Works of Ellen Wood, page 1252
But to my intense astonishment there was a third face. A face behind them peeping out from the close folds of a mantle, and almost resting on their shoulders. At the first moment I thought of Tod; but soon the features became familiar to me in the bright light, and I knew them for Phœbe’s. Phœbe, whom I had left in the kitchen, supping quietly! That she had stolen up unseen and unheard while they talked, was apparent.
A wild screech! Two wild screeches. Phœbe had put her hands on the startled women, and given vent to a dismal groan. She laughed: but the others went into a desperate passion. First at having been frightened, next at having been followed. When matters came to be investigated later, it turned out that Phœbe had overheard a conversation between Molly and Hannah, which betrayed what they were about to do, and had come on purpose to startle them.
A row ensued. Bitter words on both sides; mutual abusings. The elder servants ordered Phœbe home; she refused to go, and gave them some sauce. She intended to stay and see what there was to be seen, she said; for all she could tell, their shadows might pass, and a good thing if they did; let alone that she’d not dare to go back by herself at that hour and meet the ghosts. Hannah and Molly cut the matter short by leaving the stile to her; they went round, and took up their places by the churchyard gate.
It seems very stupid to be writing of this, I dare say; it must read like an old ghost-story out of a fable-book; but every word is true, as the people that lived round us then could tell you.
There we waited; Hannah and Molly gathered close against the hedge by the churchyard gate; Phœbe, wrapped in her shawl, leaning on the top of the stile; I on the old tree stump, feeling inclined to go to sleep. It seemed a long time, and the night grew cold. Evidently there were no watchers for St. Mark’s shadows abroad that night, except ourselves. Without warning, the old clock boomed out the strokes of the hour. Ten.
Did you ever have the opportunity of noticing how long it takes for a sound like this to die quite away on the calm night-air? I seemed to hear it still, floating off in the distance, when I became aware that some figure was advancing up the lane towards us with a rather swift step. It’s Tod this time, I thought, and naturally looked out; and I don’t mind telling that I caught hold of the bars of the stile for companionship, in my shock of terror.
I had never seen the dead walking; but I do believe I thought I saw it then. It looked like a corpse in its winding-sheet; whether man or woman, none could tell. An ashey-white, still, ghastly face, enveloped around with bands of white linen, was turned full to the moonlight, that played upon the rigid features. The whole person, from the crown of the head to the soles of the feet, was enshrouded in a white garment. All thoughts of Tod went out of me; and I’m not sure but my hair rose up on end as the thing came on. You may laugh at me, all of you, but just you go and try it.
My fear went for nothing, however; it didn’t damage me. Of all the awful cries ever heard, shrill at first, changing to something like the barking of a dog afterwards, those were the worst that arose opposite. They came from Phœbe. The girl had stood petrified, with straining eyes and laboured breath, like one who has not the power to fly, while the thing advanced. Only when it stopped close and looked at her did the pent-up cries come forth. Then she turned to fly, and the white figure leaped the stile, and went after her into the copse. What immediately followed I cannot remember — never could remember it; but it seemed that not more than a minute had elapsed when I and Molly and Hannah were standing over Phœbe, lying in convulsions on the ground, and the creature nowhere to be seen. The cries had been heard in the road, and some people passing came running up. They lifted the girl in their arms, and bore her homewards.
My senses were coming to me, showing plainly enough that it was no “shadow,” but some ill-starred individual dressed up to personate one. Poor Phœbe! I could hear her cries still, though the group was already out of the copse and crossing the open field beyond. Somebody touched me on the shoulder.
“Tod! Did you do it?”
“Do what?” asked Tod, who was out of breath with running. “What was all that row?”
I told him. Somebody had made himself into a ghost, with a tied-up whitened face, just as the dead have, and came up the Green Lane in a sheet; and Phœbe was being carried home in convulsions.
“You are a fool, Johnny,” was his wrathful answer. “I am not one to risk a thing of that sort, not even for those two old women we came out to frighten. Look here.”
He went to the edge of the copse near the road, and showed me some things — the old pistol from the stable, and gunpowder lights that went off with a crash yards high. It’s not of much use going into it now. Tod had meant, standing at a safe distance, to set a light to the explosive articles, and fire off his pistol at the same time.
“It would have been so good to see the women scutter off in their fright, Johnny; and it couldn’t have hurt them. They might have looked upon it as the blue-light from below.”
“What made you so late?”
“Late!” returned Tod, savagely; “I am late, and the fun’s spoilt. That confounded old Duff and his cane came in to see you, Johnny, just as I was starting; there was nobody else, and I couldn’t leave him. I said you were in bed and asleep, but it didn’t send him away. Down he sat, telling a tale of how hard-worked he’d been all day, and asking for brandy-and-water. The dickens take him!”
“And, Tod, it was really not you?”
“If you repeat that again, Johnny, I’ll strike you. I swear it was not me. There! I never told you a lie yet.”
He never had; and from that moment of strong denial I know that Tod had no more to do with the matter than I had.
“I wonder who it could have been?”
“I’ll find that out, as sure as my name’s Todhetley,” he said, catching up his pistols and lights.
We ran all the way home, looking out in vain for the ghost on our way, and got in almost as soon as the rest. What a hullabaloo it was! They put a mattress on the kitchen floor, and laid Phœbe on it. Mr. Duffham was upon the scene in no time; the Squire had returned earlier than was thought for, and Mrs. Todhetley came down with her face smothered in a woollen handkerchief.
As to any concealment now, it was useless to think of it. None was attempted, and Molly and Hannah had to confess that they went out to watch for the shadows. The Squire blustered at them a little, but Mrs. Todhetley said the keenest thing, in her mild way:
“At your age, Hannah!”
“I have known a person rendered an idiot for life with a less fright than this,” said old Duff, turning round to speak. “It was the following her that did the mischief.”
Nothing could be done that night as to investigation; but with the morning the Squire entered upon it in hot anger. “Couldn’t the fool have been contented with what he’d already done, without going over the stile after her? If I spend a fifty-pound note, I’ll unearth him. It looks to me uncommonly like a trick you two boys would play,” he added, turning sharply upon me and Tod.
And the suspicion made us all the more eager to find out the real fox. But not a clue could we discover. Nobody had known of the proposed expedition except Goody Picker; and she, as everybody testified, was true to the backbone. As the day went on, and nothing came of it, Tod had one of his stamping fits.
“If one could find out whether it was man or woman! If one could divine how they got at the knowledge!” stamped Tod. “The pater does not look sure about us yet.”
“I wonder if it could have been Roger Monk?” I said, speaking out a thought that had been dimly creeping up in my mind by starts all day.
“Roger Monk!” repeated Tod, “why pitch upon him?”
“Only that it’s just possible he might have got it out of Goody Picker.”
Away went Tod, in his straightforward fashion, to look for Roger Monk. He was in the hot-house, doing something to his plants.
“Monk, did you play that trick last night?”
“What trick, sir?” asked Monk, twitching a good-for-nothing leaf off a budding geranium.
“What trick! As if there were more tricks than one played! I mean dressing yourself up like a dead man, and frightening Phœbe.”
“I have too much to do with my work, Mr. Todhetley, to find time to play tricks. I took no holiday at all yesterday, day or night, but was about my business till I went to bed. They were saying out here this morning that the Squire thought you had done it.”
“Don’t you be insolent, Monk. That won’t answer with me.”
“Well, sir, it is not pleasant to be accused point-blank of a crime, as you’ve just accused me. I know nothing at all about the matter. ’Twasn’t me. I had no grudge against Phœbe, that I should harm her.”
Tod was satisfied; I was not. He never once looked in either of our faces as he was speaking. We leaped the wire-fence and went across to Goody Picker’s, bursting into her kitchen without ceremony.
“I say, Mrs. Picker, we can’t find out anything about that business last night,” began Tod.
“And you never will, gentlemen, as is my opinion,” returned Mrs. Picker, getting up in a bustle and dusting two wooden chairs. “Whoever did that, have took himself off for a bit; never doubt it. ’Twas some one o’ them village lads.”
“We have been wondering whether it was Roger Monk.”
“Lawk-a-mercy!” cried she, dropping a basin on the brick floor. And if ever I saw a woman change colour, she did.
“What’s the matter now?”
“Why, you sent me into a tremble, gentlemen, saying that,” she answered, stooping to pick up the broken crockery. “A young man lodging in my place, do such a villain’s trick! I’d not like to think it; I shouldn’t rest in my bed. The two servants having started right out from here for the churchyard have cowed-down my heart bad enough, without more ill news.”
“What time did Monk come in last night?” questioned Tod. “Do you remember?”
“He come in after Mrs. Hannah and the other had gone,” she replied, taking a moment’s pause. “Close upon it; I’d hardly shut my door on them when I had to open it to him.”
“Did he go out again?”
“Not he, sir. He eat his supper, telling me in a grumbling tone about the extra work he’d had to do in the greenhouses and places, because the other man had took holiday best part o’ the day. And then he went up to bed. Right tired he seemed.”
We left her fitting the pieces of the basin together, and went home. “It wasn’t Monk,” said Tod. “But now — where to look for the right man, Johnny?”
Look as we might, we did not find him. Phœbe was better in a day or two, but the convulsive fits stuck to her, coming on at all sorts of unexpected times. Old Duff thought it might end in insanity.
And that’s what came of Watching for the Shadows on St. Mark’s Eve!
SANKER’S VISIT.
His name was Sanker, and he was related to Mrs. Todhetley. Not expecting to go home for the holidays — for his people lived in some far-off district of Wales, and did not afford him the journey — Tod invited him to spend them with us at Dyke Manor: which was uncommonly generous, for he disliked Sanker beyond everything. Having plenty of money himself, Tod could not bear that a connection of his should be known as nearly the poorest and meanest in the school, and resented it awfully. But he could not be ill-natured, for all his prejudices, and he asked Sanker to go home with us.
“It’s slow there,” he said; “not much going on in summer besides haymaking; but it may be an improvement on this. So, if you’d like to come, I’ll write and tell them.”
“Thank you,” said Sanker; “I should like it very much.”
Things had been queer at school as the term drew to its close. Petty pilferings were taking place; articles and money alike disappeared. Tod lost half-a-sovereign; one of the masters some silver; Bill Whitney put sevenpence halfpenny and a set of enamelled studs into his desk one day, never to see either again; and Snepp, who had been home to his sister’s marriage, lost a piece of wedding-cake out of his box the night he came back. There was a thief in the school, and no clue to him. One might mentally accuse this fellow, another that; but not a shadow of proof was there against any. Altogether we were not sorry to get away.
But the curious thing was, that soon after we got home pilferings began there. Ned Banker was well received; and Tod, regarding himself in the capacity of host, grew more cordial with him than he had been at school. It was a sort of noblesse oblige feeling. Sanker was sixteen; stout and round; not tall; with pale eyes and a dull face. He was to be a clergyman; funds at his home permitting. His father lived at some mines in Wales. Tod wondered in what capacity.
“Mr. Sanker was a gentleman born and bred,” explained Mrs. Todhetley. “He never had much money; but what little it was he lost, speculating in this very mine. After that, when he had nothing in the world left to live upon, and a wife and several young children to keep, he was thankful to take a situation as over-looker at a small yearly salary.”
We had been home about a week when the first thing was missed. At one side of the house, in a sort of nook, was a square room, its glass-doors opening on the gravel-path that skirted the hedge of the vegetable garden. Squire Todhetley kept his farming accounts there and wrote his letters. A barometer and two county maps, Worcestershire and Warwickshire, on its walls, a square of matting on its floor, an upright bureau, a table, some chairs; and there you have the picture of the room.
One afternoon — mind! we did not know this for a week after, but it is as well to tell of it as it occurred — he was sitting at the table in this room, his account-books, kept in the bureau, open before him; his inkstand and cash-box at hand. Lying near the cash-box was a five-pound note, open; the Squire had put it out for Dwarf Giles to get changed at Alcester. He was writing an order for some things that Giles would have to bring back, when Rimmell, who acted as working bailiff on the estate, came to the glass-doors, open to the warm June air, saying he had received an offer for the wheat that had spurted. The Squire stepped outside on the gravel-path while he talked with Rimmell, and then strolled round with him to the fold-yard. He was away — that is, out of sight of the room — about three minutes, and when he got back the note was gone.
He could not believe his own eyes. It was a calm day; no wind stirring. He lifted the things on the table; he lifted the matting on the floor; he shook his loose coat; all in vain. Standing at the door, he shouted aloud; he walked along the path to the front of the house, and shouted there; but was not answered. So far as could be seen, no person whatever was about who could have come round to the room during his short absence.
Striding back to the room, he went through it, and up the passage to the hall, his boots creaking. Molly was in the kitchen, singing over her work; Phœbe and Hannah were heard talking upstairs; and Mrs. Todhetley stood in the store-room, doing something to the last year’s pots of jam. She said, on being questioned, that no one had passed to the passage leading to the Squire’s room.
It happened at that moment, that I, coming home from the Dyke, ran into the hall, full butt against the Squire.
“Johnny,” said he, “where are you all? What are you up to?”
I had been at the Dyke all the afternoon with Tod and Hugh; they were there still. Not Sanker: he was outside, on the lawn, reading. This I told the pater, and he said no more. Later, when we came to know what had happened, he mentioned to us that, at this time, no idea of robbery had entered his head; he thought one of us might have hidden the money in sport.
So much an impossibility did it appear of the note’s having been lifted by human hands, that the Squire went back to his room in a maze. He could only think that it must have attached itself to his clothes, and dropped off them in the fold-yard. What had become of it, goodness knew; whether it had fluttered into the pond, or the hens had scratched it to pieces, or the turkeys gobbled it up; he searched fruitlessly.
That was on a Thursday. On the following Thursday, when Tod was lying on the lawn bench on his back, playing with his tame magpie, and teasing Hugh and Lena, the pater’s voice was heard calling to him in a sharp, quick tone, as if something was the matter. Tod got up and went round by the gravel-path to whence the sound came, and I followed. The Squire was standing at the window of the room, half in, half out.
“I don’t want you, Johnny. Stay, though,” he added, after a moment, “you may as well be told — why not?”
He sat down in his place at the table. Tod stood just inside the door, paying more attention to the magpie, which he had brought on his arm, than to his father: I leaned against the bureau. There was a minute’s silence, waiting for the Squire to speak.
“Put that wretched bird down,” he said; and we knew something had put him out, for he rarely spoke with sharpness to Tod.
Tod sent the magpie off, and came in. The first day we got home from school, Tod had rescued the magpie from Goody Picker’s grandson; he caught him pulling the feathers out of its tail; gave him sixpence for it, and brought it home. A poor, miserable, half-starved thing, that somebody had taught to say continually, “Now then, Peter.” Tod meant to feed it into condition; but the pater had not taken kindly to the bird; he said it would be better dead than alive.
“What was that I heard you boys talking of the other day, about some petty pilferings in your school?” he asked, abruptly. And we gave him the history.
“Well, as it seems to me, the same thing is going on here,” he continued, looking at us both. “Johnny, sit down; I can’t talk while you sway about like that.”
“The same thing going on here, sir?”
“I say that it seems so,” said the pater, thrusting both his hands deep into his trousers’ pockets, and rattling the silver in them. “Last Thursday, this day week, a bank-note lay on my table here. I just went round to the yard with Rimmell, and when I got back the note was gone.”
