The Unknown Ajax (22 page)

“Maybe she wouldn’t, but she wasn’t reared on the edge of the moors,” returned Hugo. “I’m not used to be shut in: I want room to breathe, and never mind the carpets!” A disapproving sniff was the only answer vouchsafed to this. Spurstow then conducted the unwelcome visitors to the upper floor, and volunteered no further remark until Anthea, showing Hugo Jane Darracott’s bedchamber, asked whether her ghost had been seen there. He said repressively that he took no account of ghosts.

“The Major takes no account of them either,” said Anthea. “He thinks I’m telling him a Banbury story, but the house is haunted, isn’t it?”

“Folks say so,” Spurstow replied. “I never did, miss. I’m not one to talk, and I don’t scare easy. I’ve lived here thirty years and more, and it’s done me no harm. I don’t take any notice.”

Anthea gave an involuntary shiver, but the Major said: “Any notice of what?” Spurstow looked at him under his brows. “Aught I hear,” he said. “What do you hear?” enquired Anthea.

“Nothing, miss. It doesn’t worry me,” he said. “Time was when I’d get up out of my bed, thinking there was someone got into the house, but it was all foolishness: you can search from the cellars to the attics, but you’ll see naught. Leastways, I never did. It’s only footsteps, when all’s said.”

“Oh!” said Anthea rather faintly. “Only footsteps!”

“Now, you don’t want to listen to the silly stories folks tell, Miss Anthea!” said Spurstow roughly. “The rest’s naught but the wind in the trees, or an owl, maybe. There are nights when it sounds like someone was moaning outside here pitiful, but lor’ bless you, miss, the wind can make queer noises! I don’t heed it!”

Repressing an impulse to glance over her shoulder, Anthea moved rather closer to the Major, unexpectedly grateful for the presence of so large and solid a body. He looked down at her, and smiled reassuringly. “That makes another good reason for pushing the woodland back from the house,” he remarked. “As for the footsteps, I’d have in the rat-catcher!” His eyes were on Spurstow as he spoke, but that worthy said nothing. There was nothing acquiescent in his silence, however; his expression was that of one who might, had he chosen to do so, have made further and more alarming disclosures; and Anthea could only be glad that nothing more remained to be seen of the house than the cellars and the servants’ quarters. The Major obligingly disclaimed any interest in these, so they went downstairs again, followed by Spurstow, who broke his silence to inform them that whenever it rained the roof leaked in a dozen places. If they had gone up into the attics, he said, they would have seen the buckets placed there to catch the drips.

On this depressing note they departed, Spurstow, slightly mellowed by the douceur bestowed upon him by the Major, holding open the door for them, and even going so far as to say that they would always be welcome.

“If we were welcome, I’d be sorry for anyone that was unwelcome,” remarked Hugo, as they retraced their steps to the wicket-gate. “Did you say he’d been the old lady’s butler?” “Yes, but he was never trained to be a butler. Aunt took him out of the stables, because none of the butlers she hired from London ever stayed with her above a month. She didn’t care about his manners, and I must own that he was amazingly faithful to her, and, I think, fond of her, in his rough way. She let him do just as he pleased, and, of course, when she took to living in one room he managed everything, and never cheated her out of a groat, what’s more. He was born and bred on the estate, and his father and grandfather before him, but even Grandpapa wouldn’t have wondered at it if he had feathered his nest at Aunt Matty’s expense. She left him an annuity, but only quite a small one, which was why, I suppose, he was willing to stay on alone in the Dower House. I wouldn’t have done so for a fortune! Didn’t he make your blood run cold when he said it was only footsteps? Just as though that made everything right! I thought it made everything ten times eerier, didn’t you?” “Ay, he did it very well,” agreed Hugo.

She looked quickly up at him. “Did it very well? Do you mean he was trying to frighten us? It didn’t seem so to me. He made so little of it! He even said the wind was to blame for the moaning noise.”

Hugo chuckled. “So he did! If you could have seen your own face, lass! Not that I think it was you he was trying to scare away. What I did think was that as soon as he suspected I’d a notion of living in the Dower House myself he did all he could to set me against it.” She knit her brows. “Yes, I suppose that’s possible,” she said, after considering for a minute or two. “Unless you hired him with the house, which is not very likely, he would be obliged to leave, and I daresay—No, it can’t be that! The house was known to be haunted long before he came to it!”

“If it was half as badly haunted as he’d have us believe, our great-grandmother wouldn’t have gone to live there in the first place, let alone have stayed there till she died!” replied Hugo. “Nay, lass! Spurstow wants to keep people away from it. That might be because he’s afraid of being turned out: I’m not saying it isn’t, but what I suspect is that he’s got some other reason—and a havey-cavey one at that!—for scaring the people roundabout here with his talk of footsteps and pitiful meanings!”

“But Richmond saw the ghost!” she argued. “One or two of the villagers have seen it, too, though not as clearly as he did. Old Buttermere said it was a white thing, that glided over the ground, and vanished into the shrubbery.”

“And a very good place for it to vanish, too,” said Hugo, wholly unimpressed. “Give me a sheet, and a night without too much moonlight, and I’ll engage to do the same!” “And the form Richmond mistook for a living person?”

“If Richmond came up here expecting to see the ghost of Jane Darracott,” he suggested, after a moment, “and in fact saw that old rascal, draped in a sheet, the likelihood is that his imagination took hold of him, and made him ready to swear he’d seen a deal more than he did see. It’s a queer thing, imagination—and I’d say Richmond’s was a lively one.”

She thought this over, saying at the end of her cogitations: “Well, if you are right, Hugo, I daresay I can guess why Spurstow wishes to keep everyone away from the Dower House. Indeed, I wonder that it shouldn’t have occurred to any of us! Depend upon it, the house is being used by free-traders!”

Chapter 11

The Major received this suggestion without any visible signs of surprise or disapproval; but after turning it over in his mind, he said: “I don’t know much about smuggling, but I should have thought the Dower House would have been too far from the coast to be of use.” “No, why? It’s not much more than ten miles, and you may be sure that those who carry the run goods inland know the Marsh so well that they can find their way on the darkest of nights. They must wish to store the goods as far from the shore as they may, because the land-guard keep their strictest watch on the dwellings nearest to the coast, but they can’t go very far, on account of the darkness. The goods are landed on moonless nights, you see: the darks is what they call them.”

“Ay, they’d have to be. Do the smuggling vessels sail close in to the shore, of do the landsmen row out to them?”

“Well, I don’t know precisely. I think they very often land their cargoes in creeks, and gaps, but sometimes, I believe, they cast the goods overboard at high tide. I remember once, when I was a child, that the tide-waiters captured a cargo of tea which had been thrown overboard. It was packed in oilskin bags, made to look like mackerel pots, my nurse told me. She knew a great deal about the trade: I expect her brothers had to do with it.” He could not help grinning at her cheerful unconcern, but he was somewhat startled, and said incredulously: “You nurse’s brothers were smugglers?”

“Not master-smugglers, but hired to help carry the goods up from the shore,” she explained. “They worked on their father’s farm, and were perfectly respectable, I assure you!” “Nay!” he protested.

She smiled. “Well, quite as respectable as their fellows at all events. You don’t understand, Hugo! In Kent and Sussex almost everyone has to do with smuggling in some way or another. The farm labourers hire themselves out as porters, and the farmers themselves sometimes lend their horses, and nearly always allow their barns to be used as hiding-places. We, of course, don’t have any dealings with smugglers, but if we found ankers in one of our outhouses we shouldn’t say a word about it. No one would! Why, Grandpapa told us once how a cargo of brandy was stored in Guldeford Church, with the Vicar knowing all about it, and saying from the pulpit that there would be no service on the following Sunday because the roof needed repair! Grandpapa could tell you hundreds of stories about smuggling: he used to do so when we were children, and he was in a good humour: we thought it a high treat!”

“I’ll be bound you did,” Hugo said.

She detected a little dryness in his voice, and said, with a touch of impatience: “I collect you think it very shocking! I daresay it may be, but it is not so regarded in Kent. When Grandpapa was a young man, he says there was scarcely a magistrate to be found who would commit a man charged with smuggling.”

“So that made all right,” he nodded.

“No, of course it didn’t! I only meant—well, to show you why we don’t think it such a dreadful crime as you do!”

“Nay, you don’t know what I think,” he said, smiling down at her.

“You will not be much liked here if you show yourself to be at enmity with the Gentlemen,” she warned him.

“That’s bad,” he said, gravely shaking his head.

She said no more then, but the subject came up again later in the day, when Richmond asked Hugo how he had fared at the Dower House. It was Anthea who answered, exclaiming: “Richmond, do you think that odious old man is trying to keep everyone away from the house?”

“Yes, of course he is!” he replied, laughing. “You know he hates visitors! Besides, if we took to paying him visits, he’d be obliged to bestir himself, and scrub the floors. Was he crusty?” “Yes, and worse! He made my blood run cold, with his talk of footsteps, and moaning, and paying no heed to the things he hears! I began to have that horrid feeling that there was something behind me. If Hugo hadn’t been there, I should have picked up my skirts and fled!”

“Humdudgeon!” scoffed Richmond. “In broad daylight?”

“Well, it ain’t humdudgeon,” intervened Claud. “I know just what she means, and a dashed nasty feeling it is! It happened to me once, walking up the lane here. Couldn’t get it out of my head there was something following me. Made my flesh creep, because it was getting dark, and not a soul about.”

“Did you run?” asked Anthea, quizzing him.

“I should dashed well think I did run!” he replied. “It was a devilish great black boar that had got loose. Never had such a fright in my life! Yes, it’s all very well for you to laugh, but they’re dangerous things, boars.”

“I’d prefer to have a boar behind me than a ghost,” said Anthea. “At, least it would be a live thing!”

“Well, if you think a live boar behind you would be better than a dead one, it’s easy to see you’ve never been chased by one!” said Claud, with some feeling. “And as for ghosts, you ought to know better than to believe in ’em! They don’t exist.” “Oh, don’t they?” struck in Richmond. “Would you be willing to spend the night in the grounds of Dower House?”

“You know, Richmond, you’ve got the most uncomfortable notions of anyone I ever met,” said Claud. “Dashed if I don’t think you’re a trifle queer in your attic! A nice cake I’d make of myself, prowling round the Dower House all night!”

“But wouldn’t you be afraid to, Claud?” Anthea asked. “Truly, wouldn’t you?” “Of course I’d be afraid to! I’d be bound to catch a chill, for it stands to reason I couldn’t keep on walking for ever, and I’d be lucky if it didn’t turn to an inflammation of the lung. I’m not afraid of seeing a ghost, if that’s what you mean. I know dashed well I shouldn’t.” “Don’t be too sure of that!”

Claud bent a sapient eye upon his young cousin. “Well, I am sure of it. And don’t you take a notion into your head that I ain’t up to slum, my boy, because I am! What I should see, if I was such a nodcock as to spend the night at the Dower House, would be you, capering about in your nightshirt, with a pillowcase over your head. I don’t doubt I’d see that!” Richmond laughed, but said emphatically: “Not I! Anywhere else I’d be happy to try if I couldn’t hoax you, but not at the Dower House! Once is enough, thank you!” Hugo, who had been glancing through the latest edition of the Morning Post to reach Darracott Place, lowered the journal at this, and looked at Richmond with a twinkle in his eye. “Seemingly you’re the only person who ever saw the poor lady plainly,” he remarked. “What did she look like, lad?”

“I didn’t see her plainly enough to be able to answer that,” Richmond returned. “Besides, she was gone in a flash.”

“But you did see a female form, didn’t you?” Anthea asked.

“Yes, I thought it was someone from the village, when I first caught sight of it, but there wasn’t much light, of course, and—”

“A misty form?” interrupted Claud. “Yes. That is—”

“Did it shimmer?”

“Lord, I don’t know! There was no time to see whether it did or not: one moment it was there, and the next it had melted into the shrubbery.”

“Thought as much!” said Claud, with a satisfied air. “I get it myself. In fact, it runs in the family. There’s only one thing for it, and that’s mercury. You take my advice, young Richmond, and the next time you see things slipping away when you look at them ask my Aunt Elvira for a Blue Pill! Surprised she doesn’t give ’em to you, because it’s as plain as a pikestaff you’re as liverish as Vincent!”