Black Heather

by Virginia Coffman

  “What a way to speak of our young visitor,” murmured Mrs. Sedley, exactly as she must have coquetted thirty years before. “How do you go on, Nicholas, my dear boy?”

  “Exceedingly well, thank you.” Sir Nicholas bowed over her hand, kissing it with the flourish she expected, but I was curious to note that Elspeth not only did not appreciate his manner, which may, of course, have been ironic, but upon her face was an expression of active dislike. Such was the influence of Patrick Kelleher, I had no doubt. It seemed odd to me, though, because I could enjoy Patrick’s charm and yet give it its due value, such as it was, without ceasing to admire other people. If only Sir Nicholas would always be as kind to me as he had during the past hour! But I felt sure he would be returning soon to the sardonic woman-hating gentleman I first met in the Hag’s Head Inn. Or was it, indeed, the malign effect the inn had upon all who entered?

  “But what is this?” Sir Nicholas asked, and to my embarrassment, turned to chide me. “Has not my young friend seen to your wants? I see you carrying the decanter, Elspeth.”

  Even Elspeth had the grace to flush at this cutting little setdown.

  “She intended to, but Grandmama...”

  “Ah, yes,” said Sir Nicholas. “I was sure my dear old friend Mrs. Sedley would be in it somewhere.”

  There followed a certain amount of small talk, chiefly between Mrs. Sedley and our host, and when we all adjourned to the small summer dining room, Mrs. Sedley, as her natural right, indicated that the Hardwickes should help her to the hostess’s chair at the foot of the long table. It was all so elegant—the service, the epergne in the center of the table, the lovely slim candles in their scones, and the napery heavily laced—that I was much relieved to let her play the hostess and to sit where I was placed at Sir Nicholas’s left, with a reluctant Elspeth, who shrank from his touch, on the right. I was careful to mind my manners and behave exactly as Mama and Father had taught me, but this did not make it any easier to exchange light banter as the others did.

  Sir Nicholas made several attempts but cried off when I blurted out little truths that seemed to amuse him but aroused disdain in the others. Inevitably, the matter of today’s curious happenings cropped up again as I said, “Excuse me, sir...”

  “By all means. You have not strung two words together since we sat to dinner.”

  “Then, if Elspeth and I have imagined the whole of these odd apparitions wandering across the heath, would you tell us, sir, what they truly are?”

  “Quite simple. An overactive imagination. You expected to see something of the sort and therefore you have seen it. But Mrs. Sedley has not expected, nor desired, to see any such thing, and like me, she has not seen them.”

  “Indeed, you express it delightfully, Nicholas.” Mrs. Sedley beamed down the table at her host, who spoiled this new understanding by adding, “This is not to be taken for an endorsement of the sale of Megan’s inn. Except to me. A good healthy burning is its greatest need.”

  I felt uneasy when he pronounced the name of the girl who had been the great love of his life, but Mrs. Sedley, whose daughter Megan had been, seemed much more anxious about the sale of the abandoned inn than the tragedy to Megan. I could not but sense that Sir Nicholas had felt more deeply the death of his beloved Megan Sedley than had Megan’s mother.

  “I have said, and I shall continue to observe, that those flickering lights observed on the moor and those trifling sounds within are merely what one can expect of a disused house.”

  “Yes,” said I brightly, “but then, what did Macrae and I see upon the staircase that killed the poor man?”

  Mrs. Sedley rose from her chair at the foot of the table as we stared at her in astonishment; for we had not known that she could stand so straight without help. She asked drily, “Is this true? Macrae dead ... for such a reason?”

  It was dreadful. Mrs. Sedley stood there swaying, putting much weight upon the balls of her fingers and looking excessively white.

  “She would never—do such a thing!”

  As Nicholas sprang to help her, Elspeth and I gasped at the picture conjured up, the ghostly face that I remembered so well and so painfully, and with which, apparently, Elspeth too was acquainted. I wondered when she had seen the ghost and whether she truly felt that there was something very sinister about the thing that had staggered across the moor to the Hall, hunched and hidden. In plain fact, I felt that my old Hag phantom had been seen very vividly by Elspeth.

  I did not know, however, what particular remark or fear or memory had aroused Mrs. Sedley to this desperate pitch. Mrs. Sedley looked up at Sir Nicholas, her pale eyes wide as she stared at him.

  “It is not true, you know. I did not ... She would never say I did...” And to Elspeth’s and my horror, she toppled over against Sir Nicholas.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  I was so concerned over what had happened to Mama’s old friend that I did not reflect until later upon either her peculiar words or the ease with which Sir Nicholas came to everyone’s rescue. He helped her to her chair, directed me crisply to bring water from my place setting, let her sip that while he sopped up the spilled water from her own glass, and generally cosseted Mrs. Sedley until the housekeeper and Elspeth got her into a guest room on the ground floor.

  Since it was quite late for me by this time, I suggested that perhaps when Mrs. Sedley was recovered somewhat, we should borrow a horse and carriage and drive back to Maidenmoor, where she could be comfortable. This did not go down well at all, however. Elspeth, who showed signs of wanting to agree with me, had her grandmother’s hand pressing tightly into hers so that she could not release herself, and she confessed that her grandmother’s attacks did not permit her to move about or be jounced in a carriage for several hours. I was about to suggest then that I go home myself, for I conceived that Sir Nicholas would be furious with all of us for cluttering up his home. And it would all be my fault, for I had begun it. But to my surprise, he was as adamant about that as about every other order he ever laid down.

  “What a little gudgeon you are! Trotting back that long way to the village just to inconvenience everyone at the Hall! Come now, be sensible and stay.”

  He seemed so cross about it, and looked so casually at me, that I wished with all my heart that I had never allowed myself to be carried here in the first place. But it was done now, and I could only agree and let myself be escorted back to that charming room abovestairs and told that I must not disturb anyone until after dawn, because they all “needed their sleep.”

  Since this came from Sir Nicholas, with one of his smiles, I did not know whether to laugh in answer or pretend to ignore it. It was very lowering, though, to be talked to like that, and my only consolation was that Sir Nicholas himself had escorted me to my room while delegating the servants to care for the other ladies. I hoped no one heard his rude and typical remark to me. I could not even remember the last time anyone had called me a “little gudgeon”; for Mama was in the habit of regarding me as quite grown-up, and Father was wont to say, “Do as you choose, but leave me to my accounts. And as for coinage, you must look to your Mama for that.”

  But as Sir Nicholas said good night to me, he kissed my hand exactly as he had done with Mrs. Sedley in the summer dining room, and I could not but be impressed. I do not know if he did the same for Elspeth or not, and I did not want to know.

  My foot ached a little under the arch when I closed the door of my comfortable bedchamber and began to prepare for a night’s sleep. Sir Nicholas need not have made such a point of my keeping others from their sleep, for I had been through rather more than he during this day, what with the death of poor Master Macrae, the owner of the Owl of York Tavern, and then the curious and alarming pursuit by that beast I had seen in Seven Spinney. And if that were not all, there was the strange prowler I had seen outside the Hall gates before dinner, which I had nearly convinced myself was hiding within the walls of Everett Hall at this moment.

  This thought made me turn back to the door
seeking a bolt that might protect me from unwanted intruders, but there was a mere latch, which I had already used and which had proved singularly easy for Sir Nicholas to use before dinner.

  I limped over and looked out between the drawn portieres at the enormity of the Heatherton Moor beyond the precise plantings of Everett Hall. At this time of the evening nothing was to be seen except the little glowing patches cast upon the garden below by the lights from my window. Beyond the garden and the Hall gates nothing was visible except the kind of imagined darkness that is half-darkness and half starlight, illuminating only the occasional sprig of heather or clump of gorse that one always fancied must grow in that particular spot; for by daylight, as I well knew when I remembered my home country, I would never be able to tell for a certainty which bushes I had picked out as having cast the long, haunting shadows.

  I knew perfectly well as I studied this scene that nothing either human or ghostly was out there except the dying heather, the moorland, and the prickly furze bushes of the heath; yet if I stayed here much longer, I knew I should imagine some menacing thing rising out of those shadows to terrify me.

  As I dropped the portieres together again and set about preparing for the best washing I could manage in the steaming pewter basin of water provided, and then put on my shift, which was now dried and pressed and spread on the turned-down bed, I wondered about Mrs. Sedley’s curious behavior at dinner. She had seemed quite herself, urging me to purchase the Hag’s Head and speaking as though Elspeth and I were full of preposterous imaginings when we mentioned the odd things we had seen. Yet when I returned to the story of Macrae’s death, which had certainly been induced by his vision of that face upon the staircase landing, she had babbled out things that made no sense.

  Getting into bed, I was expecting the comfort of a warmer. You may imagine my shivers upon a chilly autumn night to find that this hospitable touch had been neglected. However, it would not be the first time that such a thing had happened to me, and after shivering for a few minutes, I found the stiff sheets and warm coverlet more than adequate. I reached over and snuffed out the candles thinking to have a long and welcome night’s sleep.

  By one of nature’s absurdly painful jokes, the minute I closed my eyes my foot began to ache. I thought very hard about pleasant things, but all the horrors of the day crowded in upon me. How could I possibly go home without making the purchase that would give me my future, not to mention satisfying Father, who never ceased to worry over my obstinacy in refusing two marriage proposals? I need not buy the Hag’s Head, though no others had presented themselves thus far. Perhaps that was Mrs. Sedley’s doing. She would not wish me to see anything more presentable than her own unused property.

  As I lay in this strange bed with my eyes closed, my thoughts, almost despite myself, drifted across the rolling moor to that lonely heap of ruins where murder had been done. I thought that if only it were not haunted, it had several of the very features I sought. It was a bargain in the matter of price; it had enough bedchambers; it had good kitchen facilities; and it was just far enough from the village to keep the young ladies out of reach of the temptations of the town.

  But was the old road to the Hag’s Head in reasonable repair for any kind of use? Sir Nicholas had taken me back to Maidenmoor on that road; yet I had become hopelessly lost today searching for the same road. It was puzzling to know which way to move, if no other building offered itself for my purpose. And I would dearly love to flout the autocratic Sir Nicholas by making the purchase he was so very anxious to prevent.

  Just before drifting off into a half-sleep I remember that I wondered how far Sir Nicholas Everett would go to stop me from purchasing that useless, ill-starred old inn. What could he possibly want with it or its destruction?

  I was used to the night-long noises of a market town at home, and last night I had heard hourly chimes from the church next door to Sedley House, so that the silence in this great building, combined with the dull, nagging ache of my foot, soon awoke me.

  I fluffed up the pillow under my head and tried to think of pleasant things, but the effect of the hot water upon my foot had worn off, and I had to get out of bed and search in the dark for the pewter basin with which I had bathed earlier. The water was still warm, and I rubbed the muscles of my foot vigorously. The noise of my hand splashing water in the dark seemed so loud in the night silence that I felt it must disturb everyone in Everett Hall. For this reason I was not surprised when I heard dogs barking on the grounds below my window, and I peeked out between the portieres.

  Someone I did not at first recognize was hurrying across the grounds toward the cacophony.

  “Be still now! Still, I say!” It was Ezra Hardwicke, hurrying stiff-legged through the carefully pruned trees and shrubs to the dogs, who pulled at their chains, tugging and swinging the metal against the stone walk. I assumed that their kennels were close by and that the chains allowed them only this much freedom. They grew more and more frantic, and I began to wonder what was troubling them. I knew something of dogs, and they were certainly not carrying on this commotion without reason. Ezra Hardwicke reached the dogs, a little to one side of my windows, and began to strike at them with his cane, a vain and inadequate weapon entirely.

  “Down! You scoundrel, that will do!”

  While I was wondering when he would realize he had gone about the business stupidly, I heard Sir Nicholas’s well-known voice in the doorway below me, to my left, and lamplight flashed across the garden from that door.

  “Leave them, Ezra. And for God’s sake, be silent! You send them into a frenzy.”

  I pushed open the window, exceedingly curious to know what had caused all this commotion and how Sir Nicholas, who never let himself be defeated, would handle this noisy little scuffle. He was a very knowledgeable man and would think of something. He had no weapon, and though the stars were covered over by a gathering of storm clouds, he was still in his well-fitted dinner clothes, with no outer wrap.

  “Here, Mealy! Down, love. And you, Poacher. What a voice you have!” He clapped his hands, and the dogs bounded up to him as far as their chains would permit, fierce enough to eat him, I thought. But it seemed that they were only frolicking now that their master had come upon the scene.

  “Careful, sir. He’ll savage you. Have a care,” Hardwicke warned him, backing off precipitously.

  “What a fool you are!” was the only thanks he received, and just the sort of thing I might have expected Sir Nicholas to say. He managed to subdue the dogs, who, though ceasing to bark, still whined and suggested, to me at least, that something was amiss.

  “But sir, they were quite ferocious,” Hardwicke ventured, as extenuation of his own retreat.

  Sir Nicholas was examining the jaws of one of the dogs, remarking as though Hardwicke had not spoken, “He has a cut here across the muzzle. How did it happen?”

  Poor Ezra looked as though he would tear his thin hair. “But, sir, why did the dogs behave so strangely? Surely not—”

  “The storm, perhaps. That isn’t important. I will not have them mistreated. You know that.”

  “What did they see?” shouted Ezra.

  “Be silent. Leave this to me. Go inside.”

  The servant must have fought out his fight, for I heard a door slam, and not too long after that, having quieted the dogs, Sir Nicholas disappeared. I did not know where.

  Very much puzzled by these developments, I closed the window as silently as possible and got back into bed.

  But now the house was no longer silent, and as for me, I was prey to as many quick, nagging little moments of puzzlement as there were odd sounds. I tried to sort them out—the creak of timbers in the changing temperatures, the stealthy footstep on the stairs or along the gallery outside my room—and still there was the uneasy rustling of the dogs’ chains outside, below my windows. Ezra Hardwicke was right, and I was amazed that Sir Nicholas had not listened to him.

  What had passed the dogs in the garden, and where had it go
ne?

  I was still considering all the logical, normal explanations for these various sounds in a house that had been so still only half an hour before, when the rain began to fall, beginning much as it had yesterday on the heath, with a few big splashing drops, then a cloudburst, pelting the shrubbery below my windows and slanting across the windows themselves, rattling against the shutters, which were fastened back. A distant streak of lightning flashed faintly, and I waited with that nervous, interested suspense for the thunderclap to follow. These noises became so intense that they completely blotted out the little betraying sounds that had nagged at my nerves only minutes before within the big house.

  Worst of all, I began to think of poor Master Macrae, and from that moved on in my troubled suspicions to ask myself what Patrick Kelleher had done in the Hag’s Head after he sent me on my way. Was it even possible that he had been the “creature” who dogged my steps in the Seven Spinney and whom I had caught a glimpse of amid all that foliage? But why would he have done such a thing?

  I turned my thoughts toward home, wondering if, after all, I must look elsewhere for that school of ours. But Mama and Mrs. Sedley had been quite sure there was much more value placed upon education in this area than at home. Still, I had given Somersetshire only a cursory examination, what with Miss Higsby’s sickness in the accommodation coach, and I had eliminated the counties nearer London only because we felt the competition would be too keen and the elegance too much to compete with.

  Down the gallery a door creaked as it was opened. I wondered if Sir Nicholas’s private apartments were on this floor. A lightning flash that struck quite close to the park gates of Everett Hall gave me a bit of a start and illuminated my room briefly, even through the portieres. As always, I clenched my teeth, waiting for the thunderclap. It was fully as shattering as I had expected it to be. It was during this monstrous noise that I fancied I heard again, beneath the general disturbance of the storm, the closing of a door along the corridor. It did not trouble me. I assumed it was the same person I had heard a moment before, now returning to his room. But I marveled that this sound seemed closer. I could not help wondering how many of the household were normally housed on this floor, for the Sedleys were on the ground floor. It would have been vastly more unnerving if I had found that I was the sole inhabitant up here tonight.