Uncanny Tales Part 5

Father nodded.

"Poor Mr. Miles!" I e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed. "You won't sit up with him, I hope, father?"

"I offered to do so, but he won't hear of it," was the reply. "He is bringing one of his keepers with him--a st.u.r.dy, trustworthy young fellow, and they two with their revolvers are going to nab the ghost, so he says. We shall see. We must manage to prevent our servants suspecting anything."

This _was_ managed. I need not go into particulars. Suffice to say that the st.u.r.dy keeper reached his own home before dawn on the night of the vigil, no endeavours of his master having succeeded in persuading him to stay another moment at Finster, and that Mr. Miles himself looked so ill the next morning when he joined us at the breakfast-table that we, the initiated, could scarcely repress our exclamations, when Sophy, with the curious instinct of touching a sore place which some people have, told him that he looked exactly "as if he had seen a ghost".

His experience had been precisely similar to ours. After that we heard no more from him--about the pity it was to leave a place that suited us so well, etc., etc. On the contrary, before he left, he told my father and myself that he thought us uncommonly plucky for staying out the three months, though at the same time he confessed to feeling completely nonplussed.

"I have lived near Finster St. Mabyn's all my life," he said, "and my people before me, and _never_, do I honestly a.s.sure you, have I heard one breath of the old place being haunted. And in a shut-up neighbourhood like this, such a thing would have leaked out."

We shook our heads, but what could we say?

PART III.

We left Finster St. Mabyn's towards the middle of July.

Nothing worth recording happened during the last few weeks. If the ghostly drama were still re-enacted night after night, or only during some portion of each month, we took care not to a.s.sist at the performance. I believe Phil and Nugent planned another vigil, but gave it up by my father's expressed wish, and on one pretext or another he managed to keep the gallery locked off without arousing any suspicion in my mother or Sophy, or any of our visitors.

It was a cold summer,--those early months of it at least--and that made it easier to avoid the room.

Somehow none of us were sorry to go. This was natural, so far as several were concerned, but rather curious as regarded those of the family who knew no drawback to the charms of the place. I suppose it was due to some instinctive consciousness of the influence which so many of the party had felt it impossible to resist or explain.

And the Rectory at Raxtrew was really a dear little place. It was so bright and open and sunny. Dormy's pale face was rosy with pleasure the first afternoon when he came rushing in to tell us that there were tame rabbits and a pair of guinea-pigs in an otherwise empty loose box in the stable-yard.

"Do come and look at them," he begged, and I went with him, pleased to see him so happy.

I did not care for the rabbits, but I always think guinea-pigs rather fascinating, and we stayed playing with them some little time.

"I'll show you another way back into the house," said Dormy, and he led me through a conservatory into a large, almost unfurnished room, opening again into a tiled pa.s.sage leading to the offices.

"This is the Warden boys' playroom," he said. "They keep their cricket and football things here, you see, and their tricycle. I wonder if I might use it?"

"We must write and ask them," I said. "But what are all these big packages?" I went on. "Oh, I see, its our heavy luggage from Finster.

There is not room in this house for our odds and ends of furniture, I suppose. It's rather a pity they have put it in here, for we could have had some nice games in this big room on a wet day, and see, Dormy, here are several pairs of roller skates! Oh, we must have this place cleared."

We spoke to father about it--he came and looked at the room and agreed with us that it would be a pity not to have the full use of it. Roller skating would be good exercise for Dormy, he said, and even for Nat, who would be joining us before long for his holidays.

So our big cases, and the chairs and tables we had bought from Hunter, in their careful swathings of wisps and matting, were carried out to an empty barn--a perfectly dry and weather-tight barn--for everything at the Rectory was in excellent repair. In this, as in all other details, our new quarters were a complete contrast to the picturesque abode we had just quitted.

The weather was charming for the first two or three weeks--much warmer and sunnier than at Finster. We all enjoyed it, and seemed to breathe more freely. Miss Larpent, who was staying through the holidays this year, and I congratulated each other more than once, when sure of not being overheard, on the cheerful, wholesome atmosphere in which we found ourselves.

"I do not think I shall ever wish to live in a very old house again,"

she said one day. We were in the play-room, and I had been persuading her to try her hand--or feet--at roller skating. "Even now," she went on, "I own to you, Leila, though it may sound very weak-minded, I cannot think of that horrible night without a shiver. Indeed, I could fancy I feel that thrill of indescribable cold at the present moment."

She _was_ shivering--and, extraordinary to relate, as she spoke, her tremor communicated itself to me. Again, I could swear to it, again I felt that blast of unutterable, unearthly cold.

I started up. We were seated on a bench against the wall--a bench belonging to the play-room, and which we had not thought of removing, as a few seats were a convenience.

Miss Larpent caught sight of my face. Her own, which was very white, grew distressed in expression. She grasped my arm.

"My dearest child," she exclaimed, "you look blue, and your teeth are chattering! I do wish I had not alluded to that fright we had. I had no idea you were so nervous."

"I did not know it myself," I replied. "I often think of the Finster ghost quite calmly, even in the middle of the night. But just then, Miss Larpent, do you know, I really _felt_ that horrid cold again!"

"So did I--or rather my imagination did," she replied, trying to talk in a matter-of-fact way. She got up as she spoke, and went to the window.

"It can't be _all_ imagination," she added. "See, Leila, what a gusty, stormy day it is--not like the beginning of August. It really is cold."

"And this play-room seems nearly as draughty as the gallery at Finster,"

I said. "Don't let us stay here--come into the drawing-room and play some duets. I wish we could quite forget about Finster."

"Dormy has done so, I hope," said Miss Larpent.

That chilly morning was the commencement of the real break-up in the weather. We women would not have minded it so much, as there are always plenty of indoor things we can find to do. And my two grown-up brothers were away. Raxtrew held no particular attractions for them, and Phil wanted to see some of our numerous relations before he returned to India. So he and Nugent started on a round of visits. But, unluckily, it was the beginning of the public school holidays, and poor Nat--the fifteen-year-old boy--had just joined us. It was very disappointing for him in more ways than one. He had set his heart on seeing Finster, impressed by our enthusiastic description of it when we first went there, and now his antic.i.p.ations had to come down to a comparatively tame and uninteresting village, and every probability--so said the wise--of a stretch of rainy, unsummerlike weather.

Nat is a good-natured, cheery fellow, however--not nearly as clever or as impressionable as Dormy, but with the same common sense. So he wisely determined to make the best of things, and as we were really sorry for him, he did not, after all, come off very badly.

His princ.i.p.al amus.e.m.e.nt was roller-skating in the play-room. Dormy had not taken to it in the same way--the greater part of _his_ time was spent with the rabbits and guinea-pigs, where Nat, when he himself had had skating enough, was pretty sure to find him.

I suppose it is with being the eldest sister that it always seems my fate to receive the confidences of the rest of the family, and it was about this time, a fortnight or so after his arrival, that it began to strike me that Nat looked as if he had something on his mind.

"He is sure to tell me what it is, sooner or later," I said to myself.

"Probably he has left some small debts behind him at school--only he did not look worried or anxious when he first came home."

The confidence was given. One afternoon Nat followed me into the library, where I was going to write some letters, and said he wanted to speak to me. I put my paper aside and waited.

"Leila," he began, "you must promise not to laugh at me."

This was not what I expected.

"Laugh at you--no, certainly not," I replied, "especially if you are in any trouble. And I have thought you were looking worried, Nat."

"Well, yes," he said, "I don't know if there is anything coming over me--I feel quite well, but--Leila," he broke off, "do you believe in ghosts?"

I started.

"Has any one----" I was beginning rashly, but the boy interrupted me.

"No, no," he said eagerly, "no one has put anything of the kind into my head--no one. It is my own senses that have seen--felt it--or else, if it is fancy, I must be going out of my mind, Leila--I do believe there is a ghost here _in the play-room_."

I sat silent, an awful dread creeping over me, which, as he went on, grew worse and worse. Had the thing--the Finster shadow--attached itself to us--I had read of such cases--had it journeyed with us to this peaceful, healthful house? The remembrance of the cold thrill experienced by Miss Larpent and myself flashed back upon me. And Nat went on.

Yes, the cold was the first thing he had been startled by, followed, just as in the gallery of our old castle, by the consciousness of the terrible shadow-like presence, gradually taking form in the moonlight.

For there had been moonlight the last night or two, and Nat, in his skating ardour, had amused himself alone in the play-room after Dormy had gone to bed.

"The night before last was the worst," he said. "It stopped raining, you remember, Leila, and the moon was very bright--I noticed how it glistened on the wet leaves outside. It was by the moonlight I saw the--the shadow. I wouldn't have thought of skating in the evening but for the light, for we've never had a lamp in there. It came round the walls, Leila, and then it seemed to stop and fumble away in one corner--at the end where there is a bench, you know."