NEW ACQUAINTANCE.
Vibert shouting for help, Emmie shrieking, the pony kicking and
struggling in vain attempts to scramble out of the ditch, rain rattling,
thunder rolling, all made a confused medley of sounds, while the
deepening darkness was ever and anon lit up by lightning-flashes.
"Oh, Vibert! dear Vibert! are you hurt?" cried the terrified Emmie, with
whom personal fear did not counterbalance anxiety for her young
brother's safety.
"I'm not hurt; I lighted on a bramble-bush; I've got off with a few
scratches," answered Vibert, who had regained the road. "But where on
earth are you, Emmie? Can't you manage to get up?"
"No," gasped Emmie; "the chaise keeps me down. Oh, there is the
lightning again!" and she shrieked.
"Never mind the lightning," cried Vibert impatiently. "How am I to get
the pony on his legs? he's kicking like mad; and, oh! do stop
screaming, Emmie, you're enough to drive any one wild. It was your pull
and your shrieking that did all the mischief."
Vibert had had little experience with horses, and to release, almost in
darkness, a kicking pony from its traces, or set free a lady imprisoned
by an overturned chaise, were tasks for which he had neither sufficient
presence of mind nor personal strength. Glad would the poor lad then
have been to have had Bruce beside him, Bruce with his firm arm and his
strong sense, and that quiet self-possession which it seemed as if
nothing could shake. Vibert felt in the emergency as helpless as a girl
might have done. Now he pulled at the upturned wheel of the chaise, but
without lifting it even an inch; then he caught up the whip which had
dropped from his hand in the shock of the fall, but he knew not whether
to use it would not but make matters worse. Vibert ran a few paces to
seek for assistance, stopped irresolute, then hurried back, thinking it
unmanly to leave his sister alone in her helpless condition.
Happily for poor Emmie, assistance was not long delayed. Not a hundred
yards from the spot where the accident had taken place, two men were
sheltering themselves from the violence of the rain in a half-ruined
barn. The cries of the lady, the loud calls for aid from her brother,
reached the ears of these men. Two forms were seen by Vibert quickly
approaching towards him, and he shouted to them to make haste to come to
the help of his sister.
"There's a lady there, under the wheel," said the shorter and elder man
to the other, when the two had reached the fallen chaise. "You'd better
look to her while I cut the beast's traces; it's lucky I have my knife
with me," and the speaker pulled a large clasp-knife out of his pocket.
The united efforts of the men, assisted by Vibert, soon were crowned
with success. The pony, frightened and mud-bespattered, but not very
seriously hurt, as soon as it was released from the harness, scrambled
out of the ditch. The light basket-chaise was, without much difficulty,
raised to its right position; and Vibert helped to lift up Emmie, who
was half covered with mud, and almost in hysterics with fear.
"Come, come, there's nothing to be terrified at now; the danger is over.
You're not hurt, are you?" asked Vibert, with some anxiety, for he loved
his sister next to himself, though, it must be confessed, with a
considerable space between.
Emmie scarcely knew whether she were injured or not. She was too much
agitated at first to be able to answer her brother's question.
"I don't think that there are any bones broken; mud is soft," said the
shorter man. "I guess she's more frightened than hurt."
"Be composed, dear lady; the storm is clearing off," observed the
younger stranger, who had assisted Vibert in releasing Emmie from her
distressing position, and who now helped to place her again in the
chaise. This person's gallantry of manner contrasted with the almost
coarse bluntness of his elder and shorter companion. Vibert at once
concluded that the two individuals who had accidentally appeared
together belonged respectively to very different grades of society.
The man who had cut the traces had had string in his capacious pocket as
well as a knife, and now occupied himself in making such a rough
arrangement with the harness as might enable the pony to draw the
chaise. He effected his purpose with no small skill; considering the
imperfect light by which he worked.
"Are we in the right road for Myst Court?" inquired Vibert of this
individual, as he was tying the last firm knot in the string.
"Myst Court!" repeated the man in a harsh, croaking tone, at the same
time raising his head from its stooping position. "Are you some of the
new folk as are coming to the old haunted house?"
The question was asked in a manner so peculiar that it arrested the
attention even of Emmie. A flash of lightning occurred at the moment,
not so vivid as that which had terrified her so much, but sufficiently
so to light up the features of the elderly man. Miss Trevor was again
and again to see that strange face, but at no time did she behold it
without recalling the impression which it made on her mind when first
shown by that gleam of blue lightning. The man might be sixty years of
age; his nose was hooked, so that it resembled a beak; his eyes were so
sunken in his head that in that transient glimpse they looked like dark
eye-holes; his hair, rough, unkempt, and grizzled, hung in wet strands
as low as his shoulders, surmounted by an old battered felt hat. Emmie
felt afraid of him, though she could not have given any reason for her
fear.
"Yes, we are to live at Myst Court," replied Vibert. "Our father has
just come into possession of the place."
"Woe to him, then, for an evil spell is upon it!" muttered the man; and
a distant rumble succeeded the words like an echo. "The thunder and
lightning, the darkness and storm, the mistaken way, the stumbling
horse,--omens of evil--omens of evil! These things do not happen by
chance."
"I wish that, instead of muttering unpleasant things, you would give a
plain answer to a plain question, and not keep us shivering here!" said
Vibert impatiently. "Are we, or are we not, on the direct road to Myst
Court?"
"No, sir," replied the taller stranger; "but by yon lane you can reach
the high-road which leads straight from S---- to the place of your
destination."
"Then that urchin did misdirect us!" exclaimed Vibert. "If I meet him
again, I will break every stick in his faggot over his back! Must we
really return through that slough of a lane, through which we have
scarcely been able to struggle?"
"You must retrace your way," said the stranger. "As far as the high-road
my path is the same as your own, as I am returning to my quarters at
S----. Perhaps you will permit me to occupy the vacant place in your
chaise (I perceive that there is a back seat), as it would be a
satisfaction to me to see the lady so far safe on the road. I shall do
myself the honour of calling at Myst Court to-morrow, to inquire after
her health. My name is Colonel Standish, at your service, and I serve
beneath the star-spangled banner."
"We shall be glad of your company, sir," said Vibert; "and are much
obliged for your ready help."
"It is lucky that old Harper and I were at hand," observed Standish, as
he stepped into the low basket-chaise.
Vibert sprang into the front seat beside his sister, but before taking
the reins from the hand of Harper, young Trevor pulled a shilling out of
his waistcoat-pocket, and tendered it to the old man. There was light
now afforded by the moon, for the rain had ceased, and through a rift in
the clouds the radiant orb shone clearly.
"A silver shilling to him who has helped you to reach the haunted
house," said Harper, as he took the coin and thrust it into a deep
pocket. "I trow there will be gold for him who shall show you the way to
leave it!"
Vibert laughed; Emmie shivered, but that may have been from cold, for
the night-air was clamp and chilly, and her clothes were saturated with
rain. Vibert now turned the pony into the lane, but the creature limped,
and had evidently some difficulty in dragging the chaise.
"The beast is lame," observed Standish; "he has probably strained a leg
in the fall. We gentlemen must walk through the lane, where the ground
is so boggy." The colonel sprang from the chaise, and his example was
followed by Vibert.
At a slow pace the party proceeded along the tree-overshadowed way. The
recent rain had increased the heaviness of the road, and the trees
dripped moisture from their wet branches over the travellers' heads. To
Emmie, cold and damp as she was, and longing for shelter and rest, it
seemed as if that wearisome lane would never come to an end.
Harper, uninvited, had joined himself to the party, and his peculiar
croaking tones were frequently heard blending in converse with the clear
voice of young Vibert, or the more manly accents of Standish. Emmie
alone kept silence.
"Our friend Harper is a near neighbour of yours," observed the colonel
to Vibert. "He has fixed himself just outside the gate of your father's
grounds."
"But I never pass through that gate," croaked Harper. Neither Vibert nor
Emmie felt any regret that their forbidding-looking neighbour should
keep outside.
"You call the place haunted?" said Vibert.
"Haunted!" repeated Harper, muttering the word between his clenched
teeth; and the old man shook his grizzled locks with so mysterious an
air, that Vibert's curiosity was roused. He began to question Harper on
the traditions connected with the place.
The old man was not loath to speak on the subject, though he imparted
his information, if such it could be called, only in broken fragments;
giving as it were, glimpses of grisly horrors, and leaving his hearers
to imagine the rest.
Then Standish followed up the theme, and recounted strange stories from
the New World,--all "well-authenticated" as he declared; stories of
haunted houses and apparitions, each tale more horrible than the last.
Such relations would have tried Emmie's nerves, even had the stories
been told on some calm summer eve; but heard, as they were, in a dark,
dreary lane, on a chilly November night, when she was wet, bruised, and
trembling from the shock of a recent accident, tales of horror seemed to
make the blood freeze to ice in her veins. Had Bruce been present, he
would have discouraged such conversation; but sensational stories had
charms for Vibert, and he never considered that they might work an evil
effect on the sensitive mind of his sister.
At last the open road was regained, and Standish took leave of the
Trevors. Rather to Emmie's surprise, the colonel familiarly shook hands
with herself as well as her brother, as if the night's adventure had
converted them into old friends. Vibert again sprang into the chaise; he
was very impatient to get at last to the end of his wearisome journey,
and urged the pony to as quick a pace as its lameness permitted over the
smoother road.
The rest of the time of the drive was passed in silence. The way to Myst
Court was clear enough from the brief directions given by Harper, of
whom the travellers soon lost sight in the darkness, though he was
following in the same track. Emmie had thought of inviting the old man
to take the back seat in the chaise, but an intuitive feeling of
repugnance prevented her from making the offer.
Glad were the weary travellers to reach the large iron gate which had
been described as marking the entrance to the grounds of Myst Court. The
gate had been left wide open to let them pass through. The drive up to
the house was rather a long one. Emmie noticed only that it appeared to
be through a thick wood, and that the chaise occasionally jolted over
impediments in the way. To her great relief, the weary girl at length
distinguished lights in some of the windows of a building which dimly
loomed before her. There streamed forth also light from the open door,
at which her brother Bruce was standing, watching for the arrival of the
long-expected chaise.