nodded complacently, and we drove up and stopped.
The piping voice of the child at once spoke up:
"How d' ye do, Mr. Simsbury? Ma's in the kitchen. Rob isn't feelin' good
to-day."
I thought her tone had a touch of mysteriousness in it. I greeted the
pale little thing, and asked if Rob was often sick.
"Never," she answered, "except, like me, he can't walk. But I'm not to
talk about it, ma says. I'd like to, but----"
Ma's face appearing at this moment over her shoulder put an end to her
innocent garrulity.
"How d' ye do, Mr. Simsbury?" came a second time from the window, but
this time in very different tones. "What's the child been saying? She's
so sot up at being allowed to take her brother's place in the winder
that she don't know how to keep her tongue still. Rob's a little
languid, that's all. You'll see him in his old place to-morrow." And she
drew back as if in polite intimation that we might drive on.
Mr. Simsbury responded to the suggestion, and in another moment we were
trotting down the road. Had we stayed a minute longer, I think the child
would have said something more or less interesting to hear.
The horse, which had brought us thus far at a pretty sharp trot, now
began to lag, which so attracted Mr. Simsbury's attention, that he
forgot to answer even by a grunt more than half of my questions. He
spent most of his time looking at the nag's hind feet, and finally, just
as we came in sight of the stores, he found his tongue sufficiently to
announce that the horse was casting a shoe and that he would be obliged
to go to the blacksmith's with her.
"Humph, and how long will that take?" I asked.
He hesitated so long, rubbing his nose with his finger, that I grew
suspicious and cast a glance at the horse's foot myself. The shoe was
loose. I began to hear it clang.
"Waal, it may be a matter of a couple of hours," he finally drawled. "We
have no blacksmith in town, and the ride up there is two miles. Sorry it
happened, ma'am, but there's all sorts of shops here, you see, and I've
allers heard that a woman can easily spend two hours haggling away in
shops."
I glanced at the two ill-furnished windows he pointed out, thought of
Arnold & Constable's, Tiffany's, and the other New York establishments I
had been in the habit of visiting, and suppressed my disdain. Either the
man was a fool or he was acting a part in the interests of Lucetta and
her family. I rather inclined to the latter supposition. If the plan was
to keep me out most of the morning why could that shoe not have been
loosened before the mare left the stable?
"I made all necessary purchases while in New York," said I, "but if you
must get the horse shod, why, take her off and do it. I suppose there is
a hotel parlor near here where I can sit."
"Oh, yes," and he made haste to point out to me where the hotel stood.
"And it's a very nice place, ma'am. Mrs. Carter, the landlady, is the
nicest sort of person. Only you won't try to go home, ma'am, on foot?
You'll wait till I come back for you?"
"It isn't likely I'll go streaking through Lost Man's Lane alone," I
exclaimed indignantly. "I'd rather sit in Mrs. Carter's parlor till
night."
"And I would advise you to," he said. "No use making gossip for the
village folks. They have enough to talk about as it is."
Not exactly seeing the force of this reasoning, but quite willing to be
left to my own devices for a little while, I pointed to a locksmith's
shop I saw near by, and bade him put me down there.
With a sniff I declined to interpret into a token of disapproval, he
drove me up to the shop and awkwardly assisted me to alight.
"Trunk key missing?" he ventured to inquire before getting back into his
seat.
I did not think it necessary to reply, but walked immediately into the
shop. He looked dissatisfied at this, but whatever his feelings were he
refrained from any expression of them, and presently mounted to his
place and drove off. I was left confronting the decent man who
represented the lock-fitting interests in X.
I found some difficulty in broaching my errand. Finally I said:
"Miss Knollys, who lives up the road, wishes a key fitted to one of her
doors. Will you come or send a man to her house to-day? She is too
occupied to see about it herself."
The man must have been struck by my appearance, for he stared at me
quite curiously for a minute. Then he gave a hem and a haw and said:
"Certainly. What kind of a door is it?" When I had answered, he gave me
another curious glance and seemed uneasy to step back to where his
assistant was working with a file.
"You will be sure to come in time to have the lock fitted before night?"
I said in that peremptory manner of mine which means simply, "I keep my
promises and expect you to keep yours."
His "Certainly" struck me as a little weaker this time, possibly because
his curiosity was excited. "Are you the lady from New York who is
staying with them?" he asked, stepping back, seemingly quite unawed by
my positive demeanor.
"Yes," said I, thawing a trifle; "I am Miss Butterworth."
He looked at me almost as if I were a curiosity.
"And did you sleep there last night?" he urged.
I thought it best to thaw still more.
"Of course," I said. "Where do you think I would sleep? The young ladies
are friends of mine."
He rapped abstractedly on the counter with a small key he was holding.
"Excuse me," said he, with some remembrance of my position toward him as
a stranger, "but weren't you afraid?"
"Afraid?" I echoed. "Afraid in Miss Knollys' house?"
"Why, then, do you want a key to your door?" he asked, with a slight
appearance of excitement. "We don't lock doors here in the village; at
least we didn't."
"I did not say it was my door," I began, but, feeling that this was a
prevarication not only unworthy of me, but one that he was entirely too
sharp to accept, I added stiffly: "It is for my door. I am not
accustomed even at home to sleep with my room unlocked."
"Oh," he murmured, totally unconvinced, "I thought you might have got a
scare. Folks somehow are afraid of that old place, it's so big and
ghost-like. I don't think you would find any one in this village who
would sleep there all night."
"A pleasing preparation for my rest to-night," I grimly laughed.
"Dangers on the road and ghosts in the house. Happily I don't believe in
the latter."
The gesture he made showed incredulity. He had ceased rapping with the
key or even to show any wish to join his assistant. All his thoughts for
the moment seemed to be concentrated on me.
"You don't know little Rob," he inquired, "the crippled lad who lives at
the head of the lane?"
"No," I said; "I haven't been in town a day yet, but I mean to know Rob
and his sister too. Two cripples in one family rouse my interest."
He did not say why he had spoken of the child, but began tapping with
his key again.
"And you are sure you saw nothing?" he whispered. "Lots of things can
happen in a lonely road like that."
"Not if everybody is as afraid to enter it as you say your villagers
are," I retorted.
But he didn't yield a jot.
"Some folks don't mind present dangers," said he. "Spirits----"
But he received no encouragement in his return to this topic. "You don't
believe in spirits?" said he. "Well, they are doubtful sort of folks,
but when honest and respectable people such as live in this town, when
children even, see what answers to nothing but phantoms, then I remember
what a wiser man than any of us once said----But perhaps you don't read
Shakespeare, madam?"
Nonplussed for the moment, but interested in the man's talk more than
was consistent with my need of haste, I said with some spirit, for it
struck me as very ridiculous that this country mechanic should question
my knowledge of the greatest dramatist of all time, "Shakespeare and the
Bible form the staple of my reading." At which he gave me a little nod
of apology and hastened to say:
"Then you know what I mean--Hamlet's remark to Horatio, madam, 'There
are more things,' etc. Your memory will readily supply you with the
words."
I signified my satisfaction and perfect comprehension of his meaning,
and, feeling that something important lay behind his words, I endeavored
to make him speak more explicitly.
"The Misses Knollys show no terror of their home," I observed. "They
cannot believe in spirits either."
"Miss Knollys is a woman of a great deal of character," said he. "But
look at Lucetta. There is a face for you, for a girl not yet out of her
twenties; and such a round-cheeked lass as she was once! Now what has
made the change? The sights and sounds of that old house, I say. Nothing
else would give her that scared look--nothing merely mortal, I mean."
This was going a step too far. I could not discuss Lucetta with this
stranger, anxious as I was to hear what he had to say about her.
"I don't know," I remonstrated, taking up my black satin bag, without
which I never stir. "One would think the terrors of the lane she lives
in might account for some appearance of fear on her part."
"So it might," he assented, but with no great heartiness. "But Lucetta
has never spoken of those dangers. The people in the lane do not seem to
fear them. Even Deacon Spear says that, set aside the wickedness of the
thing, he rather enjoys the quiet which the ill repute of the lane gives
him. I don't understand this indifference myself. I have no relish for
horrible mysteries or for ghosts either."
"You won't forget the key?" I suggested shortly, preparing to walk out,
in my dread lest he should again introduce the subject of Lucetta.
"No," said he, "I won't forget it." His tone should have warned me that
I need not expect to have a locked door that night.
XII
THE PHANTOM COACH
Ghosts! What could the fellow have meant? If I had pressed him he would
have told me, but it did not seem quite a lady's business to pick up
information in this way, especially when it involved a young lady like
Lucetta. Yet did I think I would ever come to the end of this matter
without involving Lucetta? No. Why, then, did I allow my instincts to
triumph over my judgment? Let those answer who understand the workings
of the human heart. I am simply stating facts.
Ghosts! Somehow the word startled me as if in some way it gave a rather
unwelcome confirmation to my doubts. Apparitions seen in the Knollys
mansion or in any of the houses bordering on this lane! That was a
serious charge; how serious seemed to be but half comprehended by this
man. But I comprehended it to the full, and wondered if it was on
account of such gossip as this that Mr. Gryce had persuaded me to enter
Miss Knollys' house as a guest.
I was crossing the street to the hotel as I indulged in these
conjectures, and intent as my mind was upon them, I could not but note
the curiosity and interest which my presence excited in the simple
country folk invariably to be found lounging about a country tavern.
Indeed, the whole neighborhood seemed agog, and though I would have
thought it derogatory to my dignity to notice the fact, I could not but
see how many faces were peering at me from store doors and the
half-closed blinds of adjoining cottages. No young girl in the pride of
her beauty could have awakened more interest, and this I attributed, as
was no doubt right, not to my appearance, which would not perhaps be apt
to strike these simple villagers as remarkable, or to my dress, which is
rather rich than fashionable, but to the fact that I was a stranger in
town, and, what was more extraordinary, a guest of the Misses Knollys.
My intention in approaching the hotel was not to spend a couple of
dreary hours in the parlor with Mrs. Carter, as Mr. Simsbury had
suggested, but to obtain if possible a conveyance to carry me
immediately back to the Knollys mansion. But this, which would have been
a simple matter in most towns, seemed well-nigh an impossibility in X.
The landlord was away, and Mrs. Carter, who was very frank with me, told
me it would be perfectly useless to ask one of the men to drive me
through the lane. "It's an unwholesome spot," said she, "and only Mr.
Carter and the police have the courage to brave it."
I suggested that I was willing to pay well, but it seemed to make very
little difference to her. "Money won't hire them," said she, and I had
the satisfaction of knowing that Lucetta had triumphed in her plan, and
that, after all, I must sit out the morning in the precincts of the
hotel parlor with Mrs. Carter.
It was my first signal defeat, but I was determined to make the best of
it, and if possible glean such knowledge from the talk of this woman as
would make me feel that I had lost nothing by my disappointment. She was
only too ready to talk, and the first topic was little Rob.
I saw the moment I mentioned his name that I was introducing a subject
which had already been well talked over by every eager gossip in the
village.
Her attitude of importance, the air of mystery she assumed, were
preparations I had long been accustomed to in women of this kind, and I
was not at all surprised when she announced in a way that admitted of no
dispute:
"Oh, there's no wonder the child is sick. We would be sick under the
circumstances. _He has seen the phantom coach._"
The phantom coach! So that was what the locksmith meant. A phantom
coach! I had heard of every kind of phantom but that. Somehow the idea
was a thrilling one, or would have been to a nature less practical than
mine.
"I don't know what you mean," said I. "Some superstition of the place? I
never heard of a ghostly appearance of that nature before."
"No, I expect not. It belongs to X. I never heard of it beyond these
mountains. Indeed, I have never known it to have been seen but upon one
road. I need not mention what road, madam. You can guess."
Yes, I could guess, and the guessing made me set my lips a little
grimly.
"Tell me more about this thing," I urged, half laughing. "It ought to be
of some interest to me."
She nodded, drew her chair a trifle nearer, and impetuously began:
"You see this is a very old town. It has more than one ancient country
house similar to the one you are now living in, and it has its early
traditions. One is, that an old-fashioned coach, perfectly noiseless,
drawn by horses through which you can see the moonlight, haunts the
highroad at intervals and flies through the gloomy forest road we have
christened of late years Lost Man's Lane. It is a superstition,
possibly, but you cannot find many families in town but believe in it as
a fact, for there is not an old man or woman in the place but has either
seen it in the past or has had some relative who has seen it. It passes
only at night, and it is thought to presage some disaster to those who
see it. My husband's uncle died the next morning after it flew by him on
the highway. Fortunately years elapse between its going and coming. It
is ten years, I think they say, since it was last seen. Poor little Rob!
It has frightened him almost out of his wits."
"I should think so," I cried with becoming credulity. "But how came he
to see it? I thought you said it only passed at night."
"At midnight," she repeated. "But Rob, you see, is a nervous lad, and
night before last he was so restless he could not sleep, so he begged to
be put in the window to cool off. This his mother did, and he sat there
for a good half-hour alone, looking out at the moonlight. As his mother
is an economical woman there was no candle lit in the room, so he got
his pleasure out of the shadows which the great trees made on the
highroad, when suddenly--you ought to hear the little fellow tell it--he
felt the hair rise on his forehead and all his body grow stiff with a
terror that made his tongue feel like lead in his mouth. A something he
would have called a horse and a carriage in the daytime, but which, in
this light and under the influence of the mortal terror he was in, took
on a distorted shape which made it unlike any team he was accustomed to,
was going by, not as if being driven over the earth and stones of the
road,--though there was a driver in front, a driver with an odd
three-cornered hat on his head and a cloak about his shoulders, such as
the little fellow remembered to have seen hanging in his grandmother's
closet,--but as if it floated along without sound or stir; in fact, a
spectre team which seemed to find its proper destination when it turned
into Lost Man's Lane and was lost among the shadows of that ill-reputed
road."
"Pshaw!" was my spirited comment as she paused to take her breath and
see how I was affected by this grewsome tale. "A dream of the poor
little lad! He had heard stories of this apparition and his imagination
supplied the rest."
"No; excuse me, madam, he had been carefully kept from hearing all such
tales. You could see this by the way he told his story. He hardly
believed what he had himself seen. It was not till some foolish neighbor
blurted out, 'Why, that was the phantom coach,' that he had any idea he
was not relating a dream."
My second _Pshaw!_ was no less marked than the first.
"He did know about it, notwithstanding," I insisted. "Only he had
forgotten the fact. Sleep often supplies us with these lost memories."
"Very true, and your supposition is very plausible, Miss Butterworth,
and might be regarded as correct, if he had been the only person to see
this apparition. But Mrs. Jenkins saw it too, and she is a woman to be
believed."
This was becoming serious.
"Saw it before he did or afterwards?" I asked. "Does she live on the
highway or somewhere in Lost Man's Lane?"
"She lives on the highway about a half-mile from the station. She was
sitting up with her sick husband and saw it just as it was going down
the hill. She said it made no more noise than a cloud slipping by. She
expects to lose old Rause. No one could behold such a thing as that and
not have some misfortune follow."
I laid all this up in my mind. My hour of waiting was not likely to
prove wholly unprofitable.
"You see," the good woman went on, with a relish for the marvellous that
stood me in good stead, "there is an old tradition of that road
connected with a coach. Years ago, before any of us were born, and the
house where you are now staying was a gathering-place for all the gay
young bloods of the county, a young man came up from New York to visit
Mr. Knollys. I do not mean the father or even the grandfather of the
folks you are visiting, ma'am. He was great-grandfather to Lucetta, and
a very fine gentleman, if you can trust the pictures that are left of
him. But my story has not to do with him. He had a daughter at that
time, a widow of great and sparkling attractions, and though she was
older than the young man I have mentioned, every one thought he would
marry her, she was so handsome and such an heiress.
"But he failed to pay his court to her, and though he was handsome
himself and made a fool of more than one girl in the town, every one
thought he would return as he had come, a free-hearted bachelor, when
suddenly one night the coach was missed from the stables and he from the
company, which led to the discovery that the young widow's daughter was
gone too, a chit who was barely fifteen, and without a hundredth part of
the beauty of her mother. Love only could account for this, for in those
days young ladies did not ride with gentlemen in the evening for
pleasure, and when it came to the old gentleman's ears, and, what was
worse, came to the mother's, there was a commotion in the great house,
the echoes of which, some say, have never died out. Though the pipers
were playing and the fiddles were squeaking in the great room where they
used to dance the night away, Mrs. Knollys, with her white brocade
tucked up about her waist, stood with her hand on the great front door,
waiting for the horse upon which she was determined to follow the flying
lovers. The father, who was a man of eighty years, stood by her side. He
was too old to ride himself, but he made no effort to hold her back,
though the jewels were tumbling from her hair and the moon had vanished
from the highway.
"'I will bring her back or die!' the passionate beauty exclaimed, and
not a lip said her nay, for they saw, what neither man nor woman had
been able to see up to that moment, that her very life and soul were
wrapped up in the man who had stolen away her daughter.
"Shrilly piped the pipes, squeak and hum went the fiddles, but the sound
that was sweetest to her was the pound of the horses' hoofs on the road
in front. That was music indeed, and as soon as she heard it she
bestowed one wild kiss on her father and bounded from the house. An
instant later and she was gone. One flash of her white robe at the gate,
then all was dark on the highway, and only the old father stood in the
wide-open door, waiting, as he vowed he would wait, till his daughter
returned.
"She did not go alone. A faithful groom was behind her, and from him was
learned the conclusion of that quest. For an hour and a half they rode;
then they came upon a chapel in the mountains, in which were burning
unwonted lights. At the sight the lady drew rein and almost fell from
her horse into the arms of her lackey. 'A marriage!' she murmured; 'a
marriage!' and pointed to an empty coach standing in the shadow of a
wide-spreading tree. It was their family coach. How well she knew it!
Rousing herself, she made for the chapel door. 'I will stop these
unhallowed rites!' she cried! 'I am her mother, and she is not of age.'
But the lackey drew her back by her rich white dress. 'Look!' he cried,
pointing in at one of the windows, and she looked. The man she loved
stood before the altar with her daughter. He was smiling in that
daughter's face with a look of passionate devotion. It went like a
dagger to her heart. Crushing her hands against her face, she wailed out
some fearful protest; then she dashed toward the door with 'Stop! stop!'
on her lips. But the faithful lackey at her side drew her back once
more. 'Listen!' was his word, and she listened. The minister, whose form
she had failed to note in her first hurried look, was uttering his
benediction. She had come too late. The young couple were married.
"Her servant said, or so the tradition runs, that when she realized this
she grew calm as walking death. Making her way into the chapel, she
stood ready at the door to greet them as they issued forth, and when
they saw her there, with her rich bedraggled robe and the gleam of
jewels on a neck she had not even stopped to envelop in more than the
veil from her hair, the bridegroom seemed to realize what he had done
and stopped the bride, who in her confusion would have fled back to the
altar where she had just been made a wife. 'Kneel!' he cried. 'Kneel,
Amarynth! Only thus can we ask pardon of our mother.' But at that word,
a word which seemed to push her a million miles away from these two
beings who but two hours before had been the delight of her life, the
unhappy woman gave a cry and fled from their presence. 'Go! go!' were
her parting words. 'As you have chosen, you must abide. But let no
tongue ever again call me mother.'
"They found her lying on the grass outside. As she could no longer
sustain herself on a horse, they put her into the coach, gave the reins
to her devoted lackey, and themselves rode off on horseback. One man,
the fellow who had driven them to that place, said that the clock struck
twelve from the chapel tower as the coach turned away and began its
rapid journey home. This may and may not be so. We only know that its
apparition always enters Lost Man's Lane a few minutes before one, which
is the very hour at which the real coach came back and stopped before
Mr. Knollys' gate. And now for the worst, Miss Butterworth. When the old
gentleman went down to greet the runaways, he found the lackey on the
box and his daughter sitting all alone in the coach. But the soil on the
brocaded folds of her white dress was no longer that of mud only. She
had stabbed herself to the heart with a bodkin she wore in her hair, and
it was a corpse which the faithful negro had been driving down the
highway that night."
I am not a sentimental woman, but this story as thus told gave me a
thrill I do not know as I really regret experiencing.
"What was this unhappy mother's name?" I asked.
"Lucetta," was the unexpected and none too reassuring answer.
XIII
GOSSIP
This name once mentioned called for more gossip, but of a somewhat
different nature.
"The Lucetta of to-day is not like her ancient namesake," observed Mrs.
Carter. "She may have the heart to love, but she is not capable of
showing that love by any act of daring."