Curious Rumours.
April. And a fine spring evening.
The weeks have gone on since that miserable January time, bringing but
little change to Coastdown or to those in it. Robert Hunter rested in
his grave, uninquired for--though as to the word "rested" more
hereafter--and Cyril Thornycroft had never returned. Lady Ellis had
died in Cheltenham only a week after she went back to it.
That Cyril's remaining away so long and his not writing was singular
in the extreme, no one doubted. Mr. Thornycroft grew uneasy, saying
over and over again that some accident must have happened to him.
Richard, however, had his private theory on the point, which he did
not tell to the world. He believed now that Cyril and Hunter had
returned that night together; that Cyril had witnessed the deliberate
shot, had put off to the ship, and in his condemnation of the act
would not come home to the Red Court so long as he, Richard, was in
it.
But Richard could not tell this to his father, and Mr. Thornycroft one
morning suddenly ordered his son Isaac abroad--to France, to Holland,
to Flanders--to every place and town, in fact, where there was the
least probability of Cyril's being found. The illicit business they
had been engaged in caused them to have relations with several places
on the Continent, and Cyril might be at any one of them. Isaac had but
now returned--returned as he went, neither seeing nor hearing aught of
Cyril. It was beginning to be more than singular. Surely if Cyril were
within postal bounds of communication with England, he would write!
The supposition, held from the first that he had gone off in the
smuggling boats to the ship that night, and sailed with her on her
homeward voyage, was far more probable than it might seem to
strangers. Richard and Isaac had each done the same more than once;
as, in his younger days had Mr. Thornycroft, thereby causing no end of
alarm; to his wife. Cyril, it is true, was quite different in
disposition, not at all given to wild rovings; but they had assumed
the fact, and been easy. Richard, unwillingly, but with a view to ease
her suspense, imparted the theory he had recently adopted to his
sister; and she thought he might be right. As Mary Anne observed to
her own heart, it was a miserable business altogether, looked at from
any point.
No direct confidence had been reposed in Isaac. Richard shrank from
it. Isaac had many estimable qualities, although he helped to cheat
Her Majesty's revenue, and thought it glorious fun. But he could not
avoid entertaining suspicions of his brother, and one day he asked a
question. "Never mind," shortly replied Richard; "Hunter got his
deserts." It was no direct avowal, but Isaac drew his own conclusions,
and was awfully shocked. He was as different from Richard in mind, in
disposition, in the view he took of things in general, as light is
from dark. The blow to Isaac was dreadful. He could not, so to say,
lift up his head from it; it lay on him like an incubus. _Now_, the
coldness with which Anna had ever since treated him was explained,
satisfactorily enough to his own mind. As a murderer's brother, her
avoidance of him was only natural. No doubt she was overwhelmed with
horror at being tied to him. If he could but have divined that she
suspected _him!_ But they were all going in for mistakes; Isaac
amongst the rest.
As if the real sorrow, the never-ceasing apprehension under which some
of them lived, were not enough to bear, rumours were about to arise of
an unreal one.
On this evening, in early April, Miss Thornycroft was alone. As she
paced her parlour, in the stately mourning robes of black silk and
crape, ostensibly worn for her stepmother, the blight that had fallen
on her spirit and her heart might be traced in her countenance. The
untimely and dreadful fate of Robert Hunter, to whom she had been so
passionately attached, was ever present to her; the false part she had
played at the inquest reddened her brow with shame; the guilt of her
brother Richard haunted her dreams. She would start up in fright from
sleep, seeing the officers of justice coming to apprehend him; she
would fancy sometimes she saw her _father_ taken, preparatory to the
illicit practices he had carried on being investigated before a
criminal tribunal. Mingling with this--worse, if possible, than the
rest--was the keenest weight of self-reproach. She could not hide from
herself, and no longer tried to do it, that her own deliberate
disobedience had brought it all about--all, all! But for flying in the
face of her father's express commands, in not stopping the visit of
Robert Hunter, he had been living now, and Richard's hand guiltless.
All this was telling upon Mary Anne Thornycroft. You would scarcely
know her, pacing the lonely drawing-room, pale and sad, for the
blooming, high-spirited, haughty girl of two months before. Her father
and Richard had gone to London on business, Isaac was out, she knew
not where, and she was alone. Her thoughts were dwelling on that fatal
night--when were they ever absent from it?--and were becoming, as they
sometimes did, unbearable. A nervous feeling came creeping over her;
it had done so at times of late, fearless though she was by nature: a
horror of being alone; a dread of her own lonely self; of the lonely
room and its two candles; an imperative demand for companionship. She
opened the door, and glided across the hall and lighted passages to
the kitchen, framing an excuse as she went.
"Sinnett, will you--where's Sinnett?"
The maids, three of whom were present, stood up at her entrance. They
had been seated at the table making household linen.
"Sinnett is upstairs, miss. Shall I call her?"
"No; she will be down directly, I dare say. I'll wait."
At that moment a sort of wild noise, half shriek, half howl,
long-continued and ever-recurring, arose from without--at a distance
as yet. Mary Anne Thornycroft turned her ear to listen, her face
blanching with dread fear; the least thing was sufficient to excite
fear now.
The sounds approached nearer: they seemed to come from one in the very
extremity of terror, and, just then Sinnett entered the kitchen.
Perhaps it has not been forgotten that the windows, of modern date,
looked on the side walk, and thence towards the church and village.
The shutters were not yet closed, the blinds not drawn down. In
another instant, as the frightened women stood together in a group,
one window was flung up, and a form propelled itself in, smashing a
pane of glass. It proved to be Joe, the carter's boy; a sensitive,
delicate lad, who had recently lost his mother, and was a favourite at
the Red Court Farm. He lay for a moment amidst the shivers of glass,
then rose up and clasped tight hold of Sinnett, his white face and
shivering frame betokening some extraordinary cause of terror.
They put him in a chair, and held him there, he clinging to them. Miss
Thornycroft authoritatively stopped all questions until he should be
calmer. Sinnett brought him some wine, and the boy tried to sip it;
but he could not keep his teeth still, and _he bit a piece out of the
glass_. He looked over his shoulder at the window perpetually in
ghastly fear, so one of the servants closed and barred the shutters.
By degrees, he brought out that he had "seen a ghost."
Ghosts were rather favourite appendages to Coastdown, as we have read.
They were not less implicitly believed in by the lower classes (not to
bring in others) than they used to be, so the maids screamed and drew
nearer Joe. This ghost, however, was not the old ghost of the plateau;
as the boy is explaining, sobbing between whiles; but--Robert
Hunter's.
"Nonsense!" reproved Sinnett. "Don't you be a coward, Joe, but just
speak up and tell your tale sensibly. Come!"
"I went for the newspaper to Captain Copp's, as sent," answered the
boy, doing his best to obey. "Mrs. Copp couldn't find it, and thought
the captain had took it in his pocket to the Mermaid. Coming back here
to say so, I see a figure in the churchyard hiding, like, behind a
tombstone. I thought it were old Parkes, a-taking the short cut over
the graves to his home, and I stood and looked at him. Then, as he
rose himself a bit higher, I see him out and out. It were Mr. Hunter,
with his own face and his own coat on--that black and white thing."
"His own coat!"
"It were," groaned the lad. "I never were thinking of anybody but
Parkes, but when I once saw the coat and the face, I see it were Mr.
Hunter."
Joe's hearers did not know what to make of this. Miss Thornycroft
privately thought she must fall in a fit, too, she felt so sick and
ill.
"Was the face--" began one of the maids, and stopped. Remembering Miss
Thornycroft's presence, she substituted another word for the one she
had been about to speak. "Was the face _red?_"
"No. White. It--"
At this juncture there came a sharp knock at the window, as if the
ghost were knocking to come in. The boy howled, the women shrieked;
and the ghost knocked again.
"Who's there?" called out Sinnett through the shutters.
"It's me," answered a voice, which they recognised for that of Sarah
Ford. "Is the kitchen a-fire?"
Sinnett went to the entrance-door and called to her to come in. On
occasions, when pressed for time, Sarah would give her messages at the
kitchen-window, to save going round. She had brought the newspaper,
one lent by the Red Court to Captain Copp: Mrs. Copp had found it
after Joe's departure.
"He have seen a ghost," lucidly explained one of the maids, pointing
to Joe.
"Oh," said Sarah, who had a supreme contempt for such things,
regarding them as vanities, akin to hysterics and smelling salts.
"I see it in the churchyard, close again his own grave," said the boy,
looking helplessly at Sarah.
"See a old cow," responded she, emphatically. "That's more likely.
They strays in sometimes."
"It were Mr. Hunter's ghost," persisted Joe. "He wore that there fur
coat, and he stared at me like anything. I see his eyes a-glaring."
"The boy has been dreaming," cried Sarah, pityingly, as she turned to
Sinnett. "I should give him a good dose of Epsom salts."
Which prescription Joe by no means approved of. However, Sarah could
not stay to see it enforced; and we must go out with her.
Her master had come in when she reached home. It was supper time, and
she began to lay the cloth. Old Mrs. Copp was there: she had arrived
the previous day (after spending the winter in London) on another long
visit. Peering through her tortoiseshell spectacles at Sarah, she told
her in her decisive way that she had been twice as long taking home
the newspaper as she need have been.
"I know that," answered Sarah, with composure. "A fine commotion I
found the Red Court in: the maids screeching fit to deafen you, and
young Joe in convulsions. I thought the kitchen-chimbly must be
a-fire, and they were trying whether noise would put it out."
The captain looked up at this. He was in an easy-chair at the corner
of the hearth-rug, a glass of rum-and-water on a small stand at his
elbow: old Mrs. Copp sat in front of the fire, her feet on the fender;
Amy was putting things to rights on a side-table near the sofa, and
Anna Chester sat back on a low stool in the shade on the other side of
the fire-place, a book on her knee, which she was making believe to
read.
"Was the chimney on fire?" snapped Mrs. Copp.
"Just as much as this is," answered Sarah, making a rattle with the
knives and forks. "Joe was telling them he had just seen Robert
Hunter's ghost. They screeched at that."
The captain burst into a laugh: he had no more faith in ghosts than
Sarah had. Sea-serpents and mermaids were enough marvel for him. Anna
glanced up with a perceptible shudder.
"By the way," said Mrs. Copp, taking her feet off the fender and
turning round to speak, "I should like to come to the bottom of that
extraordinary business. You slipped out of my questioning this
morning, Anna; I hardly knew how. Who _was_ the man that fired the
pistol on the plateau? As to saying you did not see him properly, you
may as well tell it to the moon. My belief is you are screening him,"
concluded shrewd Mrs. Copp, watching the poor girl's gradually
whitening face.
"If I thought that; if I thought she could screen him, I'd--I'd--send
her back to Miss Jupp's," roared Captain Copp, who was still very sore
in regard to the part his women-kind had played in the transaction.
"Screen a land murderer!"
Anna burst out crying.
"My impression is, that it was Cyril Thornycroft," resumed Mrs. Copp.
"If he had not got something bad on his conscience why should he run
away, and keep away."
Sarah took up the word, putting a tray of tumblers down to do it. "He
may have his reasons for staying away, and nobody but himself know
anything about them. But truth's truth, all the world over, and I'll
stand to it. I don't care whether it was the King of England, or
whether it was old Nick--it was not Cyril Thornycroft."
"She is right," nodded the captain. "He'd be the least likely in all
Coastdown to rush on to the plateau at night, armed like a pirate, and
shoot a man. It was no more Cyril Thornycroft did that than it was me,
mother."
"But, Sarah, what about poor Joe and the ghost?" interposed her
mistress gently, upon whom the tale had made an unpleasant impression.
"Some delusion of his, ma'am: as stands to reason. I don't believe the
boy has been right since his mother died; he has had nothing but a
down, scared look about him. He is just the one to see a ghost, he
is."
"Where did he see it?"
"In the churchyard, _he_ says, with its fur coat on."
"Fur coat!" broke in Captain Copp, his face aglow with merriment. "He
meant a white sheet."
"Ah, he made a mistake there," said Sarah. And it was really something
laughable to see how she as well as her master (mocking sceptics!)
enjoyed the ghost in their grim way. In the midst of it, who should
come in but Isaac Thornycroft.
He had not been a frequent visitor of late, rather to the regret of
the hospitable captain. Set at rest on the score of any surreptitious
liking for him on Anna's part--for it was impossible not to note her
continual avoidance of him now--the captain would have welcomed him
always in his pride and pleasure. Isaac Thornycroft was a vast
favourite of his, and this was only the second visit he had paid since
his return from abroad. Isaac looked as if he would like to join in
the merriment, utterly unconscious what the cause might be.
"It's the best joke I've heard this many a day," explained the
captain. "Your boy up at the Red Court--that Joe."
"Yes," said Isaac, the corners of his mouth relaxing in sympathy with
the sailor's. "Well?"
"He went flying through the air, bellowing enough to arouse the
neighbourhood, and tumbled in at your kitchen window in a fit, saying
he had seen Robert Hunter's ghost."
"Breaking the glass and setting the maids a-screeching like mad," put
in Sarah. "He saw it in the churchyard, he says, in its fur coat."
A troubled expression passed across Isaac's countenance. Captain Copp,
attempting to drink some rum-and-water while he laughed, began to
choke.
"What absurd story can they be getting up?" cried Isaac, sternly.
"Some rumour of this sort--that Hunter had been seen in the
churchyard--was abroad yesterday."
"You never saw a boy in such a state of fright, sir," observed Sarah.
"Whether he saw anything or nothing, he'll not get over it this many a
week."
"Saw anything or nothing! What d'ye mean?" fiercely demanded Captain
Copp, suspending his laughter for the moment. "What d'ye suppose he
saw?"
"Not a ghost," independently retorted Sarah. "I'm not such a
simpleton. But some ill-disposed fellow may have dressed himself up to
frighten people."
"If so, he shall get his punishment," spoke Isaac Thornycroft, with
the imperative authority of a magistrate's son.
Captain Copp broke into laughter still. He could not forget the joke;
but somehow all inclination for merriment seemed to have gone out of
Isaac. He sat silent and abstracted for a few minutes longer, and then
took his leave, declining to partake of supper.
"Where's Miss Anna gone?" cried the Captain to Sarah, suddenly missing
her. "Tell her we are waiting."
Isaac lingered unseen in the little hall until she appeared, and took
her hand in silence.
"Anna, this--"
But she contrived to twist it from him and turned to the parlour. He
drew her forcibly to him, speaking in a whisper.
"Are you going to visit upon me for ever the work of that miserable
night?"
"Hush! they will hear you."
But there was no other answer. Her face grew white, her lips dry and
trembling.
"Don't you know that you are my wife?"
"Oh, heaven, yes! I would rather have died. I would die now to undo
that night's work."
She seemed bewildered, as if unconscious of her words; but there was
always the struggle to get from him. Had he been an ogre who might eat
her, she could not have evinced more terror. Sarah opened the kitchen
door, and Anna took the opportunity to escape. Isaac looked after her.
If ever misery, horror, despair, were depicted on a human countenance,
they were on Anna's.
"I did not think she was one to take it up like this," he said, as he
let himself out. And in the tone of his voice, despairing as her face,
there was a perfectly hopeless sound, as if he felt that he could not
combat fate.
By the next day the story of the ghost, singular to say, had spread
all over Coastdown; singular, because the report did not come from
Joe, or from any of Joe's hearers. It appeared that a young fellow of
the name of Bartlet, a carpenter's apprentice, in passing the
churchyard soon after poor Joe must have passed it, saw the same
figure, which he protested--and went straight to the Mermaid and
protested--was that of Mr. Hunter. He was a daring lad of sixteen, as
hardy as Joe was timid. The company at the Mermaid accused him of
having got frightened and fancied it; he answered that he feared
"neither ghost nor devil," and persisted in his story with so much
cool equanimity, that his adversaries were staggered.
"It is well known that the ghosts of murdered people have been seen to
walk," decided Mrs. Pettipher, the landlady, "and that of poor Mr.
Hunter may be there. But as to the fur-coat, that can't be. It must
have been a optical delusion of yours, Tom Bartlet. The coat's here;
we have held possession of it since the inquest; for the ghost to have
it on in the churchyard is a moral impossibility."
"I'll never speak again if it hadn't got the coat upon it," loudly
persisted young Bartlet. "But for that white coat, staring out in the
moonlight, I might never have turned my head to the churchyard."
"Had it got that there black fur down it, Tom?" demanded a gentleman,
taking his long pipe from his mouth to speak.
"In course it had. I tell ye it was _the coat_, talk as you will."
This was the tale that spread in Coastdown. When the additional
testimony of Joe and the maids at the Red Court Farm came to be added
to it, something like fear took possession of three-parts of the
community. The ghost of the plateau, so long believed in, was more a
tradition than a ghost, after all; latterly, at any rate, nobody had
been frightened by it; but this spirit haunting the churchyard was
real--at least in one sense of the word. An uncomfortable feeling set
in. And when in the course of a day or two other witnesses saw it, or
professed to see it, people began to object to go abroad after
nightfall in the direction of the churchyard. A young man in the
telegraph office at Jutpoint brought over a message for Isaac
Thornycroft. He was a stranger to Coastdown, and had to inquire his
way to the Red Court Farm: misunderstanding the direction, he took at
first the wrong turning, which brought him to the churchyard.
Afterwards, the despatch at length delivered, he turned into the
Mermaid for a glass of ale, saying incidentally, not in any fear, he
had seen "sum'at" in the churchyard, a queer fellow that seemed to be
dodging about behind the upright gravestones. He had never seen or
heard of Robert Hunter; he knew nothing of the report of the ghost;
but his description of the "sum'at" tallied so exactly with the
appearance expected, and especially with the remarkable coat, that
no doubt remained. Upon which some ten spirits, well warmed with
brandy-and-water, started off arm-in-arm to the churchyard, there and
then--and saw nothing for their pains but the tombstones. Captain Copp
heard of the expedition, and went into a storm of indignation at grown
men showing themselves to be so credulous.
"Go out to a churchyard to look for a ghost! Serve 'em right to put
'em into irons till their senses come to 'em!"
Thus another day or two passed on, Mr. Thornycroft and Richard being
still absent from home. Fears were magnified; fermentation increased;
for, according to popular report, the spirit of Robert Hunter appeared
nightly in St Peter's churchyard.