Chapter I
A Firm Believer
“I SEE Mr. Vansittart Merceron’s at the Court again, mamma.”
“Yes, dear. Lady Merceron told me he was coming. She wanted to consult him about Charlie.”
“She’s always consulting him about Charlie, and it never makes any difference.”
Mrs. Bushell looked up from her needlework; her hands were full with needle and stuff, and a couple of pins protruded from her lips. She glanced at her daughter, who stood by the window in the bright blaze of a brilliant sunset, listlessly hitting the blind-cord and its tassel to and fro.
“The poor boy’s very young still,” mumbled Mrs. Bushell through her pins.
“He’s twenty-five last month,” returned Millicent. “I know, because there’s exactly three years between him and me.”
The sinking rays defined Miss Bushell’s form with wonderful clearness. She was very tall, and the severe well-cut cloth gown she wore set off the stately lines of her figure. She had a great quantity of fair hair and a handsome face, spoilt somewhat by a slightly excessive breadth across the cheeks; as her height demanded or excused, her hands and feet were not small, though well shaped. Would Time have arrested his march for ever, there would have been small fault to find with Nature’s gifts to Miss Bushell; but, as her mother said, Millie was just what she had been at twenty-one; and Mrs. Bushell was now extremely stout. Millie escaped the inference by discrediting her mother’s recollection.
The young lady wore her hat, and presently she turned away from the window, remarking:
“I think I shall go for a stroll. I’ve had no exercise to-day.”
Either inclination, or perhaps that threatening possibility from which she strove to avert her eyes, made Millie a devotee of active pursuits. She hunted, she rode, she played lawn-tennis, and, when at the seaside, golf; when all failed, she walked resolutely four or five miles on the high-road, swinging along at a healthy pace, and never pausing save to counsel an old woman or rebuke a truant urchin. On such occasions her manner (for we may not suppose that her physique aided the impression) suggested the benevolent yet stern policeman, and the vicar acknowledged in her an invaluable assistant. By a strange coincidence she seemed to suit the house she lived in—one of those large white square dwelling’s, devoid of ornament, yet possessing every substantial merit, and attaining, by virtue of their dimensions and simplicity, an effect of handsomeness denied to many more tricked-out building’s. The house satisfied; so did Millie, unless the judge were very critical.
“I shall just walk round by the Pool and back,” she added as she opened the door.
“My dear, it’s four miles!”
“Well, it’s only a little after six, and we don’t dine till eight.”
Encountering no further opposition than a sigh of admiration—three hundred yards was the limit of pleasure in a walk to her mother—Millie Bushell started on her way, dangling a neat ebony stick in her hand, and setting her feet down with a firm decisive tread. It did not take her long to cover the two miles between her and her destination. Leaving the road, she entered the grounds of the Court and, following a little path which ran steeply down hill, she found herself by the willows and reeds fringing the edge of the Pool. Opposite to her, on the higher bank, some seven or eight feet above the water, rose the temple, a small classical erection, used now, when at all, as a summer-house, but built to commemorate the sad fate of Agatha Merceron. The sun had just sunk, and the Pool looked chill and gloomy; the deep water under the temple was black and still. Millie’s robust mind was not prone to superstition, yet she was rather relieved to think that, with the sun only just gone, there was a clear hour before Agatha Merceron would come out of the temple, slowly and fearfully descend the shallow flight of marble steps, and lay herself down in the water to die. That happened every evening, according to the legend, an hour after sunset—every evening, for the last two hundred years, since poor Agatha, bereft and betrayed, had found the Pool kinder than the world, and sunk her sorrow and her shame and her beauty there—such shame and such beauty as had never been before or after in all the generations of the Mercerons.
“What nonsense it all is!” said Millie aloud. “But I’m afraid Charlie is silly enough to believe it.”
As she spoke her eye fell on a Canadian canoe, which lay at the foot of the steps. She recognized it as Charlie Merceron’s, and, knowing that approach to the temple from the other side was to be gained only by a difficult path through a tangled wood, and that the canoe usually lay under a little shed a few yards from where she stood, she concluded that Charlie was in the temple. There was nothing surprising in that: it was a favorite haunt of his. She raised her voice; and called to him. At first no answer came, and she repeated:
“Charlie! Charlie!”
After a moment of waiting a head was thrust out of a window in the side of the temple—a head in a straw hat.
“Hullo!” said Charlie Merceron in tones of startled surprise. Then, seeing the visitor, he added: “Oh, it’s you, Millie! How did you know I was here?”
“By the canoe, of course.”
“Hang the canoe!” muttered Charlie, and his head disappeared. A second later he came out of the doorway and down the steps. Standing on the lowest, he shouted—the Pool was about sixty feet across—“What do you want?”
“How rude you are!” shouted Miss Bushell in reply.
Charlie got into the canoe and began to paddle across. He had just reached the other side, when Millie screamed:
“Look, look, Charlie!” she cried. “The temple!”
“What?”
“I—I saw something white at the window.”
Charlie got out of the canoe hastily.
“What?” he asked again, walking up to Miss Bushell.
“I declare I saw something white at the window. Oh, Charlie! But it’s all”
“Bosh? Of course it is. There’s nothing in the temple.”
“Well, I thought—I wonder you like to be there.”
“Why shouldn’t I?”
The mysterious appearance not being repeated, Millie’s courage returned.
“I thought you believed in the ghost,” she said, smiling.
“So I do, but I don’t mind it.”
“You’ve never seen it?”
“Supposing I haven’t? That doesn’t prove it’s not true.”
“But you’re often here at the time?”
“Never,” answered Charlie with emphasis. “I always go away before the time.”
“Then you’d better come now. Put the canoe to bed and walk with me.”
Charlie Merceron thrust his hands into his pockets and smiled at his companion. He was tall also, and just able to look down on her.
“No,” he said, “I’m not going yet.”
“How rude—oh, there it is again, Charlie! I saw it! I’m—I’m frightened,” and her healthy color paled a trifle, as she laid a hand on Charlie’s arm.
“I tell you what,” observed Charlie. “If you have fancies of this kind you’d better not come here any more—not in the evening, at all events. You know people who think they’re going to see things always do see ’em.”
“My heart is positively beating,” said Miss Bushell. “I—I don’t quite like walking back alone.”
“I’ll see you as far as the road,” Charlie conceded, and with remarkable promptitude he led the way, turning his head over his shoulder to remark:
“Really, if you’re so nervous, you oughtn’t to come here.”
“I never will again—not alone, I mean.”
Charlie had breasted the hill with such goodwill that they were already at the road.
“And you’re really going back?” she asked.
“Oh, just for a few minutes. I left my book in the temple—I was reading there. She’s not due for half an hour yet, you know.”
“What—what happens if you see her?”
“Oh, you die,” answered Charlie. “Good-night;” and with a smile and a nod he ran down the hill towards the Pool.
Miss Bushell, cavalierly deserted, made her way home at something more than her usual rate of speed. She had never believed in that nonsense, but there was certainly something white at that window—something white that moved. Under the circumstances, Charlie really might have seen her home, she thought, for the wood-fringed road was gloomy, and dusk coming on apace. Besides, where was the hardship in being her escort?
Doubtless none, Charlie would have answered, unless a man happened to have other fish to fry. The pace at which the canoe crossed the Pool and brought up at its old moorings witnessed that he had no leisure to spend on Miss Bushell. Leaping out, he ran up the stops into the temple, crying in a loud whisper:
“She’s gone!”
The temple was empty, and Charlie, looking round in vexation, added:
“So has she, by Jingo!”
He sat down disconsolately on the low marble seat that ran round the little shrine. There were no signs of the book of which he had spoken to Millie Bushell. There were no signs of anybody whom he could have meant to address. Stay! One sign there was: a long hat-pin lay on the floor. Charlie picked it up with a sad smile.
“Agatha’s,” he said to himself.
And yet, as everyone in the neighborhood knew, poor Agatha Merceron went nightly to her phantom death bareheaded and with golden locks tossed by the wind. Moreover, the pin was of modern manufacture; moreover, ghosts do not wear—but there is no need to enter on debatable ground; the pin was utterly modern.
“Now, if uncle Van,” mused Charlie, “came here and saw this!” He carefully put the pin in his breast-pocket, and looked at his watch. It was exactly Agatha Merceron’s time; yet Charlie leant back on his cold marble seat, put his hands in his pockets, and gazed up at the ceiling with the happiest possible smile on his face. For one steeped in family legends, worshipping the hapless lady’s memory with warm devotion, and reputed a sincere believer in her ghostly wanderings, he awaited her coming with marvellous composure. In point of fact he had forgotten all about her, and there was nothing to prevent her coming, slipping down the steps, and noiselessly into the water, all unnoticed by him. His eyes were glued to the ceiling, the smile played on his lips, his ears were filled with sweet echoes, and his thoughts were far away. Perhaps the dead lady came and passed unseen. That Charlie did not see her was ridiculously slight evidence whereon to damn so ancient and picturesque a legend. He thought the same himself, for that night at dinner—he came in late for dinner—he maintained the credit of the story with fierce conviction against Mr. Vansittart Merceron’s scepticism.