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.
"I _think_ I'm doing well," said Constancy aloud to herself, as if
convincing an opponent. "Ten shillings from the _Guide of Youth_ for
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 of _The
Children's Friend_ has 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 for _The 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 the _Penny 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 the _Guide of Youth_, or to the _Penny 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, then _crack_ goes 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.