Works of Ellen Wood

by Ellen Wood

  It should be mentioned that after a week’s attendance on Mrs. Grey, Nurse Chaffen had been discharged. The patient was then going on quite well: and, as Mr. Moore saw that it worried her to have the nurse there — for whom she seemed to have conceived an insurmountable dislike — he took her away. The summary dismissal did not please the nurse: and she revenged herself by reporting that the Maze had a ghost in it As a rule, people laughed at her, and thought no more about it: this afternoon her tale was to bear different fruit.

  She told it consecutively. How she had been quite flurried by being called out by Dr. Moore all on a sudden; how he had taken her straight off to the Maze without saying where it was she was going till she got to the gate; how she and the doctor had seen the gentleman at the top of the stairs (which she took it to be the sick lady’s husband), and watched him vanish into an end room, and had never seen the least sign of him afterwards; how the servant, Mrs. Hopley, had vowed through thick and thin that no gentleman was, or had been, or could have been in the house, unbeknown to her and Hopley.

  Nurse Chaffen talked away to her heart’s content, enlarging upon points of her story. Not one of them interrupted her: not one but would have listened with interest had she run on until midnight Mrs. Jinks from her love of marvellous tales; the detective be cause he believed this might be the clue he wanted to Philip Salter; and Miss Blake in her resentful condemnation of Sir Karl Andinnian. For, that the “gentleman in dinner dress” was no other than Sir Karl, who had stolen in on one of his secret visits, she could have staked her life upon.

  “A tall gentleman with dark hair, you say it looked like!” questioned Mr. Strange indifferently.

  “Tall for certain, sir. As to his hair, I don’t know; it might have been darkish. I see he had nice white teeth.”

  “Salter had good teeth,” was the mental comment of the detective. “I have found him.”

  “And in dinner dress?” added Miss Blake with a cough.

  “So it looked like, ma’am. The sort of coat that gentlefolks wears in an evening.”

  “And you mean to say you never see him after; never but that there one time?” tartly interposed the Widow Jinks.

  “Never at all. The rooms was all open to daylight while I was there, but he wasn’t in never a one of ‘em.”

  “Then I tell you what, Betsey Chaffen; it was a ghost, and you need not hesitate to stand to it.”

  “Well, you see he didn’t look like a ghost, but like an ordinary gentleman,” confessed Mrs. Chaffen. “What came over me, and what I can’t make out, was Ann Hopley’s standing it out that neither ghost nor gentleman was there: she said she’d take her oath to it.”

  “Thank you, you’ve done my hand up beautifully, Mrs. Chaffen,” said the patient. “I should give my credence to the spirit theory. Did Mr. Moore see the appearance of this ghostly gentleman?”

  “Yes he did, sir. I’m sure he did. For he lifted his head like at the gentleman, and stood still when he got to the top of the stairs, staring at the room he had vanished into. I told him a day or two afterwards that Mrs. Hopley denied that any one had been there, and the doctor quietly said, ‘Then we must have been mistaken,’ I did not like to ask whether he thought it was a ghost.”

  “Oh! think you may depend upon the ghost,” returned Mr. Strange, biting his lips to prevent a laugh.

  “Well, sir, queer stories was told of that Maze house in the late tenant’s time. My cousin Jinks here knows that well enough.”

  “It was haunted by more than one ghost then, if all folks told true,” assented Mrs. Jinks. “Mr. Throckton’s son — a wild young blade he was — hung hisself there. I was but a girl at the time.”

  “Ah, one of the old ghosts come back again; not been laid yet,” solemnly remarked the detective, staring at Mrs. Chaffen. “Did the lady herself seem alarmed?”

  “Well, sir, I can’t say she did then, because she couldn’t have seen it, and was too ill besides. But she had got a curious manner with her.”

  “Curious?” questioned Mr. Strange.

  “Yes, sir, curious. As if she was always frightened. When everything was as still as still could be, she’d seem to be listening like, as though expecting to hear something. Now and then she’d start up in bed in a fright, and cry out What was that? — when there had been no noise at all.”

  “Feverish fancies,” quietly remarked Mr. Strange, with a cough.

  By and by, the party separated. As Nurse Chaffen was descending to the kitchen, leaving Mrs. Jinks putting the room straight, Miss Blake, who had gone down first, put forth her hand and drew the nurse into Mr. Cattacomb’s parlour; that reverend man being absent on some of his pastoral calls.

  “I have been so much interested in this that you have been telling us, nurse,” she breathed. “It seems quite to have taken hold of me. What was the gentleman like? Did he resemble any one you know — Sir Karl Andinnian, for instance?”

  “Why, ma’am, how can I tell who he resembled? — I didn’t get enough look at him for that,” was the answer. “I saw his head and the tails of his coat when he turned — and that was all. Except his teeth: I did see them.”

  “And they were white teeth — good teeth?”

  “Oh, beauties. White and even as a die.”

  “Sir Karl’s teeth are white and even,” nodded Miss Blake to herself. “Had Mrs. Grey any visitors while you were there, nurse?”

  “Never a one. Never a soul came inside the gates, good or bad, but the doctor. I don’t fancy the lady has made friends in the place at all, ma’am. She likes to keep herself to herself, Ann Hopley thinks, while Mr. Grey’s away.”

  “Oh, naturally,” said Miss Blake. And she dismissed the woman.

  The Widow Jinks had a surprise that night. Mr.

  Strange, hitherto so quiet and well conducted, asked for the latch-key! She could not forbear a caution as she gave it him: not to stay out too late on account of his health. He laughed pleasantly in answer; saying he expected a friend down by the last train from London, and might stay out late with him.

  But he never went near the station, and he met no friend. Keeping as much in the shades of night as the very bright moon allowed him to do, Mr. Strange arrived by a roundabout way at the gate of the Maze, and let himself in with a master-key.

  “The dolt I was, never to have suspected this shut-in place before!” he exclaimed. “Salter is lying here in concealment: there can be no doubt of it: and if his career’s at an end he may thank his own folly in having allowed himself to be seen by the woman, Chaffen. Wonder who the sick lady is? Perhaps his wife: perhaps not. And now — how to get through this maze that they talk of? Knowing something of mazes, I daresay I shall accomplish it without trouble.”

  And he did. His keen intelligence, sharpened no doubt by experience, enabled him, if not to hit upon the clue, at least to get through the maze. A small compass was hanging to his watch-guard, and he lighted a match frequently to consult it. So he got through. He regarded the house from all points; he penetrated to the outer path or circle, and went round and round it: he made, so to say, the outer premises his own. Then he went through the maze to reconnoitre the house again.

  It lay quiet, steeped in the moonlight. He stood at the back of the lawn, against the laurel trees that were beyond the flower beds, and gazed at it In one of the rooms a night-light was burning faintly, and he fancied he could hear the continuous wail of an infant. To make sure whether it was so, or not — though in truth it mattered not to him, and was a very probable thing to happen — he stood forward a little on the lawn: but as that brought him into the moonlight, he retreated into the shade again. Most of the windows had blinds or curtains drawn before them; the only one that had none was the casement over the portico. Mr. Strange stood there as if rooted to the spot, making his silent observations.

  “Yes; that’s where my gentleman is lying concealed, safe enough! Safe enough as he thinks. There may be some difficulty in as safely unearthing him. He’d not dare to be here wi
thout facilities for guarding against surprise and for getting away on the first sound of the alarm bugle. This is a queer old house: there may be all kinds of hiding places in it. I must go to work cautiously, and it may be a long job. Suppose I look again to the door fastenings?”

  The moon was beginning to wane when the detective officer with his false key got out again; and he thought he had his work tolerably well cut out to his hand.

  The faint wailing had not been fancy. For the first week or two of the child’s life it had seemed to thrive well, small though it was; but, after that, it began to be a little delicate, and would sometimes wail as though in pain. On this night the child — who slept with its mother — woke up and began its wail. Ann Hopley, whom the slightest noise awoke, hearing that her mistress did not seem to be able to soothe it, left her own bed to try and do so. Presently, in going to fetch some medicine-cordial for the child, she had to pass the casement window in the passage; the one that was uncurtained. The exceeding beauty of the night struck her, and she paused to look out upon it, the old black shawl she had thrown on being drawn closely round her. The grass shone in the moonlight; some of the leaves of the laurels flickered white in its rays. At that self-same moment, as the woman looked, some movement directed her attention to these very laurels: and to her utter horror she thought she saw a man standing there, apparently watching the house.

  The sickness of intense fear seized upon her as she drew aside — but the black shawl and the small diamond panes of the casement window had prevented her from being observed. Yes: she was not mistaken. The man came forth for an instant into the moonlight, and then went back again. Ann Hopley’s fear turned her heart to sickness. Her first impulse was to rush on through the passages and arouse Sir Adam Andinnian. Her second impulse was to wait and watch. She remembered her master’s most dangerous fiery temperament, and the pistols he kept always loaded. This intruding man might be but some wretched night marauder, who had stolen in after the fruit. Watching there, she saw him presently go round in the direction of the fruit-trees, and concluded that her surmise was correct.

  So she held her tongue to her master and mistress. The latter she would not alarm; the former she dared not, lest another night he should take up his stand at the window, pistol in hand. Two things puzzled her the next morning: the one was, how the man could have got in; the other, that neither fruit nor flowers seemed to have been taken.

  That same day, upon going to the gate to answer a ring, she found herself confronted by a strange gentleman, who said he had called from hearing the house was to let, and he wished to look at it Ann Hopley thought this rather strange. She assured him it was a mistake: that the house was not to let: that Mrs. Grey had no intention of leaving. When he pressed to go in and just look at the house, “in case it should be let later,” she persisted in denying him admittance, urging her mistress’s present sick state as a reason for keeping out all visitors.

  “Is Mr. Grey still at home!” then asked the applicant.

  “Mr. Grey has not been at home,” replied Ann Hopley. “My mistress is alone.”

  “Oh, indeed! Not been here at all?”

  “No, sir. I don’t know how soon he may be coming. He is abroad on his travels.”

  “What gentleman is it, then, who has been staying here lately?”

  Ann Hopley felt inwardly all of a twitter. Outwardly she was quietly self-possessed.

  “No gentleman has been here at all, sir. You must be mistaking the house for some other one, I think. This is the Maze.”

  “A lady and gentleman and two servants, I understand, are living here.”

  “It is quite a mistake, sir. My mistress and us two servants live here — me and my husband — but that’s all. Mr. Grey has not been here since we came to the place.”

  “Now that’s a disappointment to me,” cried the stranger. “I have lost sight of a friend of mine, named Grey, for the past year or two, and was hoping I might find him here. You are sure you don’t know when Mr. Grey may be expected?”

  “Quite sure, sir. My mistress does not know, herself.”

  The stranger stepped back from the gate to take his departure. In manner he was a very pleasant man, and his questions had been put with easy courtesy.

  “And you are equally sure the house is not about to be vacated?”

  “I feel sure of this, that if Mrs. Grey had thoughts of vacating it, she would have informed me. But in regard to any point connected with the house, sir, you had better apply to the landlord, Sir Karl Andinnian.”

  “Thank you; yes, that may be the best plan. Good morning,” he added, taking off his hat with something of French civility.

  “Don’t think she is to be bribed,” thought he as he walked away. “At least not easily. Perhaps I may in time work my way on to it.”

  Ann Hopley, locking the gate with double strength — at least, in imagination — pushed through the maze without well knowing whether she was on her head or her heels, so entirely had terror overtaken her. In the height and shape of this man, who had been thus questioning her, she fancied she traced a resemblance to the one who was watching the house in the night. What if they were the same?

  “The end is coming!” she murmured, clasping her faithful hands. “As sure as my poor master is alive, the end is coming.”

  Not to her master or his wife, but to Karl Andinnian, did she impart all this. It happened that Karl went over to the Maze that evening. Ann Hopley followed him out when he departed, and told him of it amidst the trees.

  It startled him in a more painful degree even than it had startled her: for, oh, what were her interests in the matter as compared with his?

  “Inside the grounds! — watching the house at night!” he repeated with a gasp.

  “Indeed, indeed he was, sir!”

  “But who is it?”

  “I don’t know,” said Ann; “I hoped it was only some thief who had come after the fruit: I thought he might have got over from the fields by means of a high ladder. That would have been nothing. But if the man who came to the gate to-day is the same man, it must mean mischief.”

  “You have not told my brother?”

  “How could I dare to tell him, sir? He might watch for the man; and, if he came another night, shoot him. That would make things worse.”

  “With a vengeance,” thought Karl. What was there to do? What could he do? Karl Andinnian went out, the question beating itself into his brain. Why, there seemed nothing for it but to wait and watch. He took off his hat and raised his bare head to the summer sky, in which some stars were twinkling, wishing he was there, in that blessed heaven above where no pain can come. What with one tribulation and another, earth was growing for him a hard resting-place.

  CHAPTER VI.

  At Afternoon Service.

  THE still quietness of the Sabbath morning shed its peace over Foxwood. Within the Court of that name — where the lawns were green and level, and the sweet flowers exhaled their perfume, and a tree here and there was already putting on its autumn tints — the aspect of peace seemed to be more especially exhaled.

  The windows of the rooms stood open. Inside one of them the breakfast was on the table yet, Miss Blake seated at it. Matins at St. Jerome’s had been unusually prolonged; and Sir Karl and Lady Andinnian had taken breakfast when she got home. The Reverend Damon Puff had now come to help Mr. Cattacomb; imparting to St. Jerome’s an additional attraction.

  While Miss Blake took her breakfast, Lucy went out amidst her flowers. The scent of the mignonette filled the air, the scarlet of the geraniums made the beds brilliant. Lucy wore one of her simple muslin dresses; it had sprigs of green upon it — for the weather was still that of summer, though the season was not, and the nightingales were no longer heard of an evening. Trinity church boasted a set of sweet-toned bells, and they were ringing on the air. When the Sacrament was administered — the first Sunday in each month — they generally did ring before service. This was the first Sunday in September. Lucy stooped
to pick some mignonette as she listened to the bells. She was getting to look what she was — worn and unhappy. Nothing could be much less satisfactory than her life: it seemed to herself sometimes that she was like a poor flower withering for lack of sunshine. For the first time for several weeks she meant, that day, to stay for the after-service: her mind had really been in too great a chaos before: but this week she had been schooling herself in preparation for it, and praying and striving to feel tranquil Karl came round the terrace from his room and crossed the lawn. In his hand he held a most exquisite rose, and offered it to her. She thanked him as she took it. In manner they were always courteous to one another.

  “What a lovely day it is!” she said. “So calm and still.”

  “And not quite so hot as it was a few weeks ago,” he replied. “Those must be Mr. Sumnor’s bells.”

  “Yes. I wish they rang every Sunday. I think — it may be all fancy, but I can’t help thinking it — that people would go to church more heartily if the bells rang for them as they are ringing now, instead of calling them with the usual ding-dong.”

  “There is something melancholy in the ringing of bells,” observed Karl, in abstraction.

  “But, when the heart is in itself melancholy, the melancholy of the bells brings to it a feeling of soothing consolation,” was Lucy’s hasty answer. And the next moment she felt sorry that she had said it. Never, willingly, did she allude to aught that could touch on their estrangement.

  “Talking of church, Lucy,” resumed Karl, in a different and almost confidential tone, “I am beginning to feel really annoyed about that place, St. Jerome’s. They are going too far. I wish you would speak a word of caution to Theresa.”

  “I — I scarcely like to,” answered Lucy, after a pause, her delicate cheek faintly flushing, for she was conscious that she had not dared to talk much on any score with Theresa lately, lest Theresa might allude to the subject of the Maze. Fearing that she avoided her when she could, so as to give no opportunity for private conversation. “She is so much older and wiser than I am—”