FROM OUT THE VASTY DEEP
BY
MRS. BELLOC LOWNDES
1921
TO
A.H. FASS
The owner of the real "Wyndfell Hall"
in memory of
many happy hours spent there
by his friend the writer
Glendower:
"_I can call spirits from the vasty deep_."
Hotspur:
"_Why, so can I; or so can any man: But will they come, when you
do call for them_?"
Henry IV.
FROM OUT THE VASTY DEEP
CHAPTER I
"I always thought that you, Pegler, were such a very sensible woman."
The words were said in a good-natured, though slightly vexed tone; and a
curious kind of smile flitted over the rather grim face of the person to
whom they were addressed.
"I've never troubled you before in this exact way, have I, ma'am?"
"No, Pegler. That you certainly have not."
Miss Farrow looked up from the very comfortable armchair where she was
sitting--leaning back, with her neatly shod, beautifully shaped feet
stretched out to the log fire. Her maid was standing a little to the
right, her spare figure and sallow face lit up by the flickering,
shooting flames, for the reading-lamp at Miss Farrow's elbow was heavily
shaded.
"D'you really mean that you won't sleep next door to-night, Pegler?"
"I wouldn't be fit to do my work to-morrow if I did, ma'am." And Miss
Farrow quite understood that that was Pegler's polite way of saying
that she most definitely did refuse to sleep in the room next door.
"I wish the ghost had come in here, instead of worrying you!" As the
maid made no answer to this observation, her mistress went on, turning
round so that she could look up into the woman's face: "What was it
exactly you _did_ see, Pegler?" And as the other still remained silent,
Miss Farrow added: "I really do want to know! You see, Pegler--well, I
need hardly tell you that I have a very great opinion of you."
And then, to the speaker's extreme surprise, there came a sudden change
over Pegler's face. Her pale countenance flushed, it became discomposed,
and she turned her head away to hide the springing tears.
Miss Farrow was touched; as much touched as her rather hard nature would
allow her to be. This woman had been her good and faithful friend, as
well as servant, for over twelve years.
She sprang up from her deep chair with the lightness of a girl, though
she was over forty; and went and took the other's hand. "Pegler!" she
exclaimed. "What's the matter, you dear old thing?"
But Pegler wrenched away her hand, rather ungraciously. "After two such
nights as I've had," she muttered, "it's no wonder I'm a bit upset."
Excellent maid though she was--Miss Farrow had never known anyone who
could do hair as Pegler could--the woman was in some ways very
unconventional, very unlike an ordinary lady's maid.
"Now do tell me exactly what happened?" Miss Farrow spoke with a mixture
of coaxing and kindly authority. "What do you think you saw? I need
hardly tell you that _I_ don't believe in ghosts." As the maid well
knew, the speaker might have finished the sentence with "or in anything
else." But that fact, Pegler being the manner of woman she was, did not
detract from the affection and esteem in which she held her lady. You
can't have everything--such was her simple philosophy--and religious
people do not always act up to their profession. Miss Farrow, at any
rate in her dealings with Pegler, was always better than her word. She
was a kind, a considerate, and an intelligent mistress.
So it was that, reluctantly, Pegler made up her mind to speak. "I'd like
to say, ma'am," she began, "that no one said nothing to me about that
room being haunted. You was the first that mentioned it to me, after I'd
spoken to you yesterday. As you know, ma'am, the servants here are a job
lot; they don't know nothing about the house. 'Twasn't till to-day that
one of the village people, the woman at the general shop and post
office, let on that Wyndfell Hall was well known to be a ghosty place."
There was a pause, and then Pegler added: "Still, as you and I well
know, ma'am, tales don't lose nothing in the telling."
"Indeed they don't! Never mind what the people in the village say. This
kind of strange, lonely, beautiful old house is sure to be said to be
haunted. What _I_ want to know is what _you_ think you saw, Pegler--"
The speaker looked sharply into the woman's face.
"I don't like to see you standing, ma'am," said Pegler inconsequently.
"If you'll sit down in your chair again I'll tell you what happened to
me."
Miss Farrow sank gracefully down into her deep, comfortable chair.
Again she put out her feet to the fire, for it was very cold on this
23rd of December, and she knew she had a tiring, probably a boring,
evening before her. Some strangers of whom she knew nothing, and cared
less, excepting that they were the friends of her friend and host,
Lionel Varick, were to arrive at Wyndfell Hall in time for dinner. It
was now six o'clock.
"Well," she said patiently, "begin at the beginning, Pegler. I wish
you'd sit down too--somehow it worries me to see you standing there.
You'll be tempted to cut your story short."
Pegler smiled a thin little smile. In the last twelve years Miss Farrow
had several times invited her to sit down, but of course she had always
refused, being one that knew her place. She had only sat in Miss
Farrow's presence during the days and nights when she had nursed her
mistress through a serious illness--then, of course, everything had been
different, and she had had to sit down sometimes.
"The day before yesterday--that is the evening Miss Bubbles arrived,
ma'am--after I'd dressed you and you'd gone downstairs, and I'd unpacked
for Miss Bubbles, I went into my room and thought how pleasant it
looked. The curtains was drawn, and there was a nice fire, as you know,
ma'am, which Mr. Varick so kindly ordered for me, and which I've had the
whole week. Also, I will say for Annie that even if she is a temporary,
she is a good housemaid, making the girls under her do their work
properly."
Pegler drew a long breath. Then she went on again: "I sat down just for
a minute or two, and I turned over queer--so queer, ma'am, that I went
and drew the curtains of one of the windows. Of course it's a much
bigger room than I'm generally accustomed to occupy, as you know, ma'am.
And I just threw up the window--it's what they call a guillotine
window--and there I saw the water, you know, ma'am, in what they call
the moat--"
"Yes," said Miss Farrow languidly. "Yes, Pegler, go on."
"As I looked down, ma'am, I had an awful turn. There seemed to me to be
something floating about in the water, a little narrow thing like a
child's body--and--and all on a sudden a small white face seemed to look
up into mine! Oh, it was 'orrible!" Pegler did not often drop an aitch,
but when she did so forget herself, she did it thoroughly.
"As I went on looking, fascinated-like"--she was speaking very slowly
now--"whatever was down there seemed to melt away. I didn't say nothing
that evening of what had happened to me, but I couldn't keep myself from
thinking of it. Well, then, ma'am, as you know, I came and undressed
you, and I asked you if you'd like the door kept open between our two
rooms. But you said no, ma'am, you'd rather it was shut. So then I went
to bed."
"And you say--you admit, Pegler--that nothing _did_ happen the night
before last?"
Pegler hesitated. "Nothing happened exactly," she said. "But I had the
most awful feeling, ma'am. And yes--well, something did happen! I heard
a kind of rustling in the room. It would leave off for a time, and, then
begin again. I tried to put it down to a mouse or a rat--or something of
that sort."
"That," said Miss Farrow quietly, "was probably what it was, Pegler."
As if she had not heard her lady's remark, the maid went on: "I'd go
off to sleep, and then suddenly, I'd awake and hear this peculiar
rustle, ma'am, like a dress swishing along--an old-fashioned, rich, soft
silk, such as ladies wore in the old days, when I was a child. But that
dress, the dress I heard rustling, ma'am, was a bit older than that."
"What _do_ you mean, Pegler?"
The maid remained silent, her eyes were fixed; it was as if she had
forgotten where she was.
"And what exactly happened last night?"
"Last night," said Pegler, drawing a long breath, "last night, ma'am--I
know you won't believe me--but I saw the spirit!"
Miss Farrow looked up into the woman's face with an anxious, searching
glance.
She felt disturbed and worried. A great deal of her material
comfort--almost, she might have truly said, much of her happiness in
life--depended on Jane Pegler. In a sense Blanche Farrow had but two
close friends in the world--her host, Lionel Varick, the new owner of
Wyndfell Hall; and the plain, spare, elderly woman standing now before
her. She realized with a sharp pang of concern what Pegler's mental
defection would mean to her. It would be dreadful, _dreadful_, if Pegler
began seeing ghosts, and turning hysterical.
"What was the spirit like?" she asked quietly.
And then, all at once, she had to suppress a violent inclination to
burst out laughing. For Pegler answered with a kind of cry, "A 'orrible
happarition, ma'am!"
Miss Farrow could not help observing a trifle satirically: "That
certainly sounds most unpleasant."
But Pegler went on, speaking with a touch of excitement very unusual
with her: "It was a woman--a woman with a dreadful, wicked, spiteful
face! Once she came up close to my bed, and I wanted to scream out, but
I couldn't--my throat seemed shut up."
"D'you mean you actually saw what you took to be a ghost?"
"I did see a ghost, ma'am; not a doubt of it! She walked up and down
that room in there, wringing her hands all the time--I'd heard the
expression, ma'am, but I'd never seen anyone do it."
"Did anything else happen?"
"At last she went over to the window, and--and I'm afraid you won't
believe me, ma'am--but there seemed no curtains there any more, nothing
but just an opening into the darkness. I saw her bend over--" An
expression of terror came over the woman's face.
"But how could you _see_ her," asked Miss Farrow quickly, "if there was
no light in the room?"
"In a sort of way," said Pegler somberly, "the spirit was supplying the
light, as it were. I could see her in the darkness, as if she was a lamp
moving about."
"Oh, Pegler, Pegler!" exclaimed Miss Farrow deprecatingly.
"It's true, ma'am! It's true as I'm standing here." Pegler would have
liked to add the words "So help me God!" but somehow she felt that these
words would not carry any added conviction to her mistress. And, indeed,
they would not have done so, for Miss Farrow, though she was much too
polite and too well-bred ever to have said so, even to herself, did not
believe in a Supreme Being. She was a complete materialist.
"And then, ma'am, after a bit, there it would begin, constant-like, all
over again."
"I don't understand...."
"I'd go to sleep, and tell myself maybe that it was all a dream--argue
with myself, ma'am, for I'm a sensible woman. And then all at once I'd
hear that rustle again! I'd try not to open my eyes, but somehow I felt
I must see what was happening. So I'd look at last--and there she'd be!
Walking up and down, walking up and down, her face--oh, ma'am, her face
staring-like most 'orrible--and wringing her hands. Then she'd go over
to the window, lean out, and disappear, down into the black water!"
In a calmer tone Pegler added: "The moat used to be much bigger and
deeper than it is now, ma'am--so they all say."
"All?" said Miss Farrow sharply. "Who do you mean by 'all'?"
"The people about the place, ma'am."
"I can't help wishing, Pegler, that you hadn't told this strange story
to the servants. You see it makes it so awkward for Mr. Varick."
Pegler flushed uncomfortably. "I was that scared," she murmured, "that I
felt I must tell somebody, and if you tell one, as I did, you tell all.
I'm sorry I did it, ma'am, for I'm afraid I've inconvenienced you."
"It can't be helped," said Miss Farrow good-naturedly. "I know you
wouldn't have done it if you could have helped it, Pegler. But of course
in a way it's unlucky."
"I've pointed out to them all that there never is but one room haunted
in a house as a rule," said the maid eagerly, "and I think they all
quite sees that, ma'am. Besides, they're very pleased with Mr. Varick.
You know what he did to-day, ma'am?"
"No," said Miss Farrow, looking up and smiling, "what did he do?"
"He called them all together, without distinction of class, so to speak,
ma'am, and he told them that if he was pleased with the way in which his
Christmas party went off, he'd give them each a five-pound note at the
end of the month. It made them forget the haunted room, I can tell you,
ma'am!" She added grudgingly, "He _is_ a kind gentleman, and no
mistake."
"Indeed he is! I'm glad that you see that now, Pegler." Miss Farrow
spoke with a touch of meaning in her voice. "I did a very good turn for
myself when I got him out of that queer scrape years ago."
"Why yes, ma'am, I suppose you did." But Pegler's tone was not as hearty
as that of her lady.
There was a pause. "Then what have you settled to do about to-night?"
"If you don't mind, ma'am--I'm arranging to sleep in what they call the
second maid's room. There is a bell through, ma'am, but you'll have to
go into the next room to ring it, for you know, ma'am, that it's the
next room that ought to have been your room by rights."
"I wish now that I'd taken it and put you in here," said Miss Farrow
ruefully.
"They're going to keep up a good fire there. So when you go in you won't
get a chill."
"That does seem luxurious," said Miss Farrow, smiling. She loved luxury,
and it was pleasant to think that there should be a fire kept up in an
empty room just so that she shouldn't feel a chill when she went in for
a moment to ring for her maid!
"By the way, I hope there's a fireplace in your room, Pegler"--the words
were uttered solicitously.
"No, there isn't, ma'am. But I don't mind that. I don't much care about
a fire."
"There's no accounting for taste!"
Miss Farrow took up her book again, and Pegler, as was her way, slid
noiselessly from the room--not through the door leading into the haunted
chamber, but out on to the beautiful panelled landing, now gay with
bowls of hothouse flowers which had come down from London that morning
by passenger train, and been brought by car all the way from Newmarket.