Comedies of Courtship Part 26

"Why shouldn't I?"

The mysterious appearance not being repeated, Millie's courage returned.

"I thought you believed in the ghost," she said, smiling.

"So I do, but I don't mind it."

"You've never seen it?"

"Supposing I haven't? That doesn't prove it's not true."

"But you're often here at the time?"

"Never," answered Charlie with emphasis. "I always go away before the time."

"Then you'd better come now. Put the canoe to bed and walk with me."

Charlie Merceron thrust his hands into his pockets and smiled at his companion. He was tall also, and just able to look down on her.

"No," he said, "I'm not going yet."

"How rude--oh, there it is again, Charlie! I saw it! I'm--I'm frightened," and her healthy color paled a trifle, as she laid a hand on Charlie's arm.

"I tell you what," observed Charlie. "If you have fancies of this kind you'd better not come here any more--not in the evening, at all events.

You know people who think they're going to see things always do see 'em."

"My heart is positively beating," said Miss Bush.e.l.l. "I--I don't quite like walking back alone."

"I'll see you as far as the road," Charlie conceded, and with remarkable prompt.i.tude he led the way, turning his head over his shoulder to remark:

"Really, if you're so nervous, you oughtn't to come here."

"I never will again--not alone, I mean."

Charlie had breasted the hill with such goodwill that they were already at the road.

"And you're really going back?" she asked.

"Oh, just for a few minutes. I left my book in the temple--I was reading there. She's not due for half an hour yet, you know."

"What--what happens if you see her?"

"Oh, you die," answered Charlie. "Goodnight;" and with a smile and a nod he ran down the hill towards the Pool.

Miss Bush.e.l.l, cavalierly deserted, made her way home at something more than her usual rate of speed. She had never believed in that nonsense, but there was certainly something white at that window--something white that moved. Under the circ.u.mstances, Charlie really might have seen her home, she thought, for the wood-fringed road was gloomy, and dusk coming on apace. Besides, where was the hards.h.i.+p in being her escort?

Doubtless none, Charlie would have answered, unless a man happened to have other fish to fry. The pace at which the canoe crossed the Pool and brought up at its old moorings witnessed that he had no leisure to spend on Miss Bush.e.l.l. Leaping out, he ran up the stops into the temple, crying in a loud whisper:

"She's gone!"

The temple was empty, and Charlie, looking round in vexation, added:

"So has she, by Jingo!"

He sat down disconsolately on the low marble seat that ran round the little shrine.

There were no signs of the book of which he had spoken to Millie Bush.e.l.l. There were no signs of anybody whom he could have meant to address. Stay! One sign there was: a long hat-pin lay on the floor.

Charlie picked it tip with a sad smile.

"Agatha's," he said to himself.

And yet, as everyone in the neighborhood knew, poor Agatha Merceron went nightly to her phantom death bareheaded and with golden locks tossed by the wind. Moreover, the pin was of modern manufacture; moreover, ghosts do not wear--but there is no need to enter on debatable ground; the pin was utterly modern.

"Now, if uncle Van," mused Charlie, "came here and saw this--!" He carefully put the pin in his breast-pocket, and looked at his watch.

It was exactly Agatha Merceron's time; yet Charlie leant back on his cold marble seat, put his hands in his pockets, and gazed up at the ceiling with the happiest possible smile on his face. For one steeped in family legends, wors.h.i.+pping the hapless lady's memory with warm devotion, and reputed a sincere believer in her ghostly wanderings, he awaited her coming with marvellous composure. In point of fact he had forgotten all about her, and there was nothing to prevent her coming, slipping down the steps, and noiselessly into the water, all unnoticed by him. His eyes were glued to the ceiling, the smile played on his lips, his ears were filled with sweet echoes, and his thoughts were far away. Perhaps the dead lady came and pa.s.sed unseen. That Charlie did not see her was ridiculously slight evidence whereon to d.a.m.n so ancient and picturesque a legend. He thought the same himself, for that night at dinner--he came in late for dinner--he maintained the credit of the story with fierce conviction against Mr. Vansittart Merceron's scepticism.

CHAPTER II

MISS WALLACE'S FRIEND

In old days the Mercerons had been great folk. They had held the earldom of Langbury and the barony of Warmley. A failure of direct descent in the male line extinguished the earldom; the Lady Agatha was the daughter of the last earl, and would have been Baroness Warmley had she lived. On her death that t.i.tle pa.s.sed to her cousin, and continued in that branch till the early days of the present century. Then came another break. The Lord Warmley of that day, a Regency dandy, had a son, but not one who could inherit his honors, and away went the barony to a yet younger branch, where, falling a few years later into female hands, it was merged in a brand-new viscounty, and was now waiting till chance again should restore it to an independent existence. From the Mercerons of the Court it was gone for ever, and the blot on their escutcheon which lost it them was a sore point, from which it behooved visitors and friends to refrain their tongues. The Regent had, indeed, with his well-known good nature, offered a baronetcy to hide the stain; but pride forbade, and the Mercerons now held no t.i.tles, save the modest dignity which Charlie's father, made a K.C.B. for services in the North-West Provinces, had left behind him to his widow. But the old house was theirs, and a comfortable remnant of the lands, and the pictures of the extinct earls and barons, down to him whose sins had robbed the line of its surviving rank and left it in a position, from an heraldic point of view, of doubtful respectability. Lady Merceron felt so acutely on the subject that she banished this last n.o.bleman to the smoking-room. There was, considering everything, an appropriateness in that position, and he no longer vexed her eyes as she sat at meat in the dining room. She had purposed a like banishment for Lady Agatha; but here Charlie had interceded, and the unhappy beauty hung still behind his mother's chair and opposite his own. It was just to remember that but for poor Agatha's fault and fate the present branch might never have enjoyed the honors at all; so Charlie urged to Lady Merceron, catching at any excuse for keeping Lady Agatha. Lady Merceron's way of judging pictures may seem peculiar, but the fact is that she lacked what is called the sense of historical perspective: she did not see why our ancestors should be treated so tenderly and allowed, with a charitable reference to the change in manners, forgiveness for what no one to-day could hope to win a pardon. Mr.

Vansittart Merceron smiled at his sister-in-law and shrugged his shoulders; but in vain. To the smoking-room went the wicked Lord Warmley, and Lady Agatha was remarkably lucky in that she did not follow him.

Mr. Vansittart, half-brother to the late Sir Victor, and twenty years younger than he, was a short thick-set man, with a smooth round white face, and a way of speaking so deliberate and weighty that it imparted momentousness to nothings and infallibility to nonsense. When he really had something sensible to say, and that was very fairly often, the effect was enormous. He was now forty-four, a widower, well off by his marriage, and a Member of Parliament. Naturally, Lady Merceron relied much, on his advice, especially in what concerned her son; she was hazy about the characters and needs of young men, not knowing how they should be treated or what appealed to them. Amid her haziness, one fact only stood out clear. To deal with a young man, you wanted a man of the world. In this capacity Mr. Vansittart had now been sent for to the Court, the object of his visit being nothing less than the arrangement and satisfactory settlement of Charlie's future.

Mr. Vansittart approached the future through the present and the past.

"Yon wasted your time at school, you wasted your time at Oxford, you're wasting your time now," he remarked, when Charlie and he were left alone after dinner.

Charlie was looking at Lady Agatha's picture. "With a sigh he turned to his uncle.

"That's all very well," he said tolerantly, "but what is there for me to do?"

"If you took more interest in country pursuits it might be different.

But you don't hunt, you shoot very seldom----"

"And very badly."

"And not at all well, as you admit. You say you won't become a magistrate, you show no interest in politics or--or--social questions.

You simply moon about."

Charlie was vividly reminded of a learned judge whom he had once heard p.r.o.nouncing sentence of death. His uncle's denunciation seemed to lack its appropriate conclusion--that he should be hanged by the neck till he was dead. He was roused to defend himself.

"You're quite wrong, uncle," he said. "I'm working hard. I'm writing a history of the family."

"A history of the family!" groaned Mr. Vansittart. "Who wants one?