It was a gusty night; the wind violently high even for the seaside; and Miss Thornycroft sat over the fire in her own sitting-room, listening to it as it whirled round the house and went booming away over the waste of waters.
Anna Chester was with her. Anna had shunned the Red Court of late; but she could not always refuse Miss Thornycroft's invitations without attracting notice; and she had heard that Isaac was to be away from home that day.
They had spent the hours unhappily. Heavy at heart, pale in countenance, subdued in spirit, it seemed to each that nothing in the world could bring pleasure again. Anna was altered just as much as Miss Thornycroft; worn, thin, haggard-eyed. Captain Copp's wife, seeing the change in Anna, and knowing nothing of the real cause, set it down to one that must inevitably bring discovery of the marriage in its train, and was fretting herself into fiddle-strings. Dinner was over; tea was taken; the evening went on. Quite unexpectedly Mr. Thornycroft and his eldest son arrived; Anna saw also, to her dismay, that Isaac was in; but none of them approached the sitting-room. Hyde, coming in later to replenish the fire, said the justice was not very well, and had retired to rest; Mr. Richard and Mr. Isaac had gone out. And the two girls sat on together, almost hearing the beating of each other's hearts.
"I wonder if the ghost is abroad this windy night!" exclaimed Anna, as a wild gust dashed against the windows and shook the frames.
"Don't joke about that, Anna," said Miss Thornycroft, sharply.
Anna looked round in surprise: nothing had been further from her thoughts than to joke; and indeed she did not know why she said it. "Of course the report is a very foolish one," she resumed "I cannot think how any people can profess to believe it."
"Isaac saw it last night," said Mary Anne, quietly.
"Nonsense!" cried Anna.
"Ah! so I have answered when others said they saw it. But Isaac is cool and practical; entirely without superstition; the very last man I know, save perhaps Richard, to be led away by fear or fancy. He was passing the churchyard when he saw--if not Robert Hunter, some one dressed up to personate him; but the features were Robert Hunter's features, Isaac says; they were for a moment as distinct as ever he had seen them in life."
"Did he tell you this?"
"Yes."
"Could he have been deceived by his imagination?"
"I think not. When a cool, collected man, like my brother Isaac, dispassionately asserts such a thing, in addition to the terrified assertions of others, I at least believe that there must be some dreadful mystery abroad, supernatural or otherwise."
"A mystery?"
"Yes, a mystery. Putting aside all questions of the figure, how is it that the coat can appear in the churchyard, when it remains all the while in safe custody at the Mermaid?"
Anna sat down, overwhelmed with the confusion of ideas that presented themselves. The chief one that struggled upwards was--how should she ever have courage to pass the churchyard that night?
"Mary Anne! why did he not speak to it?"
"Because some people came up at the time, and prevented it. When he looked again the figure was gone."
Precisely so. All this, just as Mary Anne described it, had happened to Isaac Thornycroft on the previous night. Robert Hunter, the hat drawn low on his pale face, the unmistakeable coat buttoned round him, had stood there in the churchyard, looking just as he had looked in life. To say that Isaac was not staggered would be wrong--he was--but he recovered himself almost instantly, and was about to call out to the figure, when Mr. Kyne came past with young Connaught, and stopped him. Isaac and his family had to guard against certain discoveries yet; and in the presence of the superintendent of the coastguard, whose suspicions were already too rife, he did not choose to proceed to investigation.
Silence supervened. The young ladies sat on over the fire, each occupied with her sad and secret thoughts. The time-piece struck half-past eight.
"What can have become of Sarah?" exclaimed Anna. "Mrs. Copp was not well, and my Aunt Amy said she should send for me early."
Scarcely had the words left her lips, when that respectable personage entered head foremost. Giving the door a bang, she sank into an arm-chair. Anna stood up in wonder; Miss Thornycroft looked round.
"You may well stare, young ladies, but I can't stand upon no forms nor ceremonies just now. I don't know whether my senses is here or yonder, and I made bold to come in at the hall door, as being the nearest, and make straight for here. There's the ghost at this blessed moment in the churchyard."
Anna, with a faint cry, drew near to Miss Thornycroft, and touched her for company. The latter spoke.
"Your fancy must have deceived you, Sarah."
"If anything has deceived me, it's my eyes," returned Sarah, really too much put out to stand on any sort of ceremony whether in speech or action--"which is what they never did yet, Miss Thornycroft. When it struck eight my mistress told me to go for Miss Chester. I thought I'd finish my ironing first, which took me another quarter of an hour; and then I put my blanket and things away to come. Just as I was opening the house door I heard the master's voice singing out for me, and went into the parlour. 'Is it coals, sir?' I asked. 'No, it's not coals,' says he; and I saw by his mouth he was after some nonsense. 'It's to tell you to take care of the ghost.' 'Oh, bran the ghost,' says I; 'I should give it a knock if it come anigh me.' And so I should, young ladies."
"Go on, go on," cried Mary Anne Thornycroft.
"I come right on to the churchyard, and what we had been saying made me turn my eyes to it as I passed. Young ladies," she continued, drawing the chair closer, and dropping her voice to a low, mysterious key, "if you'll believe me, there stood Robert Hunter. He was close by that big tombstone of old Marley's, not three yards from his own grave!"
Mary Anne Thornycroft seemed unwilling to admit belief in this, in spite of what she had herself been relating to Miss Chester. "Rely upon it, Sarah, your fears deceived you."
"Miss, I hadn't got any fears; at any rate, not before I saw him. There he was: his features as plain as ever they'd need be, and that uncommon coat on, which I'm sure was never made for anybody but a Guy Fawkes."
"Were you frightened then?"
"I was not frightened, so to say, but I won't deny that I felt a creepishness in my skin; and I'd have given half-a-crown out of my pocket to see any human creature come up to bear me company. I might have spoke to it if it had give me time: I don't know: but the moment it saw me it glided amid the gravestones, making for the back of the church. I made off too as fast as my legs would carry me, and come straight in here. I knew my tongue must let it out, and I thought it better for you to hear it than them timorous servants in the kitchen."
"Quite right," murmured Miss Thornycroft.
"I never did believe in ghosts," resumed Sarah; "never thought to do it, and I'm not going to begin now. But after to-night, I won't mock at the poor wretches that have been frightened by Robert Hunter's."
What now was to be done? Anna Chester would not attempt to go home and pass the churchyard with no protector but Sarah. Hyde was not to be found; and there seemed nothing for it but to wait until Richard or Isaac came in.
But neither came. Between nine and ten Captain Copp made his appearance in hot anger, shaking his stick and stamping his wooden leg at Sarah.
Had the vile hussey taken up her gossiping quarters at the Red Court Farm for the night? Did she think--
"I could not get Miss Chester away," interposed Sarah, drowning the words. "The ghost is in the churchyard. I saw it as I came past."
The sailor-captain was struck dumb. One of his women-kind avow belief in a ghost? He had seen a mermaid himself; which creatures were known to exist; but ghosts were fabulous things, fit for nothing but the fancies of marines. Any sailor in his fo'castle that had confessed to seeing ghosts, would have got a taste of the yardarm. "Get your things on this minute," concluded the captain, angrily, to Anna. "I'll teach you to be afraid of rubbishing ghosts! And that vile bumboat woman! coming here with such a tale!"
"It's my opinion ghosts is rubbish, and nothing better; for I don't see the good of 'em; but this was Robert Hunter's for all that," spoke the undaunted "bumboat-woman." "I saw his face and his eyes as plain as ever I see my own in the glass, and that precious white coat of his with the ugly fur upon it. Master, you can't say that I gave as much as half an ear to this talk before to-night."
"You credulous sea-serpent!" was the captain's retort. "And that same coat lying yet in the tallet at the Mermaid with the blood upon it, just as it was taken off the body! Ugh! fie upon you!"
"If there's apparitions of bodies, there may be apparitions of coats," reasoned Sarah, between whom and her choleric but good-hearted master there was always a fight for the last word. "If it hadn't been for knowing his face, I should say some ill-conditioned jester had borrowed the coat from the Mermaid and put it on."
Away pegged the captain in his rage, scarcely allowing himself to say good-night to Miss Thornycroft; and away went Sarah and Miss Chester after him, as close as circumstances permitted.
As they neared the churchyard Anna ventured to lay hold of the captain's arm, and bent her head upon it, in spite of his mocking assurances that a parson's daughter ought to be on visiting terms with a churchyard ghost; trusting to him to guide her steps. The captain was deliberating, as he avowed afterwards, whether to guide her into the opposite ditch, believing that a ducking would be the best panacea for all ghostly fears; when Sarah, who was a step in the rear, leaped forward and clung violently to his blue coat-tails.
"There!" she cried in a shrill whisper, before the astonished gentleman could free his tails or give vent to proper indignation, "there it is again, behind old Marley's tomb! Now then, master, is that the coat, or is it not?"
The captain was surprised into turning his eyes to the churchyard; Anna also, as if impelled by some irresistible fascination. It was too true. Within a few yards of them, in the dim moonlight--for the cloudy moon gave but a feeble light--appeared the well-known form of the ill-fated Robert Hunter, the very man whose dead body Captain Copp had helped to lay in the grave, so far as having assisted as a mourner at his funeral.
The captain was taken considerably aback; had never been half so much so before an unexpected iceberg; his wooden leg dropped submissively down and his mouth flew open. He had the keen eye of a seaman, and he saw beyond doubt that the spirit before him was indeed that of Robert Hunter. Report ran in the village afterwards that the gallant captain would have made off, but could not rid himself from the grasp of his companions.
"Hallo! you sir!" he called out presently, remembering that in that vile Sarah's presence his reputation for courage was at stake, but there was considerable deference, not to say timidity, in his tone, "what is it you want, appearing there like a figure-head?"
The ghost, however, did not wait to answer; it had already disappeared, vanishing into air, or behind the tombstones. Captain Copp lost not a moment, but tore away faster than he had ever done since the acquisition of his wooden leg, Anna sobbing convulsively on his arm, and Sarah hanging on to his coat-tails. A minute afterwards they were joined by Isaac Thornycroft, coming at a sharp pace from the direction of the village.
"Take these screeching sea-gulls home for me," cried the sailor to Isaac. "I'll go down to the Mermaid, and with my own eyes see if the coat is there. Some land-lubber's playing a trick, and has borrowed Hunter's face and stole the coat to act it in."
"Spare yourself the trouble," rejoined Isaac. "I have come straight now from the Mermaid, and the coat is there. We have been looking at it but this instant. It is under the hay in the room over the stable, doubled up and stiff, having dried in the folds."
"I should like to keelhaul that ghost," cried the discomfited captain. "I'd rather have seen ten mermaids."
Isaac Thornycroft, with an imperative gesture, took Anna on his own arm, leaving the captain to peg on alone, with Sarah still in close proximity to the coattails. He did not say what he had been doing all the evening, or why he should have come up at that particular juncture.
Upon the return of Richard to the Red Court an hour or two earlier, Isaac drew him at once out of the house to impart to him this curious fact of Hunter's ghost--as Coastdown phrased it--making its appearance nightly in the churchyard. Truth to say, the affair was altogether puzzling Isaac, bringing him trouble also. He had seen it himself the previous evening. Who was it? what did it want? whence did it come? That it wore Hunter's face and form was indisputable. What then was it? His ghost?--a kind of marvel which Isaac had never yet believed in,--or a man got up to personate him? Of course what Isaac feared was, that it might lead to discovery of various matters connected with the past.
He imparted all this to Richard. Richard scorned the information at first, ridiculed the affair, would not believe in the fear. Isaac proposed that they should go together to the churchyard, conceal themselves behind a convenient tombstone, watch for the appearance, and pounce upon it. Richard mockingly refused; if he went at all to the place he'd go by himself and deal with the "ghost" at leisure. At present he had business with Tomlett.
They went together to Tomlett's cottage, and sat there talking. The baker's boy came up on an errand; and as Mrs. Tomlett answered the door they heard him tell her that "the ghost was then--then--in the churchyard, his face and his coat awful white."
"The coat has been stolen from the Mermaid," spoke Richard in his decisive tones.
"That fact was easy to be ascertained," Isaac answered. And, rising at once from his seat, he went to the Mermaid there and then. Calling Pettipher, they went up the ladder to the tallet, and Isaac convinced himself that there the coat lay, untouched, and in fact unusable. From thence he went his way to the churchyard, intending to see what he could do with the ghost himself, and thus overtook Captain Copp and his party.
Nothing of this did he say to Anna. Leaving the ghost for the time being, he went on to Captain Copp's. She held his arm, not daring to let it go; her mind in a state of extreme distress. Trembling from head to foot went she; a sob breaking from her now and again.
"What can it be looking for?" burst from her in her grief and perplexity. "For you?"
For the thought, the fear that had been beating its terrible refrain in her brain was, that Robert Hunter's spirit, unable to rest, had come to denounce his destroyer. Such tales had over and over again been told in the world's history: why should not this be but another to add to them?
"Anna!" answered Isaac in a tone of surprise and remonstrance, "you cannot seriously believe that it is Hunter's spirit. Why talk nonsense?"
Which reply she looked upon as an evasive one. "Can you solve the mystery then?" she asked. "That thing in the churchyard wears as surely Hunter's face and form as you wear yours or I mine. It is not himself: he is dead and buried; what then is it?"
"Not his ghost," spoke Isaac. Whether he, the cool-headed, practical, worldly man, who believed hitherto in ghosts just as much as he did in fairies, felt perfectly sure himself upon the point now, at least he deemed it right to insist upon it to his wife.
No more was said. But for Captain Copp's turning back to converse with Isaac (having in a degree recovered his equanimity) he might have striven to get an explanation with his wife there and then.
"Come in, come in, and take a sup of brandy," cried the hospitable captain when they arrived at his house. "That beast of a ghost!"
"Oh, Sarah, what can have kept you!" exclaimed the captain's wife, in as complaining a tone as so gentle a woman could use. "I have had everything to do myself; the gruel to make for Mrs. Copp, the hot water to take upstairs; the--"
"It is not my fault, ma'am," interrupted the subdued Sarah, as she rubbed her shoes on the mat. "Miss Chester was afraid to come home with me alone. There's Robert Hunter in the churchyard."
Amy Copp glanced at her husband, expecting an explosion of wrath at the words. To her surprise, the captain heard them in patient silence, his face as meek as any lamb's.
"Bring some hot water, Sarah, and get out the brandy," said he.
Mixing a stiff glass for himself, Isaac declining to take any, he passed another in silence to Sarah. Anna had escaped upstairs: her usual custom when Isaac was there.
"Much obliged, sir, but I don't care for brandy," was Sarah's answer. "My courage is coming back to me, master."
Amy looked from one to the other, not knowing what to make of either. "Have you really seen anything?" she asked.
"Seen Hunter, coat and all," gravely replied the captain. "Shiver my wooden leg, if we've not! I say, mother," he called out, stumping to the foot of the stairs. "Mother!"
"What is it, Sam?" called back Mrs. Copp, who was beginning to undress, and had not yet taken her remedies for the cold.
"Mother, you know that mermaid in the Atlantic--the last voyage you went with us? You wouldn't believe that I saw it; you've only laughed at me ever since: well, I've seen the ghost to-night; so don't you disbelieve me any more."
Captain Copp returned to the parlour, and in a minute his mother walked in after him. She wore black stockings, fur slippers, a petticoat that came down to the calves of her legs; a woollen shawl, and an enormous night-cap. Isaac Thornycroft smothered an inclination to laugh, but Mrs. Copp stood with calm equanimity, regardless of the defects of her costume.
"What's that about the ghost, Sam?"
"I saw it to-night, mother. It stood near its own grave in the churchyard. And I hope you won't go on at me about that mermaid, after this. It had got long bright green hair, as I've always said, and was combing it out."
"The ghost had?"
"No, the mermaid. The ghost was Hunter's. It looked just as he'd used to look."
Mrs. Copp stood rubbing her nose, and thinking the captain's conversion a very sudden one.
"Is this a joke, Sam?"
"A joke! Why, mother, I tell ye I saw it. Ask Sarah. I called out to know what it wanted, and why it came; but it wouldn't answer me."
"Well, it's strange," observed Mrs. Copp. "Sam's a simpleton about mermaids, but I'd have backed him as to ghosts. But now: you may have observed perhaps, all of you, that I've not said a syllable to ridicule this ghost of poor dead Mr. Hunter, and I'll tell you why. Last June, in Liverpool, a friend of mine was sitting up with her father, who was ill, when her sister's spirit appeared to her. It was between twelve and one at night--twenty minutes to one, in fact, for there was a clock in the room, and she had looked at it only a minute before; the candle--"
"Oh, mother, don't; pray don't!" implored poor Amy Copp, going into a cold perspiration, for she held a firm belief in things supernatural. "This one ghost is enough for us without any more. I shall never like to go up to bed alone again."
"The candle gave as good as no light, for the snuff was a yard long a'most, with a cauliflower on the top," continued Mrs. Copp, who persisted in telling her tale, supremely indifferent to her daughter-in-law's fears and her own robes. "Emma Jenkins, that was her name, heard a rustle in the room; it seemed to come in at the door, which was put open for air, flutter across, and stir the bed-curtains. (Don't you be foolish, Amy!) Naturally, Emma Jenkins looked up, and there she saw her sister, who had died a year before. The figure seemed to give just a sigh and vanish. Now," said Mrs. Copp, applying the moral, "if that was a ghost, this may be."
"You always said, you know, mother, that you didn't believe in ghosts."
"Neither did I, Sam But Emma Jenkins is not one to be taken in by fancy; as stands to reason, considering that she has gone thirteen voyages with her husband, short and long. Sea-going people are not liable to see ghosts where there's no ghosts to see; they have got their wits about them, and keep their eyes open. What are you smiling at, Mr. Thornycroft? Mrs. Jenkins had taken a glass of brandy-and-water, perhaps? Well, I don't know; sitting up with the sick is cold work, especially when they are too far gone to have anything done for 'em. But she always liked rum best."
The story over, Captain Copp plunged into a full account of the night's adventures, enlarging on the questions he asked with the view of bringing the ghost to book, and what he would have done had it only stayed. Sarah gave her version of the sight, both in going and coming. Mrs. Copp, forgetting her cold, plunged into another story of a man who died at sea the first time she sailed with her husband, and the belief of the sailors that he haunted the ship all the while it lay in Calcutta harbour; all to the shivering horror of poor Amy Copp; and Isaac Thornycroft, waking up from his reverie by fits and starts, sat on until midnight, like a man in a miserable dream.
Mary Anne Thornycroft had remained at home in a state of mind bordering on distraction. Look where she would, there was no comfort. Surely the death of Robert Hunter had been enough, with all its attendant dreadful circumstances, without this fresh rumour of his "coming again!" Like Mrs. Copp, until impressed with her friend Emma Jenkins's experiences, Miss Thornycroft had never put faith in ghosts. She was accustomed to ridicule those who believed in the one said to haunt the plateau; but her scepticism was shaken now.
She had paid little attention to the first reports, for she knew how prone the ignorant are in general, and Coastdown in particular, to spread supernatural tales. But these reports grew and magnified. Robert Hunter was dead and buried: how then reconcile that fact with this mysterious appearance said to haunt the churchyard? Her mind became shaken; and when, on the previous night, her brother Isaac imparted to her the fact that he had seen it with his own sensible, dispassionate eyes, a sickening conviction flashed over her that it was indeed Robert Hunter's spirit. And now, to confirm it, came the testimony of the matter-of-fact Sarah. Possibly, but for the sad manner in which her nerves had been shaken, this new view might not have been taken up.
"What does it want?" she asked herself, sitting there alone in the gloomy parlour: and certain words just spoken by Sarah recurred to her, as if in answer. "It may want to denounce its murderer." Stronger even than the grief and regret she felt at his untimely fate, at the abrupt termination of her unhappy love, was the lively dread of discovery, for Richard's sake. That must be guarded against, if it were possible; for what might it not bring in its train? The betrayal of the illicit practices the Red Court Farm had lived by; the dishonour of her father and his house; perhaps the trial--condemnation--execution of Richard.
Sick, trembling, half mad with these reflections, pacing the room in agony, was she, when Richard entered. Had he seen the ghost? He looked as if he had. His damp hair hung about in a black mass, and his face and lips were as ghastly as Hunter's. His sister gazed at him with surprise: the always self-possessed Richard!
"Have you come from the village?" she asked.
"From that way."
"Did you happen to turn to the churchyard?"
"Yes," was the laconic reply.
"You know what they say: that his spirit appears there."
"I have seen it," was Richard's unexpected answer.
Miss Thornycroft started. "Oh, Richard! When?"
"Now. I went to look, and I saw it. There's no mistake about its being Hunter, or some fool made up to personate him."
"It has taken away your colour, Richard."
Richard Thornycroft did not reply. He sat with his elbow on his knee, and his chin resting on his hand, looking into the fire. The once brave man, brave to recklessness, had been scared for the first time in his mortal life. The crime lying heavily on his soul had made a coward of him.
He said nothing of the details, but they must be supplied. Shortly after Isaac had quitted Tomlett's, Richard also left, intending to go straight home. As he struck across to the direct road--not the one by the plateau--a thought came to him to take a look at the churchyard; and he turned to it.
There was Robert Hunter. As Richard's footsteps sounded on the night air, nearing the churchyard, the head and shoulders of the haunting spirit appeared, raising themselves behind old Marley's high tombstone. Richard stood still. "There was no mistake," as he observed to his sister, "that it was Hunter." And the eyes of the two were strained, the one on the other. Suddenly the ghost came into full view and advanced, and Richard Thornycroft turned and fled. An arrant coward he at that moment, alone with the ghost and his own awful conscience.
Whether the apparition would have pursued him; whether Richard would have gathered bravery enough to turn and face it, could never be known. The doctor's boy, having been to the heath with old Connaught's physic, ran past shouting and singing; "the whistling aloud to keep his courage up," as Bloomfield (is it not?) so subtly says, was not enough now for those who had to pass the churchyard at Coastdown. The ghost vanished, and Richard strode on to the Red Court Farm.
But he did not tell of all this. Mary Anne, who had been bending her head on the arm of the sofa, suddenly rose, resolution in her face and in her low, firm tone.
"Richard, if you accompany me for protection, I will go and see this spirit. I will ask what it wants. Let us go."
"You!" he somewhat contemptuously exclaimed.
"I will steel my nerves and heart to it. I have been striving to do so for the last half hour. Better for me to hold communion with it than any one else, save you. You know why, Richard."
"Tush!" he exclaimed. "Do nothing. You'd faint by the way."
"It is necessary for the honour and safety of--of--this house," she urged, not caring to speak more pointedly, "that no stranger should hear what it wants. I will go now. If I wait until to-morrow my courage may fail. I go, Richard, whether with you or alone. You are not afraid?"
For answer, Richard rose, and they left the room. In passing through the hall, Mary Anne threw on her woollen shawl and garden-bonnet, just as she had thrown them on the night of Hunter's murder; and they started.
Not a word was spoken by either until they reached the corner of the churchyard. The high, thickset hedge, facing them as they advanced, prevented their seeing into it, but they would soon come in front, where the shrubs grew low behind the iron railings. Miss Thornycroft stopped.
"You stay here, Richard. I will go on alone."
"No," he began, but she peremptorily interrupted him.
"I will have it so. If I am to go on with this, I will be alone. You can keep me within sight." And Richard acquiesced, despising himself for his cowardice, but unable to overcome it. He could not--no, he could not face the man whose life he had taken.
Mary Anne Thornycroft opened the gate and went in. In his place (he seemed to have specially appropriated to himself) behind old Marley's tomb, stood Robert Hunter. How she contrived to advance--contrived to face him and keep her senses, Mary Anne Thornycroft could never afterwards understand.
Is it of any use to go on mystifying you, my reader? Perhaps from the first you have suspected the truth. Any way, it may be better to solve the secret, for time is growing limited, as it was solved that night to Mary Anne and Richard Thornycroft. The ghost, prowling about still, was looking out for Richard, its sole object all along; but it was Robert Hunter himself and not his ghost. For Robert Hunter was not dead.
He had been in London all the while they mourned him so, as much alive as any of his mourners, quite unconscious that he was looked upon as murdered, and that the county coroner had held an inquest on his body. A week since, he had come down from London to Coastdown, had come in secret, not caring to show himself in the neighbourhood, and not daring to show himself openly to the Thornycrofts. He wanted to obtain an interview with Mary Anne; but to want it was a great deal easier than to get it, in consequence of that extravagant and hasty oath imposed upon him by Richard. According to its terms, he must not write to any one of the inmates of the Red Court Farm; he must not enter it; he must not show himself at Coastdown; and he could only hit upon the plan of coming down en cachette, keeping himself close by day, and watching for Richard at night. Not a very brilliant scheme, but he could think of no better; and, singular perhaps to say, there was no bar to his speaking to Richard if he met him; if the spirit of the oath provided against that, the letter did not; and Robert Hunter's business was urgent. So he came down to Jutpoint, walked over at night, and took up his quarters in a lonely hut that he knew of behind the churchyard, inhabited by a superannuated fisherman, old Parkes. The aged fisherman, of dim sight and failing memory, did not know his guest; he was easily bribed not to tell of his sojourn; and the rumours of the ghost had not penetrated to him. In that hut Hunter lay by day, and watched from the churchyard by night, as being a likely spot to see Richard, who used often to pass and repass it on his way to and from the heath, and an unlikely one to be seen and recognised by the public. With that convenient tomb of old Marley's to shelter behind whenever footsteps approached, he did not fear. Unfortunately, it was necessary that he should look out to see whether the footsteps were not Richard's; and this looking out had brought about all the terror. His retreating place, when people had intruded into the churchyard, Isaac for one, was under a shelving gravestone at the back of the church, where none would think of looking. And there he had been on the watch, never dreaming that he was being mistaken for his own ghost, for he knew nothing of his supposed murder.
In little more than half-a-dozen sentences this was revealed to Mary Anne Thornycroft. It was the last night that he could stay: and he had resolved, in the fear of having to go back to London with his errand unexecuted, to accost any one of the Thornycroft family that might approach him, although by so doing the oath was infringed. As their voices were borne on the night air to the ear of Richard, sufficient evidence that Hunter was a living man, a load fell from his heart. In the first blissful throb of the discovery, the thought that surged through him, turning darkness into light, was, "If he is alive, I am no murderer." He ran forward, gained the spot where they stood, grasped Hunter's hand and well-nigh embraced him. He, the cold, stern, undemonstrative Richard Thornycroft! he, with all his dislike of Hunter!
Do you consider well what that joy must be--relief from the supposed committed crime of murder? The awful nightmare that has been weighing us down: the sin that has been eating away our heartstrings! Some of us may have faintly experienced this in a vision during sleep.
"I do not understand it, Hunter," whispered Richard, his words taking a sobbing sound as they burst from his heaving breast in the intensity of his emotion. "It is like awaking from some hideous dream. If I shot you down, how is it that you are here?"
"You never shot me down. Old Parkes has been driving at some obscure tale about young Hunter being shot from the heights; but I treated it as a childish old man's fancies. Mary Anne, too, is wearing mourning for me, she says, though ostensibly put on for Lady Ellis, and came here to have speech of my ghost. I thought ghosts had gone out with the eighteenth century."
All three felt bewildered; idea after idea crowding on their minds: not one of them as yet clear or tangible. Mary Anne could not so soon overcome the shivering sensation that, had been upon her, and caught hold of her brother's arm for support. There was much of explanation to be had yet.
"Let us go and sit down in the church porch," she said; "we shall be quiet there."
They walked round the narrow path towards it. It was on the side of the church facing the Red Court. The brother and sister placed themselves on one bench: Hunter opposite. The moonlight streamed upon them, but they were in no danger there of being observed by any chance passer-by; for the hedge skirting the ground on that side was high and thick.
"That night," began Richard, "after you had gone away, what brought you back again?"
"Back where?" asked Hunter.
"Back on the plateau. Watching the fellows from the boats."
"I was not there. I did not come back."
The assertion sounded like a false one in the teeth of recollection. Mary Anne broke the silence, her low tone rather an impatient one.
"I saw you there, Robert--I and Anna Chester. We were coming up to speak to you, and got as far as the Round Tower--"
"What was worse, I saw you," hoarsely broke in Richard. "After what had passed between us, and your solemn oath to me, I felt shocked at your want of faith. I was maddened by your bad feeling, your obstinate determination to spy upon and betray us; and I stood by that same Round Tower and shot you down."
"I do not know what you are talking of," returned. Robert Hunter. "I tell you I never came back; never for one moment I got to Jutpoint by half-past ten or a quarter to eleven, so you may judge that I stepped out well."
"Did Cyril go there with you?"
"Cyril! Of course not. He left me soon after we passed the village. He only came as far as the wherry. I have been looking for Cyril while dodging about in this churchyard. I'd rather have seen him than you. He would not have been violent, you know, and would have carried you my message."
"We have never seen Cyril since that night," said Miss Thornycroft.
"Not seen Cyril!" echoed Hunter. "Where is he?"
"But we are not uneasy about him," said Richard, dropping his voice. "At least, I am not. We expect he went off in the boats with the smugglers when they rowed back to the ship that night after the cargo was run. Indeed, we feel positive of it. My father once did the same, to the terror of my mother. I believe she had him advertised. Cyril is taking a tolerably long spell on the French coast; but I think I can account for that. He will come home now."
"Still you have not explained," resumed Hunter. "What gave rise to this report that I was shot down?"
"Report!" cried Richard, vehemently, his new-found satisfaction beginning to fade, as sober recollection returned to him. "Somebody was shot, if you were not. We had the coroner's inquest on him, and he lies buried in this churchyard as Robert Hunter."
"But the features could not have been mine," debated Hunter.
"The face was not recognisable; but the head and hair were yours, and the dress was yours--a black dinner suit; and---- By the way," broke off Richard, "what is this mystery? This coat, which you appear now to have on, is at this moment in the stables at the Mermaid, and has been ever since the inquest."
Does the reader notice that one word of Richard Thornycroft's--"Appear?" Appear to have on! Was he still doubting whether the man before him could be real?
"Oh, this is Dr. Macpherson's," said Hunter, with a brief laugh. "They were fellow coats, you know, Mary Anne. You did not send me my own--at least, I never received it; and one cold day, when I happened to be there, the professor surreptitiously handed me his out of a lumber closet, glad to get rid of it, hoping madame would think it was stolen. She could not forget the grievance of his having bought them. Why did not mine come with the portmanteau?"
More amazement, more puzzle, and Richard further at sea than ever.
"When you left that night, you had your coat with you, Hunter. I saw you put it on."
"But I found it an encumbrance. I had taken more wine than usual. I had had other things to make me hot, and I did not relish the prospect of carrying it, whether on or off, for five or six miles. So I took it off when we got to the wherry, and begged Cyril to carry it back with him, and send it with the portmanteau the following morning."
A pause of thought; it seemed they were trying to realize the sense of the words. Suddenly Mary Anne started, gasped, and laid her face down on her brother's shoulder, with a sharp, low moan of pain. He leaned forward and, stared at Hunter, a pitiable expression of dread on his countenance, as the moonlight fell on his ghastly face and strained-back lips.
"Cyril said, he was glad of it, and put it on, for he had come out without one, and felt cold," continued Hunter, carelessly. "He has not been exposed to all weathers, as I have. It fitted him capitally."
A cry, shrill and, wild as that which had broken from the dying man in his fall, now broke from Richard Thornycroft.
"Stop!" he shouted, in the desperation of anguish; "don't you see?"
"See what?" demanded the astonished Hunter.
"That I have murdered my brother!"
Alas! alas! As they sat gazing at each other with terror-stricken faces, you might have heard their hearts beat. Poor Richard Thornycroft! Had any awakening to horror been like unto his!
"Murdered your brother?" slowly repeated Hunter.
It was too true. The unfortunate Cyril Thornycroft, arrayed in Hunter's coat; had been mistaken by them for him in the starlight, and Richard had shot him dead. In returning home after parting with Hunter at the wherry, there could be no doubt that he had gone straight to the heights to see whether the work which had been planned for that night with the smugglers was being carried on, or whether the discovery made by Hunter had checked it. It was the coat, the miserable coat, that had deceived them. And there was the general resemblance they bore to each other, as previously mentioned. In height, in figure, in hair, they might have been taken for one another, and had been, even in the daylight, during Hunter's stay at Coastdown. But it was not all this that had led to the dreadful error--it was the fatal and conspicuous coat.
Everything had contributed to the delusion, before life and after death. The face might have been anybody's for all the signs of recognition left in it. They wore, and only they, each a black dress dinner-suit, and Cyril, in his forgetfulness had put away his purse and watch. His money--he generally carried it so--was loose in his pockets: how were they to know that the same custom was not followed by Hunter? The white pocket-handkerchief happened to bear no mark, and his linen was not disturbed. Nothing was taken off him but his upper clothes, the coat and the above-said dinner-suit. It was an exceptional death, you see, not a pleasant one to handle, and they just put a shroud over the under clothes, and so buried him. But for that would have been seen on the shirt the full mark--"Cyril Thornycroft."
Who shall attempt to describe the silence of horror that fell on the church porch after the revelation? Richard quitted his seat and stood upright, looking out, as it seemed; and his sister's head then sought a leaning-place against the cold trellis-work.
"How was it you never wrote to me?" at length asked Robert Hunter, in a low voice. "Had you done so, this mystery would have been cleared up."
"Wrote to you?" wailed Richard. "Do you forget we thought you were here?" stamping his foot on the sod of the churchyard.
"I can hardly understand it yet," mused Robert Hunter.
Richard Thornycroft turned and touched his sister. "Let us go home, Mary Anne. We have heard enough."
Without a word of dissent or approval, she rose and put her arm within Richard's; her face white and rigid as it had been at the coroner's inquest. Hunter spoke then.
"But, Mary Anne--what I wanted to say to you--I have not yet said a word of it."
"I cannot talk to-night," she shuddered. "I cannot--I cannot."
"Then--I suppose--I must stay another day," he rejoined, wondering privately what would be said and thought of him in London. "May I come to the Red Court to-morrow?"
"If you will," answered Richard. "No necessity for concealment now. I absolve you from your oath."
But Mary Anne saw further than either of them; saw that it would not do. Richard walked forward, but she remained, and touched Mr. Hunter on the arm.
"No, Robert, it must not be. You must still be in this neighbourhood-- for a time at any rate--as dead and buried."
"Why? Far better to let them know I have not been murdered: and set their suspicions at rest."
"That you have not, but that another has," she returned, resentfully. "Would you have them rake up the matter, and hold a second inquest, and so set them upon my unfortunate brother Richard? His punishment, as it is, will be sufficiently dreadful and lasting."
"Do not speak to me in that tone of reproach," was the pained rejoinder. "You may be sure that I deeply sympathize and grieve with you all. I will continue to conceal myself: but how shall I see you? One more day, and business will enforce my return to London."
"I will see you here, in this place, to-morrow night."
"At what hour?"
"As soon as dusk comes on. Say seven."
"You will not fail, Mary Anne?"
"Fail!" she repeated, vehemently. Then, in a quieter tone, as she would have walked away, "No; I will be sure to come."
Robert Hunter grasped her hand, as if to draw her towards him for a fond embrace, but Miss Thornycroft wrenched her hand away with a half cry, and went on to join her brother. "Good night, dear Robert," she presently called out, in a gentle voice, as if to atone for her abrupt movement: but oh! what a mine of anguish that voice betrayed!
In the midst of the same silence that they had come, they went back again, walking side by side in the road, but not touching each other. Ah! what anguish it was that lay on both of them! We never know; in great affliction we are so apt to think that we can bear nothing worse, and live. It had seemed to Richard Thornycroft and his sister, when they went down to the churchyard, that no heavier weight of misery could be theirs than that lying on them; it seemed now in going back, as if that had been light, compared with this.
"Richard," she whispered, in her great pity, as they passed through the entrance gates of the Red Court Farm, "he is better off; he was fit to go. You know it must be so. Cyril is in heaven with God; it seems now as if he had been living on for it."
Richard hardly heard the words. He was thinking his own thoughts. "The death must have been a painless one."