Roy—who was standing now, his elbow leaning on the gate—brought his face nearer to Tynn’s. Tynn was also leaning on the gate.
“Have you heered of this ghost that’s said to be walking about Deerham?” he asked, lowering his voice to a whisper. “Have you heered whose they say it is?”
Now, Tynn had heard. All the retainers, male and female, at Verner’s Pride had heard. And Tynn, though not much inclined to give credence to ghosts in a general way, had felt somewhat uneasy at the tale. More on his mistress’s account than on any other score: for Tynn had the sense to know that such a report could not be pleasing to Mrs. Verner, should it reach her ears.
“I can’t think why they do say it,” replied Tynn, answering the man’s concluding question. “For my part, I don’t believe there’s anything in it. I don’t believe in ghosts.”
“Neither didn’t a good many more, till now that they have got orakelar demonstration of it,” returned Roy. “Dan Duff see it, and a’most lost his senses; that girl of Hook’s see it, and you know, I suppose, what it did for her; Broom see it; the parson see it; old Frost see it; and lots more. Not one on ’em but ’ud take their Bible oath, if put to it, that it is Fred Massingbird’s ghost.”
“But it is not,” said Tynn. “It can’t be. Leastways I’ll never believe it till I see it with my own eyes. There’d be no reason in its coming now. If it had wanted to come at all, why didn’t it come when it was first buried, and not wait till over two years had gone by?”
“That’s the point that I stuck at,” was Roy’s answer. “When my wife come home with the tales, day after day, that Fred Massingbird’s spirit was walking,—that this person had seen it, and that person had seen it—‘Yah! Rubbish!’ I says to her. ‘If his ghost had been a-coming, it ’ud have come afore now.’ And so it would.”
“Of course,” assented Tynn. “If it had been coming. But I have not lived to these years to believe in ghosts at last.”
“Then, what do you think of the parson, Mr. Tynn?” continued Roy, in a strangely significant tone. “And Broom,—he have got his senses about him? How d’ye account for their believing it?’
“I have not heard them say that they do believe it,” responded Tynn, with a knowing nod. “Folks may go about and say that I believe it, perhaps: but that wouldn’t make it any nearer the fact. And what has all this to do with Mr. Verner?”
“I am coming to it,” said Roy. He took a step backward, looked carefully up and down the road, lest listeners might be in ambush; stretched his neck forward and in like manner surveyed the field on either side the hedge. Apparently it satisfied him, and he resumed his close proximity to Tynn and his meaning whisper. “Can’t you guess the riddle, Mr. Tynn?”
“I can’t in the least guess what you mean, or what you are driving at,” was Tynn’s response. “I think you must have been having a drop of drink, Roy. I ask what this is to my master, Mr. Verner?”
“Drink be bothered! I’ve not had a sup inside my mouth since mid-day,” was Roy’s retort. “This secret has been enough drink for me, and meat, too. You’ll keep counsel, if I tell it you, Mr. Tynn? Not but what it must soon come out.”
“Well?” returned Tynn, in some surprise.
“It’s Fred Massingbird fast enough. But it’s not his ghost.”
“What on earth do you mean?” asked Tynn, never for a moment glancing at the fact of what Roy tried to imply.
“He is come back: Frederick Massingbird. He didn’t die, over there.”
A pause, devoted by Tynn to staring and thinking. When the full sense of the words broke upon him, he staggered a step or two away from the ex-bailiff.
“Heaven help us if it’s true!” he uttered. “Roy! it can’t be!”
“It is,” said Roy.
They stood looking at each other by starlight. Tynn’s face had grown hot and wet, and he wiped it.
“It can’t be,” he mechanically repeated.
“I tell you it is, Mr. Tynn. Now, never you mind asking me how I came to the bottom of it,” went on Roy in a sort of defiant tone. “I did come to the bottom of it, and I do know it: and Mr. Fred, he knows that I know it. It’s as sure that he is back, and in the neighbourhood, as that you and me is here at this gate. He is alive and he is among us—as certain as that you are Mr. Tynn, and I be Giles Roy.”
There came flashing over Tynn’s thoughts the scene of that very evening. His mistress’s shrieks and agitation when she broke from Miss West; her cries and sobs which had penetrated to their ears when she was shut afterwards in the study with her husband. The unusual scene had been good for gossipping comment among the servants: and Tynn had believed something distressing had occurred. Not this; he had never glanced a suspicion at this. He remembered the lines of pain which shone out at the moment from his master’s pale face, in spite of its impassiveness: and somehow that very face brought conviction to Tynn now, that Roy’s news was true. Tynn let his arms fall on the gate again with a groan.
“What ever will become of my poor mistress?” he uttered.
“She!” slightingly returned Roy. “She’ll be better off than him.”
“Better off than who?”
“Than Mr. Verner. She needn’t leave Verner’s Pride. He must.”
To expect any ideas but coarse ones from Roy, Tynn could not. But his attention was caught by the last suggestion.
“Leave Verner’s Pride?” slowly repeated Tynn. “Must he?—good heavens! must my master be turned from Verner’s Pride?”
“Where’ll be the help for it?” asked Roy, in a confidential tone. “I tell you, Mr. Tynn, my heart’s been a-bleeding for him ever since I heard it. I don’t see no help for his turning out.
