Part 1, Chapter II
The House

Constancy Vyner was sitting at a table, sorting and arranging a little pile of manuscripts, neatly clipped together, and written in the distinct upright hand of the modern high-school girl. She was dressed in a plain, girlish frock, well cut and well put on, her thick brown hair hung on her shoulders, and curled over her square low forehead in vigorous waves, as if every hair was full of elastic life. Her handsome eyes, of a clear shade of hazel, looked out under straight brown eyebrows, from a brown, rosy face with an air of keen and critical observation; while the straight nose and firm round chin added to her purposeful look. She was tall and strongly made for her sixteen years, and the white, well-shaped hands that held the papers looked as if made to carry out the work which the well-shaped head would conceive. The room in which she sat was as old-fashioned as she herself was modern and up to date, with small irregular panels, sloping roof, and tiny casements, through which the evening sun danced in distorted gleams.

“I think I’m doing well,” said Constancy aloud to herself, as if convincing an opponent. “Ten shillings from the Guide of Youth for the best essay on Reading. I’m glad I was so careful as to what books I mentioned. One must respect people’s prejudices. I have much the best chance for all those acrostics and search questions. The editor of The Children’s Friend has asked me for another story. This will do. The little delicate boy must catch cold in a thunderstorm when his sister takes him out without leave. Shall he quite die? I think not. The district-visitor shall save his life. And this story for The Penny Pleasure Giver. There mustn’t be any moral in that at all! Altogether I have got twenty pounds in the last year, and some of the editors write ‘Dear Madam,’ and don’t find out I’m only a little girl! Something ought to come out of this place. It’s beautiful copy!” she continued, leaning back in her chair and glancing round her, while a certain absorbed receptive look came into her keen eyes, altering her whole expression.

She jumped up, and swinging herself into the deep high recess of the little casement, pushed it open and looked out.

Beneath her lay a wild untrimmed garden divide! by a sunk fence from a large paddock sloping towards a narrow valley, with heathery hills beyond. The sky was blue and still, with long streaks of pearly silvery cloud across the hilltops. A flight of rooks came home to a group of tall elm trees beside the house, filling the still air with sound.

“It’s awfully jolly and heavenly!” said Constancy, staring at the dazzling clouds with strong, unfaltering eyes. “It’ll do for a description.”

“What will do for a description?” said an answering voice, like a softer echo of her own, as another girl, a year or so younger than herself, came in and stood below the window, lifting up a face of almost exactly the same shape, more delicate and perhaps less forcible.

“Rooks – peace – brownish meadows, and blue sky,” said Constancy. “Nice description. What have you been doing, Florella?”

“Talking to Aunt Constance about the Waynfletes, and the place. She says she is glad we have come; the house is gloomy, and she has heard odd noises. Oh, Cosy, do you think it could be haunted?”

“That would be luck!” said Constancy, jumping down. “Oh, I say, even a little noise would do to begin with! If I could only get a ghost, and the way people behaved with a ghost, it would be beautiful! It would do for the Penny Pleasure. Now, Flo, remember, you are not to tell auntie I read all those novels at Weymouth. One must have lovers, if one writes a novel, and I never can understand going into raptures about anybody, so I must get it at secondhand. Let us come down to tea – the Waynflete boys will be coming. Perhaps they can tell us about the ghost. I shall investigate it thoroughly, and if ever I am interviewed by the Psychical Society, I shall take care to give more lucid answers than most people seem to do.”

Constancy and Florella Vyner were the orphan daughters of a man who had never known how to make his considerable talents marketable, or to adapt his style to the Guide of Youth, or to the Penny Pleasure Giver, as self-interest required. He lived and died the vicar of a small town parish, and his two little girls, already motherless and with only a few thousand pounds between them, came under the care of their mother’s sister, Mrs John Palmer, who had married one of Mrs Waynflete’s connections. She was a widow, well off and childless, with a house in London, and she gave all the advantages to Constancy and Florella which she would have bestowed on her own daughters. She was very fond of Florella, and as much so of Constancy as a not very clever aunt was likely to be of a girl who not only thought that she knew better than her elders, but, like Prince Prigio, always did.

Constancy did not mean to be the mere society young lady into which her aunt expected the shining light of the high-school to develop. She had definite ambitions, and definite powers to enable her to fulfil them.

“What sort of noises did auntie hear, Flo?” she asked as she put away her papers.

“She hasn’t heard any. But the servants say there are queer whisperings and rustlings, and the lodge-keeper told them that one of the old Waynflete’s ‘walks.’ Oh! what’s that?”

“The ghost,” said Constancy, laughing, and emerging from behind the rustling, fresh calendered chintz of the old-fashioned four-post bed. “You hear a little faint rustle all round you, then crack goes a panel! You listen for footsteps, and pit-a-pat up the stairs they come. The door slowly opens – ”

“Don’t, Cosy; I don’t like it,” said Florella, shrinking.

“Stop a moment, I’ll show you,” cried Constancy, opening a door, and running along the narrow polished oak passage beyond it. The younger girl stood still at the head of the dark old staircase, and looked timidly around her. The wind whistled softly round the house, and stirred the neglected creepers outside, so that they creaked on their rusty nails, and tapped with their long arms against the windows. She felt the bygoneness and unusedness of the place, and a feeling of awe stole over her. Suddenly a sound of eerie sobbing and sighing, followed first by a wild, mournful cry and then by a ringing laugh sounded through the house. The next moment Cosy came running down the passage, laughing still.

“There! See how easy it is,” she said. “That’s how ghost-stories are hatched. I can make up a beauty for Waynflete, and study the results. Bless me! is it ringing the door-bell? No, that must be the Waynflete boys arriving. Come along, Flo, we’ll be ready to receive them.”

Mrs John Palmer, kind, pretty, and easy-mannered, was a charming hostess, and the two lads had not been many minutes in the long, low drawing-room of the ancestral home that was so strange to them before she had set them quite at their ease. She pointed out to them the quaint old furniture, some of which must have been in Waynflete Hall before it was sold, and praised the old panelling and the low ceiling, with big black beams running across it. Then she encouraged them to talk about themselves, found out that they were both at a great public school, but that Guy was just going to Oxford. He was musical, and meant to read for honours, while Godfrey, besides being well up in the school, had done everything in the way of athletics which was possible at sixteen.

Then she proposed that the girls should show them round the place; and the four young people went out together, across a lawn cut up by odd-shaped flower-beds, full of old-fashioned flowers, “inconvenient, but unique,” as Constancy said, moving towards the paddock, where they discovered the possibility of making a tennis-ground.

The two boys were soon congenially employed in stepping it out, and they all grew intimate over their respective experiences of the game, and of other occupations and amusements. Florella was a kind and cheerful girl, wishful of giving pleasure; and Constancy, though she watched the two Waynfletes keenly, and “studied” them as she talked with spirit, was not at all occupied with her own relations to them; and, as Godfrey remarked afterwards, “was more like a fellow than a girl, except that she talked about the work her form was doing, which a fellow never wanted to do.”

The four found their way into the old kitchen garden, with lavender and rosemary bushes nearly as tall as themselves, and wildernesses of untrimmed raspberries, which, in that northern country, were still bearing large specimens of red and white berries. Then, through a gate in the old stone wall, they came out into the stables and farm-buildings, picturesque and woefully tumble-down.

“Shabby old place,” said Godfrey, contemptuously; but Guy already knew that the whole scene was fastening itself on his affections. He had never liked any other so much. Constancy watched his soft gazing eyes and satirical little smile as they turned round to the entrance of the farmyard where were a pair of large iron gates with handsome stone gate-posts. Beyond was the remains of an avenue of elms, leading through rough, sunlit fields.

“The river is down there,” said Constancy. “I believe this used to be the entrance.” And Guy instantly thought of his unhappy namesake riding up to the gates – too late. A vivid picture presented itself to his eyes.

“Is that the church?” asked Godfrey, pointing to a little grey building low down at one side; while Guy said, “Let us go and see where our ‘rude forefathers sleep.’”

“Isn’t it like a slug?” said Cosy.

The comparison was not romantic, but it was apt. The long, low, moss-grown church seemed to cling to the uneven, heaped-up ground. An old woman was cleaning it, and the young people went in.

The church was dark, damp, and cold, but a flood of yellow sunlight streamed through the open door and fell upon a flat stone at the entrance on which was no name, but only a date, “1785,” and two words – “Too Late.”

“Cruel!” ejaculated Guy, and caught himself up.

“Eh, sir,” said the old woman, coming forward with a curtsey; “there be the last o’ t’owd Waynfletes, him as saw some’at and died raving. Here outside’s fayther, as shot hisself, and could na’ lie in t’kirkyard, so’s brother, t’vicar, laid un here in t’field and pu’d t’wa’ doon, and built ’t oop agen, round ’s tomb. Here a ligs.”

She led them out among the heaped-up graves, and showed them a round excrescence in the churchyard wall, within which was an old-fashioned oblong tombstone.

A tall, fair-haired, young man, with a lanky figure and stumbling steps, went before them, as if doing the honours of the dreary neglected place.

“Yon’s soft Jem Outhwaite,” said the old woman in a whisper. “He’ve seen t’owd genleman —him as walks, sir. He seed un when he wor a laddie, and went silly. He maks a bit o’ brass by fetchin’ and carryin’ fer t’sexton and me.”

“Soft” Jem touched his hat and grinned cheerfully. Guy gave him a shilling, and the old woman another, with youthful lordliness but he disliked the sight of these dishonoured graves more than he could have supposed possible, and the poor delighted softy, tying up his shilling in an old spotted handkerchief made a vivid impression on him.