by Ellen Wood
“Where are they all?” he asked, not having inquired before.
They were gone to the wake at Broxley, a small place some two miles distant. Of course! Had Mr. Bourne remembered the wake, he need not have put the question.
An arrival at last. It was Jan. Jan, attentive to poor patients as he was to rich ones, had come striding over, the last thing. They asked him if he had seen anything of Alice in his walk. But Jan had come across from Deerham Court, and that would not be the girl’s road. Another minute, and the husband came in. The two gentlemen left together.
“She is considerably better, to-night,” remarked Jan. “She’ll get about now, if she does not fret too much over Alice.”
“It is strange where Alice can have got to,” remarked Mr. Bourne. Her prolonged absence, coupled with the low spirits the girl appeared to be in, rather weighed upon his mind. “I met her as I was coming here an hour ago,” he continued. “She ought to have been home long before this.”
“Perhaps she has encountered the ghost,” said Jan, in a joke.
“I saw it to-night, Jan.”
“Saw what?” asked Jan, looking at Mr. Bourne.
“The — the party that appears to be personating Frederick Massingbird.”
“Nonsense!” uttered Jan.
“I did. And I never saw such a likeness in my life.”
“Even to the porcupine,” ridiculed Jan.
“Even to the porcupine,” gravely replied Mr. Bourne. “Jan, I am not joking. Moreover, I do not consider it a subject for a joke. If any one is playing the trick, it is an infamous thing, most disrespectful to your brother and his wife. And if not—”
“If not — what?” asked Jan.
“In truth, I stopped because I can’t continue. Frederick Massingbird’s spirit it cannot be — unless all our previous belief in the non-appearance of spirits is to be upset — and it cannot be Frederick Massingbird in life. He died in Australia, and was buried there. I am puzzled, Jan.”
Jan was not. Jan only laughed. He believed there must be something in the moonlight that deceived the people, and that Mr. Bourne had caught the infection from the rest.
“Should it prove to be a trick that any one is playing,” resumed the clergyman, “I shall—”
“Hollo!” cried Jan. “What’s this? Another ghost?”
They had nearly stumbled over something lying on the ground. A woman, dressed in some light material. Jan stooped.
“It’s Alice Hook!” he cried.
The spot was that at which Mr. Bourne had seen her sitting. The empty bottle for medicine in her hand told him that she had not gone upon her errand. She was insensible and cold.
“She has fainted,” remarked Jan. “Lend a hand, will you, sir?”
Between them they got her on the bench, and the stirring revived her. She sighed once or twice, and opened her eyes.
“Alice, girl, what is it? How were you taken ill?” asked the vicar.
She looked up at him; she looked at Jan. Then she turned her eyes in an opposite direction, glanced fearfully round, as if searching for some sight that she dreaded; shuddered, and relapsed into insensibility.
“We must get her home,” observed Jan.
“There are no means of getting her home in her present state, unless she is carried,” said Mr. Bourne.
“That’s easy enough,” returned Jan. And he caught her up in his long arms, apparently having to exert little strength in the action. “Put her petticoats right, will you?” cried he, in his unceremonious fashion.
The clergyman put her things as straight as he could, as they hung over Jan’s arm. “You’ll never be able to carry her, Jan,” said he.
“Not carry her!” returned Jan. “I could carry you, if put to it.”
And away he went, bearing his burden as tenderly and easily as though it had been a little child. Mr. Bourne could hardly keep pace with him.
“You go on, and have the door open,” said Jan, as they neared the cottage. “We must get her in without the mother hearing, upstairs.”
They had the kitchen to themselves. Hook, the father, a little the worse for what he had taken, had gone to bed, leaving the door open for his children. They got her in quietly, found a light, and placed her in a chair. Jan took off her bonnet and shawl — he was handy as a woman; and looked about for something to give her. He could find nothing except water. By and by she got better.
Her first movement, when she fully recovered her senses, was to clutch hold of Jan on the one side, of Mr. Bourne on the other.
“Is it gone?” she gasped, in a voice of the most intense terror.
“Is what gone, child?” asked Mr. Bourne.
“The ghost,” she answered. “It came right up, sir, just after you left me. I’d rather die than see it again.”
She was shaking from head to foot. There was no mistaking that her terror was intense. To attempt to meet it with confuting arguments would have been simply folly, and both gentlemen knew that it would. Mr Bourne concluded that the same sight, which had so astonished him, had been seen by the girl.
“I sat down again after you went, sir,” she resumed, her teeth chattering. “I knew there was no mighty hurry for my being back, as you had gone on to mother, and I sat on ever so long, and it came right up again me, brushing my knees with its things as it passed. At the first moment I thought it might be you coming back, to say something to me, sir, and I looked up. It turned its face upon me, and I never remember nothing after that.”
“Whose face?” questioned Jan.
“The ghost’s, sir. Mr. Fred Massingbird’s.”
“Bah!” said Jan. “Faces look alike in the moonlight.”
“Twas his face,” answered the girl, from between her shaking lips. “I saw its every feature, sir.”
“Porcupine and all?” retorted Jan, ironically.
“Porkypine and all, sir. I’m not sure that I should have knowed it at first, but for the porkypine.”
What were they to do with the girl? Leave her there, and go? Jan, who was more skilled in ailments than Mr. Bourne, thought it possible that the fright had seriously injured her.
“You must go to bed at once,” said he. “I’ll just say a word to your father.”
Jan was acquainted with the private arrangements of the Hooks’ household. He knew that there was but one sleeping apartment for the whole family — the room above, where the sick mother was lying. Father, mother, sons, and daughters all slept there together. The “house” consisted of the kitchen below and the room above it. There were many such on the Verner estate.
Jan, carrying the candle to guide him, went softly up the creaky staircase. The wife was sleeping. Hook was sleeping, too, and snoring heavily. Jan had something to do to awake him; shaking seemed useless.
“Look here,” said he in a whisper, when the man was aroused, “Alice has had a fright, and I think she may perhaps be ill through it; if so, mind you come for me without loss of time. Do you understand, Hook?”
Hook signified that he did.
“Very well,” replied Jan. “Should—”
“What’s that! what’s that?”
The alarmed cry came from the mother. She had suddenly awoke.
“It’s nothing,” said Jan. “I only had a word to say to Hook. You go to sleep again, and sleep quietly.”
Somehow Jan’s presence carried reassurance with it to most people. Mrs. Hook was contented. “Is Ally not come in yet?” asked she.
“Come in, and downstairs,” replied Jan. “Good-night. Now,” said he to Alice, when he returned to the kitchen, “you go on to bed and get to sleep; and don’t get dreaming of ghosts and goblins.”
They were turning out at the door, the clergyman and Jan, when the girl flew to them in a fresh attack of terror.
“I daren’t be left alone,” she gasped. “Oh, stop a minute! Pray stop, till I be gone upstairs.”
“Here,” said Jan, making light of it. “I’ll marshal you up.”
He
held the candle, and the girl flew up the stairs as fast as young Cheese had flown from the ghost. Her breath was panting, her bosom throbbing. Jan blew out the candle, and he and Mr. Bourne departed, merely shutting the door. Labourers’ cottages have no fear of midnight robbers.
“What do you think now?” asked Mr. Bourne, as they moved along.
Jan looked at him. “You are not thinking, surely, that it is Fred Massingbird’s ghost!”
“No. But I should advise Mr. Verner to place a watch, and have the thing cleared up — who it is, and what it is.”
“Why, Mr. Verner?”
“Because it is on his land that the disturbance is occurring. This girl has been seriously frightened.”
“You may have cause to know that, before many hours are over,” answered Jan.
“Why! you don’t fear that she will be seriously ill?”
“Time will show,” was all the answer given by Jan. “As to the ghost, I’ll either believe in him, or disbelieve him, when I come across him. If he were a respectable ghost, he’d confine himself to the churchyard, and not walk in unorthodox places, to frighten folks.”
They looked somewhat curiously at the seat near which Alice had fallen; at the Willow Pond, farther on. There was no trace of a ghost about then — at least, that they could see — and they continued their way. In emerging upon the high road, whom should they meet but old Mr. Bitterworth and Lionel, arm in arm. They had been to an evening meeting of the magistrates at Deerham, and were walking home together.
To see the vicar and surgeon of a country village in company by night, imparts the idea that some one of its inhabitants may be in extremity. It did so now to Mr. Bitterworth —
“Where do you come from?” he asked.
“From Hook’s,” answered Jan. “The mother’s better to-night; but I have had another patient there. The girl, Alice, has seen the ghost, or fancied that she saw it, and was terrified, literally, out of her senses.”
“How is she going on?” asked Mr. Bitterworth.
“Physically, do you mean, sir?”
“No, I meant morally, Jan. If all accounts are true, the girl has been losing herself.”
“Law!” said Jan. “Deerham has known that this many a month past. I’d try and stop it, if I were Lionel.”
“Stop what?” asked Lionel.
“I’d build ’em better dwellings,” composedly went on Jan. “They might be brought up to decency then.”
“It’s true that decency can’t put its head into such dwellings as that of the Hooks’,” observed the vicar. “People have accused me of showing leniency to Alice Hook, since the scandal has been known; but I cannot show harshness to her when I think of the home the girl was reared in.”
The words pricked Lionel. None could think worse of the homes than he did. He spoke in a cross tone; we are all apt to do so, when vexed with ourselves. “What possesses Deerham to show itself so absurd just now? Ghosts! They only affect fear, it is my belief.”
“Alice Hook did not affect it, for one,” said Jan. “She may have been frightened to some purpose. We found her lying on the ground, insensible. They are stupid, though, all the lot of them.”
“Stupid is not the name for it,” remarked Lionel. “A little superstition, following on Rachel’s peculiar death, may have been excusable, considering the ignorance of the people here, and the tendency to superstition inherent in human nature. But why it should have been revived now, I cannot imagine.”
Mr. Bitterworth and Jan had walked on. The vicar touched Lionel on the arm, not immediately to follow them.
“Mr. Verner, I do not hold good with the policy which seems to prevail, of keeping this matter from you,” he said, in a confidential tone. “I cannot see the expediency of it in any way. It is not Rachel’s Frost’s ghost that is said to be terrifying people.”
“Whose then?” asked Lionel.
“Frederick Massingbird’s.”
Lionel paused, as if his ears deceived him.
“Whose?” he repeated.
“Frederick Massingbird’s.”
“How perfectly absurd!” he presently exclaimed.
“True,” said Mr. Bourne. “So absurd that, were it not for a circumstance which has happened to-night, I scarcely think I should have brought myself to repeat it. My conviction is, that some person bearing an extraordinary resemblance to Frederick Massingbird is walking about to terrify the neighbourhood.”
“I should think there’s not another face living, that bears a resemblance to Fred Massingbird’s,” observed Lionel. “How have you heard this?”
“The first to tell me of it was old Matthew Frost. He saw him plainly, believing it to be Frederick Massingbird’s spirit — although he had never believed in spirits before. Dan Duff holds to it that he saw it; and now Alice Hook; besides others. I turned a deaf ear to all, Mr. Verner; but to-night I met one so like Frederick Massingbird that, were Massingbird not dead, I could have sworn it was himself. It was wondrously like him, even to the mark on the cheek.”
“I never heard such a tale!” uttered Lionel.
“That is precisely what I said — until to-night. I assure you the resemblance is so great, that if we have all female Deerham in fits, I shall not wonder. It strikes me — it is the only solution I can come to — that some one is personating Frederick Massingbird for the purpose of a mischievous joke — though how they get up the resemblance is another thing. Let me advise you to see into it, Mr. Verner.”
Mr. Bitterworth and Jan were turning round in front, waiting; and the vicar hastened on, leaving Lionel glued to the spot where he stood.
CHAPTER LIV.
MRS. DUFF’S BILL.
Peal! peal! peal! came the sound of the night-bell at Jan’s window as he lay in bed. For Jan had caused the night-bell to be hung there since he was factotum. “Where’s the good of waking up the house?” remarked Jan; and he made the alteration.
Jan got up with the first sound, and put his head out at the window. Upon which, Hook — for he was the applicant — advanced. Jan’s window being, as you may remember, nearly on a level with the ground, presented favourable auspices for holding a face to face colloquy with night visitors.
“She’s mortal bad, sir,” was Hook’s salutation.
“Who is?” asked Jan. “Alice, or the missis?”
“Not the missis, sir. The other. But I shouldn’t ha’ liked to trouble you, if you hadn’t ordered me.”
“I won’t be two minutes,” said Jan.
It seemed to Hook that Jan was only one, so speedily did he come out. A belief was popular in Deerham that Mr. Jan slept with his clothes on; no sooner would a night summons be delivered to Jan, than Jan was out with the summoner, ready for the start. Before he had closed the surgery door, through which he had to pass, there came another peal, and a woman ran up to him. Jan recognised her for the cook of a wealthy lady in the Belvedere Road, a Mrs. Ellis.
“Law, sir! what a provident mercy that you are up and ready!” exclaimed she. “My mistress is attacked again.”
“Well, you know what to do,” returned Jan. “You don’t want me.”
“But she do want you, sir. I have got orders not to go back without you.”
“I suppose she has been eating cucumber again,” remarked Jan.
“Only a bit of it, sir. About the half of a small one, she took for her supper. And now the spasms is on her dreadful.”
“Of course they are,” replied Jan. “She knows how cucumber serves her. Well, I can’t come. I’ll send Mr. Cheese, if you like. But he can do no more good than you can. Give her the drops and get the hot flannels; that’s all.”
“You are going out, sir!” cried the woman, in a tone that sounded as if she would like to be impertinent. “You are come for him, I suppose?” turning a sharp tongue upon Hook.
“Yes, I be,” humbly replied Hook. “Poor Ally—”
The woman set up a scream. “You’d attend her, that miserable castaway, afore you’d attend my
mistress!” burst out she to Jan. “Who’s Ally Hook, by the side of folks of standing?”
“If she wants attendance, she must have it,” was the composed return of Jan. “She has got a body and a soul to be saved, as other folks have. She is in danger; your mistress is not.”
“Danger! What has that got to do with it?” angrily answered the woman. “You’ll never get paid there, sir.”
“I don’t expect it,” returned Jan. “If you’d like Cheese, that’s his window,” pointing to one in the house. “Throw a handful of gravel up, and tell them I said he was to attend.”
Jan walked off with Hook. He heard a crash of gravel behind him; so concluded the cook was flinging at Mr. Cheese’s window in a temper. As she certainly was, giving Mr. Jan some hard words in the process. Just as Lady Verner had never been able to inculcate suavity on Jan, so Dr. West had found it a hopeless task to endeavour to make Jan understand that, in medical care, the rich should be considered before the poor. Take, for example, that bête noire of Deerham just now, Alice Hook, and put her by the side of a born duchess; Jan would have gone to the one who had most need of him, without reference to which of the two it might be. Evidently there was little hope for Jan.
Jan, with his long legs, outstripped the stooping and hard-worked labouring man. In at the door and up the stairs he went, into the sleeping room.
Did you ever pay a visit to a room of this social grade? If not, you will deem the introduction of this one highly coloured. Had Jan been a head and shoulders shorter, he might have been able to stand up in the lean-to attic, without touching the lath and plaster of the roof. On a low bedstead, on a flock mattress, lay the mother and two children, about eight and ten. How they made room for Hook also, was a puzzle. Opposite to it, on a straw mattress, slept three sons, grown up, or nearly so; between these beds was another straw mattress where lay Alice and her sister, a year younger; no curtains, no screens, no anything. All were asleep, with the exception of the mother and Alice; the former could not rise from her bed; Alice appeared too ill to rise from hers. Jan stooped his head and entered.