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Part 1, Chapter V
Interesting

Cuthbert Staunton was a man with a history, and rather a sad one. He had been engaged to be married to a girl who had died within a week of the wedding-day. In the first shock of his trouble, he threw up his appointment, a recorder-ship which had been obtained for him by some legal connections, and went off on an aimless wandering, which greatly exhausted his small means, and put him out of the running for the prizes of life. He quieted down in time, however, his trouble receded into the background, and he came back to the family home, settled down, as his sisters said, into a regular old bachelor, with set little tastes and set little ways, a quiet, contented face, and a very kind heart. He had much cultivation and some literary power, and felt himself more fortunate than he could have hoped in being employed by his University as an Extension lecturer on literature and modern history. In this way he obtained interesting occupation, and a sufficient addition to his income for his very moderate wants.

Now, at two and thirty, no one would have suspected him of having had a “Wanderjahr” in his life; but perhaps it was from an under-sense of sympathy with a not very lucky person that he had taken to Guy Waynflete; when he had met him first abroad, and then at Oxford, a year or two before the present occasion.

For Guy was a person who did not get on well with life, he experienced and caused a great many disappointments. Once or twice at important examinations some sudden illness had come in his way and spoiled his chances. Such, at least, was his own account of his ill success, when he was pressed to give one. With other engagements he was apt, his friends said, to fail to come up to the scratch. If he undertook to play cricket, sometimes he did not turn up, and sometimes he played badly. He was musical enough to be a coveted member of various clubs and societies, but his performances could never be calculated on, and were sometimes brilliant and sometimes disappointing. There were times when his friends could make nothing of him, and no one felt really to know him. Cuthbert Staunton did not know much about him, he suspected him of more uncertain health than he chose to confess, and had discovered that the home life was not smooth for him. But he did not want to bring his own past into the present, or to inquire into Guy’s. He found him congenial, in spite of the eight or nine years between them, and did not think that his various shortcomings were due to any discreditable cause.

“You are doing your London?” he said, as they started.

“Yes,” said Guy, “I’ve hardly ever been in town. You know we haven’t many friends who can be said to be in London society. Most of the Ingleby neighbours come up for three weeks to a good hotel, and do pictures and theatres, and visit each other a little. I am sent up now to ‘make my way’ with some of our city business connections.”

“By the way,” said Staunton, “what Maxwells were those who seem to have been rather unpleasantly connected with your family history? My mother was a Yorkshire Maxwell.”

“Was she?” said Guy.

He was quite silent for a noticeable moment, then he said, with the little ring in his voice which people called satirical, “This is very interesting. Did your mother come from the Rilston neighbourhood? When we’ve settled the fact, we can consider of our future relations to each other.”

The Stauntons were not people of pedigree; but Cuthbert produced facts enough to prove that his mother had really belonged to a family which had originally owned a small estate called Ouseley, not far from Rilston.

“That’s the place,” said Guy.

“But as for Waynflete,” said Cuthbert, “my forefather must have had to drop it again pretty quickly. I suppose he played cards too often. I never heard of its having been in the family. My grandfather Maxwell was a country doctor, and didn’t think family traditions consistent with hard work. I never thought about the matter, till Miss Vyner was so much excited at discovering your hereditary foe.”

“I don’t myself care about traditions,” said Guy, in a slow, soft, argumentative tone that told of his county. “I don’t, you know, unfortunately share my aunt’s profound respect for the house of Waynflete. She is an ancestor worth having, I grant you I think, if she knew, she’d make a Christian effort to receive you kindly; but we won’t tell her. As for me, I object to feuds and obligations – and – ghosts, and heredity’s a hobby that’s overridden nowadays. We won’t part for ever.”

He turned his soft eyes round on his friend, with a smile, but Staunton, who had spoken without a serious thought, saw with surprise that he had thought the avowal necessary.

“Well, my dear boy,” he said, “I’m glad you don’t say, ‘Here’s Vauxhall Bridge and there’s Vauxhall Bridge Road – take the tram, I take the ’bus. Farewell.’ But we must hurry up; it’s getting late.”

When they came into the Abbey, Guy looked all round him in a searching, attentive way. He joined in the singing with a voice full and sweet enough to do justice to his Yorkshire blood, and when it was over, and they parted, said, as if it was a thing to be thankfully noted, “I have very much enjoyed it.”

When, on the Tuesday afternoon, the two young men appeared in Mrs Palmer’s handsome drawing-room, it was full of other visitors, and their entertainment fell at first to Florella’s share. Her figure, as she sat a little apart by a table covered with the usual knick-knacks and flowers, had a harmonious and pictorial effect which caught Guy’s fancy and remained in his memory. She was still very like Constancy, but with softened tints; hair and eyes had not the same bright chestnut hue, but were of a dim shady brown; she was paler, and though her young outlines were plump and full, they had an indescribable grace and softness. She had Constancy’s straight brows and square forehead; but the eyes beneath were of another but equally modern type, seeking, longing, as the eyes of Fiametta or of the Blessed Damozel herself, but with this difference: they were happy as if in faith that a good answer waited their questioning. Florella did not talk, or learn, or do, as much as Constancy; but she knew all about learning and doing, and, in a girlish way, lived in the face of the questions of her time. She had one gift, too, which was likely to bring her much joy, and to this, after a few commonplaces, Cuthbert turned the conversation.

“And your painting, Miss Vyner? Has it been getting on?”

“Yes,” said Florella, “I have been having lessons.”

“May we see?”

Florella, without any excuses or shyness, took a little portfolio from the table, and showed some sketches of flowers in water-colour. The execution was slight and not perfectly skilful; but each little drawing had a characteristic suggestiveness which freed it entirely from the inexpressible dulness of most fruit and flower pieces.

A bunch of growing sweet peas labelled, “A tiptoe for a flight,” had the summer breeze blowing through them; “Pure lilies of eternal peace,” had a certain dreamy, unearthly fairness that suggested “airs of heaven,” and “A bit of green” was a cheerful, struggling plant of flowering musk, in sooty soil, on a smutty window-sill, with a yellow fog behind it.

“Why, that’s just how flowers look against smoke,” said Guy. “They glare with brightness.”

“Ah, that’s what I meant!” said Florella, pleased. “Do you draw, Mr Waynflete? You are fond of pictures?”

“I can’t draw,” said Guy; “but I can write down faces in pen-and-ink outline. I can’t make pictures. I don’t think I enjoy them.”

“Waynflete likes music,” said Cuthbert; “that is more in his line.”

“Tunes often put drawings into my head,” said Florella, simply. “The time when I began to do flower pictures was at Waynflete,” she added. “Some of the flowers there looked so wonderfully old; and age is a very difficult sentiment to convey in a flower! I never could manage it.”

As she spoke, there was a movement among the guests, and Mrs Palmer caught the name.

“Ah, Waynflete!” she said. “It was such a delightful old place, and so bracing. I should have liked to stay there very much, but the noises were such a worry. I declare when I sat in that old drawing-room by myself in a summer evening, I used to feel quite creepy. Mr Waynflete, do tell me if any noises have been heard since?”

Some of the company pricked up their ears. There are several aspects under which “ghosts” may be viewed, and there is no question that they are both fashionable and interesting. A haunted house and its owner are not often under notice at once.

Guy did not speak very quickly, and Constancy struck in.

“Aunt Con,” she said, “the situation would be quite spoiled if Mr Waynflete was willing to talk of his own ghost – or his own noises. Of course he will not. It would not be the thing at all.”

“It had not struck me that a ghost was interesting,” said Guy, dryly. “As for the noises – ”

“Oh,” interposed Florella, decidedly; “the noises were all nonsense.”

“My dear Flo,” said Mrs Palmer, “they are not pleasant when you can’t explain them. They might be burglars or the servants’ friends, or anything. But it’s a lovely place.”

The conversation now developed into ghost-stories, some of a scientific, others of a romantic type. Mr Staunton remarking that cock-crow would be nothing to ghosts nowadays, since they were accustomed to the searching light of science.

Guy stood by the mantelpiece, and fingered a Dresden-china figure in a way that gave Mrs Palmer a distinct presentiment of its downfall.

He looked up suddenly, “Did it ever occur to you to wonder,” he said, as a lady concluded a rather ghastly story, of a white lady who brushed by people on the staircase, and left a cold chill behind her, “whether contact with us makes the spooks feel hot?”

“Ah, Mr Waynflete,” said Mrs Palmer, as there was a general laugh. “You’re very sceptical, I can see. But you’re behind the age.”

She was rather glad to shake hands and say good-bye, as she was anxious to see whether he had damaged the Dresden shepherdess. But it was quite safe, even to the fine edges of its gilt roses.

“He is a nice-looking fellow, but his fingers should have been rapped when he was little to cure him of fidgeting,” she said, when they were alone. “But I shouldn’t think old Mrs Waynflete knew much about children.”

“He didn’t like to discuss his ghost,” said Constancy; “that was why he fidgeted. Family ghosts are personal.”

“Cosy,” said Florella, as her aunt left the room, “I can’t bear to think of the tricks we played at Waynflete. We ought to tell. It’s far too serious a thing to give a place the name of being haunted.”

“It was a very curious study,” said Cosy; “but, somehow, it did not frighten people nearly as much as we expected. And we did not make nearly all the noises that people fancied they heard.”

“We may have set them fancying,” said Florella. “I could have fancied things myself, after you had been whispering and scuttering about those passages. And, remember, I don’t feel bound to keep up the idea.”

“It was rather disappointing,” said Cosy, reflectively; “because the boys never took any notice. I don’t believe they heard us, the walls are so thick. But there, Flo,” she added, laughing, “it was just a bit of fun. And there are times when I feel as if I must– well – kick up a shindy. It’s the shape in which I feel the fires of youth.”

“That’s all very well,” said Florella. “You kick up a good many shindies. But I don’t like making fun of what I don’t understand.”

“I don’t see all the new pseudo-science,” returned Constancy. “I think it’s all a delusion.”

“I wonder if Guy Waynflete thinks so,” said Florella, thoughtfully, as she went to dress.

Part 1, Chapter VI
Good Comrades

Under a great copper-beech on the lawn at Ingleby one hot afternoon, Godfrey Waynflete was enjoying the “summer feeling” on which Constancy Vyner had expatiated in London, and was spending an idle hour in teaching his young Skye terrier to jump over a stick. Rawdon Crawley, a name appropriate to the creature’s hairy simplicity, was a long grey object, like a caterpillar, with huge pricked black ears, and an expression which combined guileless innocence and philosophic power. Nevertheless, when he was coaxed, he ran under the stick, and when he was threatened, he sat still and sulked, for the perverseness of his race is fathomless.

“You confounded little obstinate beggar,” cried Godfrey, shaking the stick at him; “you’ll have to learn who’s master.”

Rawdon Crawley wriggled away to some distance, like a snake, then lay with his face on his paws, looking at his owner.

“Eh, Godfrey, ye’re letting that pup get the better of ye!”

“He’d die rather than give in,” said Godfrey, as his old aunt came across the lawn towards him.

The last five years had increased Mrs Waynflete’s wrinkles, but she was still upright, slim, and vigorous, enjoying the presence of her younger nephew, and, possibly also, the elder one’s absence. The expression is rather strong; but Guy was so uncongenial to her that his presence could not be said to add to her happiness.

“Eh, well,” she said; “I like a man that can speak up to you, and has got some grit. I’ve no opinion of limp characters.”

“Things generally settle themselves if a fellow looks them in the face,” said Godfrey, cheerfully.

“Ay, but they don’t always settle themselves to our liking. I’d like, maybe, to look myself back into a young woman; but I’m in my eighty-two, and there’s no help for it.”

“Eh, what, auntie? You’re as young as the best of us,” said Godfrey, warmly.

“Why, I’ve no cause of complaint. The Lord’s given me a long life, and I’ve kept my health and my faculties through it all. But, all the same, I’m an aged woman, and I might be struck down any day. So I’ve asked Susan Joshua, my cousin Joshua Palmer’s widow, to come here and make her home for a time, and bring Sarah Jane with her. She was poorly left, poor thing; and then, if I should have a stroke, there’ll be some one to look after the maids, and make you lads comfortable.”

Godfrey was much taken aback, but before he could interpose, she went on —

“And I’ve another reason for sending for her, Godfrey. I’ve made up my mind to spend some time at Waynflete before I die. So she can attend to the house here while I’m absent.”

“At Waynflete, auntie? But it’s not in any sort of order. Have you ever seen it?”

“Once, my lad, once,” said the old lady, face and voice softening. “I made your good uncle take me there for a honeymoon trip, and I said to him, as we stood on the bridge, and looked up and down the bonnie valley, ‘Eh, Mr Thomas, ye’ll be wanting a bit of land, as the money comes in to ye. Ye wedded me with my shawl over my head, but ye might be Waynflete of Waynflete yet, if ye liked to try.’ And he said, ‘Margaret, if I can give ye your will, my lass, ye shall have it.’ So I educated myself for this, and I kept his house well, and was as saving as was fitting for him and me. But there, Mr Thomas never owned but Upper Flete Farm before the Lord took him, and it was a lonesome thing for an old woman like me to set up in a fine house alone; besides that, I had the mill to attend to. But now, it’s time I took my place before I die. Guy can go and see what’s wanting.”

“Let me go, auntie. Guy does not care about Waynflete,” said Godfrey, thoughtlessly.

“Eh?” said his aunt. But here a rapturous bark from Rawdon Crawley, who had been penitently licking the blacking off his master’s boots, directed attention to Guy’s figure at the house door.

He had had a long, hot journey from London, and now threw himself into a garden-chair, exclaiming with delight at the coolness and shade.

“So you’ve seen the Miss Vyners again?” said Godfrey, referring to a note previously received from his brother.

“Yes; they and two of Staunton’s sisters are coming down to Moorhead for a reading party in their vacation.”

“A reading party,” said Mrs Waynflete. “Young ladies?”

“That’s all quite correct, auntie,” said Godfrey. “Girls go to college nowadays, and of course they must read for their exams. They do, generally.”

“Eh, well,” said the old lady. “I see no reason against it. I never doubted that a woman’s brains were as good as a man’s. I could have taken a degree myself. I’ll ask Constance Palmer to bring them here before we go to Waynflete. They can pursue their studies afterwards.”

“Waynflete?” said Guy, with a start.

“Yes. I’ve been telling your brother,” – here she recapitulated her two proposals. “I’ll get you to go over, and see if the place is in order.”

“Oh yes, Aunt Margaret, if you wish; but I’ve been some time away from the mill, and there are one or two matters – ”

“I hope you’ve brought back no new-fangled notions from town,” interrupted the old lady, sharply.

“Well, I’ve acquired a few ideas in conversation,” said Guy, slowly. “John Cooper, no doubt, will show me the fallacy of them.”

“You’ll have to live a long time before you’re wiser than John Cooper. Tea?” as the servant appeared with some for which Guy had asked as he came through the house. “I never take tea between meals myself.”

“It’s new-fangled,” said Guy, meekly, “or was once.”

“Eh, Godfrey,” said Mrs Waynflete, “there’s a plant broken in the ribbon border. That’s Crawley, I’ll be bound. He needs a whipping.” But her tone, as she walked over to the border, had lost all its asperity. Godfrey and his dog were privileged offenders.

“Going to Waynflete is a jolly idea,” said Godfrey; “but Cousin Susan and Sarah Jane will be confounded bores, if they’re to stay here for good.”

“They will so,” said Guy. “As for Waynflete, it’s a great move for my aunt at her age.”

“Oh, she’s up to anything. I say, do you remember waking me up because you had the nightmare. You ate too many raspberries with those jolly girls in the old fruit-garden. That story would be a fortune to the fellows who go in for spooks. Do you ever see ghosts now?”

“If I do, I shall not come to you for protection. You threw too much cold water on that early effort of my subliminal self to rise into consciousness.”

“I say, I don’t go in for that jargon. Give me a good square ghost with a sheet and a turnip, not all that psychical rot.”

“If ever you do see a ghost, my boy, it will certainly be a sheet and a turnip, and by George, how it’ll frighten you!”

Godfrey was boy enough to rise to this bait; though he did not like his brother very much nor get on very smoothly with him, his growls were not much more serious than those of Rawdie at the end of a stick. He was too prosperous to be discontented with his surroundings.

When Constancy came down with her aunt to the Mill House – Florella had a previous engagement, and did not accept the invitation – she found plenty of contrasts to study, and she studied each with equal zest.

She was never tired and never bored, she was ready to play tennis from four till eight, and then, after supper, as was customary at Ingleby parties, to dance from nine to twelve. She waltzed with Godfrey as untiringly as if all her brains were in her feet. She made him coach her up in all the ways of grouse shooting, and then she roused him to fury, by wondering how long the barbaric desire to kill something would survive in the English gentleman. She made much of Rawdie, till a certain proverb occurred frequently to the mind of his master. But she also went over the mills with Guy, and learned how to tell good wool from bad, and what were the processes of conversion into broadcloth and tweed. She picked his brains about her own special subjects, or his. She had been writing an article on English musical instruments, she had worked it all up from books, but there was a bit about music itself.

“What it does for humanity,” she said; “as it does nothing for me, I have to guess it all. You are musical, have I got it right? I don’t have these experiences, you know. There are such a splendid lot of things to do and to think of, I can’t tell how people have time for feelings.”

Guy was apparently as willing to discuss music as Godfrey to defend the game laws, and it was impossible to say whether Constancy preferred his languid, satirical courtesy and soft, preoccupied eyes, or Godfrey’s overflowing vitality, and look as of a vigorous young Viking, with his exaggeration of the high, marked family features, and of the family fairness, so that his old school nickname of “Towhead” was still extremely appropriate. The rosy, round-faced Sarah Jane, who desired to be called Jeanie, and blushed whenever Guy or Godfrey spoke to her, and was always wondering how familiar she ought to be with so-called cousins, looked on in amaze. When Constancy called Godfrey a Philistine, Jeanie thought that a flippant allusion was being made to Scripture characters, and when she talked of writing an article, as simply as of making a pincushion, the allusion appeared as a social faux pas to Jeanie’s idea of propriety. If Constancy was so unlucky as to possess an unpopular taste, she had better have said nothing about it. But the young men did not appear to be repelled, and were both of them on most friendly terms with the visitor, while they regulated their conduct to Jeanie with a propriety and skill which any chaperon might have envied. They were aware of a crowded background of Palmer aunts and cousins, and, though they did not think it becoming to make objections to her introduction to the family, they were agreed on the point of their relations towards her. Jeanie was a good little girl; but she knew quite well which “cousin’s” attention to Constancy meant as she called it, “something particular;” she knew quite well which of the two was the most interesting to herself.

But Constancy took the young men much for granted. She was more struck with Mrs Waynflete than with either of them.

Cousin Susan Joshua – it was the custom in the Palmer family to call the wives by their Christian names attached to those of their husbands – limited her intercourse with “Aunt Waynflete,” to receiving her commands; “Constance John,” as she submitted to be called with a shrug, to sympathetic and polite commonplaces, Jeanie was far too much afraid of her hostess to say anything but, “Yes, aunt,” and “Very well, aunt;” but Constancy talked and listened by the hour together. Her imagination was caught by the stately, flaxen-haired old woman whose strong personality was impressed on every detail of the life around her, whose household must breakfast at eight, and go to bed at ten, go to church on Sunday afternoon, and stay at home on Sunday evening, as by the law of the Medes and Persians. She heard, more than any one else had ever done, of old Margaret’s early struggles, of her strong purpose, and of how the only birthright of which she had been actively conscious had been won at last, since of that she was more than worthy. Constancy noted keenly how impatient she was of any change in the methods of her prime; she saw plainly how Guy’s indifferent manner irritated her, and how Godfrey was the kind of youth that pleased her. It was to Constancy’s credit that she could bridge over sixty years, and see a point of view so alien to her young modern spirit; and Mrs Waynflete was flattered by her preference as age must be by the admiration of brilliant youth.

Godfrey looked on delighted, and drew quite false conclusions; for, if Constancy loved Rawdie, and admired Mrs Waynflete, it was for their own sakes and not for his.

The hour and the maiden had come for the happy, prosperous youth. The vigorous inspiring companionship filled him with delight, the roses of that summer were redder and its sun warmer than he had ever known. Love came upon him with a rush of joyful hope, and, as was natural to him, his passion became a purpose, which he expected to fulfil. He would work hard for a degree, for she would scout a failure. He must win her; but Guy – He was furiously jealous when Guy obtained a monograph on the “Music of the Greeks,” and presented it to Miss Vyner, though it was given openly in the family circle. Godfrey could not dare to give her a bunch of the dark red dog roses of the north country, which he had heard her admire.

He was “over head and ears in love,” – no other expression could express his condition – and when she went to join her friends at Moorhead, and her aunt tired, as she said in private, of making talk for Mrs Joshua, betook herself to Harrogate, only hopes of speedy meetings modified his despair.

The girls’ reading party must come over both to Ingleby and to Waynflete, and Cousin Susan and Jeanie would both want to see the spinster housekeeping at Moorhead.

But before these visits took place, the situation, already strained, between Guy and his aunt was intensified in an unexpected manner.