What was the Fear?
The early buds had gone, the flowers of May were springing. Richard
and Isaac Thornycroft were at home again, and the old profuse,
irregular mode of life reigned at the Red Court Farm.
The skies are grey this afternoon; there is a chillness in the early
summer air. Mr. Thornycroft, leaning lightly on the slender railings,
that separate his grounds from the plateau, looks up to see whether
rain will be falling.
There was trouble at home with Mary Anne. Uncontrolled as she was just
now, no female friend to watch over her, she went her own way. Not any
very bad way; only a little inexpedient. Masters came from the nearest
town for her studies, taking up an hour or two each day; the rest of
it she exercised her own will. The fear of school had subsided by this
time, and she was growing wilful again--careering about on the heath;
calling in at Captain Copp's and other houses; seated on some old
timber on the beach, talking to the fishermen; riding off alone on her
pony; jolting away (she had done it twice) in the omnibus to Jutpoint,
without saying a word to anybody. Only on the previous day she had
gone out in old Betts's tub of a boat, with the old man and his little
son, got benighted, and frightened them at home. Clearly this was a
state of things that could not be allowed to continue; and Mr.
Thornycroft, leaning there on the railings, was revolving a question:
should he ask Lady Ellis to come to the Red Court as dame de
compagnie?--or as his wife?
"Of the two, a wife would be less dangerous than a companion," thought
Justice Thornycroft, giving the light railings a shake with his strong
hand "I'm not dying for either; but then--there's Mary Anne."
Almost as if she had heard the word, his daughter came out of the
house and ran up to him. The justice put his hand on hers.
"What are you doing here, papa?"
"Thinking about you."
"About me?"
"Yes, about you. You are getting on for seventeen, Mary Anne; you have
as much common sense as most people; therefore--listen, I want to
speak to yon seriously."
She had turned her head at the ringing of the bell of the outer gate.
But the injunction brought it round again.
"Therefore you must be quite well aware, without my having to
reiterate it to you, that this kind of thing cannot be allowed to go
on."
"I do no harm," said Mary Anne, knowing well to what the words tended.
"Harm or no harm, it cannot go on; it shall not. Now, which will you
do--go to school again, or have a governess?"
"I don't want either," she answered, with a pout of her decisive lips.
"Or would you like--it is the one other alternative--a lady to come
here as your friend and companion?"
"Frankly speaking, papa, I don't see what the difference would be
between a companion and a governess. Of course, of the two I'd rather
have a companion. To school I will not go. Lady Ellis was talking to
me of this. I think she was fishing to be the companion herself."
"Fishing!" echoed the justice.
"Well, I do."
"Would you like her?"
"Not at all, papa."
"Who is it that you would like?" asked the justice, tartly.
"I should _like_ nobody in that capacity. I might put up with it; but
that is very different from liking."
"For my own part, if we decide upon a companion, there's no one I
would so soon have as Lady Ellis," remarked Mr. Thornycroft. "Would
you?"
"La la, la la!" sang Mary Anne, her eyes following a passing bird.
"Answer me without further trifling," sternly resumed Mr. Thornycroft,
putting his hand on her shoulder.
The tone sobered her. "Of course, papa; if some one must come, why,
let it be Lady Ellis."
Heaving a sort of relieved sigh, he released her, and she went away
singing to herself a scrap of a pretty little French song, the refrain
of which was, rendered in English--"If you come today, madam, you go
tomorrow."
The misapprehension that arises in this world! None of us are
perfectly open one with the other. Between the husband and the wife,
the parents and the children, the brothers and the sisters,
involuntary deceit reigns. Mr. Thornycroft assumed that Lady Ellis
would be more acceptable to his daughter as a resident at the Red
Court than any one else that could be found: had Miss Thornycroft
spoken the truth boldly, she would have said that my Lady Ellis was
her _bête noire_; the person she most disliked of all others on earth.
But the chief question was not solved yet in the mind of Justice
Thornycroft. Should it be wife, or should it be only companion? He was
quite sufficiently taken with my lady's fascinations to render the
first alternative sufficiently agreeable in prospective; he deemed her
a soft-hearted, yielding gentlewoman; he repeated over again to
himself the mysterious words, "As a wife she would be less dangerous
than a companion." But still, there were considerations against it
that made him hesitate. And with good cause.
He went strolling towards the village, turning down the waste land, a
right of way that was his own, past the plateau. The first house, at
the corner of the street, was the Mermaid. He passed the end of it,
and struck across to a low commodious cottage on the cliffs, whose
rooms were all on the ground-floor. Tomlett lived in it; he was called
the fishing-boat master, and was also employed occasionally on the
farm of Mr. Thornycroft, as he had leisure. Mrs. Tomlett, a little
woman with a red face and shrill voice, was hanging out linen on the
lines to dry.
"Where's Tomlett today?" asked the justice. "He has not been to the
farm."
Mrs. Tomlett turned sharply round, for she had not heard the approach,
and dropped a curtsey to the justice. "He have gone to Dartfield,
sir," she answered, lowering her voice to the key people use when
talking secrets. "Mr. Richard he come in the first thing this morning
and sent him."
Mr. Thornycroft nodded, and went away, muttering to himself
exclusively something to the effect that Richard might have mentioned
it. Passing round by the Mermaid again, he went towards home.
And he was charmingly rewarded. Standing on the waste land near the
plateau, in her pretty and becoming bonnet of delicate primrose and
white, her Indian shawl folded gracefully round her, her dress looped,
was Lady Ellis.
"Do you know, Mr. Thornycroft," she said, as he took her hand, "I have
never been on the plateau. Will you take me?"
Mr. Thornycroft hesitated visibly. "It is not a place for a lady to go
to," he said, after a pause.
"But why not? Mary Anne told me one day you objected to her going on
it."
"I do. The real objection is the danger. The cliff has a treacherous
edge just there, and you might be over before you were aware. A sharp
gust of wind, a footing too near or not quite secure, and the evil is
done. Some accidents have occurred there; one, the last of them, was
attended by very sad circumstances, and I then had these railings put
round."
"You said the _real_ objection was the danger; is there any other
objection?" resumed Lady Ellis, who never lost a word or its emphasis.
"There are certain superstitious fancies connected with the plateau,"
answered Mr. Thornycroft, and very much to her surprise his face took
a solemn look, his voice a subdued tone, just as if he himself
believed in them: "a less tangible fear than the danger, but one that
effectually scares visitors away, at night especially."
They were walking round towards the Red Court now, to which he had
turned, and Mr. Thornycroft changed the subject. She could not fail to
see that he wished it dropped. At the gates of the farm she wished him
good afternoon, and took the road to the heath.
Justice Thornycroft did not enter the gates, but went round to the
back entrance. Passing by the various outbuildings, he gained the
yard, just as a man was driving out with a waggon and team.
"Where are you going?" asked the justice.
"After the oats, sir. Mr. Richard telled me."
"Is Mr. Richard about?"
"He be close to his own stables, sir."
Mr. Thornycroft went on across the yard, not to the house but to the
stables at its end. This portion of the stables (as may be remembered)
was detached from the rest, and had formed part of the old ruins. It
was shut in by a wall. The horses of the two elder sons were kept
there, and their dog-cart. It was their whim and pleasure that Hyde,
the man-servant (who could turn his hand to anything indoors or out),
should attend to this dog-cart and the horses used in it, and not the
groom. Richard was sitting on the frame of the well just on this side
the wall, doing something to the collar of his dog.
"Dicky," said the justice, without any sort of circumlocution, "I
think I shall give the Red Court a mistress."
Richard lifted his dark stern face to see whether--as he verily
thought--his father was joking. "Give it a what?" he asked.
"A mistress. I shall take a wife, I think."
"Are you mad, sir?" asked Richard, after a pause.
"Softly, softly, Dick."
Richard lifted his towering form to its full height. Every feeling
within him, every sense of reason rebelled against the notion of the
measure. A few sharp words ensued, and Richard went into a swearing
fit.
"I knew it would be so; he was always hot and hasty," thought the
justice to himself. "What behaviour do you call this?" he asked aloud.
"Perhaps if you'll hear what I have to say you may cool down. Do you
suppose I should be intending to marry for my own gratification?"
"I don't suppose you'd be marrying for that of anybody else," said the
undaunted Richard.
"It is for the sake of Mary Anne. Some one _must_ be here with her,
and a wife will be less--less risk than a crafty, inquisitive
governess."
"For the sake of Mary Anne!" ironically retorted Richard. "Send Mary
Anne to school."
"I did send her; and she cane back again."
"I'd keep her there with cords. I said so at the time."
"Unfortunately she won't be kept. She has a touch of the Thornycroft
will, Dick."
"Hang the Thornycroft will!" was Dick's angry answer. Not but what it
was a stronger word he said.
"When you have cooled down from your passion I'll talk further with
you," said the justice, some irritation arising in his own tone. "You
have no right to display this temper to me. I am master here,
remember, Dick; though sometimes, if appearances may be trusted, you
like to act as if you forgot that."
Richard bit his dark lip. "You must know how inexpedient the measure
would be, sir. Give yourself a wife!--the house a mistress! Why, the
place might no longer be our own."
"Do you suppose I have not weighed the subject on all sides? I have
been weeks considering it, and I have come to the conclusion that of
the two--a wife or a governess--the former will be the less risk."
"No," said Richard; "a governess may be got rid of in an hour; a wife,
never."
"But a governess might go out in the world and talk; a wife would
not."
Richard dashed the dog's collar on the ground which he had held all
the while. "Mark me, father"--he said, his stern eyes and resolute
lips presenting a picture of angry warning rarely equalled--"this
step, if you enter on it, will lead to what you have so long lived in
dread of,--to what we are ever scheming to guard against. Mary Anne!
Before that girl's puny interests should lead me to--to a measure that
may bring ruin in its wake, I'd send her off to the wilds of Africa."
He strode away, haughty, imperious, rigid in his sharp condemnation.
Mr. Thornycroft, one of those men whom opposition only hardens, turned
to the fields, thinking of his brother Richard; Dick was so like him.
There he found Isaac, stretched idly on the ground with a book. The
young man rose at once in his respect to his father. His handsome
velveteen coat, light summer trousers and white linen, his tall form
with its nameless grace, his fair features, clear blue eyes and waving
light hair, presenting as fine a picture as man ever made.
"That's one way of being useful," remarked Mr. Thornycroft.
Isaac laughed. "I confess I am idle this afternoon: and there's
nothing particular to do."
"Isaac--" Mr. Thornycroft came to a long pause, and then went on
rapidly, imparting the news that he had to tell. And it was a somewhat
curious fact, that an embarrassment pervaded his manner in making this
communication to his second son, quite contrasting with the easy
coolness shown to his eldest. A bright flush rose to Isaac's fair
Saxon face as he listened.
"A wife, sir! Will it be well that you should introduce one to the Red
Court?"
"Don't make me go over the ground again, Isaac. I repeat that I think
it _will_ be well. Some lady must be had here--a wife or a governess,
and the former in my judgment will be the lesser evil."
"As you please, of course, sir," returned Isaac, who could not forget
the perfect respect and courtesy due to his father, however he might
deplore the news. "I have heard you say--"
"Well? Speak out, Ikey."
"That had the time to come over again you would not have married my
mother. I think it killed her, sir."
"My marrying her?" asked the justice in a joke. Isaac smiled.
"No, sir. You know what I mean; the constant state of fear she lived
in."
"She was one of those sensitive, timid women that fear works upon;
Cyril is the only one of you like her," said the justice, his thoughts
reverting with some sadness to his departed wife. "But the error
committed there, Isaac, lay in my disclosing it to her."
"In disclosing what, sir?" asked Isaac, rather at sea.
"The secret connected with the Red Court Farm," laconically answered
Mr. Thornycroft.
There ensued a pause. Isaac put a straw in his lips and bit it like a
man in pain. He had loved his mother with no common love; to hear that
her place was to be occupied fell on him like a blow, putting aside
other considerations against it.
"It is a _great_ risk, sir."
"I don't see it, Isaac. But for an accident your mother would never
have suspected. I then disclosed the truth to her, and I cursed myself
for my folly afterwards. But for that she might have been with us now.
As to risk, we run the same every day with Mary Anne. Ah me! your poor
mother was too sensitive, and the fear killed her."
Isaac winced. He remembered how his mother had faded visibly, day by
day; he could see, even now, the alarm in her soft eyes that the
twilight often brought.
Mr. Thornycroft went away with the last words. Richard, who appeared
to have been reconnoitring, came striding up to his brother, and let
off a little of his superfluous anger, talking loud and fast.
"He is going out of his senses; you know it must be so, Isaac. Who is
the woman? Did he tell you?"
"No," replied Isaac; "but I can give a pretty shrewd guess at her."
"Well?"
"Lady Ellis."
"Who?" roared Richard, as if too much surprised to hear the name
distinctly.
"Lady Ellis. I have seen him walking with her two or three times
lately."
"The devil take Lady Ellis!"
"So say I; rather than she should come into the Red Court."
"Lady Ellis!" repeated Richard, panic-stricken. "_That_ beetle-browed,
bold-eyed woman--with her soft, false words, and her stealthy step!
'Ware her, Isaac. Mark me, 'ware her, all of us, should she come home
to the Red Court!"
-----------------
The June roses were in bloom, and the nightingales sang in the green
branches. Perfume was exhaled from the linden trees; butterflies
floated in the air; insects hummed through the summer day. Out at sea
the fishing-boats lay idly on the sparkling waves that gently rippled
in the sun. And in this joyous time the new mistress came home to the
Red Court Farm.
Lady Ellis had departed for London. Some three weeks afterwards Mr.
Thornycroft went up one day, and was married the next, having said
nothing at all at home. It came upon Mary Anne like a thunderbolt. She
cried, she sobbed, she felt every feeling within her outraged.
"Isaac, I _hate_ Lady Ellis!"
In that first moment, with the shock upon her, it was worse than
useless to argue or persuade, and Isaac wisely left it. The mischief
was done; and all that remained for them was to make the best of it.
Mary Anne, with the independence of will that characterized her, wrote
off a pressing mandate to France, which brought Mademoiselle Derode
back again. In the girl's grief she instinctively turned to the little
governess, her kind friend in the past years.
And now, after a fortnight's lapse, the mature bridegroom and bride
were coming home. The Red Court had made its preparations to receive
them. Mary Anne Thornycroft stood in the large drawing-room, in use
this evening, wearing a pale blue silk of delicate brightness. Her
hard opposition had yielded. Isaac persuaded, mademoiselle reasoned,
Richard came down upon her with a short, stern command--and she stood
ready, if not exactly to welcome, at least to receive civilly her
father's wife. Richard appeared to have fallen in with Isaac's
recommendation--that they should "make the best of it." At any rate he
no longer showed anger; and he ordered his sister not to do it. So,
apparently, all was smooth.
She stood there in her gleaming silk, with blue ribbons in her hair,
and a deep flush in her fair face. Little Miss Derode, her dark brown
eyes kindly and simple as ever, her small face browner, sat placidly
working at a strip of embroidery. It was striking six, the hour for
which Mr. Thornycroft had desired dinner to be ready.
Wheels were heard, the signal of the approach. They were pretty
punctual, then. Isaac went out; it was evident that he at least
intended to pay due respect to his father's wife. Presently Hyde,
who had worn a long face ever since the wedding, threw open the
drawing-room door.
"The justice and Lady Ellis."
The man had spoken her old name in his sore feeling, little thinking
that she intended to retain it, in defiance of good taste. She
approached Mary Anne, and kissed her. That ill-trained young lady
submitted to it for an instant, and then burst into a passionate fit
of angry sobs on her father's breast.
"Don't be a goose," whispered the justice, fondly kissing her.
"Halloa! why, is it _you_, mademoiselle?" he cried out, his eyes
falling on the governess. "When did you come over?"
"She came over because I sent for her, papa; and she has been here
nine or ten days."
A few minutes and they went in to dinner. Richard's place was vacant.
"Where's your brother, Isaac?" asked the justice. "I believe he had to
go out, sir."
Lady Ellis wondered a little at the profuseness of the dinner, but
supposed it was in honour of herself, and felt gratified. It was, in
fact, the usual style of dining at the Red Court, except at those
quiet times (somewhat rare) when the two elder sons were away from
home. But Lady Ellis did not suspect this.
Vastly agreeable did she make herself. Isaac, seated at her left
elbow, was the most attractive man she had come in contact with since
the advent of Mr. Lake, and Lady Ellis liked attractive men, even
though they could be nothing more to her than step-sons. But she had
come home to the Court really intending to be cordial with its
inmates. And, as it has been already hinted, Richard and Isaac saw the
policy of making the best of things.
If ever Mademoiselle Derode had been fascinated with a person at first
sight, it was with Lady Ellis. The delicate attentions of that lady
won her heart. When they crossed the hall to the drawing-room after
dinner, and my lady linked her arm within that of her unwilling
step-daughter, and extended the other to take the poor little withered
hand of the Frenchwoman, mademoiselle's heart went out to her. Very
far indeed was it from the intention of Lady Ellis to undertake the
completion of Mary Anne's education, whatever might be the private
expectation of Mr. Thornycroft: in the visit of the ex-governess she
saw a solution of the difficulty--mademoiselle should remain and
resume her situation. To bring this about by crafty means, her usual
way of going to work, instead of open ones, my lady set out by being
very charming with the governess. The very fact of mademoiselle's
having been prejudiced by Miss Thornycroft against the stepmother who
was coming home, served to augment within her the feeling of
fascination. "A dark, ugly woman, poor and pretentious, who has not an
iota of good feeling or of truth within her whole composition," spoke
Miss Mary Anne, judging of her exactly as Richard did. Great was
mademoiselle's surprise to see the handsome, fascinating, superbly
dressed lady, who came in upon them with her soft smile and suave
manners. She thought Miss Thornycroft had spoken in prejudice only,
and almost resented it for the new lady's sake.
It was daylight still, and Lady Ellis stood for a minute at the
window, open to the evening's loveliness. The sun had set, but some of
its golden brightness lingered yet in the sky. Lady Ellis leaned from
the window and plucked a rose from a tree within reach. Mademoiselle
stood near; Mary Anne sat down on the music stool, her back to the
room and her eyes busied with an uninteresting page of music, striking
a bar of it now and again.
"Are you fond of flowers, miladi?" asked the simple little
Frenchwoman. "I think there's nothing so good hardly in the world."
"You shall have this rose, then. Stay, let me place it in your
waistband. There!--you will have the perfume now until it fades."
Mademoiselle caught the delicate hand and imprinted a kiss upon it.
Single-minded, simple-hearted, possessing no discernment at the best
of times, artless as a child, she took all the sweet looks and kind
tones for real. Lady Ellis sat down on an ottoman in front of the
window, and graciously drew mademoiselle beside her.
"Do you live in Paris?"
"I live in Paris now with my mother. We have a sweet little
appartement near the Rue Montagne--one room and a cabinet de toilette
and a very little kitchen, and we are happy. We go to the Champs
Elysées with our work on fine days, to sit there and see the
world:--the fine toilettes and the little ones at play. It was long
to be separated from her, all the years that I was here."
"How many were they?"
"Seven. Yes, miladi, seven! But what will you? I had to gain. My
mother she has a very small rente, and I came here. Mr. Thornycroft he
was liberal to me--he is liberal to all,--and I saved enough to have
on my side a little rente too. I went home when it was decided I
should leave my pupil, and took my mother from the pension where she
had stayed: and now we are happy together."
A thought crossed Lady Ellis that the charming apartment near the Rue
Montague, and the mother in it, might prove some impediment to her
scheme. Well--it would require the greater diplomacy.
"Is your mother old?"
"She will be sixty-five on the day of the All-Saints; and I was forty
last month," added mademoiselle, with the candour as to age that is
characteristic of a Frenchwoman. Suddenly, just as Lady Ellis was
clasping the withered brown hand with a sweet smile, mademoiselle,
without intending the least discourtesy, started up, her eyes fixed
upon the plateau.
"Ah, bah," she said, sitting down again. "It is but the douanier--the
preventive man."
Lady Ellis naturally looked out, and saw a man pacing along the border
of the plateau. The superstition said to be connected with the place
came into her mind, but did not stay there.
"You were here in the time of Mrs. Thornycroft, mademoiselle?"
"Ah, yes; she did not die for a long while after I came."
"She had years of ill health, I have heard. What was the matter with
her?"
"It was but weakness, as we all thought," answered the Frenchwoman.
"There was nothing to be told; no disease to be found.. She got
thinner every week, and month, and year; like one who fades away. The
doctor he came and came, and said the lungs were wrong; and so she
died. Ah, she was so gentle, so patient; never murmuring, never
complaining. Miladi, she was just an angel."
"What had she to complain of?" asked miladi.
"What to complain of? Why, her sickness; her waste of strength.
Everything was done for her that could be, except one--and that was to
go from home. It was urged upon her, but she would not listen; she
used to shudder at the thought."
"But why?" wondered Lady Ellis.
"I never knew. My pupil, Miss Mary Anne, never knew. She would kneel
at her mamma's feet, and beg her to go anywhere, and to take her; but
the poor lady would shake her head, or say quietly, no; and that would
end it."
Mademoiselle Virginie Derode was a capable woman in her vocation. She
could do a vast many things useful, good, necessary to be done in
the world. But there was one thing that she could not do, and that
was--hold her tongue. Some people are born with the bump of reticence;
my Lady Ellis was a case in point: some, it may be said, with the bump
of communicativeness, though I don't know where it lies. Mademoiselle
was an exemplification of the latter.
"There was some _secret_--some trouble on Madame Thornycroft's mind,"
said good mademoiselle in her open-heartedness. "Towards the last,
when the weakness grew to worse and worse, she would--what do you
call it?--wander a little; and I once heard her say that it had killed
her. Mr. Isaac, he was in the room at the time, and he shook his
mother--gently, you know, he loved her very much; and told her she was
dreaming, and talking in her sleep. That aroused her; and she laid her
head upon his shoulder, and thanked him for awaking her."
"And was she talking in her sleep?"
"Ah, no; she was not asleep. But I think Mr. Isaac said it because of
me. I saw there was something, always from the time I first came; she
used to start at shadows; if the window did but creak she would turn
white, and stare at it; if the door but opened suddenly, she would
turn all over in a cold sweat. It was like a great fear that never
went away."
"But what fear was it?" reiterated Lady Ellis.
"I used to repeat to myself that same question--'What is it?' One day
I said to Hyde, as I saw him watching his mistress, 'She has got some
trouble upon her mind?' and he, that polite Hyde called me a French
idiot to my face, saying she had no more trouble on her mind than he
had on his. I never saw Hyde fierce but that one time. Ah, but yes;
she certainly said it; that it had killed her."
"That _what_ had killed her?" still questioned Lady Ellis,
considerably at sea.
"I had to guess what; I knew it quite well as I listened; the secret
trouble that had been upon her like a fright perpetual."
Lady Ellis threw her piercing eyes upon the soft and simple ones of
the little Frenchwoman. All this was as food for her curious mind. "A
perpetual fright!" she repeated musingly. "I never heard of such a
thing. What was it connected with?"
"I don't know, unless it was connected with that horror of the
plateau. Miladi, I used to think it might be."
Casting her thoughts back some few weeks, Lady Ellis remembered the
little episode of her proposing to go on the plateau, and Mr.
Thornycroft's words as he opposed it. She turned this to use now with
mademoiselle in her clever way.
"Mr. Thornycroft was speaking to me about this--this mystery connected
with the plateau, but we were interrupted, and I did not gather much.
It is a mystery, is it not, mademoiselle?"
"But, yes; it might be called a mystery," was the answer.
"Will you recite it to me?"
Mademoiselle knew very little to recite; but that little she
remembered with as much distinctness as though it had happened
yesterday. One light evening in the bygone years, shortly after she
came to the Red Court, she went out in the garden and strolled on to
the plateau. There were no preventive railings round it then. It was
fresh and pleasant there; the sea was calm, the moonbeams fell across
the waves; and a vessel far away, lying apparently at anchor, showed
its cheery white light. Mademoiselle strolled back towards the house,
and was about to take another turn, when she saw a figure on the edge
of the plateau, seemingly standing to look at the sea. To her sight it
either wore some white garment, or else the rays of the moon caused it
to appear so. At that moment Richard Thornycroft came up. In turning
to speak to him mademoiselle lost sight of the plateau, and when she
looked again, the figure was gone. "Was it a shadowy sort of figure?"
Richard asked her, in a low voice, when she expressed her surprise at
the disappearance; and mademoiselle answered after a moment's
consideration that she thought it _was_ shadowy. Mr. Richard looked up
at the sky, and then down at her, and then far away; his countenance
(it seemed to mademoiselle that she could see it now) wearing a
curious expression of care and awe. "It must have been the ghost," he
said; "it is apt to show itself when strangers appear at night on the
plateau." The words nearly startled mademoiselle out of her seven
senses; "ghosts" had been her one dread through life. She put her poor
trembling fingers on Richard's coat sleeve, and humbly begged him to
walk back with her as far as the house. Richard did so; giving her
scraps of information on the way. He had never seen the figure
himself, perhaps because he had specially looked for it, but many at
Coastdown had seen it; nay, some even then living at the Red Court.
Why did the ghost come _there?_ Well, it was said that a murder had
been committed on that very spot, the edge of the plateau, and the
murderer, stung with remorse, killed himself within a few hours, and
could not rest in his grave. Mademoiselle was too scared to hear all
he said; she heard quite enough for her own peace; and she went into
the presence of Mrs. Thornycroft, bursting into tears. When that lady
heard what the matter was, she chided Richard in her gentle manner.
"Was there _need_ to have told her this?" she whispered to him with a
strange sorrow, a great reproach, in her sad brown eyes. "I am sorry
to have said it if it has alarmed mademoiselle," was Richard's answer.
"It need not trouble her; let her keep off the plateau at night; it
never comes in the day." That Richard believed in it himself appeared
all too evident, and she remarked it to Mrs. Thornycroft as she left
the room. That good lady poured a glass of wine out for her with her
own hand, and begged her, in accents so imploring as to take a tone of
wildness, never again to go on the plateau after dusk had fallen. No
need of the injunction; mademoiselle had scuttered onwards ever since
with her head down, if obliged to go abroad at night in attendance on
Miss Thornycroft.
To hear her tell this in a low earnest whisper, her brown hands
clasped, her scared eyes strained on the opposite plateau, whose edge
stood out defined and clear against the line of sea beyond and the sky
above, was the strangest of all to Lady Ellis.
"If there is one thing that I have feared in life it is a revenant,"
confessed mademoiselle. "Were I to see one, knowing it was one, I
think I should die. There was a revenant in the convent where they put
me when I was a little child; a white-faced nun who had died
unshriven; and we used to hear her in the upper corridors on a windy
night. Ah, me! I was sick with fear when I listened; I was but a poor
little weak thing then, and the dread of revenants has always rested
with me."
Lady Ellis suppressed her inclination to smile, and pressed the
trembling brown fingers in her calm ones. With the matter-of-fact
plateau lying there before her, with her own matter-of-fact mind so
hard and real, the ghost story sounded like what it must be, simple
delusion. But that something strange was connected with the plateau,
she had little doubt.
"And what more did you hear of it?" she asked.
"Nothing--nothing more after that night. In a day or two, when my
courage came to me, and I would have asked details, Mr. Thornycroft,
who happened to be in the room, went into great anger. He told me to
hold my tongue; never to speak or think of the subject again, or he
should send me back to France. I obeyed him; I did not speak of it;
even when there was talk in the village because of the accident, and
he had the railings put up, I kept myself silent. I could not obey him
in the other thing--not to think of it. I tried not; and I got dear
Mrs. Thornycroft to put my bed in a back room, so that I did not see
the plateau from my window. Well, to go back, miladi: I think it must
have been this cause, or something connected with it, that brought the
fear in which she lived to Mrs. Thornycroft."
Lady Ellis was silent. She could not think anything of the sort.
Unless, indeed, the late Mrs. Thornycroft was of a kindred nature to
mademoiselle; timorous and weak-minded.
"The preventive men pace there, do they not?"
"By day, yes; they walk on to it from their beat below, but not much
at night. Ah, no! not since the accident; they do not like the ghost."
Mademoiselle rose; she was going to Mrs. Wilkinson's, on the heath,
for the rest of her stay in Coastdown. Saying good night to my lady,
she went in search of Mary Anne, and could not find her.
Mary Anne was with her brother Isaac. She had flown to him after
quitting the presence of her stepmother, having had much ado to
repress all the feelings that went well-nigh to choke her. With a
crimson face and heaving bosom, with wild sobs, no longer checked, she
threw herself on his neck.
"Now, Mary Anne!"
"It has been my place ever since mamma died. It is not right that she
should take it."
He found she was speaking of the seat at table. Every little incident
of this kind, that must inevitably occur when a second wife is brought
home, did but add to the feeling of bitter grief, of _wrong_. Not for
the place in itself did she care, but because a stranger had usurped
what had been their mother's.
Letting the burst of grief spend itself, Isaac Thornycroft then sat
down, put her in a chair near him, and gave her some wise counsel. It
would be so much happier for her--for all of them--for papa--that they
should unite in making the best of the new wife come amidst them; of
her, and for her.
All he said was of little use. Anger, pain, bitter, bitter
self-reproach sat passionately this night on the heart of Mary Anne
Thornycroft.
"Don't talk, Isaac. I hope I shall not die of it."
"Die of it?"
"The fault is mine. I can see it well. Had I been obedient to Miss
Derode; had I only stayed quietly at school, it never would have
happened. Papa would not have brought her home, or thought of bringing
her home, but for me."
That was very true. Mary Anne Thornycroft, in her strong good sense,
saw the past in its right light. She could blame herself just as much
as she could others when the cause of blame rested with her. Isaac
strove to still her emotion; to speak comfort to her; but she only
broke out again with the words that seemed to come from a bursting
heart.
"I hope I shall not die of it!"