Mrs John Palmer replied by a handsome subscription to the letter
informing her of the condition of Waynflete church. "Miss S.J. Palmer"
sent fifty pounds as a tribute to her dear aunt's memory, from the
Riviera, where she had gone with her mother; and others of the family
and neighbours came forward liberally enough to put Mr Clifton in very
high spirits. Miss Florella Vyner offered a modest five pounds, and,
finally, Constancy sent fifteen, being the entire fruit of the story
that had come into being at Moorhead. She sent it to Guy, and stated
that it was a token of affection for dear Mrs Waynflete; but it was,
perhaps, something of a sin-offering as well.
Godfrey beheld her contribution with strange thrills. He was pleased,
and yet life was harder after he had read, and secreted her little note,
on the loss of which Guy did not comment.
Life could not be very easy. Apart from his own troubles, there was a
strain in living with any one in such a state of nervous tension as Guy,
carefully as the elder brother controlled himself. His very reticence
began to have an effect on Godfrey, and though he himself felt more and
more the blessing of comparative inward peace, he could not but suffer
much from the outward trial, and once his carefully maintained caution
gave way, and he made a great mistake.
"Look here," he said one morning in the early spring, as he studied his
letters, "I asked Clifton to get this done for me."
"What?" said Godfrey, looking. "A photo graph? Oh, that picture. What
did you want it for?"
"You don't mind? I wanted really to see it."
"It's not much like you now," said Godfrey. Guy got up, and, unlocking
a drawer, he laid a row of small objects on the table, setting the
photograph of the Waynflete picture beside them.
These were the old likenesses of their father and grandfather, a
handsome, well-set-up photograph of himself taken at Oxford, and another
more recent one.
"Oh, I say," said Godfrey, "why did you sit when you were looking so
ill? Yes, there's a good deal of likeness; but, oh, chuck this one with
the eyes into the fire--I don't like it. Eh! What's this? Have you
been drawing yourself? You have made yourself look quite fiendish."
Guy had laid a rough pen-and-ink outline beside the line of photographs.
They certainly formed a curious study of a persistent type, but the
last photograph of the living Guy seemed to blot the others out, the
mournful eyes were so full of terrible suggestion, the mocking lips were
set into lines of so much stronger purpose. And the drawing repeated
the photograph with a difference.
"What?" said Godfrey, as Guy's silence suddenly suggested an idea to
him. "What? Do you mean that--the ghost--your bogie--looks like that?"
"Yes," said Guy, "I think so."
Godfrey swept the pictures together with an angry motion. He had
believed in the ghost, but somehow this definite presentment struck a
sudden scepticism into him.
"Oh, come," he said, "nonsense! You never ought to look at them. It's
very bad for you. You may get to fancy anything."
Guy gave him an odd look of comprehension.
"Never mind," he said quietly, "I ought not to have brought them out.
They won't hurt me. Here's quite another matter. You've managed those
Devonshire dyers very well. They're coming round to our terms. See."
In the gentle steady look with which Guy spoke these encouraging words,
the likeness to these wild versions of the family face was lost; but
Godfrey had received a shock. In the instinctive recoil of his being
from the incredible horror, he doubted Guy's sanity, even his truth; he
shrank from him, even while he loyally obeyed him, and did all he knew
for his comfort. And yet as the slow days wore on, in close contact
with his brother, an awful sense of comprehension began to steal into
him. He too was a son of the Waynfletes; he too had been tempted, was
tempted hourly to give up the hateful drudgery, to shake off the fate to
which he was bound. He began to understand Guy. And though Guy
controlled not only his face and words, but his very thoughts, before
Godfrey, the mischief was done. Guy's very presence filled him with
weird suggestions. It struck him that _that other figure must be there
too_, and the longing for escape became almost irresistible, a longing
much intensified when he received the following letter from Mrs Joshua
Palmer, one Saturday, by the second post--
"Jeanie enjoys the new places and the amusements of hotel life, and I
may say, without a mother's vanity, that she is greatly admired; but I
think she loves her old friends, and has enjoyed nothing so much as her
Christmas at Raby. We are most glad to hear that the Ingleby business
is prosperous, and that Guy is stronger, and we look forward to seeing
you on our return from abroad, my dear Godfrey, with great pleasure.
Jeanie hears from a Rilston friend, who has a cousin at Constancy
Vyner's college, that there is a very learned professor there who
admires her very much, and that when she has taken her degree they will
be married, a very suitable arrangement; but I am an old-fashioned,
ignorant person, and I don't think that these new studies teach girls
how to make home happy, and I am glad dear Jeanie has simpler tastes."
Godfrey flung the letter down, and tore open another. It was from a
college friend in Queensland, and gave a lively picture of the life of a
sheep-farmer.
"Come out and join me," it said; "let your brother manage the business.
He can buy our wool, and we'll make a good thing of it."
If he could but go, and escape from his misery! He looked up and
started violently as he saw Guy standing beside him, watching him with
his intent, searching look.
"I've been having a turn with Rawdie," he said, and sat down by the
fire, still looking at Godfrey, under his hand.
There was a short silence, and then suddenly, without warning, Godfrey
burst out.
"I see no good in all this work, nor in anything else. I believe there
_is_ a curse upon us. We'd better cut each other's throats."
"That's what I want to talk about," said Guy; "not about cutting
throats, but because I know you're in a bad way. I've been thinking a
great deal about you. What's the matter?"
Then Godfrey showed his two letters, and in confused words, helped out
by Guy's questions, he told that he loved Constancy to distraction, that
she had failed him in his hour of need, that Jeanie was his inevitable
fate, and, finally, that he wanted to run away. He hated Waynflete--no,
not only because of the way he had got it, but because--well, there was
something--Waynflete took the heart out of him. Guy leant forward and
looked hard into his brother's face.
"We have got to go down to the bottom of it together," he said. "It
won't do to be afraid of one's thoughts. There are no other ghosts so
fatal. And as for cutting one's throat, no doubt it's simple, but how
about when it's done?"
"Guy," said Godfrey, hurriedly, "do you--do you really see that Thing--
you showed me?"
"Yes," said Guy, gently; "but that has nothing at all to do with you.
That is only a nervous affection, wholly physical. It has no existence
whatever for you."
"But you said you had seen the ghost?"
"I believe," said Guy, choosing his words carefully, "that I have gone
through experiences, not new in our family, and to which our
constitutions make us liable. It's an unusual kind of thing, but there
are other cases on record. As to what agency causes these delusions and
visions--I use both words advisedly--I am not prepared to say. As to
the Waynflete traditions, it is my belief that there is some connection
between these experiences and the place where they occur, and the people
to whom they happen, somehow, where nerves and Spirit and the hidden
forces of Nature meet. I know no more, and I don't think they'll fall
to your share."
The definite words, the composed manner steadied Godfrey's spirit. He
had felt the brush of the unseen wings, and he was able to recognise
what Guy meant.
"There is something more," said Guy. "It is under these forms of
experience that _I_ have had to resist temptation. Temptation is common
to man, but some of us are made so as to _know_ when it tears soul and
spirit--yes, and body, asunder. But it's just as hard, no doubt, for
other people to keep their heads above water as for me. But," he paused
and hesitated; then went on in still quieter tones, "whatever men, in
all ages and all places, have meant by spiritual experience, what they
meant when they said that they were `tempted of the devil,' that I have
known, and I know. And I know, also, what they meant when they said
that the Lord had delivered them out of his hands. And I thank God for
the knowledge, even if it came by fire! Remember that! But as for you,
the devil, or what he stands for, would give you just as much trouble in
Queensland as here. You're not married to Jeanie yet, nor even engaged
to her. And you promised not to leave me alone with the ghosts."
Guy's manner was so reticent and calm that Godfrey hardly grasped at
once all the force of what he had said. He leant his head on his hands,
and was silent for some minutes. Then he said, not very steadily--
"If I left you now, I should be a deserter. But I nearly did. And you
know what I did do--as to you--and what a fool I was at Christmas. Some
day I shall knock under."
"No, you won't," said Guy; "you'll stick to your colours. You'll stand
by me."
Godfrey nodded; he still sat with hidden face. Guy laid a hand on his
shoulder.
"Poor old lad!" he said. "I'd rather fight seven devils, more wicked
than the first, than have my angel fail me! But, Godfrey, stick to
this. Never mind _what_ the fate or the curse may be. We have to fight
it, and, God helping us, we _can_. And I've no reason to suppose that
the fight would be over, even if we had cut our throats, and been--
gathered to our fathers. If it were, it would be a dirty trick to turn
tail and leave the fiends--or the bailiffs--in possession at Waynflete."
Poor Godfrey looked hardly reassured by this suggestive speech; but
suddenly Guy's face softened, and he said, pleadingly--
"Don't make me into a bugbear, old boy; it's rather hard, and there's
really no occasion."
"I should be a confounded fool if I did," said Godfrey, with some
embarrassment. "No, I'll not turn tail. I'll stick to the shop."
He kept his promise manfully; but it was a relief to both brothers when
Easter week brought Cuthbert Staunton for a flying visit. He was going
abroad, he said, to look up materials for a set of lectures on the
sources of English culture. He had set his heart on getting Guy to come
with him.
"We'll take it easy," he said; "and drop all the bogies in the Channel
as we go."
"Paradise wouldn't be in it," said Guy, with a long breath. "But no;
first I must go to Waynflete."
"I don't approve of that move."
"I'm much better, and I mean to go."
"That's always conclusive."
"Well, I know best. But by-and-by--Poor Godfrey frames very well to the
business. Perhaps he would be better without me. I say, is Constancy
Vyner really going to marry a learned professor?"
"Not that I know of. She is going abroad with my sisters, as soon as
the term is over. She is not coming to Waynflete, and that, perhaps, is
best."
"Well, I don't know. I think the heavens will have to fall some time."
"Florella Vyner has a sweet little drawing, which she means for the
Academy. `Above the Stars'--a ditch full of wide-open celandines."
"Does she come to Waynflete?"
"I believe so--to study primroses," said Cuthbert, sedately.
Guy pulled Rawdie's ears, and said nothing; but Cuthbert ceased to
oppose his intention of accepting Mr Clifton's invitation, and looking
after the improvements for himself.