The Collected Supernatural and Weird Fiction of Mrs Molesworth

by Mary Molesworth

  Things grew warlike, boding no agreeable reception for the newcomers—a Mr. Raynald and his family, newcomers to England, it was said, as well as to Scarshire. Everyone plunged into questions of right-of-way; the local legalities raised and discussed knotty points; Colletwood and Scarby were aflame. But it all ended, flatly enough, in a compromise!

  Mr. Raynald turned out to be one of the most reasonable and courteous of men. He came, saw, and—conquered. The goodwill of his future neighbours was won e’er he knew he had risked its loss. Henceforward congratulations, reciprocated and repeated, on the charming additions to Scarby society were the order of the day, and the détour, skirting the south boundary of the Monksholdings grounds, which the footpath was now inveigled into making, was voted “a great improvement”.

  And in due time the mansion rose.

  “A great improvement” also, to the aspect of the surrounding landscape. It was in perfectly good taste—unpretentious and quietly picturesque. It might have been there always for any jarring protest to the contrary.

  And just halfway along the old foot-track, that is to say, between the two stiles which let the traveller to or from Scarby in or out of the Monksholdings demesne, stood Sybil Raynald’s grand piano!

  The stiles remained as an interesting survival; but they were made use of by no one not bound for the house itself. And beside each was a gate—a good oaken gate, that suited the place, as did everything about it; and beside each gate a quaint miniature dwelling, one of which came to be known as the east, and the other as the west, Monksholdings lodge.

  The first time the Raynalds came down to their new home they made but a short stay there. It was already late in the season, and though the preceding summer had been a magnificent one for drying fresh walls and plaster, it would scarcely have done to risk damp or chilly weather in so recently-built a house.

  They stayed long enough to confirm the favourable impression the head of the family had already made, and to lead themselves to look forward with pleasure to a less curtailed stay in Scarshire.

  The last morning of their visit, Sybil, the eldest daughter, up and about betimes, turned to her father, when she had taken her place beside him at the breakfast-table, with a suspicion of annoyance on her usually cheerful face.

  “Papa,” she said, “I have seen that old man again, leaning on the stile by the Scarby lodge and looking in—along the drive—so queerly. I don’t quite like it. It gave me rather a ghosty feeling; or else he is out of his mind.”

  Her brother, Mark by name, began to laugh, after the manner of brothers.

  “How very oddly you express yourself!” he said. “I should like to experience ‘a ghosty feeling’. A ghost is just what this place wants to make it perfect. But it should be the spirit of one of the original monks.”

  Mr. Raynald turned to his son rather sharply.

  “I don’t want any nonsense of that kind set about, Mark,” he said. “It would frighten the younger children when they come down here. I will ask about the old man. It is quite possible he is half-witted, or something of that sort. I forgot about it when Sybil mentioned it before. But no doubt he is perfectly harmless. Has no one seen him but you, Sybil?”

  The girl shook her head.

  “None of us,” she replied. “And I wasn’t exactly frightened. There was something very pathetic about him. He looked at me closely, murmuring some words, and then shook his head. That was all.”

  But just then her father was called away to give some last directions, and in the bustle of hurry to catch their train the matter passed from the minds of the younger as well as the elder members of the family.

  It returned to Sybil’s memory, however, when she found herself in their London house again, and called upon by her younger sisters to relate every detail of Monksholdings and its neighbourhood. But mindful of her father’s warning, she said nothing to Esther or Annis of the figure at the gate. It was only to Miss March—Ellinor March—the dearly-loved governess, who was more friend than teacher to her three pupils, that she spoke of it, late in the evening, when the younger ones had gone to bed, and her father and mother were busy with Indian letters in Mr. Raynald’s study.

  The two girls, we may say—for Ellinor was still some years under thirty—were alone in the drawing-room. Ellinor had been playing something tender and faintly weird—it died away under her fingers, and she sat on at the piano in silence.

  Sybil spoke suddenly.

  “That is so melancholy,” she said, “something so long ago about it, like the ghost of a sorrow rather than a sorrow itself. I know—I know what it makes me think of. Listen, Ellinor.”

  For out of school hours the two threw formality aside. And Sybil told of the sad, wistful old face looking over the stile.

  “Now it has come back to me,” she said, “I can’t forget it.”

  Ellinor, too, was impressed. “Yes,” she said, “it sounds very pitiful. Who knows what tragedy is bound up in it?” and she sighed.

  Sybil understood her. Miss March’s own history was a strange one.

  “We must find out about it when we go down to Monksholdings next year,” she said.

  “And perhaps,” added Ellinor, “even if he is half-witted, we might do something to comfort the poor man.”

  Sybil hesitated.

  “Then you don’t think he can be a ghost?” she said, looking half ashamed of the suggestion.

  Miss March smiled—her smile was sad.

  “In one sense, no, I should think it highly improbable; in another, yes, there must be the ghost of some great sorrow about the face you describe,” she said.

  So there was. This is the story.

  At the farther end of Scarby village—the farther end, that is to say, from Monksholdings and the path between the hills—the road drops again somewhat suddenly. Only for a short distance, however; Mayling Farm—“Giles’s” as it is colloquially called— which is the first house you come to when you reach level ground again, being by no means low lying.

  On the contrary, the west windows command a grand view of the great Scarshire plain beneath, bordered by the faint hazy blue, scarcely to be distinguished from clouds, of the long range of hills concealing the far-off glimmer of the ocean, which otherwise might sometimes be perceptible.

  Mayling is a very old place, and the Giles’s had been there “always,” so to speak—steady-going, unambitious, save as regards their farming and its success; they had been just the make of men to settle on to their ground as if it and they could have no existence apart. A fine race physically as well as morally, though some twenty-five years or so before the Raynalds bought Monksholdings, a run of ill luck, a whole chapter of casualties, had brought them down to but one representative, and he scarcely the typical Farmer Giles of Mayling.

  This was Barnett, the youngest of four stalwart sons; the youngest and the only survivor. He was already forty when his father died, earnestly commending to him the “old place,” which even at eighty the aged farmer felt himself better fitted to manage than the somewhat delicate, sensitive man whom his brothers had made good-natured fun of in his youth as a “bookworm.”

  But Barnett was intelligent and sensible, and he rose to the occasion. Circumstances helped him. The year after old Giles’s death Barnett for the first time fell in love, wisely and well. His affection was bestowed on a worthy object—Marion Grover, the daughter of a yeoman in the next county—and was fully returned.

  Marion was years younger than her lover, fifteen at least, eminently practical, healthy, and pretty. She brought her husband just exactly what he was most in need of—brightness, energy, and youth. It was an ideal marriage, and everything prospered at Mayling. Four years after the advent of the new Mrs. Giles you would scarcely have recognised the farmer, he seemed another man.

  He adored his wife, and could hardly find it in his heart to regret that their child was not a son, even though, failing an heir, the old name must die out; for if there was one creature the husband and wife
loved more than each other it was their baby girl.

  A month or two after this child’s second birthday the singular catastrophe occurred which changed the world to poor Barnett Giles, leaving him but a wreck of his former self, physically and mentally.

  Young Mrs. Giles was strong in every way, and from the first she took the line of saving her husband all extra fatigue or annoyance which she could possibly hoist on to her own brave shoulders. There was something quaint and even pathetic in the relations of the couple. For, notwithstanding Marion’s being so much Barnett’s junior, her attitude towards him had a decided suggestion of the maternal about it, though at times of real emergency his sound judgment and advice never failed her. It was within a week or two of Christmas; the weather was bitingly, raspingly cold. And though as yet no snow had fallen, the weather-wise were predicting it daily.

  “I must go over to Colletwood this week,” said Mrs. Giles, “and I must take Nelly. Her new coat is waiting to be tried at the dressmaker’s, and I must get her some boots and several other things before Christmas. And there is a whole list of other shopping too—all our Christmas presents to see to.”

  Her husband was looking out of the window, it was still very early in the day.

  “I doubt if the snow will hold off much longer,” he said. “And once it begins it may be heavy,” his wife replied, “and then I might not be able to go for ever so long, even by the road,”—for a deep fall of snow at Scarby was practically a stoppage to all traffic. “I’ll tell you what, Barnett, we’ll go today and make sure of it. I will put other things aside and start before noon. A couple of hours, or three at the most, will do everything, and then Nelly and I will be back long before dark. You’ll come to meet us, won’t you?”

  “Of course I will—if you go. But,” and again he glanced at the sky. The morning was, so far, clear and bright, though very cold, but over towards the north there was a suspicious look about the blue-grey clouds. “I don’t know,” he said, “but that you’d better wait till tomorrow and see if it blows off again.”

  But Marion shook her head.

  “I’ve a feeling,” she said, “that if I don’t go today, I won’t go at all. And I really must. I’ll take Betsy to carry the child till we’re just above the town, and then send her home, so as not to be tired for coming back. Not that I’m ever tired, as you know,” with a smile.

  He gave in, only stipulating that at all costs they should start to return by a certain hour, unless the snow should have already begun, in which case Marion was to run no risks, but either to hire a fly to bring her home by the road, or to stay in the town with some of her friends till the weather cleared again.

  “And I’ll meet you,” he added. “Let us set our watches together—I’ll start from here so as to be at—let me see——”

  “Half-way between the stiles,” said Marion. “We can each see the other from one stile to the opposite one, you know, even though it’s a good bit of a way. Yes, dear, I’ll time it as near as I can to meet half-way between the stiles.”

  And with these words the last on her lips, she set off, a picture of health and happiness—little Nelly crowing back to “Dada” from over stout Betsy’s shoulder.

  Betsy was home again within the hour.

  But the mother and child—alas and alas! It was the immortal story of “Lucy Gray” in an almost more pathetic shape.

  Farmer Giles, as I have said, was a studious, often absentminded man. There was not much to do at that season and in such weather, and what there was, some amount of supervision on his part was enough for. After his early dinner he got out his books for an hour or two’s quiet reading till it should be time to set off to meet his darlings. No fear of his forgetting that time, but till the clock struck, and he saw it was approaching nearly, he never looked out—he was unconscious of the rapid growth of the lurid, steely clouds; he had no idea that the snowflakes were already falling, falling, more and more closely and thickly with each instant that passed.

  Then rose the storm spirit and issued his orders—all too quickly obeyed. Before Barnett Giles had left the village street he found himself in what now-a-days would be called a “blizzard”. And his pale face grew paler, and his heart beat as if to choke him, when at last he reached the first stile and stood there panting, to regain his breath. It was all he could do to battle on through the fury of the wind, the blinding, whirling snow, which seemed to envelop him as if in sheets. Not for many and many a day will that awful snowstorm be forgotten in Scarshire.

  ******

  It was at the appointed trysting place they found him—“halfway between the stiles.” But not till late that evening, when Betsy, more alarmed by his absence than by her mistress’s not returning, at last struggled out through the deep-lying snow to alarm the nearest neighbours.

  “The missis and Miss Nell will have stayed the night in the town,” she said. “But I misdoubt me if the master will ever have got so far, though he may have been tempted on when he did not meet them.”

  By this time the fury of the storm had spent itself, and they found poor Giles after a not very protracted search, and brought him home—dead, they thought at first.

  No, he was not dead, but it was less than half life that he returned to. For his first inquiry late the next day, when glimmering consciousness had begun to revive—“Marion, the baby?”—seemed by some subtle instinct to answer itself truthfully, in spite of the kindly endeavour to deceive him for the time.

  “Dead!” he murmured. “I knew it. Halfway between the stiles,” and he turned his face to the wall.

  They almost wished he had died too—the rough but kind-hearted country-folk who were his neighbours. But he lived. He never asked and never knew the details of the tragedy, which, indeed, was never fully known by anyone.

  All that came to light was that the dead body of Marion Giles was brought by some semi-gipsy wanderers to the workhouse of a town several miles south of Colletwood, early on the morning after the blizzard. They had found it, they said, at some little distance from the road along which they were journeying, so that she must have lost her way long before approaching the Monksholdings confines, not improbably, indeed, in attempting to retrace her steps to the town which she had so imprudently quitted. But of the child the tramps said nothing, and after making the above deposition, they were allowed to go on their way, which they expressed themselves as anxious to do; for reasons of their own, no doubt; possibly the same reasons which had prevented their returning to Colletwood with the young woman’s corpse, as would have seemed more natural.

  And afterwards no very special inquiry was made about the baby. The father was incapable of it, and in those days people accepted things more carelessly, perhaps. It was taken for granted that “Little Nell” had fallen down some cliff, no doubt, and lay buried there, with the snow for her shroud, like a strayed lambkin. Her tiny bones might yet be found, years hence, maybe, by a shepherd in search of some bleating wanderer, or—no more might ever be known of the infant’s fate!

  Barnett Giles rose from his bed, after many weeks, with all the look of a very old man. At first it was thought that his mind was quite gone; but it did not prove to be so. After a time, with the help of an excellent foreman, or bailiff, he showed himself able to manage his farm with a strange, mechanical kind of intelligence. It seemed as if the sense of duty outlived the loss of other perceptions, though these, too, cleared by degrees to a considerable extent, and material things, curious as it may appear, prospered with him.

  But he rarely spoke unless obliged to do so; and whenever he felt himself at leisure, and knew that his work was not calling for him, he seemed to relapse into the half-dreamy state which was his more real life. Then he would pass through the village and slowly climb the slope to the stile, where he would stand for hours together, patiently gazing before him, while he murmured the old refrain: “‘Halfway between the stiles,’ she said. I shall meet them there, ‘halfway between the stiles’.”

  Fortu
nately, perhaps, it was not often he attempted to climb over; he contented himself with standing and gazing. Fortunately so, for otherwise the changes at Monksholdings would have probably terribly shocked his abnormally sensitive brain. But he did not seem to notice them, nor the new route of the old right-of-way agreed to by the compromise. He was content with his post—standing, leaning on the stile, and gazing before him.

  His, of course, was the worn, wistful face which had half frightened, half appealed to Sybil Raynald.

  But she forgot about it again, or other things put it temporarily aside, so that when the Raynalds came down to Monksholdings again the following Easter it did not at once occur to her to remind her father of the inquiry he had promised to make.

  Miss March was not with her pupils and their parents at first. She had gone to spend a holiday week with the friends who had brought her up and seen to her education—good, benevolent people, if not specially sympathetic, but to whom she felt herself bound by ties of sincerest gratitude, though her five years with the Raynald family had given her more of the feeling of a “home” than she had ever had before.

  And her arrival at Monksholdings was the occasion of much rejoicing. There was everything to show her, and everyone, from Mark down to little Robin, wanted to be her guide. It was not till the morning of the next day that Sybil managed to get her to herself for a tête-à-tête stroll.

  Ellinor had some things to tell her quondam pupil. Mrs. Bellairs, her self-appointed guardian, was growing old and somewhat feeble.

  “I fear she is not likely to live many years,” said Miss March, “and she thinks so herself. She has a curious longing, which I never saw in her before, to find out my history—to know if there is no one really belonging to me to whom she can give me back, as it were, before she dies. She gave me the little parcel containing the clothes I had on when she rescued me from being sent to a workhouse. They are carefully washed and mended, and though I was a poor, dirty little object when I was found, they do not look really as if I had been a beggar child,” with a little smile.