_SIGHTS AND NOISES_
There is not an old house in England of which the servants and young people
who live in it do not cherish some traditions of the ghostly. Knowl has its
shadows, noises, and marvellous records. Rachel Ruthyn, the beauty of Queen
Anne's time, who died of grief for the handsome Colonel Norbrooke, who
was killed in the Low Countries, walks the house by night, in crisp and
sounding silks. She is not seen, only heard. The tapping of her high-heeled
shoes, the sweep and rustle of her brocades, her sighs as she pauses in the
galleries, near the bed-room doors; and sometimes, on stormy nights, her
sobs.
There is, beside, the 'link-man', a lank, dark-faced, black-haired man, in
a sable suit, with a link or torch in his hand. It usually only smoulders,
with a deep red glow, as he visits his beat. The library is one of the
rooms he sees to. Unlike 'Lady Rachel,' as the maids called her, he is seen
only, never heard. His steps fall noiseless as shadows on floor and carpet.
The lurid glow of his smouldering torch imperfectly lights his figure and
face, and, except when much perturbed, his link never blazes. On those
occasions, however, as he goes his rounds, he ever and anon whirls it
around his head, and it bursts into a dismal flame. This is a fearful omen,
and always portends some direful crisis or calamity. It occurs, only once
or twice in a century.
I don't know whether Madame had heard anything of these phenomena; but she
did report which very much frightened me and Mary Quince. She asked us who
walked in the gallery on which her bed-room opened, making a rustling with
her dress, and going down the stairs, and breathing long breaths here and
there. Twice, she said, she had stood at her door in the dark, listening to
these sounds, and once she called to know who it was. There was no answer,
but the person plainly turned back, and hurried towards her with an
unnatural speed, which made her jump within her door and shut it.
When first such tales are told, they excite the nerves of the young and the
ignorant intensely. But the special effect, I have found, soon wears out.
The tale simply takes it's place with the rest. It was with Madame's
narrative.
About a week after its relation, I had my experience of a similar sort.
Mary Quince went down-stairs for a night-light, leaving me in bed, a candle
burning in the room, and being tired, I fell asleep before her return.
When I awoke the candle had been extinguished. But I heard a step softly
approaching. I jumped up--quite forgetting the ghost, and thinking only of
Mary Quince--and opened the door, expecting to see the light of her candle.
Instead, all was dark, and near me I heard the fall of a bare foot on the
oak floor. It was as if some one had stumbled. I said, 'Mary,' but no
answer came, only a rustling of clothes and a breathing at the other side
of the gallery, which passed off towards the upper staircase. I turned into
my room, freezing with horror, and clapt my door. The noise wakened Mary
Quince, who had returned and gone to her bed half an hour before.
About a fortnight after this, Mary Quince, a very veracious spinster,
reported to me, that having got up to fix the window, which was rattling,
at about four o'clock in the morning, she saw a light shining from the
library window. She could swear to its being a strong light, streaming
through the chinks of the shutter, and moving. No doubt the link was waved
about his head by the angry 'link-man.'
These strange occurrences helped, I think, just then to make me nervous,
and prepared the way for the odd sort of ascendency which, through my
sense of the mysterious and super-natural, that repulsive Frenchwoman was
gradually, and it seemed without effort, establishing over me.
Some dark points of her character speedily emerged from the prismatic mist
with which she had enveloped it.
Mrs. Rusk's observation about the agreeability of new-comers I found to be
true; for as Madame began to lose that character, her good-humour abated
very perceptibly, and she began to show gleams of another sort of temper,
that was lurid and dangerous.
Notwithstanding this, she was in the habit of always having her Bible open
by her, and was austerely attentive at morning and evening services, and
asked my father, with great humility, to lend her some translations of
Swedenborg's books, which she laid much to heart.
When we went out for our walk, if the weather were bad we generally made
our promenade up and down the broad terrace in front of the windows. Sullen
and malign at times she used to look, and as suddenly she would pat me on
the shoulder caressingly, and smile with a grotesque benignity, asking
tenderly, 'Are you fatigue, ma chère?' or 'Are you cold-a, dear Maud?'
At first these abrupt transitions puzzled me, sometimes half frightened
me, savouring, I fancied, of insanity. The key, however, was accidentally
supplied, and I found that these accesses of demonstrative affection were
sure to supervene whenever my father's face was visible through the library
windows.
I did not know well what to make of this woman, whom I feared with a vein
of superstitious dread. I hated being alone with her after dusk in the
school-room. She would sometimes sit for half an hour at a time, with her
wide mouth drawn down at the corners, and a scowl, looking into the fire.
If she saw me looking at her, she would change all this on the instant,
affect a sort of languor, and lean her head upon her hand, and ultimately
have recourse to her Bible. But I fancied she did not read, but pursued her
own dark ruminations, for I observed that the open book might often lie for
half an hour or more under her eyes and yet the leaf never turned.
I should have been glad to be assured that she prayed when on her knees, or
read when that book was before her; I should have felt that she was more
canny and human. As it was, those external pieties made a suspicion of a
hollow contrast with realities that helped to scare me; yet it was but a
suspicion--I could not be certain.
Our rector and the curate, with whom she was very gracious, and anxious
about my collects and catechism, had an exalted opinion of her. In public
places her affection for me was always demonstrative.
In like manner she contrived conferences with my father. She was always
making excuses to consult him about my reading, and to confide in him her
sufferings, as I learned, from my contumacy and temper. The fact is, I was
altogether quiet and submissive. But I think she had a wish to reduce me
to a state of the most abject bondage. She had designs of domination and
subversion regarding the entire household, I now believe, worthy of the
evil spirit I sometimes fancied her.
My father beckoned me into the study one day, and said he--
'You ought not to give poor Madame so much pain. She is one of the few
persons who take an interest in you; why should she have so often to
complain of your ill-temper and disobedience?--why should she be compelled
to ask my permission to punish you? Don't be afraid, I won't concede that.
But in so kind a person it argues much. Affection I can't command--respect
and obedience I may--and I insist on your rendering _both_ to Madame.'
'But sir,' I said, roused into courage by the gross injustice of the
charge, 'I have always done exactly as she bid me, and never said one
disrespectful word to Madame.'
'I don't think, child, _you_ are the best judge of that. Go, and _amend_.'
And with a displeased look he pointed to the door. My heart swelled with
the sense of wrong, and as I reached the door I turned to say another word,
but I could not, and only burst into tears.
'There--don't cry, little Maud--only let us do better for the future.
There--there--there has been enough.'
And he kissed my forehead, and gently put me out and closed the door.
In the school-room I took courage, and with some warmth upbraided Madame.
'Wat wicked cheaile!' moaned Madame, demurely. 'Read aloud those
three--yes, _those_ three chapters of the Bible, my dear Maud.'
There was no special fitness in those particular chapters, and when they
were ended she said in a sad tone--
'Now, dear, you must commit to memory this pretty priaire for umility of
art.'
It was a long one, and in a state of profound irritation I got through the
task.
Mrs. Rusk hated her. She said she stole wine and brandy whenever the
opportunity offered--that she was always asking her for such stimulants and
pretending pains in her stomach. Here, perhaps, there was exaggeration; but
I knew it was true that I had been at different times despatched on that
errand and pretext for brandy to Mrs. Rusk, who at last came to her bedside
with pills and a mustard blister only, and was hated irrevocably ever
after.
I felt all this was done to torture me. But a day is a long time to a
child, and they forgive quickly. It was always with a sense of danger that
I heard Madame say she must go and see Monsieur Ruthyn in the library,
and I think a jealousy of her growing influence was an ingredient in the
detestation in which honest Mrs. Rusk held her.