by Simon Stern
The elder hesitated; whilst the younger whispered, “Oh, aunt, pray do!”
“Thank you,” said Mrs. May to the stranger, whom she believed to be a gardener; “but perhaps Mr. Stainton might object.”
“No. He wouldn’t, I know,” declared the new owner. “You can go through the house if you wish. There is no one in it. Nobody lives there except myself.”
“Taking charge, I suppose?” suggested Mrs. May, blandly.
“Something of that sort,” he answered.
“I do not think he is a caretaker,” said the girl, as she and her relative passed into the old house together.
“What do you suppose he is, then?” asked her aunt.
“Mr. Stainton himself.”
“Nonsense, child!” exclaimed Mrs. May, turning, nevertheless, to one of the windows, and casting a curious glance towards the new owner, who was now, his hands thrust deep in his pockets, walking idly up and down the drive.
After they had been all over the place, from hall to garret, with a peep into this room and a glance into that, Mrs. May found the man who puzzled her leaning against one of the pillars of the porch, waiting, apparently, for their reappearance.
“I am sure we are very much obliged to you,” she began, with a certain hesitation in her manner.
“Pray do not mention it,” he said.
“This young lady has sad associations connected with the house,” Mrs. May proceeded, still doubtfully feeling her way.
He turned his eyes towards the girl for a moment, and, though her veil was down, saw she had been weeping.
“I surmised as much,” he replied. “She is Miss Fenton, is she not?”
“Yes, certainly,” was the answer; “and you are——”
“Edgar Stainton,” said the new owner, holding out his hand.
“I am all alone here,” he explained, after the first explanations were over. “But I can manage to give you a cup of tea. Pray do come in, and let me feel I am not entirely alone in England.”
Only too well pleased, Mrs. May complied, and ten minutes later the three were sitting round a fire the blaze of which leapt and flickered upon the walls and over the ceiling, casting bright lights on the dingy mirrors and the dark oak shelves
“It is all coming back to me now,” said the girl softly, addressing her aunt. “Many an hour Georgie and I have sat on that hearth seeing pictures in the fire.”
But she did not see something which was even then standing close beside her, and which the new owner had witnessed approach with a feeling of terror that precluded speech.
It was the child! The child searching about no longer for something it failed to find, but standing at the girl’s side still and motionless, with its eyes fixed upon her face, and its poor, wasted figure nestling amongst the folds of her dress.
“Thank Heaven, she does not see it!” he thought, and drew his breath, relieved.
No; she did not see it—though its wan cheek touched her shoulder, though its thin hand rested on her arm, though through the long conversation which followed, it never moved from her side, nor turned its wistful eyes from her face.
When she went away—when she took her fresh young beauty out of the house her presence seemed to gladden and light up—the child followed her to the threshold; and then in an instant it vanished, and Mr. Stainton watched for its flitting up the staircase all in vain.
But later on in the evening, when he was sitting alone beside the fire, with his eyes bent on the glowing coals, and perhaps seeing pictures there, as Mary said she and her brother had done in their lonely childhood, he felt conscious, even without looking round, that the boy was there once again.
And when he fell to thinking of the long, long years during which the dead child had kept faithful and weary watch for his sister, searching through the empty rooms for one who never came, and then bethought him of the sister to whom her dead brother had become but the vaguest of memories, of the summers and winters during the course of which she had probably forgotten him altogether, he sighed deeply—he heard his sigh echoed behind him in the merest faintest whisper.
More, when he, thinking deeply about his newly found relative and trying to recall each feature in her face, each tone of her voice, found it impossible to dissociate the girl grown to womanhood from the child he had pictured to himself as wandering about the old house in company with her twin-brother, their arms twined together, their thoughts one, their sorrows one, their poor pleasures one—he felt a touch on his hand, and knew the boy was beside him, looking with wistful eyes into the firelight, too.
But when he turned he saw that sadness clouded those eyes no longer. She was found; the lost had come again to meet a living friend on the once desolate hearth, and up and down the wide desolate staircase those weary little feet pattered no more.
The quest was over, the search ended; into the darksome corners of that dreary house the child’s glance peered no longer.
She was come! Through years he had kept faithful watch for her, but the waiting was ended now.
CHAPTER VI
THE MISSING WILL
Ere long there were changes in the old house. Once again Mrs. Toplis reigned there, but this time with servants under her—with maids she could scold and lads she could harass.
The larder was well plenished, the cellars sufficiently stocked; windows formerly closely shuttered now stood open to admit the air; and on the drive grass grew no longer—too many footsteps passed that way for weeds to flourish.
It was Christmas-time. The joints in the butchers’ shops were gay with ribbons; the grocers’ windows were tricked out to delight the eyes of the children, young and old, who passed along. In Mr. May’s house up the Clapham-road all was excitement, for the whole of the family—father, mother, grown-up sons and daughters—girls still in short frocks and boys in round jackets—were going to spend Christmas Eve with their newly-found cousin, whom they had adopted as a relation with a unanimity as rare as charming.
Cousin Mary also was going—Cousin Mary had got a new dress for the occasion, and was having her hair done up in a specially effective manner by Crissie May, when the toilette proceedings were interrupted by half a dozen young voices announcing—
“A gentleman in the parlour wants to see you, Mary. Pa says you are to make haste and come down immediately.”
Obediently Mary made haste as bidden and descended to the parlour, to find there the clerk from Timpson’s, who met Mr. Stainton on his arrival in London.
His business was simple, but important. Once again he was the bearer of a letter from Timpson and Co., this time announcing to Miss Fenton that the will of Mr. Felix Stainton had been found, and that under it she was entitled to the interest of ten thousand pounds, secured upon the houses in Stainton-street.
“Oh! aunt, oh! uncle, how rich we shall be,” cried the girl, running off to tell her cousins; but the uncle and aunt looked grave. They were wondering how this will might affect Edgar Stainton.
While they were still talking it over—after Timpson’s young man had taken his departure, Mr. Edgar Stainton himself arrived.
“That is all right!” he said, in answer to their questions. “I found the will in the room where Felix Stainton died. Walnut-Tree House and all the freeholds were left to the poor little chap who died, chargeable with Mary’s ten thousand pounds, five hundred to Mrs. Toplis, and a few other legacies. Failing George, the property was to come to me. I have been to Quinance’s successor, and found out that the old man and Alfred had a grievous quarrel, and that in consequence he determined to cut him off altogether. Where is Mary? I want to wish her joy.”
Mary was in the little conservatory, searching for a rose to put in her pretty brown hair.
He went straight to her, and said,
“Mary, dear, you have had one Christmas gift to-night, and I want you to take another with it.”
“What is it, Cousin Edgar?” she asked; but when she looked in his face she must have guessed his meaning, fo
r she drooped her head, and began pulling her sweet rose to pieces.
He took the flower, and with it her fingers.
“Will you have me, dear?” he asked. “I am but a rough fellow; but I am true, and I love you dearly.”
Somehow, she answered him as he wished, and they all spent a very happy evening in the old house.
Once, when he was standing close beside her in the familiar room, hand clasped in hand, Edgar Stainton saw the child looking at them.
There was no sorrow or yearning in his eyes as he gazed—only a great peace, a calm which seemed to fill and light them up with an exquisite beauty.
HAUNTED ASHCHURCH by Anonymous
It was a lonesome little country church, quite deserted and rapidly falling into decay. The nearest house was that of old Joe Salter, the blacksmith, and that was fully half-a-mile away. It could not be said that the little fabric possessed anything of architectural beauty or intent: a plain, oblong building, with a square, thick-set, squat tower. It had no chancel.
It was hard upon fifty years since regular services had been discontinued at Ashchurch, owing to the building and endowment of a handsome new church, nearer the centre of population and better adapted to the requirements of the parish.
For about the first half of these fifty years, the cracked old bell of Ashchurch still rang occasionally for the funerals of old residents of the parish; for the churchyard was not declared closed when the Sunday services ceased.
But the time came when the authorities decided that henceforward all burials must be in the new cemetery.
Up to that time, the aged church had been kept in some sort of repair, and had, at any rate, been water-tight. But, from that time, the efforts made to keep it so had been but spasmodic and inadequate, and, year by year, it became more and more dilapidated.
The ivy now grew in unchecked luxuriance, not only over the walls, but over the roof. As for the tower, it became a perfect bush of creepers under which the form of the masonry was concealed, like that of an esquimaux in his furs.
The once trim laurel hedge put forth greedy arms, and embraced within its unwieldy and irregular width many of the moss-grown gravestones. Grass grew coarse and rank on the churchyard paths. Here and there a headstone or mound of green turf showed signs of care and loving tendance; but, as a rule, the graves, like the church itself, looked neglected and desolate, and some were hidden by foxglove and nettles.
A stranger, accidentally detained in the parish by the effects of a fall from his horse, being convalescent, had strolled aimlessly down the narrow, winding lane, which led to the church, and, coming suddenly upon it, had been struck by its forlorn appearance.
Leaning over the rusty-hinged churchyard gate, he descried a woman and a sturdy girl hurriedly weeding one of the smallest of the green mounds of its rank growth of dock-leaves. His attention could not but be arrested by the headlong haste which characterised their performance of a task over which love usually lingers long.
As he was desirous of learning something of the history of the church, and of the causes of its present state of decay, he, with some difficulty, opened the crazy old gate and went towards them. But though he succeeded, by dint of questioning, in eliciting most of the facts, of which the reader is already in possession, he found the woman far from communicative and evidently anxious to be gone. Once only did her natural love of gossip prompt her to impart unsolicited information.
“Volks hereabout du say,” she began, “ez how she had a hand—” But here, as though frightened at her own impulse, she broke off abruptly and, turning short round, ambled off at the top of her speed, closely followed by the girl, without shutting the gate behind her. The stranger heard the patter of their feet hurrying down the lane, and smiled the superior smile of an educated man.
“Some superstitious fancy!” he said to himself.
Choosing a flat tombstone, he lay down at full length thereon, and gave himself up to the full enjoyment of the lovely summer’s evening. The pure physical pleasure of it, to one who had so lately been an invalid, was most grateful and soothing.
The intense quiet of the place, amid the sound sleepers beneath the sod, its touching air of desertion and its uncared-for aspect, the history of the abandonment of the church—all appealed strongly to his imagination, and he was soon lost in a dreamland of musings. At length, warned, by a cold gust of evening air, that he was hardly strong enough yet to risk being out in the dew, he rose to go.
He was amazed to find that he must have been there over two hours. It was getting dusk, and his watch told him it was half-past eight. He turned to take one last look at the lorn church, and, as he did so, caught a glimpse of the white drapery of a woman’s skirts in the act of disappearing round the north-west corner of the tower.
He had a strong distaste for anything like intrusion on the privacy of one who was possibly visiting the grave of a relation, and he accordingly left the churchyard, without again turning his head.
But he was conscious that it cost him a strong effort to do so, owing to a most extraordinary craving, which he could not for the life of him explain, to look round the corner of the tower. On his emerging from the lane, he saw the cheerful glow of the blacksmith’s forge some way ahead. Salter had done some work for him, and it might, he thought, be as well to ask the loan of a top-coat for the rest of his way home. In height and build they were much alike. So he turned in at the half-door of the forge.
“My sakes!” said the blacksmith, heartily, “why, it’s Muster Cortram. Glad to see you, sir, out and aboot, though ’tis maist too sharp a evening, and you not quite set oop, as ye may say.”
“True, Salter, and so I’ve come to ask you to lend me an overcoat.”
“Right you are, sir, and welcome, too; but set ye down and have a warm first.”
And the blacksmith, mindful of the duties of hospitality, drew his shirt-sleeves down over his mighty arms, and proceeded to light a pipe, by way of company to Mr. Cortram’s cigar.
“ ’Tis a quaint spot this close by you,” said the latter, as he struck a light and passed it over to Salter.
“Meaning——?” queried the smith, as he held the match over the bowl.
“Ashchurch.”
Salter let the match drop.
“What! have you been there at this hour o’ night?”
“Hour of night indeed! Why, it is barely dusk, and what is more, some lady or other is probably there still.”
This time the blacksmith dropped his pipe, and it was smashed against the anvil in the fall. The man was pale as death.
“What ails you, Salter, my man? Here, have a cigar.”
Salter took no notice of the proffered cigar-case. With an effort he drew himself up to his full height, and, in the deep shadows and strong lights of the forge he looked like a prophet of the olden time as he said, most earnestly and solemnly:
“Mr. Cortram, sir, go ye home, do ye now, and pray to-night when ye sez yer prayers, as in coorse ye do, that no harm may come this night to you or any av yer famuly.”
Mr. Cortram respected the man’s emotion, though quite at a loss to guess its cause, and, without bothering him further about the overcoat, walked briskly home.
Next day he sallied forth as usual in the evening for a stroll, but had not gone far when he met a mounted messenger from the telegraph office of the neighbouring town, who recognised him and handed him a telegram. It announced the sudden death of an uncle the previous evening at half-past eight o’clock. The recollection came to him like a sudden gust of icy wind, chilling his heart, that, at that very time, he had seen the mysterious white dress fluttering round the corner of Ashchurch tower. Why his instinct connected the two things together he could not divine. He was by no means a fanciful man, but was generally credited with a clear head and strong common-sense.
Having the responsibility for the arrangements of his uncle’s funeral, he left the place that evening.
Some months went on, but, notwithstanding a great
pressure of business, which came upon him in consequence of his uncle’s death, the mystery of Ashchurch continually recurred to him. The strange behaviour of the peasant woman in the churchyard, the unexplained emotion of the blacksmith, his own strong and unaccountable yearning, that memorable evening, to look behind the tower, the odd coincidence of his uncle’s death with his glimpse of the white dress, passed and repassed before his mind’s eye over and over again.
One evening he had sat down to look over old papers and letters, with a view to destroying what was worthless. His uncle’s correspondence had been extensive, and the task was a fatiguing one. He was on the point of giving it up for the night, when, out of one of the letters, there dropped a square piece of yellow-looking paper which fluttered down upon the carpet. He listlessly picked it up.
The inscription on it was so curiously in accord with the subject uppermost in his thoughts, that he was roused into strong interest. It ran thus:—
“Her vesture, dimly seen afar,
To him who sees, an evil star;
Her self who sees, he shall be blest,
And give her weary spirit rest.”
His mind was so possessed with the conviction that the two first lines of the doggerel described what he had himself recently experienced, that he felt no surprise, at the time, on reading at the head of the letter in which the paper had been enclosed, the word “Ashchurch,” over the date.
The letter turned out to be one written to his uncle by a former resident in the parish of Ashchurch, who had been many years dead.
It gave a long account of the Ashchurch ghost, quoting several cases of its white robes having been seen in the moment of their disappearance round a corner of the church—always the same corner, viz. the north west, and, in each case, some disaster was found to have befallen the person witnessing the spectral appearance at the very moment of the ghostly dress having been seen.
Strangely enough, Cortram had never heard his uncle mention the subject, and, up to the date of his accident some months before, he had never even heard the name of Ashchurch. On turning to his uncle’s diary he found, within a week of the date of the letter, the following entry:—