Cuthbert Staunton was a man with a history, and rather a sad one. He
had been engaged to be married to a girl who had died within a week of
the wedding-day. In the first shock of his trouble, he threw up his
appointment, a recorder-ship which had been obtained for him by some
legal connections, and went off on an aimless wandering, which greatly
exhausted his small means, and put him out of the running for the prizes
of life. He quieted down in time, however, his trouble receded into the
background, and he came back to the family home, settled down, as his
sisters said, into a regular old bachelor, with set little tastes and
set little ways, a quiet, contented face, and a very kind heart. He had
much cultivation and some literary power, and felt himself more
fortunate than he could have hoped in being employed by his University
as an Extension lecturer on literature and modern history. In this way
he obtained interesting occupation, and a sufficient addition to his
income for his very moderate wants.
Now, at two and thirty, no one would have suspected him of having had a
"Wanderjahr" in his life; but perhaps it was from an under-sense of
sympathy with a not very lucky person that he had taken to Guy
Waynflete; when he had met him first abroad, and then at Oxford, a year
or two before the present occasion.
For Guy was a person who did not get on well with life, he experienced
and caused a great many disappointments. Once or twice at important
examinations some sudden illness had come in his way and spoiled his
chances. Such, at least, was his own account of his ill success, when
he was pressed to give one. With other engagements he was apt, his
friends said, to fail to come up to the scratch. If he undertook to
play cricket, sometimes he did not turn up, and sometimes he played
badly. He was musical enough to be a coveted member of various clubs
and societies, but his performances could never be calculated on, and
were sometimes brilliant and sometimes disappointing. There were times
when his friends could make nothing of him, and no one felt really to
know him. Cuthbert Staunton did not know much about him, he suspected
him of more uncertain health than he chose to confess, and had
discovered that the home life was not smooth for him. But he did not
want to bring his own past into the present, or to inquire into Guy's.
He found him congenial, in spite of the eight or nine years between
them, and did not think that his various shortcomings were due to any
discreditable cause.
"You are doing your London?" he said, as they started.
"Yes," said Guy, "I've hardly ever been in town. You know we haven't
many friends who can be said to be in London society. Most of the
Ingleby neighbours come up for three weeks to a good hotel, and do
pictures and theatres, and visit each other a little. I am sent up now
to `make my way' with some of our city business connections."
"By the way," said Staunton, "what Maxwells were those who seem to have
been rather unpleasantly connected with your family history? My mother
was a Yorkshire Maxwell."
"Was she?" said Guy.
He was quite silent for a noticeable moment, then he said, with the
little ring in his voice which people called satirical, "This is very
interesting. Did your mother come from the Rilston neighbourhood? When
we've settled the fact, we can consider of our future relations to each
other."
The Stauntons were not people of pedigree; but Cuthbert produced facts
enough to prove that his mother had really belonged to a family which
had originally owned a small estate called Ouseley, not far from
Rilston.
"That's the place," said Guy.
"But as for Waynflete," said Cuthbert, "my forefather must have had to
drop it again pretty quickly. I suppose he played cards too often. I
never heard of its having been in the family. My grandfather Maxwell
was a country doctor, and didn't think family traditions consistent with
hard work. I never thought about the matter, till Miss Vyner was so
much excited at discovering your hereditary foe."
"I don't myself care about traditions," said Guy, in a slow, soft,
argumentative tone that told of his county. "I don't, you know,
unfortunately share my aunt's profound respect for the house of
Waynflete. She is an ancestor worth having, I grant you I think, if she
knew, she'd make a Christian effort to receive you kindly; but we won't
tell her. As for me, I object to feuds and obligations--and--ghosts,
and heredity's a hobby that's overridden nowadays. We won't part for
ever."
He turned his soft eyes round on his friend, with a smile, but Staunton,
who had spoken without a serious thought, saw with surprise that he had
thought the avowal necessary.
"Well, my dear boy," he said, "I'm glad you don't say, `Here's Vauxhall
Bridge and there's Vauxhall Bridge Road--take the tram, I take the 'bus.
Farewell.' But we must hurry up; it's getting late."
When they came into the Abbey, Guy looked all round him in a searching,
attentive way. He joined in the singing with a voice full and sweet
enough to do justice to his Yorkshire blood, and when it was over, and
they parted, said, as if it was a thing to be thankfully noted, "I have
very much enjoyed it."
When, on the Tuesday afternoon, the two young men appeared in Mrs
Palmer's handsome drawing-room, it was full of other visitors, and their
entertainment fell at first to Florella's share. Her figure, as she sat
a little apart by a table covered with the usual knick-knacks and
flowers, had a harmonious and pictorial effect which caught Guy's fancy
and remained in his memory. She was still very like Constancy, but with
softened tints; hair and eyes had not the same bright chestnut hue, but
were of a dim shady brown; she was paler, and though her young outlines
were plump and full, they had an indescribable grace and softness. She
had Constancy's straight brows and square forehead; but the eyes beneath
were of another but equally modern type, seeking, longing, as the eyes
of Fiametta or of the Blessed Damozel herself, but with this difference:
they were happy as if in faith that a good answer waited their
questioning. Florella did not talk, or learn, or do, as much as
Constancy; but she knew all about learning and doing, and, in a girlish
way, lived in the face of the questions of her time. She had one gift,
too, which was likely to bring her much joy, and to this, after a few
commonplaces, Cuthbert turned the conversation.
"And your painting, Miss Vyner? Has it been getting on?"
"Yes," said Florella, "I have been having lessons."
"May we see?"
Florella, without any excuses or shyness, took a little portfolio from
the table, and showed some sketches of flowers in water-colour. The
execution was slight and not perfectly skilful; but each little drawing
had a characteristic suggestiveness which freed it entirely from the
inexpressible dulness of most fruit and flower pieces.
A bunch of growing sweet peas labelled, "A tiptoe for a flight," had the
summer breeze blowing through them; "Pure lilies of eternal peace," had
a certain dreamy, unearthly fairness that suggested "airs of heaven,"
and "A bit of green" was a cheerful, struggling plant of flowering musk,
in sooty soil, on a smutty window-sill, with a yellow fog behind it.
"Why, that's just how flowers look against smoke," said Guy. "They
_glare_ with brightness."
"Ah, that's what I meant!" said Florella, pleased. "Do you draw, Mr
Waynflete? You are fond of pictures?"
"I can't draw," said Guy; "but I can _write down_ faces in pen-and-ink
outline. I can't make pictures. I don't think I enjoy them."
"Waynflete likes music," said Cuthbert; "that is more in his line."
"Tunes often put drawings into my head," said Florella, simply. "The
time when I began to do flower pictures was at Waynflete," she added.
"Some of the flowers there looked so wonderfully old; and age is a very
difficult sentiment to convey in a flower! I never could manage it."
As she spoke, there was a movement among the guests, and Mrs Palmer
caught the name.
"Ah, Waynflete!" she said. "It was such a delightful old place, and so
bracing. I should have liked to stay there very much, but the noises
were such a worry. I declare when I sat in that old drawing-room by
myself in a summer evening, I used to feel quite creepy. Mr Waynflete,
do tell me if any noises have been heard since?"
Some of the company pricked up their ears. There are several aspects
under which "ghosts" may be viewed, and there is no question that they
are both fashionable and interesting. A haunted house and its owner are
not often under notice at once.
Guy did not speak very quickly, and Constancy struck in.
"Aunt Con," she said, "the situation would be quite spoiled if Mr
Waynflete was willing to talk of his own ghost--or his own noises. Of
course he will not. It would not be the thing at all."
"It had not struck me that a ghost was interesting," said Guy, dryly.
"As for the noises--"
"Oh," interposed Florella, decidedly; "the noises were all nonsense."
"My dear Flo," said Mrs Palmer, "they are not pleasant when you can't
explain them. They might be burglars or the servants' friends, or
anything. But it's a lovely place."
The conversation now developed into ghost-stories, some of a scientific,
others of a romantic type. Mr Staunton remarking that cock-crow would
be nothing to ghosts nowadays, since they were accustomed to the
searching light of science.
Guy stood by the mantelpiece, and fingered a Dresden-china figure in a
way that gave Mrs Palmer a distinct presentiment of its downfall.
He looked up suddenly, "Did it ever occur to you to wonder," he said, as
a lady concluded a rather ghastly story, of a white lady who brushed by
people on the staircase, and left a cold chill behind her, "whether
contact with us makes the spooks feel hot?"
"Ah, Mr Waynflete," said Mrs Palmer, as there was a general laugh.
"You're very sceptical, I can see. But you're behind the age."
She was rather glad to shake hands and say good-bye, as she was anxious
to see whether he had damaged the Dresden shepherdess. But it was quite
safe, even to the fine edges of its gilt roses.
"He is a nice-looking fellow, but his fingers should have been rapped
when he was little to cure him of fidgeting," she said, when they were
alone. "But I shouldn't think old Mrs Waynflete knew much about
children."
"He didn't like to discuss his ghost," said Constancy; "that was why he
fidgeted. Family ghosts are personal."
"Cosy," said Florella, as her aunt left the room, "I can't bear to think
of the tricks we played at Waynflete. We ought to tell. It's far too
serious a thing to give a place the name of being haunted."
"It was a very curious study," said Cosy; "but, somehow, it did not
frighten people nearly as much as we expected. And we did not make
nearly all the noises that people fancied they heard."
"We may have set them fancying," said Florella. "I could have fancied
things myself, after you had been whispering and scuttering about those
passages. And, remember, I don't feel bound to keep up the idea."
"It was rather disappointing," said Cosy, reflectively; "because the
boys never took any notice. I don't believe they heard us, the walls
are so thick. But there, Flo," she added, laughing, "it was just a bit
of fun. And there are times when I feel as if I _must_--well--kick up a
shindy. It's the shape in which I feel the fires of youth."
"That's all very well," said Florella. "You kick up a good many
shindies. But I don't like making fun of what I don't understand."
"I don't see all the new pseudo-science," returned Constancy. "I think
it's all a delusion."
"I wonder if Guy Waynflete thinks so," said Florella, thoughtfully, as
she went to dress.