Waynflete. Christabel R. Coleridge
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