fall in love, they do dreadful things to people. Things
like this!’ She has risen, and is now advancing on the stricken Jacky
with her slender arms uplifted, and long fingers pointed downwards and
arranged like claws. She has taken to a sort of prance, a high-stepping
walk that brings her knees upwards and her toes outward, and she has
worked her face out of all recognition in an abominable grin. All this
taken together proves too much for Jacky, who, his face now visibly
paler, descends precipitately upon Susan.
Susan has been seeing to the comfort of her little Bonnie, and has
therefore been ignorant of Betty’s flight of fancy until the moment when
Jacky stumbles somewhat heavily against her, and looking up, she sees
Betty’s diabolical pose.
‘Betty, don’t!’ says she, glancing back to Jacky’s face, which is,
indeed, a mixture of pluck and abject terror.
‘Would you not warn him, then?’ says Betty reproachfully, returning,
however, to her ordinary appearance, and making an aside at Bonnie, a
pretence at shooting him with her first finger and thumb, that sends the
delicate little creature into fits of laughter. ‘Poor old Jacky!’
returning to the charge. ‘It isn’t for nothing that ghosts reveal
themselves. It is easy to see that this one has her eye on you!’
‘She hasn’t,’ says Jacky again, who is on the point of tears. He is
evidently not partial to ghosts. ‘And it wasn’t through a glass wall I
saw her—it was——’ He stops dead short.
‘Yes?’ says Susan, still severely. ‘Do be quiet, Betty, and let him
speak. It was——’
‘Through the hole in the wall near the garden,’ confesses Jacky
doggedly, but somewhat shamefacedly.
‘You see, it was through the wall, after all!’ says Betty, breaking into
a delighted laugh. ‘She’ll get you, Jacky—she’ll get you yet.’
‘I don’t think it is a very nice thing to peep through other people’s
walls into their grounds,’ says Susan, more from the point of view that
she is the eldest sister, and bound to say a word in season now and
then, than from any feeling of horror at the act. All boys peep through
holes in walls, when lucky enough to find them. ‘How would you like it,’
says she, ‘if you were found doing it?’
‘But I wasn’t found,’ retorts Jacky sulkily.
‘Susan,’ Betty breaks into the argument with a vivacity all her own,
‘you have no more morality than a cat. You are teaching him all wrong.
It isn’t the not being found out, Jacky, that is of importance, as Susan
is most erroneously bent on impressing upon you; it is the fact of
peeping in itself that makes you the’—shaking her finger at
him—‘miserable sinner that you are!’
‘Sinner yourself!’ says Jacky, now driven to desperation and the most
unreserved impertinence. ‘I often saw you look through the hole in the
wall yourself.’
At this, instead of being annoyed, both Susan and Betty give way to
inextinguishable mirth; whereupon Jacky, who had, perhaps, hoped that
his shot would take effect, prepares once more to march away. But Betty,
making a sudden grab at him, catches him by his trousers.
‘Wait awhile,’ cries she, still shaking with laughter. ‘Susan, seize his
arm. Tell us the rest of it. Was she——’
‘I won’t tell you anything; and I’m sorry I told you a word at all. Let
me go, Betty. D’ye hear? You are tearing my breeches.’
‘And you are tearing our hearts,’ says Betty, ‘Jacky darling. Go on;
don’t be a cross cat, now. Was she——’
‘Twice as pretty as you, any way,’ says Jacky, with virulence.
‘Is that all? Poor girl! says Betty, who is very hard to beat. ‘Prettier
than Susan?’
‘Yes, lots.’
‘She must be a real princess, then, and no ghost. I’d like to leave a
card upon her. Perhaps you would kindly push it through the hole in the
wall, Jacky.’
This is adding to the insult, and Jacky, with the loss of a button or
two, and serious injury to his suspenders, breaks away.
‘There now!’ says he, beginning to cry. ‘Look what you’ve done; and no
one to mend it; and Aunt Maria will be angry, and father will give me
twenty lines——’ Sobs check his utterance.
Susan rises hurriedly, and, with a whispered word to Bonnie, she passes
him on to Betty, who, in spite of her carelessness, receives the little
fragile creature with loving arms, hugging him to her, and beginning to
ransack her memory for a story to tell him, such as his soul loveth;
then Susan, slipping her arm round Jacky’s shoulder, whispers soft
comforts to him. He shall come in now and do his lessons with her, so
that father shall not be vexed this evening, and after dinner (the
Rector’s family dined at two, and had high tea at seven) she would take
him with her up to Crosby Park.
Jacky’s recovery is swift; his sobs cease, and he graciously allows
himself to be kissed. To go to Crosby Park is always a joy—the big,
huge, handsome place, with its long gardens and glass houses, and, best
of all, its absentee landlord.
It is, indeed, quite ten years since George Crosby has been at the Park,
and in all probability ten more years are likely to elapse before he
comes again. The last accounts of him were from Africa, where he had had
a most unpleasantly near interview with a lion, but had got off with a
whole skin and another not quite so whole: the lion had come to grief.