Filing out of the room in groups, came the crowd who had filled it. The day had changed. The brightness of the morning was replaced by a wintry afternoon of grey sky; the air blew keen; snow began to fall. The eager spectators put up their umbrellas, if they happened to possess any, and stood to talk in excited whispers.
Crossing to the waste land, the roundabout road she chose to take on her way home, was Anna Chester. Sarah had gone striding up the nearest way; Captain Copp had been laid hold of by Supervisor Kyne, whose grievance on the score of the smugglers was sore; and Anna was alone. Her veil drawn over her white face, her eyes wearing a depth of trouble never yet seen in their sweetness, went she, looking neither to the right nor left, until she was overtaken by Miss Thornycroft.
"Anna!"
"Mary Anne!"
For a full minute they stood, looking into each other's faces of fear and pain. And then the latter spoke, a rising sob of emotion catching her breath.
"Thank you for what you have done this day, Anna! I was in doubt before; I did not know how much you had seen that night; whether you had not mercifully been spared all by the fainting fit. But now that you have given your evidence, I see how much I have to thank you for. Thank you truly. We have both forsworn ourselves: you less than I; but surely Heaven will forgive us in such a cause."
"Let us never speak of it again," murmured Anna. "I don't think I can bear it."
"Just a word first--to set my mind at rest," returned Miss Thornycroft, as she stood grasping Anna's hand in hers. "How much did you see? Did you see the pistol fired?"
"I saw only that. It was at the moment I looked out round the wall. The flash drove me back again. That and the cry that broke from Robert Hunter: upon which I fainted for the first time in my life."
"And you--recognised him--him who fired the pistol?" whispered Miss Thornycroft, glancing cautiously round as the words issued from her bloodless lips.
"Yes, I fear so."
It was quite enough. Qualified though the avowal was, Mary Anne saw that she could have spoken decisively. The two unhappy girls, burdened with their miserable secret, looked into each other's faces that sickness and terror had rendered white. Anna, as if in desperation to have her fears confirmed where no confirmation was needed, broke the silence.
"It--was--your--brother."
"Yes."
"Isaac."
Miss Thornycroft opened her lips to speak, and closed them again. She turned her head away.
"You will not betray him--and us, Anna? You will ever be cautious--silent?"
"I will be cautious and silent always; I will guard the secret jealously."
A sharp pressure of the hand in ratification of the bargain, and they parted, Anna going on her solitary way.
"Will I guard the secret! Heaven alone knows how much heavier lies the obligation on me to do so than on others," wailed Anna. "May God help me to bear it!"
Quick steps behind her, and she turned, for they had a ring that she knew too well. Pressing onwards through the flakes of snow came Isaac Thornycroft. Anna set off to run; it was in the lonely spot by the churchyard.
"Anna! Anna! Don't you know me?"
Not a word of answer. She only ran the faster--as if she could hope to outstep him! Isaac, with his long, fleet strides, overtook her with ease, and laid his hand upon her shoulder.
Like a stag brought to bay, she turned upon him, with her terror-stricken face, more ghastly, more trembling than it had yet been; and by a dexterous movement freed herself.
"Why, Anna, what is the matter? Why do you run from me?"
"There's my uncle," she panted. "Don't speak to me--don't come after me."
And sure enough, as Isaac turned, he distinguished Captain Copp at a distance. Anna had set off to run again like a wild hare, and was half-way across the heath. Isaac turned slowly back, passed the captain with a nod, and went on, wondering. What had come to Anna? Why did she fly from him?
He might have wondered still more had he been near her in her flight. Groans of pain were breaking from her; soft low moans of anguish; sighs, and horribly perplexing thoughts; driving her to a state of utter despair.
For, according to the testimony of her own eyes that ill-fated night, Anna, you see, believed the murderer to be her husband Miss Thornycroft had now confirmed it. And, not to keep you in more suspense than can be helped, we must return to that night for a few brief moments.
When Richard Thornycroft darted into the subterranean passage with the intention of warning his brother Isaac, before he reached its end the question naturally occurred to him, Why stop the boats, now Hunter is off? and he turned back again. So much has been already said. But half-way down the passage he again vacillated--a most uncommon thing in Richard Thornycroft, but the episode with Hunter had well-nigh scared his senses away. Turning about again, he retraced his steps and called to Isaac.
A private conference ensued. Richard told all without reserve, down to the point where he had watched Hunter away, under the surveillance of Cyril. "Will it be better to stop the boats or not?" he asked.
"There is not the slightest cause for stopping them, that I see," returned Isaac, who had listened attentively. "Certainly not. Hunter is gone; and if he were not, I do not think, by what you say, that he would attempt to interfere further; he'd rather turn his back a mile the other way."
"Let them come on then," decided Richard.
"They are already, I expect, putting off from the ship."
Isaac Thornycroft remained at his work; Richard went back again up the passage. Not quickly; some latent doubt, whence arising he could not see or trace, lingered on his mind still--his better angel perhaps urging him from the road he was going. Certain it was: he remembered it afterwards even more vividly than he felt it then: that a strong inclination lay upon him to stop the work for that night. But it appeared not to hold reason, and was disregarded.
He emerged from the subterranean passage, lightly shut the trap-door--which could be opened from the inside at will, when not fastened down--and took his way to the plateau to watch against intruders. This would bring it to about the time that the two young ladies had gone there, and Sarah, her apron over her head, had taken her place on the low red stone. In her evidence the woman had said it might be a quarter of an hour or twenty minutes since she met Robert Hunter starting on his journey; it had taken Richard about that time to do since what he had done; and it might have taken Robert Hunter about the same space (or rather less) to walk quickly to the wherry, and come back again. And come back again! Richard Thornycroft could have staked his life, had the question occurred to him, that Hunter would not come back: he never supposed any living man, calling himself a gentleman, could be guilty of so great treachery. But the doubt never presented itself to him for a moment.
What then was his astonishment, as he ran swiftly and stealthily (escaping the sight of Sarah Ford, owing, no doubt, to her crouching posture on the stone, and the black apron on her head) up the plateau, to see Robert Hunter? He was at its edge, at the corner farthest from the village; was looking out steadily over the sea, as if watching for the boats and their prey. Richard verily thought he must be in a dream: he stood still and strained his eyes, wondering if they deceived him; and then as ugly a word broke from him as ever escaped the lips of man.
Thunderstruck with indignation, with dismay, half mad at the fellow's despicable conduct, believing that if any in the world ever merited shooting, he did; nay, believing that the fool must court death to be there after his, Richard's, warning promise; overpowered with fury, with passion, Richard Thornycroft stood in the shade of the Round Tower, his eyes glaring, his white teeth showing themselves from between the drawn lips. At that same moment Robert Hunter, after stooping to look over the precipice, turned round; the ugly fur on the breast of his coat very conspicuous. May Richard Thornycroft be forgiven! With a second hissing oath, he drew the pistol from his breast-pocket, pointed it with his unerring hand, and fired; and the ill-fated man fell over the cliff with a yelling cry. Another shriek, more shrill, arose at Richard's elbow from the shade of the Round Tower.
"So ye cursed sea-bird," he muttered. "He has got his deserts. I would be served so myself, if I could thus have turned traitor!"
But what was it seized Richard's arm? Not a seabird. It was his sister Mary Anne. "You here!" he cried, with increased passion. "What the fury!--have you all turned mad to-night?"
"You have murdered him!" she cried, in a dread whisper--for how could she know that Anna Chester had fallen senseless and could not hear her?--"you have murdered Robert Hunter!"
"I have," he answered. "He is dead, and more than dead. If the shot did not take effect, the fall would kill him."
"Oh, Richard, say it was an accident!" she moaned, very nearly bereft of reason in her shock of horror. "What madness came over you?"
"He earned it of his own accord; earned it deliberately. I held my pistol to his head before, this night, and I spared him. I had him on his knees to me, and he took an oath to be away from this place instantly, and to be silent. I told him if he broke it, if he lingered here but for a moment, I would put the bullet into him. I saw him off; I send Cyril with him to speed him on his road; and--see!--the fool came back again. I was right to do it."
"I will denounce you!" she fiercely uttered, anger getting the better of other feelings. "Ay, though you are my brother, Richard Thornycroft! I will raise the hue and cry upon you."
"You had better think twice of that," he answered, shaking her arm in his passion. "If you do, you must raise it against your father and your father's house!"
"What do you mean?" she asked, quailing, for there was a savage earnestness in his words which told of startling truth.
"Girl! see you no mystery? can't you fathom it? You would have aided Hunter in discovering the smugglers: see you not that we are the smugglers? We are running a cargo now--now"--and his voice rose to a hoarse shriek as he pointed to the Half-moon, "and he would have turned Judas to us! He was on the watch there, on the plateau's edge, doing traitor's work for Kyne."
"He did not know it was you he would have denounced," she faintly urged, gathering in the sense of his revelation to her sinking heart.
"He did know it. The knowledge came to him tonight. He was abject enough before me, the coward, and swore he would be silent, and be gone from hence there and then. But his traitor's nature prevailed, and he has got his deserts. Now go and raise the hue and cry upon us! Bring your father to a felon's bar."
Mary Anne Thornycroft, with a despairing cry, sank down on the grass at her brother's feet. He was about to raise her, rudely enough it must be confessed, rather than tenderly, when his eye caught the form of some one advancing; he darted off at right angles across the plateau, and descended recklessly the dangerous path.
The intruder was Sarah. Miss Thornycroft, passing off her own emotion as the effect of fear at the shot, though scarcely knowing how she contrived not to betray herself, remembered Anna. She lay within the walls in a fainting-fit. Only as they went in was consciousness beginning to return to her. It must be mentioned that at this stage Sarah did not know any one had been killed.
"Who was the man?" asked Sarah of Miss Thornycroft.
"Did you see him?" was the only answer.
"Not to know him, miss; only at a distance. A regular fool he must be to fire off guns at night, to frighten folks! Was it a stranger?"
"Yes." Mary Anne wiped the dew from her cold brow as she told the lie.
They took their departure, Sarah promising not to say they had been on the plateau--to hold her tongue, in short, as to the events of the night, shot and all. But a chance passer-by who had heard the report, saw them descend. It might have been through him the news got wind.
Mary Anne Thornycroft went in. Sounds of laughter and glee proceeded from the dining-room as she passed it, and she dragged her shaking limbs upstairs to her chamber, and shut herself in with her dreadful secret. Anna Chester with her secret turned to the heath, even one more dreadful; for in the momentary glimpse she caught of the man who drew the pistol, as he stood partly with his back to her, she had recognised, as she fully believed, her husband Isaac. Had the impression wanted confirmation in her mind--which it did not--the tacit admission of his sister, now alluded to, supplied it. Miss Thornycroft had opened her lips to correct her, "not Isaac, but Richard;" and closed them again without saying it. Thought is quick; and a dim idea flew through her brain, that to divert suspicion from Richard might add to his safety. It was not her place to denounce him; nay, her duty lay in screening him. Terribly though she detested and deplored the crime, she was still his sister.
And the poor dead body had lain unseen where it fell, in the remote corner of the plateau. The smugglers ran their cargo, passing within a few yards of the dark angle where it lay, and never saw it.
The funeral took place on the Friday, and Robert Hunter was buried within sight of the place from whence he had been shot down. Any one standing on that ill-fated spot could see the grave in the churchyard corner, close by the tomb of the late Mrs. Thornycroft.
None of his friends had arrived to claim him. It would have been remarkable, perhaps, if they had, since they had not been written to. Of male relatives he had none living, so far as was believed. His sister Susan was in a remote district of Yorkshire, and it was a positive fact that her address was unknown to both Anna Chester and Miss Thornycroft. Of course, the Miss Jupps could have supplied it on application, but nobody did apply. His half-sister, Mrs. Chester, was also uncertain in her domicile, here to-day, there to-morrow, and Anna had not heard from her for some months. The old saying that "Where there's a will there's a way," might have been exemplified, no doubt, in this case; but here there was no will. To all at Coastdown interested in the unfortunate matter, it had been a blessed relief could they have heard that Robert Hunter would lie in his quiet grave unclaimed for ever, his miserable end not inquired into. Richard Thornycroft had only too good personal cause to hope this, his sister also for his sake; and Mr. Thornycroft, acting on the caution Richard gave him as to the desirability of keeping other things quiet that were done on that eventful night, tacitly acquiesced in the silence. And Anna Chester--the only one besides who could be supposed to hold interest in the deceased--shuddered at the bare idea of writing to make it known; rather would she have cut off her right hand.
"They will be coming down fast enough with their inquiries from his office in London, when they find he does not return," spoke Richard gloomily the evening previous to the funeral. "No need to send them word before that time."
It was a snowy day. Mary Anne Thornycroft stood at the corridor window, from which a view of the path crossing from the village to the churchyard, could be obtained. Only for a few yards of it; but she watched carefully, and saw the funeral go winding past. The sky was clear at the moment; the snow had ceased; but the whole landscape, far and near, presented a sheet of white, contrasting strangely with the sombre black of the procession. Such a thing as a hearse was not known in Coastdown, and the body was carried by eight bearers. The clergyman, Mr. Southall, walked first, in his surplice--it was the custom of the place--having gone down to the Mermaid with the rest. Following it were Justice Thornycroft and his son Isaac, Captain Copp and Mr. Kyne, who acted as mourners; and a number of spectators brought up the rear. Richard had gone out to a distance that day; he had business, he said. Cyril had not been heard of. Mr. Thornycroft bore the expenses of the funeral. Some money had been found in the pockets of the deceased, a sovereign in gold and some silver; nothing else except a white handkerchief.
Mary Anne strained her eyes, blinded by their tears, upon the short line, as its features came into view one by one, more distinctly than could have happened at any time but this of snow. All she had cared for in life was being carried past there; henceforth the world would be a miserable blank. Dead! Killed! Murdered!--murdered by her brother, Richard Thornycroft! Had it been done by anybody not connected with her by blood, some satisfaction might have been derived by bringing the crime home to its perpetrator. Had it been brought home to Richard--and of course she could not move to bring it--he would have battled it out, persisting he was justified. He called it justifiable homicide; she called it murder.
The distant line of black has passed now, and colours follow: men and women, boys and girls; displaying, if not all the tints of the rainbow, the shades and hues, dirt included, that prevail in the every-day attire of the great unwashed. Mary Anne glided into her room, and sank down on her knees in the darkest corner.
Some time after, when she thought they might be coming home, for the mourners would return to the Red Court, not the Mermaid, she came out again, her eyes swollen, and entered her step-mother's room. My lady, looking worse and worse, every day bringing her palpably nearer the grave, sat with her prayer-book in her hand She had been reading the burial service. Ah, how changed she was; how changed in spirit!
"I suppose it is over," she said, in a subdued tone, as she laid the book down.
"Yes; by this time."
"May God rest his soul!" she breathed, to herself rather than to her companion.
Mary Anne covered her face with her hand, and for some moments there was perfect silence.
"I shall be going hence to-morrow, as you know," resumed Lady Ellis, "never to return, never perhaps to hold further communication with the Red Court Farm. I would ask you one thing first, Mary Anne, or the doubt and trouble will follow me: perhaps mix itself up with my thoughts in dying. What of Cyril?"
"Of Cyril?" returned Miss Thornycroft, lifting her face, rather in surprise. "We have not heard from him."
"Of course I know that. What I wish to ask is--what are the apprehensions?"
"There are none. Papa and my brothers seem perfectly at their ease in regard to him."
"Then whence arises this great weight of care, of tribulation, that lies on you?--that I can see lies on you, Mary Anne?"
"It is not on Cyril's account. The events of the last few days have frightened me," she hastened to add. "They have startled others as well as me."
"Ah, yes; true. And it seems to me so sad that you did not know the man who fired the pistol," continued Lady Ellis, who had no suspicion that Miss Thornycroft had not told the whole truth. "But to return to Cyril. If it be as you say, that they are easy about him, why, they must know something that I and others do not. I have asked your papa, but he only puts me off. Mary Anne, you might tell me."
Mary Anne made no immediate reply. She was considering what to do.
"The thought of Cyril is troubling me," resumed Lady Ellis. "As I lay awake last night, I thought how much I owed him. Were he my own son, his welfare could not be dearer to me than it is. Surely, Mary Anne, whatever you may know of him, I may share it. The secret--if it be a secret--will be sacred with me."
"Yes, I am sure it will," spoke Mary Anne impulsively. "Not that it is any particular secret," she added, with hesitation, framing the communication cautiously; "but still, papa has reasons for not wishing it to be known. He thinks Cyril has gone to Holland."
"To Holland?"
"Yes; we have friends there. And a ship was off lying o here on Sunday night with other friends on board. Some of them, subsequent to the--the accident--came on shore in a little boat, and papa and Richard feel quite certain that Cyril went on board with them when they returned. But there are reasons why this must not be told to the public."
"What a relief!" cried the invalid. "My dear, it is safe with me. Dear Cyril! he will live to fulfil God's mission yet in the world. I shall not see him for a last farewell here, but we shall say it in heaven. Not a farewell there--a happy greeting."
A sort of muffled sound downstairs, and Mary Anne quitted the room to look. Yes, they were coming in in their black cloaks and hatbands, having left Robert Hunter in the grave in St. Peter's churchyard.
For all that could be seen at present he seemed likely to lie there at rest, undisturbed, uninquired after. And the name of his slayer with him.
April. And a fine spring evening.
The weeks have gone on since that miserable January time, bringing but little change to Coastdown or to those in it. Robert Hunter rested in his grave, uninquired for--though as to the word "rested" more hereafter--and Cyril Thornycroft had never returned. Lady Ellis had died in Cheltenham only a week after she went back to it.
That Cyril's remaining away so long and his not writing was singular in the extreme, no one doubted. Mr. Thornycroft grew uneasy, saying over and over again that some accident must have happened to him. Richard, however, had his private theory on the point, which he did not tell to the world. He believed now that Cyril and Hunter had returned that night together; that Cyril had witnessed the deliberate shot, had put off to the ship, and in his condemnation of the act would not come home to the Red Court so long as he, Richard, was in it.
But Richard could not tell this to his father, and Mr. Thornycroft one morning suddenly ordered his son Isaac abroad--to France, to Holland, to Flanders--to every place and town, in fact, where there was the least probability of Cyril's being found. The illicit business they had been engaged in caused them to have relations with several places on the Continent, and Cyril might be at any one of them. Isaac had but now returned--returned as he went, neither seeing nor hearing aught of Cyril. It was beginning to be more than singular. Surely if Cyril were within postal bounds of communication with England, he would write!
The supposition, held from the first that he had gone off in the smuggling boats to the ship that night, and sailed with her on her homeward voyage, was far more probable than it might seem to strangers. Richard and Isaac had each done the same more than once; as, in his younger days had Mr. Thornycroft, thereby causing no end of alarm; to his wife. Cyril, it is true, was quite different in disposition, not at all given to wild rovings; but they had assumed the fact, and been easy. Richard, unwillingly, but with a view to ease her suspense, imparted the theory he had recently adopted to his sister; and she thought he might be right. As Mary Anne observed to her own heart, it was a miserable business altogether, looked at from any point.
No direct confidence had been reposed in Isaac. Richard shrank from it. Isaac had many estimable qualities, although he helped to cheat Her Majesty's revenue, and thought it glorious fun. But he could not avoid entertaining suspicions of his brother, and one day he asked a question. "Never mind," shortly replied Richard; "Hunter got his deserts." It was no direct avowal, but Isaac drew his own conclusions, and was awfully shocked. He was as different from Richard in mind, in disposition, in the view he took of things in general, as light is from dark. The blow to Isaac was dreadful. He could not, so to say, lift up his head from it; it lay on him like an incubus. Now, the coldness with which Anna had ever since treated him was explained, satisfactorily enough to his own mind. As a murderer's brother, her avoidance of him was only natural. No doubt she was overwhelmed with horror at being tied to him. If he could but have divined that she suspected him! But they were all going in for mistakes; Isaac amongst the rest.
As if the real sorrow, the never-ceasing apprehension under which some of them lived, were not enough to bear, rumours were about to arise of an unreal one.
On this evening, in early April, Miss Thornycroft was alone. As she paced her parlour, in the stately mourning robes of black silk and crape, ostensibly worn for her stepmother, the blight that had fallen on her spirit and her heart might be traced in her countenance. The untimely and dreadful fate of Robert Hunter, to whom she had been so passionately attached, was ever present to her; the false part she had played at the inquest reddened her brow with shame; the guilt of her brother Richard haunted her dreams. She would start up in fright from sleep, seeing the officers of justice coming to apprehend him; she would fancy sometimes she saw her father taken, preparatory to the illicit practices he had carried on being investigated before a criminal tribunal. Mingling with this--worse, if possible, than the rest--was the keenest weight of self-reproach. She could not hide from herself, and no longer tried to do it, that her own deliberate disobedience had brought it all about--all, all! But for flying in the face of her father's express commands, in not stopping the visit of Robert Hunter, he had been living now, and Richard's hand guiltless.
All this was telling upon Mary Anne Thornycroft. You would scarcely know her, pacing the lonely drawing-room, pale and sad, for the blooming, high-spirited, haughty girl of two months before. Her father and Richard had gone to London on business, Isaac was out, she knew not where, and she was alone. Her thoughts were dwelling on that fatal night--when were they ever absent from it?--and were becoming, as they sometimes did, unbearable. A nervous feeling came creeping over her; it had done so at times of late, fearless though she was by nature: a horror of being alone; a dread of her own lonely self; of the lonely room and its two candles; an imperative demand for companionship. She opened the door, and glided across the hall and lighted passages to the kitchen, framing an excuse as she went.
"Sinnett, will you--where's Sinnett?"
The maids, three of whom were present, stood up at her entrance. They had been seated at the table making household linen.
"Sinnett is upstairs, miss. Shall I call her?"
"No; she will be down directly, I dare say. I'll wait."
At that moment a sort of wild noise, half shriek, half howl, long-continued and ever-recurring, arose from without--at a distance as yet. Mary Anne Thornycroft turned her ear to listen, her face blanching with dread fear; the least thing was sufficient to excite fear now.
The sounds approached nearer: they seemed to come from one in the very extremity of terror, and, just then Sinnett entered the kitchen. Perhaps it has not been forgotten that the windows, of modern date, looked on the side walk, and thence towards the church and village. The shutters were not yet closed, the blinds not drawn down. In another instant, as the frightened women stood together in a group, one window was flung up, and a form propelled itself in, smashing a pane of glass. It proved to be Joe, the carter's boy; a sensitive, delicate lad, who had recently lost his mother, and was a favourite at the Red Court Farm. He lay for a moment amidst the shivers of glass, then rose up and clasped tight hold of Sinnett, his white face and shivering frame betokening some extraordinary cause of terror.
They put him in a chair, and held him there, he clinging to them. Miss Thornycroft authoritatively stopped all questions until he should be calmer. Sinnett brought him some wine, and the boy tried to sip it; but he could not keep his teeth still, and he bit a piece out of the glass. He looked over his shoulder at the window perpetually in ghastly fear, so one of the servants closed and barred the shutters. By degrees, he brought out that he had "seen a ghost."
Ghosts were rather favourite appendages to Coastdown, as we have read. They were not less implicitly believed in by the lower classes (not to bring in others) than they used to be, so the maids screamed and drew nearer Joe. This ghost, however, was not the old ghost of the plateau; as the boy is explaining, sobbing between whiles; but--Robert Hunter's.
"Nonsense!" reproved Sinnett. "Don't you be a coward, Joe, but just speak up and tell your tale sensibly. Come!"
"I went for the newspaper to Captain Copp's, as sent," answered the boy, doing his best to obey. "Mrs. Copp couldn't find it, and thought the captain had took it in his pocket to the Mermaid. Coming back here to say so, I see a figure in the churchyard hiding, like, behind a tombstone. I thought it were old Parkes, a-taking the short cut over the graves to his home, and I stood and looked at him. Then, as he rose himself a bit higher, I see him out and out. It were Mr. Hunter, with his own face and his own coat on--that black and white thing."
"His own coat!"
"It were," groaned the lad. "I never were thinking of anybody but Parkes, but when I once saw the coat and the face, I see it were Mr. Hunter."
Joe's hearers did not know what to make of this. Miss Thornycroft privately thought she must fall in a fit, too, she felt so sick and ill.
"Was the face--" began one of the maids, and stopped. Remembering Miss Thornycroft's presence, she substituted another word for the one she had been about to speak. "Was the face red?"
"No. White. It--"
At this juncture there came a sharp knock at the window, as if the ghost were knocking to come in. The boy howled, the women shrieked; and the ghost knocked again.
"Who's there?" called out Sinnett through the shutters.
"It's me," answered a voice, which they recognised for that of Sarah Ford. "Is the kitchen a-fire?"
Sinnett went to the entrance-door and called to her to come in. On occasions, when pressed for time, Sarah would give her messages at the kitchen-window, to save going round. She had brought the newspaper, one lent by the Red Court to Captain Copp: Mrs. Copp had found it after Joe's departure.
"He have seen a ghost," lucidly explained one of the maids, pointing to Joe.
"Oh," said Sarah, who had a supreme contempt for such things, regarding them as vanities, akin to hysterics and smelling salts.
"I see it in the churchyard, close again his own grave," said the boy, looking helplessly at Sarah.
"See a old cow," responded she, emphatically. "That's more likely. They strays in sometimes."
"It were Mr. Hunter's ghost," persisted Joe. "He wore that there fur coat, and he stared at me like anything. I see his eyes a-glaring."
"The boy has been dreaming," cried Sarah, pityingly, as she turned to Sinnett. "I should give him a good dose of Epsom salts."
Which prescription Joe by no means approved of. However, Sarah could not stay to see it enforced; and we must go out with her.
Her master had come in when she reached home. It was supper time, and she began to lay the cloth. Old Mrs. Copp was there: she had arrived the previous day (after spending the winter in London) on another long visit. Peering through her tortoiseshell spectacles at Sarah, she told her in her decisive way that she had been twice as long taking home the newspaper as she need have been.
"I know that," answered Sarah, with composure. "A fine commotion I found the Red Court in: the maids screeching fit to deafen you, and young Joe in convulsions. I thought the kitchen-chimbly must be a-fire, and they were trying whether noise would put it out."
The captain looked up at this. He was in an easy-chair at the corner of the hearth-rug, a glass of rum-and-water on a small stand at his elbow: old Mrs. Copp sat in front of the fire, her feet on the fender; Amy was putting things to rights on a side-table near the sofa, and Anna Chester sat back on a low stool in the shade on the other side of the fire-place, a book on her knee, which she was making believe to read.
"Was the chimney on fire?" snapped Mrs. Copp.
"Just as much as this is," answered Sarah, making a rattle with the knives and forks. "Joe was telling them he had just seen Robert Hunter's ghost. They screeched at that."
The captain burst into a laugh: he had no more faith in ghosts than Sarah had. Sea-serpents and mermaids were enough marvel for him. Anna glanced up with a perceptible shudder.
"By the way," said Mrs. Copp, taking her feet off the fender and turning round to speak, "I should like to come to the bottom of that extraordinary business. You slipped out of my questioning this morning, Anna; I hardly knew how. Who was the man that fired the pistol on the plateau? As to saying you did not see him properly, you may as well tell it to the moon. My belief is you are screening him," concluded shrewd Mrs. Copp, watching the poor girl's gradually whitening face.
"If I thought that; if I thought she could screen him, I'd--I'd--send her back to Miss Jupp's," roared Captain Copp, who was still very sore in regard to the part his women-kind had played in the transaction. "Screen a land murderer!"
Anna burst out crying.
"My impression is, that it was Cyril Thornycroft," resumed Mrs. Copp. "If he had not got something bad on his conscience why should he run away, and keep away."
Sarah took up the word, putting a tray of tumblers down to do it. "He may have his reasons for staying away, and nobody but himself know anything about them. But truth's truth, all the world over, and I'll stand to it. I don't care whether it was the King of England, or whether it was old Nick--it was not Cyril Thornycroft."
"She is right," nodded the captain. "He'd be the least likely in all Coastdown to rush on to the plateau at night, armed like a pirate, and shoot a man. It was no more Cyril Thornycroft did that than it was me, mother."
"But, Sarah, what about poor Joe and the ghost?" interposed her mistress gently, upon whom the tale had made an unpleasant impression.
"Some delusion of his, ma'am: as stands to reason. I don't believe the boy has been right since his mother died; he has had nothing but a down, scared look about him. He is just the one to see a ghost, he is."
"Where did he see it?"
"In the churchyard, he says, with its fur coat on."
"Fur coat!" broke in Captain Copp, his face aglow with merriment. "He meant a white sheet."
"Ah, he made a mistake there," said Sarah. And it was really something laughable to see how she as well as her master (mocking sceptics!) enjoyed the ghost in their grim way. In the midst of it, who should come in but Isaac Thornycroft.
He had not been a frequent visitor of late, rather to the regret of the hospitable captain. Set at rest on the score of any surreptitious liking for him on Anna's part--for it was impossible not to note her continual avoidance of him now--the captain would have welcomed him always in his pride and pleasure. Isaac Thornycroft was a vast favourite of his, and this was only the second visit he had paid since his return from abroad. Isaac looked as if he would like to join in the merriment, utterly unconscious what the cause might be.
"It's the best joke I've heard this many a day," explained the captain. "Your boy up at the Red Court--that Joe."
"Yes," said Isaac, the corners of his mouth relaxing in sympathy with the sailor's. "Well?"
"He went flying through the air, bellowing enough to arouse the neighbourhood, and tumbled in at your kitchen window in a fit, saying he had seen Robert Hunter's ghost."
"Breaking the glass and setting the maids a-screeching like mad," put in Sarah. "He saw it in the churchyard, he says, in its fur coat."
A troubled expression passed across Isaac's countenance. Captain Copp, attempting to drink some rum-and-water while he laughed, began to choke.
"What absurd story can they be getting up?" cried Isaac, sternly. "Some rumour of this sort--that Hunter had been seen in the churchyard--was abroad yesterday."
"You never saw a boy in such a state of fright, sir," observed Sarah. "Whether he saw anything or nothing, he'll not get over it this many a week."
"Saw anything or nothing! What d'ye mean?" fiercely demanded Captain Copp, suspending his laughter for the moment. "What d'ye suppose he saw?"
"Not a ghost," independently retorted Sarah. "I'm not such a simpleton. But some ill-disposed fellow may have dressed himself up to frighten people."
"If so, he shall get his punishment," spoke Isaac Thornycroft, with the imperative authority of a magistrate's son.
Captain Copp broke into laughter still. He could not forget the joke; but somehow all inclination for merriment seemed to have gone out of Isaac. He sat silent and abstracted for a few minutes longer, and then took his leave, declining to partake of supper.
"Where's Miss Anna gone?" cried the Captain to Sarah, suddenly missing her. "Tell her we are waiting."
Isaac lingered unseen in the little hall until she appeared, and took her hand in silence.
"Anna, this--"
But she contrived to twist it from him and turned to the parlour. He drew her forcibly to him, speaking in a whisper.
"Are you going to visit upon me for ever the work of that miserable night?"
"Hush! they will hear you."
But there was no other answer. Her face grew white, her lips dry and trembling.
"Don't you know that you are my wife?"
"Oh, heaven, yes! I would rather have died. I would die now to undo that night's work."
She seemed bewildered, as if unconscious of her words; but there was always the struggle to get from him. Had he been an ogre who might eat her, she could not have evinced more terror. Sarah opened the kitchen door, and Anna took the opportunity to escape. Isaac looked after her. If ever misery, horror, despair, were depicted on a human countenance, they were on Anna's.
"I did not think she was one to take it up like this," he said, as he let himself out. And in the tone of his voice, despairing as her face, there was a perfectly hopeless sound, as if he felt that he could not combat fate.
By the next day the story of the ghost, singular to say, had spread all over Coastdown; singular, because the report did not come from Joe, or from any of Joe's hearers. It appeared that a young fellow of the name of Bartlet, a carpenter's apprentice, in passing the churchyard soon after poor Joe must have passed it, saw the same figure, which he protested--and went straight to the Mermaid and protested--was that of Mr. Hunter. He was a daring lad of sixteen, as hardy as Joe was timid. The company at the Mermaid accused him of having got frightened and fancied it; he answered that he feared "neither ghost nor devil," and persisted in his story with so much cool equanimity, that his adversaries were staggered.
"It is well known that the ghosts of murdered people have been seen to walk," decided Mrs. Pettipher, the landlady, "and that of poor Mr. Hunter may be there. But as to the fur-coat, that can't be. It must have been a optical delusion of yours, Tom Bartlet. The coat's here; we have held possession of it since the inquest; for the ghost to have it on in the churchyard is a moral impossibility."
"I'll never speak again if it hadn't got the coat upon it," loudly persisted young Bartlet. "But for that white coat, staring out in the moonlight, I might never have turned my head to the churchyard."
"Had it got that there black fur down it, Tom?" demanded a gentleman, taking his long pipe from his mouth to speak.
"In course it had. I tell ye it was the coat, talk as you will."
This was the tale that spread in Coastdown. When the additional testimony of Joe and the maids at the Red Court Farm came to be added to it, something like fear took possession of three-parts of the community. The ghost of the plateau, so long believed in, was more a tradition than a ghost, after all; latterly, at any rate, nobody had been frightened by it; but this spirit haunting the churchyard was real--at least in one sense of the word. An uncomfortable feeling set in. And when in the course of a day or two other witnesses saw it, or professed to see it, people began to object to go abroad after nightfall in the direction of the churchyard. A young man in the telegraph office at Jutpoint brought over a message for Isaac Thornycroft. He was a stranger to Coastdown, and had to inquire his way to the Red Court Farm: misunderstanding the direction, he took at first the wrong turning, which brought him to the churchyard. Afterwards, the despatch at length delivered, he turned into the Mermaid for a glass of ale, saying incidentally, not in any fear, he had seen "sum'at" in the churchyard, a queer fellow that seemed to be dodging about behind the upright gravestones. He had never seen or heard of Robert Hunter; he knew nothing of the report of the ghost; but his description of the "sum'at" tallied so exactly with the appearance expected, and especially with the remarkable coat, that no doubt remained. Upon which some ten spirits, well warmed with brandy-and-water, started off arm-in-arm to the churchyard, there and then--and saw nothing for their pains but the tombstones. Captain Copp heard of the expedition, and went into a storm of indignation at grown men showing themselves to be so credulous.
"Go out to a churchyard to look for a ghost! Serve 'em right to put 'em into irons till their senses come to 'em!"
Thus another day or two passed on, Mr. Thornycroft and Richard being still absent from home. Fears were magnified; fermentation increased; for, according to popular report, the spirit of Robert Hunter appeared nightly in St Peter's churchyard.