Waynflete

“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.

Part 1, Chapter III

The Inheritance

Constancy made Godfrey tell her all the story of the loss of Waynflete, of the traitor’s ghost, and of the Guy who was too late, as they walked home round the paddock, and looked down over Flete Edge to the river Flete at the bottom of the valley. A rough, ill-grown plantation covered the steep descent, while scattered cottages were planted on the equally steep hill opposite to them. Guy studied it with silent interest, while Godfrey compared it unfavourably with the Ingleby valley, and scoffed at the legends which he was repeating.

“Ghosts are all bosh,” he said, with decision.

“Well, there are some odd noises at Waynflete,” said Constancy, as they reached the house. “Now, come and see a picture. It must be this wretched Guy who was too late.”

She took them upstairs to the extreme end of the wing of the house next the stables. Here, with windows looking out three ways, was a little octagon room, with polished oak floor, and scanty old-fashioned furniture. Over the chimney was the head of a handsome fair-faced youth, with the last rays of sun falling on his face.

“I declare, Guy,” said Godfrey, “he’s uncommonly like you, especially about the eyes.”

“I dare say,” said Guy, but the likeness annoyed him.

“He looks very sad, poor fellow,” said Florella, softly; while Constancy looked from one to the other, and thought, “I’ve got a lot of ‘study.’” Rooms had been assigned to the two boys at the other end of this same wing of the house, opening into each other, as was the way of rooms at Waynflete.

Godfrey went to bed, thinking that he did not much like these old legends and old scandals; and as for ghosts, the idea was too ridiculous! Still, there were certainly an odd variety of nocturnal noises at Waynflete – scratch, tap – rats and mice? Then a low murmuring and sobbing – the wind? He stuck his candle in the open window, and the flame hardly stirred. There was an interval of silence, and he got into bed and fell asleep as he ran through in his mind all the causes of mysterious noises – distant trains, coughing sheep, scraping creepers, pecking pigeons, whistling wind, scratching mice, etc, etc.

He was awakened by a violent clutch on his shoulder, and starting up saw, in the stream of moonlight from the window, his brother, half dressed and deadly pale, who fell on his knees beside him, hiding his face and grasping him so tightly that he was hardly able to move.

“Guy – I say! Guy! Good Lord, what’s the matter with you? Ill? Got the nightmare? I say – let go – I can’t stir!”

Guy loosened his hold after a moment or two, but he shook from head to foot, and Godfrey, tumbling out of the bed, pushed him up on to it, and stood staring at him as he lay with hidden face.

“What the dickens is the matter with you? I say, Guy! Can’t you speak?”

There was no answer, and Godfrey bethinking himself that cold water was supposed to be an appropriate remedy for sudden ailments, plunged his sponge into the water-jug, and soused it on his brother’s head. It was so far effectual that Guy began to fetch his breath again, in long sobbing gasps, while Godfrey, to his increased horror, felt that there were tears on the face that was pressed against his hand.

“Oh, I say, Guy! I say – what is making you such an awful duffer? What is the matter with you?”

Poor Guy shivered and trembled, perhaps not finding Godfrey’s method very helpful; but he came more to himself by degrees, asked for some water to drink, and pulled the coverings round him.

“Didn’t you see – him?” he whispered at last. “See – see what? Oh, I say! Guy, you haven’t been dreaming of the ghost? Oh, I say! how can you be such a duffer! You’re as bad as when you used to climb into my crib, and Auntie Waynflete whipped you, after that nursemaid made the bogie and scared you.” What difference it might have made to Guy Waynflete if, at that moment of terrible experience he had had some comprehending friend to soothe and sustain him, it is impossible to say; as it was, his boyish pride and self-consciousness began to revive, under his brother’s rough dealing; he made an effort to pull himself together, laughed in an odd, startling way, and said —

“Dreaming! Yes, of course I was dreaming. Don’t you ever say one word about it.”

“Not I,” said Godfrey. “A nice story it would be to get about. Now, am I to go into your room, and sleep with the ghost? It’s getting chilly.”

Guy raised himself on his arm, and stared out into the moonlight.

“No,” he said, “I’ll go back myself. You’ll never hear another word about it.”

He got up, still tremulously, and went away, shutting the door behind him.

Godfrey was but a boy, with all the callous stupidity of his sixteen years. He thought that the incident had been very odd, and rather disgraceful to Guy’s manhood. He was glad it was over, and he tumbled back into bed again, and went to sleep.

Guy looked much paler than usual the next morning, but confessed to nothing amiss. As he went out with the others to join in trying the new tennis-ground, he saw Florella, standing a little apart from the others, evidently just getting over a fit of crying.

“I say – can I help you about anything?” he said, good naturedly.

“No,” said Florella, turning upon him a pair of translucent eyes, almost as steadfast as Constancy’s, and even more candid. “I – I – I’ve been helping to do something wrong – that’s all.”

She ran away before he could speak; but, surprised as he was, there remained in his mind the feeling that somehow she was a nice little girl.

Godfrey heard no more of Guy’s midnight adventure during the remaining three days of the visit. The time passed pleasantly, and the aged vicar of the parish and one or two of the neighbouring gentlemen called formally on “Mr Waynflete.” The recognition pleased Guy, or at least that part of him which was free to care about it. He had very little to say to his aunt when they came back about Waynflete, speaking of it in a satirical, rather contemptuous fashion, which annoyed her very much; while Godfrey described it fully, though he staunchly declared that he liked Ingleby best.

Shortly afterwards Guy had a sharp attack of illness. He had never been quite so strong as his brother, and he did not recover from its effects for some time. Mrs Waynflete had little patience with any ailment less definite than the measles, and thought him fanciful and self-indulgent.

She was also much put out by Mrs John Palmer’s complaints of odd and unaccountable noises at Waynflete, which upset her nerves and frightened her servants. But for these, she would have liked to take the house again next summer, as the air suited her, and she was glad to be near her husband’s family. As it was, she did not feel able to settle down comfortably.

Mrs Waynflete thought Constance Palmer would have had more sense. She let Waynflete Hall to a working farmer, with directions to look after the house carefully, and keep it dry.

Nothing more was heard of mysterious noises, and Guy and Godfrey did not see the place again for nearly five years, when the farmer’s tenancy had come to an end.

Part 1, Chapter IV

Hereditary Foes

“Very few people appreciate the feeling of a place. Hardly any one can feel the London atmosphere,” said Constancy Vyner, one Sunday afternoon nearly five years after the events last recorded, as she sat drinking tea on a balcony in a square on the London side of Kensington.

“I shouldn’t have thought our atmosphere so ethereal as to be imperceptible to any one,” said a young man who formed one of the party.

“That’s a most obvious remark, Mr Staunton; but I didn’t mean fogs. I don’t believe the country ever gives one just such a feel of summer as there is now. Hot air, balcony-flowers, rustling brown trees, they’re drier and more papery than country ones; sunny dust, dusty sun, and people, pavements, and omnibuses, and undergrounds – and smart fashionable clothes. It’s so summery! Nobody’s got the idea exactly,” she said. “Of course Dickens has a London feel; but that’s on another level, ghastly and squalid – or best parlour and hot-buttered toast; nor does it quite belong to the swells, though it has fashion and the season in it, too.”

“Your idea is coming?” said Mr Staunton, watching her curiously.

“I’ve got it!” said Constancy, sitting up with a broad smile of pleasure. “It’s modern – it’s democratic. It’s life’s fulness, roses, strawberries, sun, summer – got with some trouble, for the many. So there’s a little dust. You have the best of everything – music, parties; but you go by the underground!”

When Constancy was present, she always took the stage – or, rather, people gave it to her – she commanded attention. She was now at college, thinking, talking, making friends according to her wont, and though her literary ambitions were necessarily much in abeyance, she wrote, now and then, an article or short story, which had just the distinction that wins acceptance, and was not quite like every one else’s.

The youngest Miss Staunton was a college friend, and Constancy was intimate with her family, which consisted of two or three sisters, all busy with various forms of self-help and self-expression, and of the brother now present. The whole party lived harmoniously together, on a conjunction of small incomes, on terms of mutual independence, and, as Constancy epigrammatically put it, “went into society in the underground,” and into very good society too, which is no doubt a modern and democratic development.

“Don’t let us collect material for magazine articles,” said Violet Staunton; “but let us settle about the reading party. Cuthbert has heard of a jolly old-fashioned place on the moors up above Rilston, in Yorkshire, within reach of all kinds of fine scenery.”

“Rilston!” interposed Constancy. “We stayed once with Aunt Connie, at a place near there – Waynflete.”

“How odd!” said Violet. “It was from Mr Waynflete that Cuth heard of the place.”

“Guy Waynflete is a friend of mine,” said Mr Staunton. “I stayed with him once at Ingleby. We came upon Moorhead in our walks, and I should think it might suit for the preparation of future double firsts and senior-wranglers.”

“Thank you, Mr Staunton,” said Constancy, frankly rising to the bait. “I dare say you would expect to find us crocheting antimacassars!”

A little more discussion followed as to ways and means, and as to the number of the party, which was to consist of Constancy and her sister, of the eldest and youngest Miss Stauntons, and of two other college students.

“I should like to see Waynflete again,” said Constancy; “it was a lovely old place – haunted, too. The family lost it to a villain called Maxwell, and the old lady who has it now bought it back again.”

“I never heard anything of the family history from Waynflete,” said Cuthbert Staunton, “beyond the fact that the old place had been recovered. But I believe we are connected with some Yorkshire Maxwells. Do you know any particulars of the ‘villain,’ Miss Vyner?”

“You, descended from the hereditary foe, and friends with Guy Waynflete, without knowing it? How splendid!” said Constancy, sitting upright. “This is the story.”

And with exact memory and considerable force she related the legend of the loss of Waynflete as she had heard it five years ago from Godfrey; putting in a vivid description of the eerie old house, and the still more eerie picture of the unhappy heir, concluding with —

“The eldest one was so like the picture. He is in the business now, isn’t he? I heard he didn’t take a good degree. And Godfrey was such a big boy.”

“Well, he is a very big boy still,” said Cuthbert Staunton, who had listened with much interest. “He is a fine fellow, still at Oxford. Guy is made of rather complex stuff. Perhaps you may see him – he is in London, and I asked him to look in to tell my sisters about this moorland paradise.”

As he spoke there was a movement, and a fair, slight young man came in, whom Cuthbert greeted cordially, and introduced as Mr Waynflete.

The five years had not greatly changed him. He had the same slightly supercilious manner and the same “pretty” wistful eyes, into which, at the sight of Constancy, there came a startled look.

“I remember Waynflete so well,” she said, after the greeting. “Is it as delightful as ever?”

“I have never seen it since,” said Guy; “but the lease is out this year, and I believe some of us are to go and inspect it. Moorhead is eight or ten miles off – up on the moors.”

“Will you tell us about it, Mr Waynflete,” said the elder Miss Staunton. “We want to go in August. Is it a place where we are likely to be shot, or glared at by indignant keepers, if we walk about? We shouldn’t like to be a grievance – or to be treated as one.”

“No,” said Guy, with a smile. “It’s only the fringe of the moor, and there are very few grouse there. I think you’d be tolerated, even if you picked bilberries and had picnics.”

“That’s just what we want to do,” said Constancy, “picnics on improved principles. But we shall each have an etna, we shan’t trust to sticks and a gipsy-kettle.”

“I don’t know how young ladies amuse themselves when they’re not reading,” said Guy. “But there’s nothing to do at Moorhead. It’s two miles from High Hinton, and four from Kirk Hinton, and nine from Rilston – and it mostly rains up there. But Mrs Shipley’s very good at scones and tea-cakes, and the view is first-class of its kind.”

“Then, when it rains, we can put on our mackintoshes, and walk two – or four – miles to buy postage stamps,” said Constancy, rising. “Good-bye, Kitty, I must be going. Mind you look up your duties as chaperon and eldest of the party. Mr Waynflete, I’m sure my aunt will be delighted to see you if you like to call. We are at home on Tuesdays – 12, Sumner Square. Mr Staunton, perhaps we shall see you too?”

The young men made proper acknowledgments, and when Constancy, with no ladies’ last words, had taken her departure, Guy stated that he wished to hear the evening service at Westminster, and asked his friend to walk there with him by way of the Thames Embankment.

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.