Title: At Midnight and Other Stories
Author: Ada Cambridge
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Language:  English
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Title:      At Midnight and Other Stories
Author:     Ada Cambridge




CONTENTS

At Midnight
A Breath of the Sea
Two Old Fogies
"One of these Little Ones"
A Sweet Day
The Wind of Destiny
At Midnight





AT MIDNIGHT



CHAPTER I


They sat in their American buggy at the turn of an English road--an
Australian bride and bridegroom, on their wedding tour.
It was a bit of the "old country" that had not been syndicated and
modernized since the bridegroom had seen it last--when he was a young
fellow at Cambridge, paying visits to the houses of his university chums
because his own home was inaccessible. Tall hedges embraced the ripening
wheat-fields still; brambly ditches yawned beneath them. There were dense
woods hereabouts that made green tunnels of the road, and there were
thickets of fern and wild vines and bushes--acres of unprofitable
beauty--under the useless trees. The spot was a joy to the sentimental
wayfarer, and Mrs. Wingate's gaze meant rapture not expressible in words.

"This," she sighed, "is England, Billy."

She meant that this was the England of her romantic dreams--England as
described to her by exiled parents and in scores of delightful books.

"And this," said Billy, "is the place I told you of."

He pointed with his whip.

Just below and before them rose an ancient gateway, iron and stone, with
much heraldic ornament. An ivy-mantled lodge with curly chimney-stacks
stood immediately within; and beyond, sloping gently upward for a mile or
more, a straight, grassed drive between thick woods--a beautiful green
vista, three times as wide as an ordinary park avenue--was closed, on an
elevated horizon, by the indistinct but imposing mass of a great grey
house, one of those "stately homes of England" which are our pride and
boast. It was a lovely picture, and a lovely atmosphere through which to
view it--tinted with the hues of approaching sunset on a late summer day.
A few head of deer were browsing quietly on the shadow-patterned sward;
thrushes were calling to each other from wood to wood; partridges flying
homeward to their nests in the corn, disturbed by the sound of the
horses' hoofs.

"There it is," said the bridegroom, his eyes kindling, his voice full of
feeling, evoked by thronging memories of the splendid days of youth. "And
you should see it when the pink may is out and those woods full of
rhododendron in flower! Look at that grass ride--the deer like to come out
there to feed, though they hide in the fern to rest--and what a stretch
for a gallop! There wasn't the shooting in my time that there is now, but
many a jolly day have I had with Walter Desailly in those fields over
there, walking up our birds with one old dog through the turnips and
stubble. You see that water shining through the trees? There was duck
there; we shot them with a rook rifle by moonlight out of a bedroom
window, and scared the maids with the row we made; once we caught a
forty-two pound pike on a night-line; Walter had been fishing for it all
his life, and found three sets of his tackle rusted in its jaws. The old
squire had it stuffed for a curiosity. I wonder if Walter has it still,
and whether he ever thinks of those old days?"

The speaker sighed inaudibly. He was a fine man, in his prime, inclining
to stoutness, and with a suspicion of frost upon his short brown beard.
"Those old days" were nearly twenty years ago.

"You ought to call upon him," said Mrs. Wingate, "and remind him of them.
I'm sure he would be delighted, if you were such friends as that. Then
you could show me over. Probably he would invite us to stay with him. At
any rate, he might be able to advise us about a place for ourselves."

This pair, it must be explained, were wealthy, as was the case with many
Australians at that date--a period now indicated in the conversation of
their countrymen is "the good times"--he a lucky Queensland pastoralist,
she an heiress of the Silver Boom, both rather new to prosperity of this
kind, but too naturally nice to be vulgarized by it. Neither had any of
the gross ambitions common to persons in their case, but both desired
keenly to enjoy their money. They had just concluded a most successful
London season, without having been presented at Court or made notorious
in society papers; and they were now touring the country behind their own
horses, mainly for rest and independence, and to see what was to be seen,
but also in search of a good house in a sporting neighbourhood, where
they might make a home and entertain their friends during the shooting
and hunting seasons. Mrs. Wingate's dream of luxury was to live in a
medieval castle, with history around her in the atmosphere of refined,
aristocratic, old-England life, as she had romantically imagined it. Mr.
Wingate craved for gun and rod and a straight run after a stout fox--the
joys of his early manhood, which memory had idealized--but was mainly bent
at present upon pleasing his wife. They gazed together at the most
attractive "place" they had yet seen, with thoughts of proprietorship
that they felt were absurd and vain. Windsor Castle seemed as likely to
be to let as the old mansion of the Desaillys, which had not wanted a
master of the name for at least four hundred years.

"Why don't you call on him?" urged the bride. "To have been college
friends surely is introduction enough?"

"We parted on bad terms," replied Wingate, with an air of reserve.

"What does that matter, after all these hundreds of years? You are not
Corsican vendetta people. English gentlemen quarrel and have done with
it; they don't bear malice for a lifetime. I am sure he has forgotten the
whole thing long ago. Unless," she added, with a glance at her husband's
face, "unless it was something very desperate indeed. Was it? Oh, I
believe it was! A woman, of course. If you don't want to tell me, Billy,
you need not."

Billy's left arm curled round the bride's slim waist.

"You are such a dear, kind little soul, Nettie, that I really don't mind
telling you," he said, after a pause. "You'll believe me, I know, when I
declare on my honour that it wasn't my fault. And, besides, it was before
your time, sweetheart; almost before you were born, indeed."

"Yes, Billy; I know I am not the first, by thousands!"

"Oh, not quite so many as that! Just--well, never mind--there's only you
now, pet--only you for evermore." He kissed her at this point, for it was
a lonely bit of road where they had stopped to look at the view and
breathe the horses. And she returned his caress with a laugh, much
comforted by the reflection that the particular lady referred to, if
still alive, would be forty by this time, if not more.

"She was the daughter of a Cambridge bookseller," confessed Billy. "It
don't sound much, but a truer lady never stepped. We called her 'the
Princess,' because she treated us all with such crushing dignity. Lots of
us were gone on her: really, I think, just because of that; but Walter
Desailly cut me out. At any rate, he said something that made me stop
going there, so that I mightn't seem to be interfering with him. Of
course I imagined it was just a little affair, like others, and never
thought he would dream of marrying her, because the Desaillys are such
great folks and so proud of their pedigree. But he did. I suppose she is
living there now in state as my lady, and forgets that she ever waited in
her father's shop. But, no--she wouldn't; she hadn't an ounce of that
sort of snobbishness in her."

"Go on," said Mrs. Wingate, breaking a meditative pause. "There is no
motive for quarrel, so far. I hope I am not strait-laced, Billy dear, and
you couldn't make me jealous if you tried; but I do hope you did not
elope with her afterwards."

"I did nothing, Nettie, that you would not have approved of, had you been
there and known all the circumstances. Walter did not know all the
circumstances, and a man won't believe the word of his best friend in
these cases, if appearances are against him. Come to that, I don't blame
him. I wouldn't myself. It was a chapter of accidents all through. In the
first place, I never thought of Lexie Baird again after I left Cambridge.
I came home--"

"And got engaged to that fat woman who is now Mrs. Ross."

"She was not a fat woman then. Let us keep to the point, if you please.
But perhaps you don't care to hear about it?"

"Oh, I do--I do! I never was more interested in anything. And I think it
is so good and dear of you, Billy, not to mind telling me."

She slipped her hand within his elbow, and laid her fair young cheek upon
his very large coat sleeve. She really was a sweet little bride,
incapable of a mean thought about her husband, as he well knew.

"I came home, and took to business, and did not return to England for a
couple of years and more. I went then because--no, not because of any
woman, fat or thin, as I see you would insinuate--though it was not nice
to live in a place where a fascinating widow was employing lawyers to
write her letters to you. At any rate--well, look here, Nettie; young men
will be young men, just as boys will be boys--they can't help it; and you
needn't rake up old follies now that I've grown wise. Yes, I'm wise now.
You are a witness to it. All those blunders were teaching me your value,
don't you see? Perhaps I had better not tell you any more. It was stupid
to mention the subject."

She apologized so prettily for having dared to laugh, and urged him with
such obvious sincerity not to tell her any more if he would rather not,
that he proceeded with his little tale immediately.

"I went to shoot at a place not far from here, and a girl in the house
told me that young Desailly had married a low barmaid, and been cut by
his family for it. I was quite staggered by the news, because he'd been a
fastidious sort of fellow, and I wanted to find him and cheer him up a
bit; but no one knew where he was. The girl, Miss Balcombe--her father was
the rector here--she was awfully bitter. It seems Walter had wanted to
marry her at one time, and his people wouldn't have it. She was no end of
a pretty girl, but there was something about her--she reminded me of a
silky cat; and the way she talked of poor Lexie--I didn't know it was
Lexie then--was fiendish. A low barmaid, indeed! No wonder I hadn't a
notion what was coming. By the way, she honoured me with a particular
regard. It's not for me to say it, but if I'd liked--however, I didn't."

"Sure?" Mrs. Wingate questioned cautiously.

"Quite sure. She gave me the creeps sometimes when she used to smile. It
was a perfectly heavenly smile, if you can understand, but she just put
it on and off like a mask, and it was always the same for all purposes.
She'd look really like an angel with that smile on, and her fair hair,
and complexion like a lily; and all the time you'd have a cold feeling
that she was thinking she'd like to strangle you. At least, that's how I
felt when I was trying not to make love to her--I mean to resist her
inducements to--I mean--but you know what I mean."

"Perfectly, Billy dear."

"Oh, she was a little devil, that girl! I know she was, though she was a
parson's daughter. To look at her father, a real old-style rector, fat
and red, fond of good living and not too fond of work--the commonplace
personified--you'd really feel doubts as to whether he could be her
father. Same with her mother, a meek little goose of a woman, who just
fell down before her child and worshipped her. But a dear little soul for
all that. We got on capitally together. She invited me to visit them at
that old rectory over there"--pointing with his whip to a church tower in
the landscape--"and I got a sprained wrist from a hunting fall first time
I went out that season, and she nursed me as if I were a son of her own.
What are you smiling at, Nettie?"

"Nothing, dearest. I didn't know I smiled."

"And it was while I was there that everything happened. The very day I
arrived they told me that Walter had been forgiven and taken back,
because his wife--that low barmaid, you know!--had had a son, and somebody
had reported that it was a fine child, and the old squire, being
naturally anxious about the succession, thought it time to set things
straight. Nobody had seen them yet, but there was to be a small dinner
party that night to meet them, and I had been invited. Well, you can
imagine my feelings when I stood with the others round the fire in the
hall--I wish you could have a sight of that hall, Nettie!--to see, coming
down the stairs by Walter's side, our princess--and looking it too, by
George!--instead of the vulgar creature I had been expecting. I never was
so struck all of a heap in my life. As for Geraldine Balcombe, oh, it was
rich to see her smiling when Mrs. Walter Desailly was introduced to her!
I had walked there with her--up that very grass ride you see before you,
which is a good deal longer than it looks--and all the way she had been
dancing on her toes, as it were, full of the triumph she was going to
have over them all, and especially over the wife Walter had taken instead
of her; she couldn't keep her elation within decent bounds. Dress!--I
believe you. A regular ball gown of white satin, the best she'd got, and
pearls round her neck--a lovely neck it was, too--and flowers out of the
greenhouse. She'd got herself up regardless, thinking how mad Walter
would be when he compared her with the low person, and how old Sir Thomas
and my lady would curse the stratagems they had used so successfully to
keep her out of the family. She quite thought she was going to have a
rich revenge on the lot of them that night. And there was Lexie, looking
like a real princess, in her plain black gown, with hardly any neck
showing, putting everybody in the shade. Oh, she was a beautiful woman,
Nettie! There was no mistake bout it. Even Geraldine, though her vanity
was like a rhinoceros' hide, felt it directly she saw her; and I know she
hated poor Lexie like poison from that moment. There was no love lost on
the other side either. When Lexie heard her calling 'Walter' here and
'Walter' there, like a cooing dove, I understood the look in her eyes.
She was quick enough to smell a rat, and she wasn't the sort of woman to
be trifled with. I can tell you she walked into that house all on fire
with the humiliations they had made her suffer before they knew her, and
if she didn't make them eat humble pie, from the great Sir Thomas
downwards, I'm a Dutchman. Do you think she'd have her child sent for to
be introduced and inspected? Not a bit of it. Everybody was dying to see
the heir, for whose sake she had been condoned and acknowledged, and she
calmly refused to have him disturbed out of his regular habits. Sir
Thomas himself said, with his queer smile--he and she became very good
friends afterwards--that he supposed they'd have to go on their knees at
the nursery door before she'd deign to show it. Oh, she was a match for
Miss Geraldine--except that she was all open and above board, and
Geraldine was so secret and treacherous. I know that girl began to make
mischief between husband and wife--and me--before we'd been an hour
together. Of course Lexie vas very pleased to see me."

"Why? if you don't mind my asking, Billy."

"Well, you see I was an old friend, and I was not so grand as the
Desaillys. Though she was not bit afraid of them, their stately ways
oppressed her Besides, she was angry with them for the way they had
repudiated her, and too proud to submit to be suddenly patronized and
tolerated, and to make herself cheap to them all at once. Moreover,
Walter behaved like an idiot. Instead of keeping near her, to pilot her
about and help her to understand the strange ways, he sat the whole
blessed evening in Geraldine Balcombe's pocket. Her doing, of course, but
that didn't excuse him. He was her husband, and he ought to have backed
her up. I know she felt it. In fact, I could see plainly that they were
not as happy together as they should have been. Walter would have liked
to talk to me about that--he did tell me he'd had a devil of a time
keeping house on a bachelor's allowance--but I always shut him up
straight. He was a selfish fellow, Walter Desailly. She was infinitely
too good for him."

He paused, gazing at the grey pile on the horizon, unconscious of the
creeping twilight that had begun to blot it out. His wife heaved a
pensive little sigh. He did not hear it.

"They asked me to The Chase to stay. By degrees the house filled, for Sir
Thomas tried to make up to her for past slights and to bring the county
families to receive and respect her. Men came to shoot, and there were
parties given. Somehow Geraldine was always there, and she was always
with Walter. The fellow must have been mad, or else the little cat had
some power of witchcraft in her. To neglect a woman like Lexie, and she
his wife, for such an unwholesome, cold-blooded--however, she wasn't
cold-blooded to him. I do think she loved him as far as she could love
anybody. I know she turned against me as soon as ever he came
home--regularly hated me, in fact--partly, I suppose, because I sided with
Lexie, whom she hated more. Why, the very last time I ever saw her, when
I went to say goodbye, she was deliberately burning a fichu thing of
Venetian lace just because I had given it to her--a valuable piece, mind
you, of a rare pattern, that I had been stupid enough to pay a lot of
money for; stuffing it into the fire, she was, and ramming it down with
the poker, as if it was so much dishcloth."

"An extraordinary way to show spite!" Mrs. Wingate ejaculated. "And she
did not scorn your offering in the first instance?"

"It wasn't my offering. She almost wheedled it out of me--admired it so
much that for very shame I had to give it to her. It wasn't meant for her
at all."

"That makes it still more extraordinary. If it had been Mrs. Walter's
lace, I could understand it. For whom did you mean it, dear?"

"I don't know. Not for her, at any rate. But she got it, and seemed to
think no end of it too--always wore it when she wanted to be extra smart.
That very night she had had it on, over a blue silk dress. In a paroxysm
of rage she just tore it off her shoulders and destroyed it. I asked her
why, and she said because she did not want anything that reminded her of
me. When I asked her why again, she said something implying that I had
paid her attentions and then thrown her over. Which was a lie. But I was
so upset myself that I didn't care what she said or what she thought. I
left The Chase that night and went to the Himalayas, and I don't know
where--the farthest off that I could get. And I never heard a word of the
Desaillys from that day to this. Oh, yes, I heard that Sir Thomas was
dead--that's all."

"But you haven't told me what happened, Billy?"

"Oh, nothing much happened. I stayed a little while the first time--not
long; you can't stay in a house when you see your host growing cool to
you--getting utterly unfounded suspicions of you into his head. I went on
to other places, and wandered about a bit; looked up her people at
Cambridge, to tell them about her and how she was settling down. They
were a nice family, none the worse for being tradespeople--three jolly
young sisters, who were so proud of her rise in life; and when they asked
me to stay a few days with them, I did, of course. She didn't know I was
there, but one day--it was winter time, and I'd just come in from my old
college chapel with two of the girls--we found her in the sitting-room,
crying in her mother's lap as if her heart would break. She had come home
because she could not bear it--Geraldine, you know--and said she was going
to stay awhile and have a rest; but they were so awfully afraid she would
make a breach with her husband and offend the Desaillys that they
implored her not to. I went out of the room to leave them together, but
presently they called me back, and she was quite recovered and calm. She
made some excuse for her sudden visit, and said she must return before
night--it was nearly night already--and would I look up the trains for her.
She had the child with her, and, of course, she had remembered about his
being the heir and belonging to The Chase in spite of her; and she was
keener now than anybody to retrieve her false step. For it was a false
step, and she, who was always so sensible and courageous, must have been
fearfully treated to make her take it. I never knew what they did to her.
They, I say. But Walter was a gentleman when not bewitched by that fiend
of a girl.

"Well, I took her home. I had to, because the only man in her family was
ill, and she couldn't be allowed to knock about railway stations alone at
that hour. Besides, she was so perfectly innocent and unconscious of
wrong that she asked me to escort her. We had the child with us, and we
hardly spoke the whole way; she was full of her thoughts, so was I,
neither of us could mention what they were, though we were such old
friends. I wished with all my soul that I could leave her outside her
gates, but I dared not suggest it; I had to go on right to the house, or
put ideas into her head that she was above dreaming of. And Walter
received us, and you can imagine how much he believed of the explanation
we had to give; he just turned on his heel and walked away, leaving us
standing together in the great hall. And I saw Geraldine Balcombe up in
the gallery, looking down and smiling.

"Of course Lexie knew then. She was as white as a sheet. Poor girl! Poor
girl! But I never saw such bravery in a woman, and she was more like a
princess than ever. I had already arranged to sleep at the inn in the
village--the Desailly Arms, where we will put up now, if it is still in
existence--taking on the fly we had got at the station; and she just
quietly bade me good-night, and thanked me for taking such good care of
her; and I left her--left her alone to bear it all.

"However, I went to The Chase next day. I could not rest, and I
determined to have it out with Walter. So I did, and so lost control of
myself that I did her more harm than good, but she forgave me that. Look
here, Nettie, I will make a clean breast of it--it is over and done with
these twenty years, so you needn't be jealous--but I was hard hit. I was
damned hard hit."

"And told her?"

"Good heavens, no! I'd have cut my throat sooner. But seeing her in all
that trouble--burning to help her, and not able to--I think she got a
notion, just at the last She encouraged me to travel. She was so kind,
never reproaching me, but I knew what she meant. She wished me to go
away, and never come back. And I did--for twenty years, at any rate. This
is the first time--what? Oh, you precious little noodle! You don't mean to
tell me you are jealous, after all? Now, Nettie, I'll let you into
another dead secret: for fifteen, at least, out of those twenty years I
haven't cared a single, solitary straw about her, not even enough to
inquire of anybody whether she was alive or dead. And surely to goodness
you don't suppose I am going to do it now?"

"You are a faithless wretch," Mrs. Wingate ejaculated, wetting his cheek
with the tip of an eyelash. "I suppose fifteen other women--oh, I begin to
see what I have done in marrying a handsome husband! But one thing I
insist on, Billy--I will see Lady Desailly with my own eyes before we
leave this place, and so shall you. Call up that man who is going along
the road, and ask him if the family is home."




CHAPTER II



Mystery


William Wingate had a feeling that he would rather inquire about his old
sweetheart elsewhere than at the buggy side on the public highway. And
so, finding his wife firm in demanding the immediate satisfaction of her
curiosity, and that he should be confronted at the earliest opportunity
with a woman old enough to be her mother--another Mrs. Ross with an
immeasurable waist--he said he would seek information at the lodge, where
he might find some one who remembered him. She approved, and took the
reins. He jumped down, and the ivied cottage with the Tudor chimneys
swallowed him.
It was all but dark when he reappeared, and yet she saw at once that he
had had a shock.

"Ah," she cried sympathetically, "your Lexie is dead!"

"Worse," he groaned, as he swung himself into the buggy. "Unutterably
worse! But I don't believe it. It's incredible. Nettie, what do you think
they say?--that she eloped years ago with a foreigner who was staying in
the house; that she left the child, who is now a young man, and that she
took one of the most valuable of the family jewels with her--a diamond
necklace, with five star-rubies in it. I remember it well. The old man,
when he was reconciled to her, and wishing everybody to look up to her as
if she had been born to the position, gave it to her and asked her to
wear it; she had it on the very last time I ever saw her. This fellow--he
is only a young keeper, speaking from hearsay and gossip--says Walter
would not have her followed--scorned to interfere with her, both because
he was too proud and because her lover had been his friend--and let the
necklace go with her, and that nothing has been heard of either of them
since. As if Lexie, of all people, would carry off property! I laughed at
the idea. I told the fellow I didn't believe a word of such a story. I
don't. I'll lay my life there's been a mistake somewhere."

"She was an impulsive woman," Mrs. Wingate remarked thoughtfully. "See
how she rushed home in a fit of impatience, and repented the next moment
and rushed back again. And perhaps they drove her to extremities."

"It is conceivable," he returned, "she might have done a mad thing in
sheer desperation, though I should have thought she'd have sooner killed
herself. They say that she and the man were seen going off
together--though, if it was in the night, it may easily have been a case
of mistaken identity. But supposing she left the child--she would have to
do that if she wanted to get free herself, for the heir they must have
recovered--which is sufficiently incredible, seeing what a devoted mother
she was, she would certainly never have taken a scrap of Desailly
property with her. That I will stake my head on, and every penny I
possess."

"The man may have been the culprit there, Billy."

"Oh, it's awful!" he moaned, evidently cut to the heart. "I wish I could
see Walter himself. But he's in Scotland with his son. This place is
deserted--has been nearly all the time. The other day they opened it just
to celebrate the boy's coming of age in the great hall, after some
customs of the family; but it was all locked up directly afterwards, and
stands there empty and falling into decay. Walter lives in London and
abroad mostly, and when here, at the Dower House, a house near one of the
other gates, where an aunt of his used to live. The old folks are both
dead. There's a new rector too, but Geraldine Balcombe is alive and
married. Well, my pet, you must be dying of hunger and fatigue. Let's be
off to the Desailly Arms and a good supper, if they can give us one.
After all, it is no concern of ours, I suppose."

"It has occurred to me that it may concern us closely," Mrs. Wingate
said, in a matter-of-fact tone, no longer dreaming of jealousy. "If that
house is empty, Billy, and Sir Walter cares so little what becomes of it,
why shouldn't we try to find out whether it won't suit us? There must be
an agent here somewhere who could give us particulars, and through whom
we might open negotiations for renting it, if we found it to our taste
and not too appallingly expensive."

Billy confessed himself struck by the idea, but inclined to postpone the
consideration of it to a future hour. He was upset and preoccupied, also
wearying for his dinner. So they drove through the beautiful twilight,
tinged now with the haze of a rising moon, to an inn that he remembered,
and were shortly absorbed in beef and bottled porter, and the comforting
sensation of being safe and snug together, with the troubled world shut
out. There are times when happy people cannot be bothered to think of
anything but themselves.

But when the landlady brought the coffee, she was induced to linger and
be interrogated, whereby further details were added to the Desailly
romance.

"Yes, sir, I remember when Sir Walter brought his wife and child to The
Chase. I was kitchen-maid there at the time, but I don't call to mind
your face, sir. My husband's father was butler; perhaps he'd remember
you, only he's in his second childhood, and, being paralysed, can't make
himself understood. Mrs. Walter, as she was then, did not stay long; she
ran away within the year. And her husband, he was so set on her and so
cut up that he never was the same man afterwards. He never wanted to
marry again. Though lots of people tried to persuade him to get a
divorce, he wouldn't."

"Was he very much cut up?" inquired Wingate gravely.

"They say so, sir. The servants who saw him were always speaking of it.
He seemed partly to blame himself, and I won't say that he's perfection.
You can't expect it of a gentleman in his position, with no work to do to
keep him out of mischief. He has brought young persons to the Dower House
at times, and we hear of goings-on in London that it's best to take no
notice of. But he did his duty by her, at any rate. He made her an honest
woman, in spite of everything; he wouldn't take the law to her when she
turned against him and disgraced a fine old family that had done her only
too much honour; and as for that poor abandoned child of hers, why, he
dotes on the very ground that Master Thomas walks on. Ah, let's hope that
dear young man will make a better choice than his father did! He's the
finest lad in the whole county, though he does come of a bad mother."

"If you are speaking of Sir Walter's son by his wife, Miss Alexandra
Baird," said Wingate, slowly and with emphasis, "he comes of a mother who
was simply one of the best women that ever lived. I had the privilege of
knowing her well."

"Indeed, sir! But the best o' women don't do what she did--not as a rule,
sir---do they?"

The fat landlady, who regarded the peccadilloes of the male person with
such extreme indulgence, smiled austerely.

"I have yet to be convinced that she did do it," said Billy, who, as he
spoke, felt the hand of his little wife slipped into his, and grasped it
gratefully.

"As to that, sir, there's the evidence of parties that saw them go off
together. A lady staying in the house happened to be standing at her
bedroom window, which she had opened, because it was bright moon-light
and the garden looking so pretty, and she heard voices on the terrace
underneath, close to a door at the foot of a private staircase; and when
she looked down, there was Mrs. Walter and the young man, quite plain, so
as nobody could mistake them. She had on the same white cloak that she'd
left the hall with, the stairs and passages being draughty, and it
slipped off her shoulders, and the lady saw the diamond necklace shining.
The young man, he struck a match to see how to lock the door again, and
that showed their faces clear. And the best proof was that neither of
them was ever seen again, sir."

"And the lady did not give the alarm?"

"She said nothing about it because she hoped they'd come back before they
were found out and scandals made, and because Mrs. Walter was in the
habit of going to her family when she was in a temper with her husband;
and they did have words that day. Sir Walter had his suspicions of the
young man, and taxed her with it. They all thought at first that she'd
gone to Cambridge, and the lady that knew she hadn't said the same, just
out of kindness and to give the woman a chance. Besides, she couldn't
bear to be the one to break the news. However, she had to do it at last,
when they found out by letters that came for Mrs. Walter from her mother
that she'd never been there."

"Poor mother!" Wingate ejaculated. "Nettie, we must go and see her. I
want to hear both sides."

"So do I," cried Nettie, with cordial sympathy.

"Dead, sir; dead, ma'am," said the landlady, "many years ago; both her
father and mother, and the business sold. There are no Bairds in
Cambridge now."

It was Nettie who asked the next and most important question.

"Mrs. Venn, was the lady you mention the only person who saw the
elopement with her own eyes?"

Mrs. Venn said she believed the lady was the only person who actually so
saw it, but a servant in the house--the baby's nurse--heard the door of the
private staircase shut. It was in the wing Mrs. Walter occupied--a whole
wing that old Sir Thomas had set apart for her and her husband's use, so
that they could live independently, as if in their own house, when they
felt disposed. The nurse had gone to bed in the nursery with the child;
the noise of the door woke her, and she thought it was her master going
into his dressing-room. But as it happened, Sir Walter--Mr. Walter as he
was then--had gone to London unbeknown to her, and was away all that
night--came home, poor man, to find the bird flown!"

"And who was that lady?" Mrs. Wingate inquired, in a tone of voice that
made her Billy sit up and prick his ears.

"Mrs. George Desailly, ma'am. She married a cousin of the squire's. A
good-for-nothing he is too, though he does belong to the family, and
stands next to Master Thomas too, worse luck."

Billy had heard already who Mrs. George Desailly was, and he seemed to
spring out of his seat. "Aha! I thought so--I thought so! Which took place
first, Mrs. Venn, her marriage or the elopement--the alleged elopement?"

"The elopement, sir--years and years before. Miss Balcombe married quite
late in life--that is, late for a lady so good looking and attractive."

"Any children?"

"Two, sir, only--a girl and boy. The poor little boy is not quite right,
they say, but of course she thinks the world of him."

"And Walter swallowed all her damned lies? I beg your pardon; I can't
help using strong language. Because I can see, as plainly as that you are
standing there, that Mrs. George Desailly invented that elopement for her
own purposes. Don't you see it, Nettie? You remember what I told
you?"--with a significant nod.

"Sir," said Mrs. Venn, "you are like many other people--speaking, evil of
that lady without knowing anything about her."

"I not know anything about her!" laughed Wingate grimly.

"Without knowing anything of the circumstances that, you say, happened
after your time. As a matter of fact, Mrs. Walter and she were the best
of friends. She has told me so herself."

"Oh," said Wingate. And he seemed to wink at Nettie from the corner of a
sombre eye.

"And she could have had no interest whatever in injuring Mrs. Walter--in
telling lies about her, as you call it."

"Unless her lies caused Mrs. Walter's husband to divorce her."

"Which they didn't."

"No. But she could not have foreseen that."

"And never thought of such disgraceful things. Besides, sir, if her story
was an invention, how do you account for Mrs. Walter's disappearance? She
went away that night, and the young foreign gentleman went away that
night, and they've never been heard of since. That's the truth, at any
rate; and if you can find any explanation of it but the one that anybody
who knows the world--"

"I can find another without any trouble," Wingate broke in. "The fellow
may have been a villain--a foreigner generally is--and enticed her away,
and murdered her for the sake of the necklace."

"Not one who loved her. The whole house knew that he loved her, and that
her husband had quarrelled with both of them because he'd found it out."

Wingate's face fell slowly, and he heaved a restless sigh. "It is
strange--it is indeed strange!" he ejaculated. Then, with an air of sudden
resolution, he asked where Mrs. George Desailly might be found. "I am
going," said he darkly, "to the fountain head."

Mrs. George, he was then informed, had no settled habitation of her own,
her husband being a rolling stone, living by his wits and from hand to
mouth, a frequenter of Continental gaming places and a sponger upon his
friends; but it so happened that she was at this moment staying at the
old rectory which used to be her home.

"They were both at the coming of age," said the landlady, "though they
weren't invited, and the squire was very angry when he saw them there.
He's the best of landlords, and kindness itself to everybody else, but he
does hate those George Desaillys so that it's like a madness with him.
The other squires don't think it looks well at all, seeing that Mr.
George is his own blood, and so near the title too. And his poor
wife--goodness knows she has troubles enough without Sir Walter making
more for her."

"What! Does he hate her too? You don't say so!"

"Like poison, sir. And all for nothing, I'm convinced. She once invited
young Master Thomas to stay with her when he was home for his holidays
and his father was away, and he got a bad cold, and told his father in a
letter that his sheets were that damp you could have wrung them. Well,
supposing they were damp--any careless hussy of a housemaid might have
done it, and the missus never known. Desailly ladies don't make the beds.
But Sir Walter, he got it into his head then that she wanted to kill the
boy so that her own might succeed, and now it's a regular monomania with
him. He keeps Master Thomas always under his eye, and he's given orders
that neither she nor her husband are to set foot on the property. Any
gatekeeper that lets them through even into the park is to lose his place
directly. I call it a shame--though he is Sir Walter and my husband's
landlord. She's a lady, like any other lady, and a Desailly moreover, and
a sweet, gentle creature, incapable of doing such things as she's accused
of. She was sitting in this parlour only. yesterday, talking to me about
it, and saying how she missed her dear mother, and how nice it was to be
in her childhood's home again. For my part, I hate to see people despised
and insulted just because they're poor. Why shouldn't she walk in the
park if she's a mind? And why shouldn't she go into the house as well as
the rats and mice? Now that she's here, she just pines to wander alone
through the old rooms where she had such happy days when she was a girl,
and she was asking me whether I could not manage it for her, through my
husband, who's that trusted by the agent that he could get the keys at
any time he wished. I'm sure I was willing enough, and I did all I could,
but there's no man here that'll go against the squire. It went to my
heart to see her pleading for such a little thing, and having to
disappoint her. She said she supposed Sir Walter was afraid she'd steal
something; but the tears were in her eyes, poor thing, and she trembled
all over. There's nothing to steal except what nobody could carry away.
The valuable small things are all well locked up, or at the Dower House,
or in the bank. A burning shame, I call it."

"It is," said Wingate, smiling strangely. "And she is staying at the
rectory, you say?"

"Yes, sir; at least, she was yesterday. The rector now is Mr. Martin, a
bachelor gentleman; he was tutor to Master Thomas before he went to Eton.
He never saw Mrs. George till the other day, at the coming of age; but he
was told how the squire had treated her, and was very indignant, and
offered her his arm as she was leaving the hall, and asked her to honour
him by making use of his house."

"How did the squire treat her?" inquired Wingate. "I used to know him
pretty well, but I never thought him a man to be rude to ladies."

"This was what he did," said Mrs. Venn. "She and her husband came to The
Chase because it was sort of open house at the coming of age--though the
house is so empty and out of repair that only the great hall, the state
drawing-room, and the kitchens were actually used--and because they hoped,
she said, that on such an occasion the family might be reconciled. They
wanted to congratulate Master Thomas, and to drink his health, and so
make up all quarrels, and start fresh as friends. However, we noticed
they were not at the banquet--the company this time was only the people on
the estate, and a few friends of Master Thomas's, very different from the
coming of ages that used to be--though we had seen them go in amongst the
first, and it appears that Sir Walter didn't know they were there at all.
But while the speeches were going on some one whispered to Master Thomas,
and Master Thomas whispered to his father, and the squire looked as black
as thunder, and as soon as the banquet was over ran up the stairs. They
were not using the upper part of the house, and poor Mrs. George had
taken the opportunity to have a quiet stroll through the rooms, the
scenes of her happy days, poor thing! She was looking out of a window,
and thinking of the past, when she used to be petted by Sir Thomas and my
lady as if she were their own daughter, when up comes Sir Walter, and
orders her out of the place just as if she was a common tramp. And she
without even her husband to defend her. Mr. George had changed his mind
about speaking to his cousin before so many people, and had left while
everybody was at the banquet, and gone back to London, so that she was
all alone by herself. She says he abused her shameful, but there was
nobody to hear what they said till the rector met them in the gallery
over the hall. Master Thomas had told the rector what was going on, for
you must know that he doesn't hold with the way his father treats Mrs.
George, which is real scandalous, though I oughtn't to say it, being an
old servant of the family. Mr. Martin, he ran upstairs to see what he
could do, and there was poor Mrs. George crying, and Sir Walter calling
Mr. Blackett, the agent, to come and lock all the doors, and give the
keys to him. He says he wouldn't trust her not to lay dynamite about the
place, and blow them all up--which shows how mad he is in his spite
against her. For anybody can see that a gentler creature never walked.
Mr. Martin, he says he won't break bread in the house again while Sir
Walter is master, though he did give him the living; and Master Thomas
looked so ashamed, poor young gentleman! They say he had words with his
father afterwards, though they are that fond of each other that they're
more like twin brothers than parent and child."

"This," remarked Wingate, "is strangely unlike the Walter Desailly that I
used to know. However--"

He looked at his watch, and then at his wife, and then at the landlady,
who was so enjoying her own loquacity.

"Can you tell me, Mrs. Venn, whether Sir Walter still keeps the keys?"

Mrs. Venn supposed not, as he was out of the country. She thought Mr.
Blackett would have them, and was sure there would be no difficulty in
getting leave to look over the house, if Mr. Wingate wished to do so. It
was only Mrs. George who was shut out, lest she should plant dynamite
upon the premises.

"Well," said Billy, who craved impatiently for a pipe and a quiet gossip
with his wife, "what do you say to a little stroll before turning in,
Nettie? It is a lovely night, and I don't feel a bit like sleep at
present."

"Nor I," said Nettie, also anxious to dispense with the landlady, and not
knowing how to do it politely. "Supper has made a new creature of me. I
could walk miles. Only I'm afraid we might be keeping Mrs. Venn up."

The landlady offered to leave a key under a doormat, and otherwise to
meet the wishes of a customer who had been at college with the squire,
and whose whole equipment betokened wealth, and of the pretty young wife
who was so considerate for other people She took them, with many
apologies, through back passages and a kitchen to show them the door, the
key, and the mat, and where they would find matches and their bedroom
candle, incidentally bringing to their notice certain members of her
family circle. These the strangers affected to ignore, from motives of
delicacy, until a very old man, who was being helped to bed by a pair of
stalwart grandchildren, actually blocked their path.

"This," said Mrs. Venn, "is my husband's father, that must have been
butler at The Chase when you were there, sir. But I suppose you wouldn't
have known him again. He's close on eighty-four, and was a faithful
servant of the family from the time he cleaned the knives when he was
only ten. Grandpa!"--raising her voice to a loud yell--"this--gentleman--
used--to--come--to--the--house--when--you--were--there--Mr.--Win--gate--
friend--of--the--squire's--went--to--col--lege--with--him--knew--the--
lady--that--ran--a--way--"

"Hush-sh!" cried Wingate fiercely. And she stopped.

"We have to bawl at him, sir, to make him hear. But it's not much use. He
gets deafer and deafer, and his memory is quite gone. He won't know you.
Oh, but he does, though! Look at him!"

Grandpa was evidently acting in an unusual way. He pointed a claw-like
finger at Wingate's massive chest, glared up at him with his rheumy eyes,
wagged his head, made strange gabbling sounds, and pulled at the arms
supporting him, evidently in high excitement.

"Well, old gentleman, and how do you do?" Wingate jauntily addressed him,
taking the trembling hand and sawing it up and down. "It is very
flattering to me to think that I've changed so little. Hey? What? Look
here, Mrs. Venn, if I were you I'd get him off to bed as soon as
possible. He looks to me as if he were going to have a fit."

The Venn family removed the patriarch, with soothing words to him and
apologies to the guest, explaining that the old man was quite childish,
and not accountable for his vagaries. And the bride and bridegroom
escaped, to their relief and pleasure, into the calm night.




CHAPTER III



The Scent Lies


Talking of Lexie Desailly and her fate, in which the one had become as
much interested as the other, Mr. and Mrs. Wingate found their way almost
unconsciously to the gates through which they had gazed, a few hours
earlier, at what they supposed to be her home. It was now invisible
amongst the distant shades, but half a mile of the green ride lay fair
beneath the moon, looking like a lawn for elves to dance on. Nettie held
two of the great bars in her little hands, and peered between them
wistfully. Billy's eyes, over the top of her head, searched the night
with equal eagerness. The Chase was laying a spell upon them both.
The young lodge-keeper heard them talking, and came out to reconnoitre.
Wingate accosted him, asking leave to enter the enclosure. The request
was at once granted to an old friend of the squire's, who was exhorted to
take his own time, and return when it pleased him. The man had some
business of his own on hand, which would keep him up for an hour or two,
and was willing to wait upon the strangers' pleasure.

"We shall have time, then, to get a peep at the house," Nettie joyfully
exclaimed. She was "dying," as she called it, for that satisfaction.

"Perhaps, if we look sharp," said Billy. "But the length of this avenue
is about three times what it looks."

And they set off to walk it at a swinging pace, keeping the middle of the
grass, to be as far as possible from the black shadows of the woods on
either side. Nettie held tight to her stalwart husband's hand, and after
a little only spoke in low tones, glancing hither and thither in a
furtive way, with occasional jumps and starts; for the sense of mystery
was upon her--delightful certainly, enchantingly English, but a little
uncanny, all the same. Bushes to right and left rustled as they passed;
twigs snapped; owls went by with no sound of wings, phantom-like;
couching forms of deer arose, loomed for a moment, and disappeared. These
latter were the most romantic feature of The Chase to her Australian
mind, but an antlered buck in twilight, showing himself unexpectedly and
merely as something alive and large, brings, as she expressed it, one's
heart into one's mouth.

The spectacle of the old mansion, when they reached the inner enclosure
of garden surrounding it, enhanced this sense of phantasmal things, the
general awesomeness of the expedition and the hour. It was indeed the
ideal haunted house. Nettie said she had seen the very "moral" of it,
under that title, in an old volume of the Illustrated London News. Ivy
cloaked embattled walls and hung ragged wreaths from projections of
ornamental stonework; towers and chimney-stacks rose majestic from the
mass, cutting large blocks out of the pellucid sky. Moss and weeds showed
clear in the chinks of the flagged terraces, and unpruned growths from
the once trim parterres overran the pillared balustrades and short
flights of shallow steps leading from one level to another. A rusty gate
hung awry on a broken hinge; gravel paths were all but obliterated;
storm-strewn twigs and branches of trees lay where the wind had tossed
them, bedded in rank grass; and over all this desolation the broad
windows gazed blankly, from under their stone brows, like open eyes of
the dead.

"What a change!" Wingate muttered, in an awed voice; "oh, what a change!
I cannot understand it. For the boy's sake, if not for his own--for common
decency's sake--he might have kept such a beautiful place from going to
rack and ruin like this! He doesn't deserve to own it. Well, I don't
think we'll try to make a home here, sweetheart."

"Oh, no!" whispered Nettie, shivering within the arm he had thrown around
her.

Nevertheless, he looked about him with a keen business eye, trying to
measure the extent of the dilapidation, and what it would cost to put the
place in habitable repair. And while thus engaged, detached for the
moment from the sentiment of the scene, Nettie startled him with a sudden
cry and a clutch upon his arm. In an instant she was within the rampart
of that arm, as behind a padlocked door.

"Hullo!" he cried; "what's the matter?"

"Look!" she gasped. "Oh, look!"

He looked hurriedly hither and thither, not knowing what she meant.

"Hey? Where? I don't see anything."

"It's gone," she said, in the same dry-throated whisper. "But I saw it
quite plainly--in that great window--the one hanging out on the wall up
there."

"Saw what, child? Oh, this is getting on your nerves!"

"Billy, you may disbelieve me if you like, but I did see it--a light like
a candle--in that window at the end of the wing. Watch; perhaps we shall
see it again."

They stared steadily for several minutes, and saw no light except the
moonlight, which was very clear and bright. In the silence they heard
rustlings in the bushes near them, and, above all other noises, the
thumping of their hearts.

"That," said Billy, in a low voice, "is the wing where Lexie lived. The
big window belongs to what used to be her bedroom--a great room, that was
three parts sitting-room, one of the finest in the house. If you really
saw a candle in it, of course some one must be there. But they certainly
told me it was all shut up."

As he spoke they simultaneously detected a figure gliding across a
moon-lighted corner of the terrace beneath the window. It was such a
shadow of a figure, and came and went so swiftly, that they barely
identified it as human, and were unable to distinguish sex. Nettie
smothered a shriek in her husband's breast.

"I say, this looks very suspicious," he exclaimed excitedly, while trying
to soothe her alarm. "There are some little games going on that the
authorities don't know anything about, evidently.
Poachers--burglars--somebody taking advantage of the empty house for
unlawful purposes."

"Oh, Billy, come away, come away! They might see us, and you are unarmed,
and we are so far from help!"

"Nonsense, pet! Don't be a little goose. Well, we'll go at once,
dear--only just let me run up and see where that fellow went to, first. It
would be cowardly to leave them to do no one knows what mischief, and not
lift a hand to prevent it. You stay here in shelter, and I'll be back in
two minutes."

But Nettie, mustering a fair stock of native courage, declared that if he
must go on such an errand, she would go too. Never would she be separated
from her husband, whatever happened. They would die together, if need
were.

Wingate would have preferred to make a sortie by himself--it would have
been the sooner over, and he could have dealt summarily with any
difficulty encountered; the presence of his wife made an irksome caution
necessary. However, her wish was law; and he lifted her over the rusted
gate upon which they had been leaning, and set her little feet upon a
path that led, by two flights of massive steps, to the terrace under the
wing that had been Lexie's private dwelling, and the particular window in
which Nettie had seen the light. Here they proceeded softly, the man
holding his companion behind him with a firm grip, and keeping one eye on
the window and the other on the bushes to right and left, until they
reached the moonlit corner where the figure had been seen. Here Billy
stopped and pounced upon something--something that lay coiled on the weedy
pavement under the shadow of the balustrade like one of his native
snakes. He pulled it out into the light, and lo, a rope of many fathoms,
new and strong, with a long thin cord attached to it, weighted at the
end--similar to the tackle with which ships make fast to tug or wharf, but
of inferior weight and quality.

"Burglars, of course," he remarked, delighted with his find. "Some of
them must have got in, and others are outside; every window on the ground
floor is barred like a prison, so I suppose they are hauling themselves
into that upper one with the rope. But how the dickens did the first one
get through? It projects so far from the wall that the ivy wouldn't help.
They must have got the line over something, but I can't see what. And the
casements are shut. There are two, in the lower part, opening like doors.
Lexie loved to have them open; she was so fond of fresh air! By the way,
there's the door of the little staircase that they say she eloped by; is
that shut, I wonder?"

It was--hard and fast. And, when he ran half round the house, and ran
back, before Nettie had time to feel deserted, he found all doors and
windows wearing the same impenetrable look. And no sign of life was
visible, nor further trace of the supposed marauders. In spite of which,
common prudence dictated a retreat under the circumstances.

"If I were alone," said Billy, "I'd get to the bottom of this, but I
can't expose you to the tender mercies of a burglar at bay. The best
thing to be done is to get you safe to the inn, and then come back with
what men I can muster, and thoroughly search the place. We will take the
rascals' rope with us, at any rate, and trust they haven't got another."

He quickly made a coil of the rope and slung it over his shoulder. With
the other arm he embraced his wife and propelled her homeward. Along the
cracked and weedy flags, down the moss-grown steps, through the
wilderness of a garden they scurried, as if themselves detected
housebreakers; and neither of them enjoyed the romance of the situation
in the least. Bright as the moon was, their path to the rusty gate,
through the rank, dank shrubberies, was a more fearsome passage than
before; and when, at a spot where the branches closed above their heads,
they heard a rustle and a movement as of some creature tracking them,
Nettie's heart failed her, and she screamed aloud. Billy thereupon
dropped his load of rope, clasped his wife to his breast, planted his
feet firmly, and glared from side to side.

"Who's there?" he called sharply.

No answer. No sound.

"Who's that?" he repeated, in a still louder tone.

They listened with all their tingling ears, but heard nothing.

"A rabbit, or a bird, or perhaps one of the deer out of the woods," he
murmured soothingly. "Why, child, what's come to you?"

But his own voice was a trifle unsteady. Eager to stand and fight any
danger that he could see, this shadow business unnerved him.

A mile in twenty minutes was their rate of travel down the long chase to
the lodge, and the little star that was Abel Rowe's parlour lamp, on
which they kept their eyes fixed steadily all the way, was a great
comfort to them. The young keeper came out to meet them, and speaking
both at once and rather breathlessly, they poured the story of their
adventure into his ears. He received it without visible surprise or
concern, and did not agree with Mr. Wingate that a midnight expedition
was necessary.

"Oh, you saw that light in the window!" he exclaimed, with much gravity.
"I was wondering whether you would. I was out last night, looking at some
traps, and saw it myself; and several other people have seen it. The
conclusion they've come to is that the old house is haunted, sir. I don't
hold with ghosts myself, but that's the common view."

"Haunted be blowed!" was Wingate's rude rejoinder; and he showed the
rope, which was mysterious without being supernatural, and described how
they had seen a man "scoot" round a corner of the house. "Besides," said
he, "if ghosts were allowed to carry matches and candles, they'd burn the
places down."

"I suppose there are ghosts of lights as well as ghosts of people, if
there are ghosts at all," argued Abel Rowe. "Be that as it may, no mortal
hand lit that light you saw, sir, if it was in the big window of the west
wing you saw it. Because why? The day after it was first seen, Mr.
Blackett and a whole posse of people, thinking just as you do that
burglars were in the house, went in and all over it, and tried every lock
and bolt, and thoroughly ransacked the whole place; and they proved that
nobody could possibly have been there. Especially in that room where the
window is; that was locked up tighter than any. Sir Walter doesn't like
to have people prying there. It used to be his wife's room."

"There must be a hiding-place in it," said Wingate.

"There is not, sir, begging your pardon. Every bit of wall and floor was
tapped and tested; some of the boards were ripped up. Mr. Blackett
satisfied himself that there was no hiding-place."

Then they had got out of the window with the rope in the meantime."

"No, sir; for the casements were found fastened on the inside."

"Well, but here's the rope to speak for itself. It was lying close under
the window. It is quite new--just out of the shop--no doubt bought on
purpose. What do you suppose it was doing there? And the fellow we saw
running? Must he be a ghost too?"

"I can't account for him, nor for the rope," Mr. Rowe admitted, fingering
the latter in an abstracted way. "I thought nobody cared to go near the
place of a night, since there's been this talk of the ghost in the
window. I'll see Mr. Blackett about it in the morning--"

"I will see him also," broke in Wingate, with a significant glance at his
wife. "And I will keep the rope, if you please. It is my evidence, you
see. I intend to sift this thing to the bottom, ghost and all."

He was about to leave, when Mrs. Rowe, the keeper's mother, having risen
from bed and dressed in haste, in order to find out what was doing at
this hour of the night, entered the parlour, curtsied, looked from one to
another with an expectant smile, and then caught sight of the coil of
rope and pounced upon it.

"Why, if this ain't the clothes line that was stole last night!" she
ejaculated, with round eyes and uplifted hands. "Why, Abel, wherever did
you find it?"

"This gentleman found it, mother, in the garden at The Chase."

"Lor! Right away up there! Whatever--"

"Was it yours?" interposed Wingate eagerly.

"No, sir, the rector's. His housekeeper bought it new last week, and the
very first time she used it she had it stole. Strange to say, the linen
that was a-hanging on it--for myself, I don't believe in leaving your
clothes out all night--was left on the grass, and only the line took."

"Only the line was required," said Billy. "But how do you know it is the
same?"

"Because there wasn't another new clothes line in the place."

"I suppose rope is used for other purposes. Probably this was brought to
The Chase from quite another direction."

"And to The Chase, of all places!"

She desired ardently to enter upon a long discussion, covering the matter
of the ghost, but sudden reticence had fallen upon the visitor. He
affected surprise to find it near upon midnight, and concern that his
wife was so late up after a journey, and took a hasty leave, carrying his
rope with him. As soon as they were both upon the high-road, out of
ear-shot of the lodge, he said to his wife, solemnly,--

"Nettie, either that fellow is in league with the burglars, or Geraldine
Balcombe has some game on hand. One or the other."

"Then it must be Geraldine Balcombe," said Nettie, "for I am convinced
that Abel Rowe is as honest as the day."

"How are you convinced?" her husband asked.

"By the look of his face--the way he speaks--everything."

"Woman's instinct!" laughed Billy. "Now I think his manner most
suspicious: his disinclination to have the matter inquired into--his
preposterous suggestion that the candle-man is a ghost--everything, as you
would say. But things look black against the rector's house too. We will
interview Mrs. George Desailly to-morrow morning, and get particulars
concerning the larceny of the clothes line. I'm awfully curious to see
her, apart from that. I wonder how she'll receive me, and what she looks
like now? She was uncommonly pretty as a girl, in her white-cat style.
And I'll make her tell that story about Lexie before I've done--and watch
how she does it. I can't get it out of my mind somehow that it's all a
pack of lies."

"But what then, Billy?"

"Oh, God knows! I believe she was enticed away by that foreign fellow--on
some charitable errand perhaps--and murdered for the necklace. That, to
me, is far more likely than the other thing. And they never seem to have
thought of it! Fancy, never thinking of it, and never lifting a hand or
taking a step to find her!"

"I suppose they had more reason than you know of," suggested Nettie,
saying to herself, with an inward sigh, "How he harps upon that woman!
How impossible he thinks it for her to have done wrong!"

They found Mrs. Venn's door-key under the mat, and slipped through the
house to bed, and tried to sleep. Nettie succeeded, for she was only
twenty-two and her heart was at rest--she did not seriously concern
herself about her handsome husband's past; Billy declared in the morning
that the feather mattress had defeated him, and that if they stayed
another night in that place he should lie on the floor. He took a nip of
whisky before breakfast, to clear his brain of morbid thoughts that had
haunted him through the dark hours.

Their buggy having no seat for a servant, and the English-feeling
morning--a mixture of delicate mist and sunshine--being more inviting than
usual, they agreed to do their errands to the rectory and the agent's
house on foot. And they set forth early, without confiding their business
and late experiences to their garrulous landlady, Wingate being still
under the impression that a police case impended in which anybody might
be involved.

Their first call was upon the interesting Geraldine Balcombe that was,
and Wingate was almost certain that he saw her face at an upper window as
they passed through the well-remembered garden, where the beech tree
under which she used to make afternoon tea was beginning to turn yellow,
and the myriad chrysanthemum buds opening into bloom. Great, therefore,
was their disappointment when the genial rector, who received them in his
study, presently intimated that she was too unwell to come downstairs.
His mention of the fact that she had seen the linen taken from the lost
line, when gazing at the moon from her bedroom window--unfortunately
assuming that it was the housekeeper who, for fear of thieves, was
bringing it indoors--saved Wingate the awkwardness of introducing her
name, and gave him his opportunity to explain that she was an old friend.
His touching account of his intimacy with her and her family in past
years--of how he had been a guest in this very house, treated like a son,
and how interesting he found it to return to the old scenes and revive
the happy memories connected therewith--caused Mr. Martin to send a
message to Mrs. Desailly, with the expectation that she would make a
special effort in response; but her answer, long delayed, was that she
begged Mr. Wingate would excuse her, and the report of the servant to the
effect that the lady had had a kind of fainting fit at the moment of
hearing his name.

Wingate expressed his sorrow for this state of things, looking becomingly
grave, but revealing a certain elation at the back of his gravity to
Nettie's watchful eye. His air of sympathy and his claim to old
friendship had the anticipated result of drawing confidences from Mr.
Martin which he would not have reposed in a stranger.

"I daresay," said he, "you are aware of the sad dissensions in the
Desailly family?"

Wingate said he was, implying a complete knowledge of all their affairs.

"She suffers terribly," the rector continued, shaking his head; "more
than Sir Walter can have any idea of, or he would never treat her so
cruelly as he does."

"I cannot realize his character, as you and others paint it," said
Wingate. "I was his chosen comrade for years when we were both young men,
and never knew a kinder-hearted fellow. He must have greatly changed."

"He has, evidently. To hound a poor, weak woman into her grave or the
mad-house--no man worthy of the name of man, let alone a gentleman, and
one with a kind heart, could stoop to such cowardly, such infamous
conduct."

The warmth with which this speech was delivered suggested to Wingate that
the fascinating Geraldine had not yet outgrown her fascinations.

"I am quite sure," he said, "that my old friend could not stoop to that,
however changed. There must be a misunderstanding somewhere. Possibly you
are not acquainted with all the circumstances."

"Pardon me. Mrs. Desailly has herself done me the honour to confide the
whole matter to me, without reserve."

"I see," murmured Billy, with another look at his wife, who sat out of
the discussion as far as her host's politeness allowed.

"And I have the evidence of my own eyes, Mr. Wingate--of her terrible
state of health, the result of these constant trials. They have so preyed
upon a highly nervous constitution that the brain seems to have become
incapable of rest. She is a martyr to insomnia in its most acute form."

"I am really awfully sorry to hear it," remarked Wingate, in a
commiserating tone, and with all his wits on the alert.

"Yes. She has taken to walking in her sleep--when she does sleep--which
greatly alarms me. And one doesn't know what to do in such a case,
especially in my situation. I am afraid to lock her in, lest she should
fall out of the window or have an accident with the candle. She
naturally, objects to have a servant with her at night, and opiates she
has a horror of--so have I. I have known the habit of taking morphia to
entirely destroy all moral principle and self-restraint. I would rather
any one belonging to me poisoned himself outright than take a single dose
of it."

"You have really proved the somnambulism?" Wingate queried gently.

"Beyond a doubt. I met her on the road a few nights ago, hours after she
had retired to bed--I was called from mine to attend a dying
parishioner--and she told me she had no idea how she had got there. It is
a most serious symptom in her case. I have tried to impress this upon
her, and to persuade her to seek medical advice."

"And won't she?"

"She wishes to give herself a fair trial of the country first. She thinks
her native air and the peace and quiet of her present life are doing her
good, and will soon restore her altogether. I am bound to say I don't. I
think the disorganization of the nervous system increases daily. Indeed,
if her husband does not come very soon, I must send for him, or else for
a good doctor, for my own satisfaction."

"Does she expect her husband soon?"

"Any day. But he is rather an erratic person, as perhaps you know. I
proposed to fetch her daughter to keep her company, but she won't hear of
it. She thinks it bad for the child to be shut up with a nervous invalid.
Perhaps it is. But I am sure it is advisable to have some one to stay
with her. It would relieve me of much responsibility, and keep her from
brooding and fretting so much."

"I should insist upon it," said Wingate, "if I were you. By the way, you
don't think she may have taken the clothes line herself, when walking in
her sleep?"

"Oh, no; certainly not. She was awake and looking from the window when
she saw the thief, and that was one of her better nights. But last night
she must have been out again. We did not hear her moving, but my
housekeeper says there is no doubt about it. She judges by the state of
her clothes and shoes. And she seems this morning to be prostrate with
exhaustion, though she stayed in the house all yesterday."

"I should certainly get a doctor at once," said Wingate, rising, "and
make him insist on her being watched at night. Your housekeeper looks a
lady-like person; Mrs. Desailly could not object to her having a bed in
her room, under the circumstances. But the best thing, of course, would
be to send for her husband to come and take her home."

"I cannot be inhospitable," the poor rector faltered, "if the change of
air is really doing her any good. But--well, I must talk matters over with
her when she gets up."

"And pray command me, if I can be of any use," said Wingate. "As an old
friend, you know--"

"Oh, thank you, thank you! Where are you staying? Won't you take lunch
with me? Pray do--you and Mrs. Wingate--and perhaps Mrs. Desailly might
then be well enough to come down. She will be deeply disappointed, I am
sure, to miss seeing you. Everything connected with her happy girlhood is
so intensely interesting to her. And I should like to show you the church
and the improvements I have made. You will find things looking very
different from what they were in poor old Balcombe's time."

The visitors pleaded the pressing nature of their business with the
squire's agent, which turned the conversation upon the burglars, the
ghost, and contingent matters, delaying their departure for another
half-hour. But engagements were entered into for an exchange of
hospitalities when convenient, while the rector walked with them to his
garden gate, gathering flowers for Nettie by the way; and before
separating cordial offers of assistance in their respective difficulties
were provisionally accepted on both sides. As Wingate shook hands with
his new friend, promising to call again later to report progress in the
affair of the rope, he saw a face in an upper window, peeping from behind
a blind. While he tried to draw Nettie's attention to it, it disappeared.

"But I know that profile," he said, when they were again upon the road,
"and I see the whole thing as clear as day. It isn't burglars--it's some
fight going on between Walter and her--I should imagine for the possession
of something he's got locked up at The Chase. Compromising documents,
perhaps. Well, though it doesn't seem exactly chivalrous, and though I
don't owe him any service, but quite the contrary, I am going to be on
Walter's side. And we'll stop here, Nettie, if you have no objection,
till we get through with the affair."

"Oh!, I have no objection," Nettie cried heartily; "far from it! I
wouldn't go away now for fifty pounds. I never was so interested in
anything in all my life."




CHAPTER IV



The Honest Truth


Mr. Blackett was stout and elderly and a good deal crippled by
rheumatism, but he had young, keen eyes, deep set under intellectual
brows, and with those eyes received Wingate as at the muzzle of a
double-barrelled gun. The boyish face of twenty years ago was now lean
and tanned, maturely dignified, wearing a slightly grizzled moustache and
beard that had formerly been absent from it; but the agent--who had been
the agent for more than twenty years, and deserved his reputation for an
almost miraculous sharp-sightedness--instantly knew it for the same,
though he had only seen it once. When the name belonging to it was
announced to him, he concentrated upon the visitor a steely gaze that was
unpleasant and disconcerting. Though Wingate gave himself no airs, it
nettled him to be looked at in this way; he consequently remained
standing, and stated his errand in the briefest terms, Nettie meanwhile
lingering near the door, glancing at bookshelves and affecting not to
listen. The rude master of the house did not rise from his arm-chair, but
it presently appeared that he could only do so with difficulty, owing to
physical ailments.
The story of the rope, the candle in the window, and the visible figure
of the supposed burglar was told again, but the information gathered at
the rectory was withheld. Wingate said he thought it his duty to report
what he had seen; he also desired to assist in the search which he
presumed would immediately be set on foot to discover what was wrong.

"You may not be aware," he said stiffly, "that I am an old friend of Sir
Walter Desailly's."

Mr. Blackett replied that he was quite aware of it, still transfixing the
visitor with steadfast, steely eyes.

"I remember your coming here, Mr. Wingate, rather more than twenty years
ago--it was your last visit, was it not?--and also your departure. Also
your departure, Mr. Wingate."

"You have the advantage of me," Wingate returned, with his easy courtesy;
"I have no recollection of having seen you before."

"I was Sir Thomas's agent, in succession to my father," said the old man.
"I was cognisant, sir, of all the family affairs."

"The family affairs, I hear, took a sad turn after I left," remarked
Wingate.

Mr. Blackett did not answer, but stared more strangely than before.
Wingate thought the look referred to the elopement, and added, with
warmth: "But I, for one, refuse to believe that Mrs. Walter Desailly was
to blame. I knew her well, and never knew a better woman--a perfect
English lady, if ever there was one, in spite of her people being
shop-keepers. The circumstances may be as they have been described to me,
but I am convinced that the popular theory is a wrong one."

The agent seemed much agitated by this reference to the great scandal.
Twice he opened his mouth to speak, and shut it without doing so; the
gnarled hand on his writing table closed and unclosed sharply; he drew
his brows together; his eyes flashed upon Nettie's pretty figure, which
had not yet been invited to rest itself.

"You are married to this lady?" he jerked out.

Wingate bowed, while he wondered if it were not his duty to feel insulted
by the question on her behalf.

"I must apologise for asking it," the old man continued, with a tremble
in his voice, "but will she mind leaving us for a short time? There are
some important matters--the drawing-room is just across the hall--I think
my wife is at home--"

He hoisted himself with difficulty out of his chair to reach a bell
button, but before he could get at it, and before Wingate could explain
that Mrs. Wingate had an equal interest with him in the proceedings, the
lady had disappeared.

"I will wait for you on the road, Billy," said she, with fiery cheeks and
an icy smile, and next minute was out of the house and marching along the
highway in wrath. "If these are your English manners," she intended to
say to Billy when she saw him again, "give me Australia." For it seemed
to her that he was too much in the habit of glorifying England and its
institutions (including its women) at the expense of his own country.

She had promised to wait for him on the road, and did so for nearly
three-quarters of an hour, learning every hedgerow leaf and every blade
of wayside grass by heart, exhausting all the charms of the harvest
landscape. But when the little watch pinned to the breast of her neat
tweed coat, as also an inward monitor of equal infallibility, informed
her that it was one o'clock and lunch time, she decided to leave him to
his devices. Doubtless he and that rude old man were so absorbed in their
reminiscences of the incomparable Mrs. Walter as to forget that a mere
every-day young woman with an appetite existed. She returned to the inn,
ordered the cutlets to be served and the bottle of Bass opened, and sat
down to begin her meal alone--for the first time since she had been
Billy's wife.

"I really could not wait any longer," she called out, when the
sitting-room door opened to admit the laggard. But a glance at her
husband's face caused her voice to change its note. "Oh, my dear boy!
what is the matter with you?"

Instead of falling upon the beer and cutlets, Billy fell in a headlong
fashion upon the horsehair sofa, planted his elbows on his knees, dropped
his face in his hands, and sobbed audibly--one sob only, no more, but
enough to pierce her heart. She was instantly beside him, trying to span
his huge back with her little arm, to pull his strong fingers from their
tight clasp upon his brow.

"Darling! darling! Tell me! Tell your Nettie! What is it, precious one?"
She cooed like a courting turtle-dove, pressing her cheek to his shoulder
and his ear.

"Oh, Nettie, I have had a blow! I have had an awful shock!" he groaned,
with a long up-drawing of the breath. "A bolt from the blue, and no
mistake!" He raised himself and looked at her, with something wild in his
eyes. "Who do you think the foreigner was, Nettie?"

"The--the man she el--"

"Me--me!" he burst out, in the grammar of strong emotion. "They actually
believed that she ran away with ME!"

"And called you a foreigner?" cried Nettie. "What cheek! Just like these
ignorant English people! As if we were not just as much English as they
are!"

"But don't you see, child? They have been supposing we went away
together, because it seems we were missed at the same time. That cursed
talk about foreigners has been putting me off the scent; but I might have
known--I did know--that Geraldine's tale was a pack of lies--of a piece
with her tale of how she saw the linen taken off the clothes line. It was
she who swore she had seen us sneaking away together, and made Walter
believe it--when no one knows better how I went than she does, for she
accompanied me part of the way. Oh, that little devil is at the bottom of
it all!"

"But where, then--"

"Ah, that's the point! that's the point! That's the awful part of it! If
Lexie didn't elope with me--as certainly she didn't, and no other man has
been mentioned in the case--what, in the name of God, did become of her?"
He struck his knee with a clenched fist. "But I'll find out, Nettie; I'll
find out, if I take years to do it, and it costs me my last penny."

"Sir Walter will surely see to that," said Nettie softly. "She was his
wife."

"We have telegraphed for Walter," said Wingate, for the first time
turning an eye upon the luncheon table. "Yes, of course he will see to
it; for I find he really did appreciate her, appearances notwithstanding,
and from the moment he lost her turned against Geraldine as if he
suspected something, and has shunned and hated her ever since. But we can
help him. There is plenty to do before he comes. That woman is up to
mischief at this moment, though we don't know what. It can't be anything
that concerns poor Lexie now, but it may lead us to a clue. We've got to
hunt for all fresh clues now. And Blackett is as convinced as I am that
our best course is to stick like wax to her. Her story, you see, being
proved untrue, is damning evidence against herself--looks as if she either
put poor Lexie out of the way, or knows who did. I am going to have a
policeman this afternoon to go over the house with me, and I am going to
sleep in that room where we saw the candle--Lexie's room--to-night."

"I with you," said Mrs. Wingate, putting a tumbler of fresh beer into his
unsteady hand.

"My pet, I can't expose you--"

"Now, Billy, let us understand one another," she broke in, with an
inflexible air to which he was unaccustomed; and forthwith she stated a
case in words that made an impression upon him. The result was what
Rudyard Kipling would call an "interlude" of unwonted duration and
intensity--a general concession of her right, as a bride on her honeymoon,
to anything she liked to ask for, on the part of the husband; and on the
part of the wife, a renewed conviction that he was the best and dearest
of living men, despite his little weaknesses. She sat on his knee while
he ate his lunch as best he could with one hand; then she filled his
pipe, and put a cushion under his head.

"Now," said she, "try if you can remember all that happened that night at
The Chase. It may help us to an idea. You never told me before, by the
way, that Miss Balcombe was with you when you left, and that is a most
important detail."

"Well, it was this way, Nettie. You know I had a scrimmage with Walter. I
wanted to explain about the Cambridge journey, and to stand up for Lexie,
and it's always a mistake to begin putting things of that sort into
words, especially as we were situated. I stood up for her too
much--because I saw he was taking it all wrong--and I lost my temper, and
said things I wouldn't forgive myself, if any man said them to me. As for
him, he couldn't have insulted me more than he did. So, of course, there
it stood. That was in the morning. There was nothing for me but to clear
out as soon as possible, and I went back to the inn--this inn, and this
room too, only different people. I packed up for London, had some bread
and cheese, and started to go by the next train. But just as I'd settled
in my corner, I saw Walter's dog-cart tearing along the road, and I knew
he was trying to catch the train too; and I hated the thought of
travelling with him, or near him, after the row we'd had; besides--well,
I'll tell you the honest truth, Nettie--it was a chance to have a word
with Lexie that I could not resist. I didn't do anything behind Walter's
back that I wouldn't have done before his face, but for her sake I
couldn't go near her while he was there misjudging us, and it was a
cowardly thing to make off without even bidding her good-bye--looked like
deserting her in her trouble, and owning to wrong things. At any rate, I
jumped out of the carriage, and kept out of sight until Walter got in.
Then, when the train was gone, I went outside, and spoke to the groom. He
said his master had been called to town on business, but was expected
back next morning. My luggage had gone on in the van, so I telegraphed to
London to have it looked after on arrival, and walked across the fields
to The Chase. I daresay they made capital out of all that afterwards."

"You may be certain that they did," said Nettie, "and you can't blame
them either."

"No, of course. Still, you mustn't forget that The Chase was Sir Thomas's
house then, and not Walter's, and that the old gentleman and I were the
best of friends. He was out when I arrived, and I just asked straight for
Lexie, so as not to waste time. The man took me to her boudoir--she didn't
use it much, because she liked her big bedroom to sit in--and no one came
to disturb us. We had a--a talk--"

He paused absent-mindedly. The silence was broken by a plaintive little
sigh,--

"Ah, Billy! Billy!"

"Yes, pet, I know. But it was twenty years ago, and I've got over it this
many a day."

"I don't believe you have got over it yet, Billy."

"You are the last person who should say that, or think it," he
remonstrated, drawing her to his knee again, and settling her comfortably
in a favourite place and pose. "And, besides, she's dead--I know she is
dead. Nothing but death would have taken her from the child. You can't be
jealous of a dead woman."

"Oh, can't I? But I won't, Billy--indeed, I won't! It was only my
nonsense. You are mine now, and that's all I care about. Listen, dear,
I've thought of something. There is that lake where you caught the big
pike--I expect that, being so unhappy, she committed suicide by drowning
herself in it. That would account for her sudden disappearance, and her
never being seen or traced. Billy, I have thought of another thing.
Perhaps it was because--but, no, I won't say it!"

"Say it, Nettie."

"She might have been broken-hearted at losing you."

Wingate drew in his breath, and went red and pale, but controlled himself
instantly.

"No," he said, reluctantly impartial, "there was no motive of that sort.
I'll tell the honest truth, Nettie--I did let myself go that last time
that we were together, though I tried my utmost not to. But she never
did; on the contrary, she pulled me up in her firm, kind way, lectured me
like a mother she did--tried to make me see there were good things still
to live for, and that she trusted me for a gentleman, and--and so on. Oh,
she was not the sort of person to play fast and loose with matrimony and
motherhood--not she; nor yet of the flimsy stuff that suicides are made
of. Still, it's an idea. When Walter comes, of course he'll leave no
stone unturned, and the lake must be emptied if necessary. But then why
did Geraldine concoct that elaborate story? She must have had some
object."

"She was staying in the house, you say?"

"Yes; and, unfortunately, knew about my having gone away before lunch,
and come back after Walter had left the house, and being shown up to
Lexie's private sitting-room, and staying such a long time with
her--things she could twist and turn to suit her tale. I did not know how
late it was till I heard the dressing-bell ring, and then, when I tried
to get away quietly, I ran up against the old lady and Geraldine, who
were pacing up and down the terrace in the evening sun. They were both
ready for dinner, and the girl had got that lace on which I afterwards
found her stuffing into the fire--"

"Ah! I want to hear more about that lace," Nettie interposed, with the
air of a detective on a strong scent.

"Oh, that was nothing; I must have offended her in the course of the
evening," said Wingate absently. "I know I was a surly boor, not fit for
ladies' company; but they made me stay. The old people knew nothing of
any quarrel, and couldn't understand why I should make off just before
dinner, and pooh-poohed my excuse that I wasn't dressed. It was weak of
me, I know, but I let myself be tempted; and after all Lexie went
upstairs while the squire and I were talking over our wine, and never
showed again. I particularly wanted to say something to her that I had
forgotten, so I stayed late. I went to the smoking-room with the old man.
At last he proposed that I should remain for the night, and some things
of Walter's were put out for me, and we went to our rooms, and the house
was closed. Oh, yes; I know how contemptible it was! But at the time
every other feeling was swallowed up in my longing to put right a
misunderstanding that I thought Lexie was labouring under--to have all
straight between us before I went away for good; in fact, I wanted to
tell her I meant to try and do, and be, all she wished. I thought, as it
was the last time--but I was an ass and a fool, and very nearly a villain,
too. I might have compromised her worse; perhaps I did. Somebody else
besides Geraldine Balcombe--somebody who wasn't a liar--may have seen me
messing about the west wing at three in the morning--"

"What? You don't surely mean to say--"

"No, of course I don't. All I did was to write a letter to her, and take
it to her boudoir and slip it into a blotting case on her writing table,
walking softly in my socks, so as not to wake anybody. I made sure that
the whole place was dead asleep, for I hadn't heard a sound for hours.
But as I was getting back to my room, I saw a glimmer of light through
the crack of a door--a curtain rather. There's a queer little circular
room at an angle of the stairs where they run into the gallery that goes
round the great hall; it's like one huge bay window with the bay
enclosed; a big portière hangs across the entrance, which you can loop
back or not, as you like; just the little nook for sitting out dances in,
if there were balls in the hall, which would be a magnificent place for
them, with a wooden floor. It isn't a private room, and yet it is; and
they always had a fire there in fire weather. Having windows all
round--the room seemed to be built of the stone mullions, with a little
churchy ceiling--it was beautifully light and cheerful, and it had a
lovely view. We were always meeting there on our way to other rooms, and
going downstairs to dinner, and so on. There were two or three lounge
chairs in it, and a small table--no room for other furniture. Lady
Desailly used to read the Times there of a morning, and sometimes have
afternoon tea there, when there was no company, instead of in the hall.
Well, though it wasn't cold yet, the fires were all going, and there had
been one in this little room that evening. I had been there to look for
Lexie after dinner, and saw it burning. And it was here where I saw the
light at three in the morning. The curtain was down, but just one ray
came through, like a finger. It seemed to me like a finger beckoning me
to her. I made sure that she was there, and I stole up without a sound
and put the curtain back a little. I had not undressed, of course."

"And saw Miss Balcombe burning the Venetian lace?"

"Yes. She was standing over the fireplace, with a candle in one hand and
the lace in the other. She was holding it over the flame, and it was
flaring and frizzling up, very nearly all burnt. I could see she had just
taken it off, because otherwise she was fully dressed as when she left
the drawing-room; the blue bodice was plain and bare, and the silk was
torn where the lace had been stitched on, and wrenched off anyhow--"

"Billy dear, you think nothing of this lace business, but I think it is
the most suspicious of all the features of the case. Why should she have
burnt her own lace that she was so eager to get, and so proud of when she
did get it? And why secretly at three o'clock in the morning? You said
she did it in a fit of rage with you, but she would not have been in a
fit of rage--that sort of rage--for hours and hours all by herself, with
you or anybody. What had she been doing in the meantime, do you suppose?
Billy, do you know how I read the riddle? There was blood on that lace."

Wingate shuddered. "Oh, don't talk of blood!" he implored. "Besides, in
that case, there would have been blood elsewhere. There was none on her
dress, I know, and evidently none was found. Blood is a thing that cries
out anywhere. The least trace would have altered everything and set them
hunting."

"Did she have a guilty look when you surprised her?"

"I don't know what you call a guilty look. Of course it gave her an awful
start when she heard the curtain move and saw me watching her. Anybody
would have looked scared under the circumstances at that unearthly time
o' night. She gave a loud catch of the breath, and then dashed the lace
into the coals and rammed it in with the poker. There was still a little
red fire left, and it caught, and was consumed directly. I think she was
anxious that I shouldn't see it was my present to her, but I came a
little too soon."

"And how did she explain herself?"

"At first she kept her back to me and said nothing. I was embarrassed
too. I would have crept away when I found it was she and not Lexie; but
when I saw she had seen me, and saw what she was doing, I went in. I made
believe that I was glad of the opportunity to say good-bye to her before
leaving in the morning, as I should probably never come back again. The
fact was, I guessed she knew pretty well about me and Lexie, and I knew
she was furiously jealous at having to play second fiddle, and I wanted,
for Lexie's sake, to square her if I could. So I tried to be friendly,
although I was so sick at heart, and I asked why she was treating my gift
to her in that way. She said--but I told you what she said. If you want
the honest truth, Nettie--it's the first time I ever let on about a woman
in a matter of this kind--she did all she knew to make me believe that it
wasn't Walter after all."

"Made love to you, do you mean?"

"Like the very deuce. Said she was burning the fichu because the sight of
it in the glass over the mantel-piece made her desperate at my treatment
of her, and--and so on. I've known women throw themselves at a fellow's
head, but--by George! And I might have been fool enough, Lord knows! if it
hadn't been for feeling the way I did."

"If I recollect aright, you said she did go with you?"

"But not that way, of course not. Sit still, Nettie, until I've finished.
Oh, I give you leave to be jealous of Geraldine Balcombe all you like.
That won't hurt."

"Billy, you say she asked you to run away with her, and you said--you
distinctly said--you did."

"Madam, I said nothing of the kind. Stay here and be nice to me, and I'll
tell you exactly what occurred. After we had been talking in the little
room for a bit--"

"How much of a bit?"

"I don't know. But the mornings were still early, and all those windows
showed us the dawn coming. There had been a moon, as she says in that
precious tale of hers, but it had set long ago. She was frightened lest
we should be found up, and you may be sure I didn't care about it either.
Indeed, I was raging to get clear of the house and her, and the whole
blessed business, especially when I thought of Walter coming home in a
few hours. As you know, I had no luggage with me. I was free to go
directly I got an opportunity, and I made up my mind to slip off somehow
so as to catch an early train across the fields. She seemed to know that
I was trying to get away from her, for she said if I wanted to go she
could show me how to do so without disturbing the house. I was so glad of
any chance that I accepted the offer, and when I had fetched my boots and
things, she took me down that very staircase and through the door which
she says she saw me and Lexie elope by. She knew that door well,
evidently, for she had the key with her, and locked and unlocked it as
easily as if she did it every day. The nurse may say she heard it bang,
but it didn't bang that time."

"And she locked herself outside as well as you?"

"I thought she would say good-bye there, but she took a hat and cloak
from a peg and threw them on, and said she'd show me how to get out of
the park without passing the lodges. That's the way she's getting in now,
I expect, when Walter fancies he has guarded every point. There's a door
in the park wall where it joins the rectory grounds; it's for the use of
the rector when he likes, and she had the key. That's where she let me
out, and that's where she made her last try; but I mustn't say any more
about that. It still wanted nearly two hours to the train. She said she
could slip into the rectory and up to her room--by another secret way, I
suppose--and get some clothes. She offered to be my servant--my
anything--if I would take her with me. Oh, but I am a cad to tell on her,
though she is what she is! I got away somehow, and struck across country,
and walked I don't know where, picked up the railway a dozen miles off,
and took the train at a little station I'd never been to before. And as
soon as I got to London I fell in with a friend just off to shoot wild
sheep and goats in the Himalayas, and I got my rifles and things ready in
a day and went with him--the beginning of long wanderings. And I hardly
saw an English paper, and never heard any news, and never wanted to.
And--and I think that's all, Nettie."

She put her arms round his neck, and kissed him, and thanked him. She
said she didn't think any husband could have told the honest truth more
honestly.




CHAPTER V



The Spirit Of Murder


The Wingates drove in their own buggy to The Chase, where they were met
by Mr. Blackett's policeman, by whom they were escorted over the great
house.
It was a great house, in more ways than one; and Nettie, whose passion
for things English was far greater than that of which she had accused her
husband, walked about with clasped hands and head thrown back, uttering
sighs and "ohs" and other senseless ejaculations, in a state of rapture
too profound for words.

The hall--the great hall, as it was properly termed--had been left almost
exactly as it was in what Billy called his time, and was impressive
enough for anything--especially in the dull light of a threatening storm
which had unexpectedly followed upon the bright morning. It was not much
unlike a church,--with a fireplace in it and all the pews turned out.
There was a screen like a rood-screen at the lower end, dividing it from
an outer vestibule; at the upper end the massive staircase, down which
Lexie had walked like a princess at her husband's side, branched into
galleries running down the sides. The windows were mullioned and filled
with old glass, partly stained; the floor was of chequered stone; the
roof a mass of oak beams, spreading fan-wise in all directions. From the
latter--very high up and shadowed--hung banners, beautifully dilapidated.
There were trophies of arms on the walls, genuinely mediaeval; rows upon
rows of family portraits, with authentic dates to them, historic and
notorious; heraldic insignia on every hand, indisputably testifying that
the Desaillys were an ancient and a noble family. Altogether, there was a
fine, solemn, feudal air about the place, calculated to awe a colonial
person seeing it for the first time.

Having been so lately used for the coming-of-age festivities, dust and
cobwebs were not conspicuous; but the air struck cold and had a musty,
mouldy taint, causing Nettie to cry "Pah!" and put a perfumed
handkerchief to her nose.

"It is the very smell of murdered bodies," she declared, shivering.

"How do you know what the smell of murdered bodies is like?" her husband
asked her.

"Oh, by instinct," she replied.

"It's the smell of old age," he said, sniffing and peering about him.
"Powers above! It looks as if it might have been like this for a thousand
years."

They opened the shutters of the state drawing-room which had been used in
Lexie's honour on the night Wingate so well remembered--a place of com-
fortless splendour such as may still be found in certain royal palaces
which the changes of fifty years or so have respectfully passed by. Here
was desolation again. The floral carpet and much of the satiny furniture
had been removed, and most of the precious ornaments; what were left
stood shrouded in bags of calico, bulging and shapeless. But the
chandeliers, that weighed tons, and the cunning carved work of the
sumptuous ceiling and doorways, were exposed so were the panels of
tapestry said to be three hundred years old, and the famous pictures that
carried history on their faces--faces of Vandyke ladies in their stately
and beautiful Henrietta-Maria costumes; Lely ladies in flowing and
formless draperies, kept from flowing away altogether by a mere
taper-fingered hand; Gainsboroughs, Sir Joshuas, Romneys, with huge heads
and little scarves and fichus--Lexie's noble predecessors in that most
select of county families.

"Oh!" sighed Nettie Wingate, to all this forsaken beauty, "what a
drawing-room I could make of this! Billy, what do you say--?"

But when they went upstairs she was afraid to repeat the suggestion.
Here, where the rooms had not been opened for the coming-of-age guests,
the utterly undomestic, deserted, haunted-house look of everything made
the thought of the vulgarest Melbourne villa grateful. Anything like a
home seemed inconceivable in that forlorn and fusty wilderness where rats
squeaked in daytime, and spiders' webs, drawn over the heavily leaded
windows, shut wholesome sunshine out. In every room carpets were rolled
up, and only the heavy furniture left in place--except in that most
interesting room of all at the end of the west wing, identified with
Lexie in the past, and with the rope and candle in the present, the place
of the mystery which it was the object of their expedition to solve. Here
what carpet the moth had left still clung to the floor, and curtains of
flowered silk damask, that had been old and faded in her time, still
depended from the canopy of Lexie's bed--a monumental structure of
mahogany that must have been built where it stood--and from the cornice
spanning the bay of the big window, which almost filled one end of the
room and was the only light in it. The great wardrobes and presses, the
bow-legged toilet table, with its oval mirror swinging between tall
shafts, the sofa and the escritoire, the very mattress and pillows of the
vast bed, with the satin quilt drawn over them--everything that she had
used during her brief occupancy of the apartment--seemed to have been left
unaltered; and Billy looked at all with a full heart and eyes that his
wife did not care to meet for a few minutes. The rooms that had been
Walter's dressing-room and the nurseries, adjoining each other in the
passage outside, communicated with hers by one door only, the only one in
the great room, corresponding at the one end to the only window at the
other. The long side walls were unbroken save by the chimney-piece, which
was the usual massive structure, sixteenth-century woodwork, with
ornamentation reaching to the ceiling, the hearth wide and the shaft
spacious, giving a far-off view of a disc of sky. The most casual
inspection showed the impossibility of any living thing, save birds,
being harboured there. The floor, as Wingate had been informed, had been
taken up in various places and put down again, the old carpet now hiding
the scars the window casements were fastened; and when he went along the
wainscot, rapping sharply on every panel, and standing still to listen
for the effect, the sound died immediately, with no hint of inward echo.

"We've done that," the constable observed with a smile. "There's nothing
there, sir. Solid as a rock."

"What!" cried Wingate, "do you believe in ghosts, too?"

"No, sir; but I believe in the evidence of my senses. Those walls don't
hide anything. I've proved it."

They were lined from top to bottom with wood panelling, that had been
painted white and gilded in places, and was now soiled and tarnished. In
five of the panels, three on one side and two on the other, the latter
flanking the central chimney-piece, pictures were embedded as in fixed
frames. They were so old that it was impossible to tell whether, as works
of art, they were good or bad, for hardly an outline was visible under
the varnish, which seemed to be many coats thick. Their blackened hues
contrasted oddly with the white paint, suggesting that the latter was a
recent innovation in the chronology of the house, and probably hid the
beautiful texture and colour of old oak or other valuable wood. The
visitors passed them over with a glance.

"Well," said Wingate to the constable, "I think that's all for the
present. The place is empty now, whatever it may have been last night;
the windows are secure, and we will lock the door behind us safely. When
we have had something to eat, and gathered together a few things that we
may want, we will return here, and stay in this room till morning. And if
you will meet us with the keys, and share our watch, I shall be
infinitely obliged to you. Of course I'll make it well worth your while."

"Don't you think, sir," suggested the constable, "that it'd be as well
for somebody to watch outside as well as in? That fellow with the rope,
that you saw in the garden, wants attending to."

"Certainly. I mean to keep a good look-out from the window. There will be
a splendid moon if these clouds clear off. The fewer we are the better in
a case of this sort. You don't catch fish if you make a splash in the
water."

"No, sir. But I think it's my business to look after the man rather than
the ghost, if it's all the same to you."

Wingate agreed that a policeman must be allowed to know his own business
best, and had a shrewd suspicion that this particular policeman would
rather deal single-handed with fifty corporeal thieves of the most
desperate character than with one indeterminate spectre lighting its way
about the deserted house with a harmless spectral candle. So it was
arranged that he should patrol the garden, with a trusty friend for
company, while husband and wife held the fort within. At six o'clock of a
summer evening the prospect had no terrors for the latter. She was
delighted to have gained permission to share such a brave adventure.

It was slightly otherwise at nine o'clock, however. Night was closing in
then, and with the night came the heavy storm that had been slowly
gathering during the afternoon. Sombre thunder clouds, riven with red
lightning, and a deep and swelling murmur in the air, were the conditions
attendant upon an uncomfortable start from the abode of Mrs. Venn, who,
having supplied certain demands, was wild with curiosity to know what
for--the only fact confided to her being the intention of her guests to
"camp out," which seemed about the last thing likely in the state of the
weather. Half-way up the green chase, the horses, already at their
fastest trot, delighting in the longest stretch of sward they had ever
felt under their feet, were encouraged to break into a gallop; and the
deserted stables were reached just as the furious rain began to fall.
Here they found the constable and Abel Rowe, his chosen mate--declared to
be the best available--looking far from happy. They helped Wingate to
shelter his buggy, and make the horses comfortable, and then to carry the
contents of the vehicle into the house.

How the great hall clanged to the tread of their hob-nailed boots! And
the aspect of the place, in the light of one candle and a bull's-eye
lantern--the hollow silence and darkness filled with the sound of rushing
rain--how eerie it was! When such rain falls on your roof at night,
particularly with trees about, you can always hear voices in it, gabbling
to each other, if you like to listen for them; here they seemed to shout
overhead, like wild birds passing over--a ride of vallkyries above the
storm; and the empty house reverberated till one could well fancy that
kindred spirits within it were answering to the call. Nevertheless, Billy
enticed his evidently uneasy comrades to remain while the downpour
lasted, keeping them in heart with the whisky flask. He earnestly advised
them to remain inside for the night, and watch the terrace from a
ground-floor window; but they preferred the risk of rheumatism and
pneumonia in a damp summer-house outside.

It wouldn't do, they said, with sheepish smiles, to make themselves too
comfortable, since they had to keep awake all night.

"Very well; only if you catch your deaths don't blame me," said Billy
testily. He had scorned to plead nervousness on his own account, but was
more and more conscious that it would have been a satisfaction to have
his guards on the inner side of the locked doors during the witching
hours.

"Look sharp that you do keep awake," he besought them, as they turned to
go. "Don't take your eye off that terrace and the window for a moment.
And cooee--that is, call out to me, if you see anything suspicious. I will
do the same. Good-night! Take the mackintosh rug with you."

He let them out into the sweet-smelling, rain-washed night, closed the
heavy door upon them and turned the key with a vindictive wrench,
reflecting with pleasure that their cowardice, as he supposed it, had cut
them off from the support of his courage, companionship and revolver;
then he and Nettie, crowding into each other's pockets, sat down to
hearten themselves with a little supper.

"I've got some more whisky here," he said, rummaging, "and I'm going to
give you some, old girl. I am wishing, do you know, that I'd left you
with Mrs. Venn after all."

"Why, Billy? I am not frightened. I wouldn't have stayed at home, away
from you, for anything; nothing should have induced me. But I do think,"
speaking rather tremulously, "that those men might have kept us company
the first night!"

"I can easily make them, if you wish. I can drive them in by threatening
to shoot them if they won't come. But that wouldn't help much, and I
suppose it really is an advantage to have the house watched outside.
Don't you feel safe with only me, sweetheart?"

He put his arm around her as she sat upon his knee, and she dropped a
package of sandwiches to the floor in order to kiss him adequately.

"Oh, I do, I do!" she cried, and honestly meant it, for never had her
bridegroom shown himself so much of a man and a husband as he was doing
now. "But this place"--they were in the great hall, for the security of a
wide outlook all round them--"oh, Billy dear, this place is so, so
creepy!"

It certainly was--even Billy confessed it; far more so in the moonlight
than in the rain. No ordinary imagination could withstand the effect--the
conjunction of effects--presented.

"We won't stay here any longer," he murmured soothingly. "We'll go to
bed. Here, drink,"--holding a potent tumbler to her lips. "I know it is
nasty, but it will do you good. Now just one little sandwich to please
me. That's right! You feel better now, don't you? You are not nervous
now, are you?"

Gladdened to the heart by his serious anxiety, responsively solicitous
for his ease of mind, she assured him that she feared nothing so long as
her husband was with her. In the silent hug that followed they touched a
deeper note than had yet sounded in the merry music of their joint lives.

"Brave girl! Come along, then; stick close to me. There's nothing
whatever to be afraid of. It's only that the place looks so big and
grand, and feels so full of its old stories somehow. This is the sort of
thing that makes people feel religious in cathedrals, when they are quite
cold and callous in a common modern church. Just imagine that you've been
locked into Melbourne Town Hall by mistake, and see how little you will
care then!"

"I can't. This is like being in another world."

"It's the same old world--the same 'so-called nineteenth century'; and
we're just as safe as--hullo!"

"Oh!"

"Confound the thing! All right, all right; it's only one of the buggy
lamps; I didn't see it was there." He had knocked it from a pile of
bedclothes to the floor, and the glass and metal rang upon the bare
stone. Echoes in the roof and galleries were like a flock of startled
birds taking wing at the noise.

"That ought to be a warning to the ghosts," he growled, in a vexed tone;
"the very thing I didn't want to give them. Wait a bit, Nettie; listen a
moment."

They stood quite still, in their small island of light, peering into the
sea of shadows round them. The flame of the candle glowed up into their
handsome faces, so alive and alert, but left dark, as in ambush, the eyes
of the dead Desaillys watching the intruders from the wall. Brighter
every moment shone the moon through the blazoned windows, sharper its
embroidery of cross-bars and lattice-work came out upon the pavement
under them; and the lighter it grew, the more like a haunted place it
looked. Oh, how different things appear at night from what they do by
day! Billy wished again that he had left Nettie with Mrs. Venn. "Listen!"
he said, holding her tightly with one hand and the butt of his revolver
with the other. But they heard nothing, except their hearts beating.

So they started on their voyage to the west wing. Their supper had done
them so much good that they dared to blow the candle out and find their
way by the light of the moon; for, as Billy said, if they were to catch
that ghost, it was necessary to stalk him carefully.

"But don't think of such rot," he hastened to add. "If you hear anything,
mind, it will be the dripping of the rain, or the mice and rats, or the
wind in chimneys and keyholes, or the windows shaking, or the old boards
creaking and cracking underfoot. Natural causes, remember--not
supernatural."

"Oh! I'm not afraid of ghosts," boasted Nettie, whom whisky had made
valiant for the moment. "Nor of anything else--with you."

She carried the candlestick and matches, her dressing-bag and wraps;
Billy had loaded himself with all their bedclothes, but kept his right
hand free. They walked in their stockinged feet and talked in whispers.
The first sensation, as of cold water down her spine, came to Nettie as
they passed the little room at the angle of the stairs. No curtain masked
it now, and the moonlight poured through its encircling windows in a
melodramatic way.

"That's where I saw her burning the lace," said Wingate, pointing.

"Oh, don't!" gasped Nettie, seeing in her mind's eye the lace with
blood-stains on it. All the tragical story, as her young fancy composed
it, seemed to act itself again before her; she dared not look into the
little room, lest she should behold the spirit of midnight murder bending
over the hearth. Oh, this was indeed an uncanny place to be astray in at
such an hour!

They reached, or all but reached, their destination in the west wing,
creeping past the little well staircase and the row of doors to the
carefully locked door at the end of the passage. Suddenly both stood
motionless, arrested in the self-same instant; and Nettie uttered an
involuntary exclamation which Wingate instantly suppressed.

"Oh!"

"Hush--sh--sh!"

"What was that?"

A sound which, if anywhere outside their own imaginations, was inside
the sealed chamber, and not wind or mice or rain-drops now. The noise, a
deep rumble, was as if some one were dragging a solid, smooth piece of
furniture over the floor, rather like the sound of an earthquake, and the
feel of it too. A distinct vibration was communicated to the pair, who
were as yet some dozen yards from the spot whence the movement seemed to
proceed, the air being at the same time filled with a muffled hum,
swelling for a moment and then ceasing suddenly, leaving the tomb-like
silence as before. It might have been an earthquake, or it might have
been thunder, the tail end of the recent storm; but our adventurers did
not think of either possibility.

"They've got in before us," whispered Wingate, dropping the bedclothes
where he stood, and getting a grip of his revolver. "Steady now. Don't be
frightened. Light the candle. Quick!"

He turned the heavy handle of the door, expecting to find it unfastened.
But it was not unfastened; it was just as he had left it. Stooping, with
the candle at his eye, he peered into the keyhole, and saw that no key
obstructed it. Then he snatched his own from his pocket, wrenched it
round in the lock, and threw the door wide open.

No one was visible. The room was silent and empty of everything but what
they had left there in the afternoon; nothing had been moved. They stood
for a minute or two just within the door, which, when they had brought in
the bedclothes, they closed and locked behind them, staring up and down
and from side to side; then, holding his wife's hand, Wingate approached
the fireplace cautiously and looked up the wide shaft of the chimney,
holding the candle high above his head.

"Nothing there," he whispered.

Then he tip-toed to the window, which he examined closely. No one, he
found, could have got out that way. The two casements were both closed.
He took hold of each handle of the iron catches and moved it up and down;
both worked well, but both had been in their sockets, and no draughts
could have displaced them. Opening one door-like lattice, he reached his
head out; the window, resting on a bracket of heraldic stone-work, was
thirty feet up in the wall, at least, projecting into the air, with
nothing under it but flag pavements. Any burglar departing by that route
would do so to certain suicide.

"What could it have been?" faltered Nettie, whose little heart was
pumping violently.

"Thunder, I expect. It must have been thunder."

"It didn't sound like thunder, Billy. It stopped too suddenly."

"Couldn't have been anything else," he insisted, with some impatience;
but he still prowled about uneasily.

"If any of the village people are watching the house," said Nettie, as
she placed the candle on the dressing-table, not far from the window,
"they will say the ghost is here to-night, at any rate."

"Blow it out," cried Wingate, and he extinguished the little flame
himself as he spoke. "Let us watch for an hour or two. The moon is light
enough for anything, and it's as well--ha!"

"Oh!"

They stood like statues, listening, and heard the voices of the men from
the terrace beneath. Wingate put his head out of the window and hailed
them. "Cooee! You fellows there--what's up?"

"We've only found another rope, sir. An old one this time."

"Oh, have you? Anything else?"

"Nothing else, sir. We heard a rustling and thought we saw somebody, but
it was a mistake. We'll keep a good look-out, sir."

"Just scour the place well before you settle yourselves down, and report
to me in half an hour."

They did so, but had nothing further to report.

"All right inside, sir?" the constable kindly inquired.

"As right as a trivet," was the ostentatiously cheerful reply.

"Did you light a candle and put it out just now, sir?"

"Of course I did. We like the moonlight best. You had better come along,
you and Rowe, and sleep up here near us."

"Thank you, sir. It's very comfortable outside, sir."

"All right. Please yourselves. Good-night!"

"Good-night, sir!"

Wingate turned from the window, and he and Nettie made their bed by the
light of the moon. They made it within the monstrous four-poster that had
been Lexie's marriage couch for the few sad and splendid weeks that
seemed to have been her last; the hair mattress and the big down pillows
were dry and wholesome-smelling, for something seemed to have preserved
the air in this room fresher than that of the rest of the houses--a
circumstance, however, which did not strike them at the time. As they
spread their inadequate blankets and linen, and tucked the old silk
curtains back behind the bedhead and the wall, they talked of various
matters, but never mentioned Lexie.

When all preparations were made, they were still reluctant to go to bed.
They sat together on Lexie's sofa in the window, and let the cool, clean
air flow over them. They gazed at the high, clear sky and the beautiful
moon-touched clouds, at the wide-branching "English" trees that were such
a constant joy, and those majestic angles of wall with the ivy on them,
the wet leaves twinkling where they caught the light. They sniffed the
perfume of the rain, exhaled from earth and flowers, the sweetest of all
sweet things to an Australian nose. And, with their late unsettled nerves
composed, they remembered they were bride and bridegroom, and that,
wherever they were, they carried their home shrine with them, as the
snails, now coming out in such myriads, carried their shells upon their
backs.

"It only wants a nightingale to make it perfect," sighed Nettie, slowly
drawing hairpins from her chestnut plaits.

The nightingale had done his courting for that year; he was gone--only
just gone--and would be heard no more in English gardens till April came
again. But her lover beside her had no difficulty in proving to her that
nightingales were, after all, superfluous.

At about midnight they lit the candle once more Wingate opened the door
to take a last look into the corridor, and before he shut it laid a piece
of paper over the outer keyhole, and stuck it down with some strips torn
from the edge of a sheet of postage stamps. Then, locking it inside with
the greatest care, he placed the key by the bedside, along with candle
and matches and the loaded revolver. They extinguished the light, and,
feeling safe and satisfied, lay down to sleep in each other's arms.




CHAPTER VI



The Catspaw


That first night in the haunted chamber was not so romantic in its
incidents as the second one, and yet it was far from being commonplace.
The occupants found it impossible to feel at home in such surroundings.
They fidgetted through the long six hours, listening, watching, talking,
dozing in brief snatches, waking on the threshold of dreams to cry,
"Phew, how hot it is!" and disturb each other by asking whether he or she
was asleep or not. And the mice were distracting. But for the testimony
of universal experience, it would have been hard to believe they were
mice, rushing and raging over the floor, and scratching and squealing
behind the wainscot in that rampageous manner. The present auditors had
no doubt about it--blessed them in choice language without feeling any
necessity to light the candle. Perhaps it was the familiar domestic
associations of the noise which lulled them into their first sleep, when
their ears had become accustomed to the noise itself.
At any rate, they slept. It seemed to themselves that they had been off
guard for about five minutes, when first Nettie, and then her husband,
awoke to a sensation of something having happened during their absence.
There was a subdued creaking, as when one tries to open a door or window
without being heard--a little cracking noise, then silence, then another
crack.

"There's some one in the room," whispered Nettie, her dry tongue cleaving
to the roof of her mouth.

"Hush-sh-sh!" breathed Wingate in her ear, and he drew himself up softly
into a sitting posture. The moon was obscured at this moment, and from
their bed by the fireplace, nearer to the door than the window, they
could see nothing distinctly.

Again they heard the creaking noise--a noise that certainly had not
disturbed them before they went to sleep--and Wingate cautiously felt for
the matches. He was not alarmed, but he trembled with the effort that he
made not to betray himself by an untimely movement. He managed to secure
the match-box without rattling it against the candlestick, and to open
and close it without a tinkle; then he sat up in bed with a match in his
hand, ready to strike the instant he heard the creaking sound again.
After long suspense it was repeated, and, with his straining eyes fixed
upon the door whence he believed it to come, he dashed the match upon the
box, expecting to reveal the form of Geraldine Desailly or an accomplice
in the act of creeping into the room. But he dashed with too much vigour;
the match-head snapped without exploding, and fell off upon the sheet. He
did not swear, as he felt inclined to do, but listened for a moment
eagerly. Again there was the creaking sound, not so loud this time, but
continued for several seconds instead of for one. He seized another
match, struck it successfully, and held the little flame high, rising on
one knee as he did so, and he saw that the door was closed and the room
unchanged. He then lit the candle and got out of bed to explore more
thoroughly, Nettie following close behind him; but the strictest search
discovered nothing. The bit of paper was still over the outside keyhole,
untouched; the passage doors were shut and fastened; the passage and the
little staircase were empty and silent; the haunted room revealed no sign
of any human presence, save their own.

"It must have been the mice," said Wingate, as he locked their own door
afresh; and he bade his wife go back to bed.

"It was not a bit like mice," she objected timidly.

"Well, there's nobody about, at any rate."

So they returned to their pillows, and, listening for a long time, heard
no more noises except such as mice ordinarily make in their nibblings at
dry woodwork and their scamperings to and fro. Rain began to patter down
again, and to tinkle upon the window.

"Perhaps it was the rain," said Wingate.

"Perhaps," suggested Nettie hopefully, "it was the furniture creaking
after being moved and pulled about. I had a wicker chair in my bedroom
once that used to make noises the whole night if I had been sitting in it
before I went to bed."

"Oh, very likely. I daresay that was it."

Wingate turned over to go to sleep.

His wife, less satisfied, lay awake for some time longer, and then she,
too, dozed again; but she had troubled dreams of ghosts and burglars that
startled her into sudden recognition of the white moonlit and black
shadows of the haunted room at very short intervals. On one of these
occasions she crept to Billy, and whispered his name into his ear. He was
slumbering lightly, but in a moment checked his audible breathing and
brought all his senses to attention. There was a noise in the air again,
but not the same noise as before. It was a sort of pulsation, half a sigh
and half a snore, rising and falling gently and evenly, like the heavy
breathing of some sleeping animal, and it seemed to come from under the
floor.

"If we were in the bush," said Wingate, "I should say it was an opossum.
It is exactly like the noise they make in the trees at night, just
outside your window."

"It must be a dog," said Nettie.

"Yes. Or--" he was trying to think of an English equivalent for an
opossum, "or a squirrel out of the woods."

They were both sure that it was not man, woman, or ghost; so Wingate
picked up one of his boots and flung it noisily across the floor, crying
"Shoo!" loudly as he did so. Instantly the noise stopped, there was the
sound of a stealthy, creeping movement, and all was still.

"A squirrel," said Wingate again. "An old place like this, deserted for
so long, and standing in the middle of these lonely woods, must be alive
with creatures making a shelter of it. No wonder there are noises."

Then they went to sleep for the last time, and awoke in daylight, safe
and sound, satisfied with the issue of their adventure.

Nettie dressed provisionally, put a tin kettle to boil on a spirit stove,
and made tea, first for her husband and herself, and then for the two men
who had spent the night on the hard boards of the summer-house, and whom
Wingate went in search of as soon as he had hurried on his clothes.

"Well, you fellows," he said airily, "now that you've got the light of
day to reassure you, perhaps you'll come into the house for a little
refreshment. Mrs. Wingate is brewing you a cup of tea; she thinks you'll
be wanting something after all you have gone through. We have been as
comfortable and snug as possible."

"Slept well, sir?" inquired Abel Rowe, as he and his companion walked
stiffly towards the house, having returned respectful greetings and
tendered thanks for the lady's kindness.

"Never better," replied Wingate.

"You didn't keep awake to watch--?"

"Of course I did. When I say I slept well, I mean that everything was
quiet. The mice made a bit of a rumpus, that's all."

"And your lady wasn'