II.
So on the morrow, at the appointed time, I was comfortably seated at M. le Brun's mahogany; and while, "for this occasion only," I played my old rôle of bachelor, I loosed the hymeneal reins, and actually told some ancient Cider-cellar stories—in French, too,—which produced explosion after explosion of laughter, though whether this was caused by the tales or the telling I cannot of course guess.
By-and-by evening came, and it was time to start. Le Brun and I hastened, therefore, to finish the bottles then in circulation; and, as soon as that was done, rose to walk to the haunted property. And now the skeptical blockheads who doubt every thing would say that what follows was the consequence of our libations. Let them say what they like, I only put it to you, if it is likely that a thorough-going Church and State rector would be influenced by a few bottles of vin ordinaire and a mere thought of cognac after all.
It was about nine o'clock when we arrived within sight of St. Sauveur. It was a lovely night. Beyond the little village in the distance loomed the hills, rising from the Eure, over which the moon was shining brilliantly. Presently my companion turned sharply off from the main road, and we began to ascend a narrow stony lane, so thickly fringed with bushes that the light was excluded; but ere long we came upon a cross-path nearly as narrow, but lighted by the rays of the bright moon; this we followed, till, in a few minutes, we arrived before a gate, which we pushed open, and advanced into a field.
Le Brun paused to light a fresh cigar from the smoking ruins of the last, and, as I walked on, I suddenly became reflective. "Your life, my dear and reverend sir," I ejaculated, "has just been like this evening's walk. Your school and college life were all bright and silvery as the highway flooded by the glorious beams, and so forth. Then came the stony lane of curateship, and then you gained a cross-lane, stony still, but lighted by the smiles of Grace, and the prospect of a reversion, which your father got you cheap, because the occupant was young. And then this youthful rector joined the Church of Rome, leaving the gate open for you; and so you stepped into your twelve hundred a year, of which you only need to sacrifice seventy for a hack to do the work. So that after a somewhat pleasant life you can enjoy yourself in foreign parts, and——"
"Halloa!" cried a voice behind.
I started. In a moment I remembered that I was upon haunted ground, and motioned to fly. I am no coward, but I hate a surprise, and thought that perhaps the hero of this enchanted ground was close beside me. Le Brun's voice, however, dissipated those fears. I had strolled from the right path in my dream, and he wished me to re-rejoin him. I did so, and we pursued our walk.
We soon arrived before the house. It was approachable at the rear by a road which led to St. Sauveur, after winding about the country some two or three miles more than necessary, as French roads are apt to do: but the main entrance was from the fields, as we had come. It was a shabby place, and looked in the staring moonlight as seedy as a bookseller's hack would look in the glare of an Almack's ball. The windows were mostly broken, and the portico, like its Greek model, was in ruins. Rude evergreens grew downward from the rails which had fixed them, when young, in the way they were to go, and were sprawling about the nominal garden, which was likewise overrun by weeds and plots of grass, and fallen shrubs and flowers. The moon never looked on a poorer spot, and yet there was an air about the tattered old house which seemed to indicate that it had been good-looking once; as we may see, despite the plaster-work among the wrinkles of some of our dowagers, that they were not altogether hideous, as they now are, in the days of the "Greatest Gentleman" in Europe.
We entered. It was too late and too dark in-doors to survey the mansion; so, as Le Brun had been directed to the habitable room, we struck a light, and ascended directly to it. It was handsomely furnished, and a basket containing that refreshment which we had looked forward to stood on the table. The windows were whole; still I thought it well to close the shutters, as I hate Midsummer nights' draughts as much as I love the "Midsummer Night's Dream." This done, I sank on a sofa; Le Brun drew some wine; we fell to at an early supper, and fared well.
When we had finished we lighted cigars, and our conversation grew frivolous. Le Brun was in the midst of a description of Esther, when I heard a groan, and said so. He pooh-poohed me, and, half annoyed at the interruption, proceeded. He had not got on very far before the groan was repeated. I started up.
"Pooh!—wind!" said my companion, retaining his seat and emitting his smoke.
"If so, it must be wind on the stomach, or wind in the lungs," I said. "Hark!"
I heard a faint noise. We both listened intently for some minutes, I standing. It was not repeated, however; so, growing tired, I said that I must have been mistaken, and sat down. Le Brun agreed with me, and resumed his description. I followed with a tale; he was reminded by it of another; and so we continued, till our repeated potations, much speaking, and the late hour, made both of us prosy, and then we fell, as with one accord, asleep.
I must have slept for a considerable time, as, when I woke, I found that the lamp had burned very low, and looked the worse for having been kept up so late. I woke with a start, caused, as I imagined, by hearing the room-door suddenly opened. That was a sound which, as a father of a large family, I had got to know very well, especially about the smaller hours. I looked towards the door, but my eyes were dim with sleep, and it was not till Le Brun's boot was projected against my shin that I became sufficiently awake to see if my idea was correct or no. It was.
Not only was the door open but a person was evidently standing on the threshold. In the sickly light his face was not visible; nothing, in fact, but an outline of him. I rose, and with as much steadiness of voice as I could command, requested the visitor to come in. He made a deep bow, set his hat modestly upon the floor, came across the room, and stood as if awaiting further orders.
I had, however, none to give him. I had not sufficient impudence to bid him sit down and help himself to wine, or what he liked; but I kicked Le Brun, in payment for his attack on me, and motioned to him to do the honors. He met the advance of my foot, however, in an unexpected way.
"Diable!" he cried, "Est-ce que——"
He stopped as if a gag had been thrust between his jaws; for our visitor, doubtless applying the epithet to himself, suddenly turned his back on us, walked to the door, picked up his hat, and, though I cried after him, as the Master of Ravenswood cried after his dead Lucia's ghost, to stop, paid no more heed than that virgin does to Mario, but retired quickly, his boots screaming as he trod upon them like veritable souls in pain. We made no motion to follow, but remained as if glued to our places, looking on each other from our semi-sleepy eyes in a somewhat foolish manner.
"He'll come back," said Le Brun. "Hush!"
The boots had stopped at the bottom of the stairs; we heard no sound.
"If he does, don't name Sathanas, for Heaven's sake," I said. "He doesn't like it. It may recall unpleasant things—seem personal, in fact——"
"Hush!" he exclaimed.
We listened. The screaming boots were remounting the stairs. The visitor had got over the personality, and was coming back. "What should be done? I am no coward; I've said so before; but I seriously thought of running to, shutting, fastening, and setting chairs against the door. But I did not move. The footsteps approached, and then began to recede again. This suspense of the interest—or, rather, dragging out of it—was most tormenting. What if he should go on walking all night? But the steps were ere long heard once more coming near the room, and once more the visitor stood at the door. But he did not enter now. He looked steadfastly towards us; beckoned slowly; then, turning, began to leave us again. I drew a long, well-satisfied breath as he disappeared and leaned back on the sofa.
"I trust he's gone for good now," I said.
"He beckoned. We must follow," said Le Brun.
"Follow! Pooh, pooh!" I exclaimed. "Let us sit still and be glad."
"Not I," was his brave response. "Be he man, or be he——"
"Hush!" I cried. "He may hear. He doesn't like the word——"
"I do not understand the impulse," said Le Brun; "but we must follow."
"I do not feel the impulse," I rejoined. "Still, if you do, and obey it, I will not desert you."
"Come," he answered. And with quick steps we chased the vocal boots down the corridor, and ere long saw the wearer of them, having descended the stairs, cross the hall, and wait at the door of the house.
The moon was still shining brightly, and its rays came through the broken windows on the ground-floor, and fell on the figure of the mysterious one. He was of middle height, and of broad and muscular build. He seemed more like an English farmer than a French ghost. His garments were seedy, and his hat was old; but his boots were like the boots of Thaddeus of Warsaw, the son of Miss Porter, who was so mortally offended when asked the name of the maker of his Bluchers, and they gleamed like boots of polished steel. All, however, did not seem right about the stranger. His head appeared awry, and his arms out of their places. But perhaps these blemishes were attributable to the moonlight, and not to the man; for he showed that he could turn his head and look at us, and use his arms to open the door. We followed him out into the air.
He led us through the field we had already traversed, but in a rather different direction. The night was chilly, and the long grass damp, and I began to grow weary of the adventure. Suddenly, however, our conductor stopped before what appeared to be a ruined cow-shed. He looked at it earnestly for a few moments, then at us, who kept a respectful distance; then, making an abrupt motion of his arm towards it, too rapid for us to understand, he seemed to me to spring into the air. Whether he did so or not, I cannot declare; but I know that when I rubbed my eyes, and looked round about for him, he was nowhere to be seen. We examined the spot, but he had left no traces. Boots, and hat, and all his trappery had gone with him. He had come like a dream, and vanished like a morning dream.
We stood for a few moments uncertain what to do, and then it occurred to me that the room we had left was warm and comfortable, and this field cold and dreary; so I proposed to return, especially as, the stranger having vanished, there did not appear to be any business in hand. Le Brun agreed, and we did so, and, after talking awhile over our adventure, went to sleep over our talk; and I did not wake again till morning was staring into the chamber, as Le Brun threw open the shutters.
The conversation that took place is as well to be imagined as transcribed. Enough to say that I determined to have no share in Le Brun's narrative, but left him to heighten it for himself. I parted with him at my house, where I found Grace looking out for me; and he promised to return in the course of the morning to pay his respects to her.
To my surprise, however, when he came, he asked me for five minutes' conversation, and we went together into the field belonging to my house, which sloped down to the Seine. His countenance was both joyous and anxious, and I saw that he had something heavier on his mind than last night's frolic.
"I have spoken to you of M. Gray," he said, "and of Mademoiselle Raymond. I have learnt this morning that M. Gray has her father in his power."
"You learnt that from her?" I asked.
He blushed and did not answer.
I went on. I had compared notes with my brother about this Gray, and found my suspicions correct. I therefore told Le Brun what I had overheard on the zigzag, and he in reply told me that Raymond had accepted a bill for the amount of the debt to Gray.
"That's serious," I said. "But before we say more, monsieur, are you engaged to Mademoiselle Esther?"
He replied in the affirmative.
"Can you live—excuse the question—with her without dowry?"
He replied in the affirmative again.
"Then," I said, "though it may sound oddly from one of my cloth, you must either elope with her——"
"But then M. Raymond?—But his family?"
"He must suffer for his folly; not you. And you are only going to marry one daughter, not all of them. The other alternative is—you must pay Raymond's acceptance, as he cannot."
"It would be ruin. I cannot, either," he replied.
"Then you must lose Esther."
"I will not. No. And yet if I was to shoot Gray——"
"Shoot?" I interrupted, with the virtuous horror of a man who has never been tempted to fight a duel—"and would you then outrage the laws of divine and human?"
"No; it wouldn't do to shoot him," he pursued. "But oh, monsieur, can you not suggest something to help me—to help us?"
A thought suddenly came into my head. "Gray is pledged to spend to-night in the haunted house, is he not?" I asked.
He answered that it was so.
"I believe the man to be an arrant coward," I went on. "To be sure, he shot a dear friend of mine in a duel, and behaved, as the world says, like a brave man before his witnesses. But he's a coward for all that, and we'll test it. I don't believe in our friend the Goblin Farmer; I don't believe we saw any body, or any spirit last night at all. Well, never mind beliefs; don't interrupt me. I think our eyes were made the fools of other senses, and that there's no such thing. Gray has to spend the night there—we'll go again to-night, that is, if my wife will let me, and perhaps get my brother to help us—eh? Suppose we give him a lesson." And I laughed.
He laughed too; and after a few more observations, he accompanied me into my drawing-room. Grace and James, with his wife Emma, were sitting talking there.
I have said that I am a lazy rector. During my curatehood, however, I had learned to preach sufficiently well for the parish where I worked. To be sure my congregation was neither large or wakeful, except in winter, when the church was like a Wenham ice depôt, and people could not sleep. But I was brief, and no faults were ever found in my time with brevity. My experience in exposition and appeal now stood me in good stead.
I introduced Le Brun, and then plunged into matters. I gave a brief account of Esther and her father. I eulogized Le Brun. After that I spoke of Gray, and reminded James of the life and times—the death, too, of John Finnis, whom he saved from being plucked alive in St. James's, only that he might be shot in Hampstead. These dispatched, I opened my plans, which were listened to with great interest; the only alteration proposed was that James should go to find the authorities (if there were any, which he doubted), and give notice of Gray's character to them; after which he was to return to my house, and stay there till Le Brun and I came back from our nocturnal expedition, as Grace and Emma feared to be left alone. Poor Emma, indeed, declared that this was the most romantic thing she had ever heard of, except one which happened in the village where she was born; but as neither James or I liked to hear her speak of her origin, we cut her narrative short.
The cresset moon was up in heaven—at least, Emma said it was—when we started. It seemed to me nearly full; but she was poetical. I told her that if it was a cresset, it was tilting up, and ought, therefore, to be pouring out oil, and not light, on the earth. We started, I repeat, and a short time after, in the language of a favorite novelist, two travellers might have been seen slowly wending on their way, bundle in hand, towards the haunted house.
In another hour or so, when the wind had sunk into repose, and the birds had ceased their songs, and all things save the ever-watching stars were sleeping (as that favorite historian might go on, if he were telling this tale and not I), a tall and ecclesiastical form crept slowly from a place of concealment near the house, approached it, and gently knocked at the door. It was opened, and he entered cautiously. A few whispered sentences passed with some friend within, which being over, he proceeded, though with some hesitation, to mount the stairs and pace along the corridor.
My boots (for I was the ecclesiastic) creaked and crackled like mad boots. Onward I went, like the Ghost in Hamlet, only with very vocal buskins. I reached Gray's room and opened the door. A strange sight met my eyes through the green glass goggles which I wore over them.
Gray was pacing up and down, in evident fear. A quantity of half-burnt cigars, some bottles of wine, glasses, the lamp, and, above all, two pistols were on the table. As I opened the door, and the light fell on me, I feared that I should be discovered. But the gambler was afraid—and fear has no eyes. I advanced into the room, and solemnly waved to him to follow. He must have caught up a pistol ere he did so. I led the way.
It was my determination to lead him a long chase, and leave him in a ditch if possible, Le Brun being near at hand to cudgel him. He had readily understood my pantomime (I studied under Jones the player when in training for orders), for I found he followed me, though at a distance.
But all my plans were disconcerted. As I reached the stair-head I heard a noise, and stopped; so did Gray. It was as of some one forcing the house door. Directly afterwards I heard the loud cries of the real goblin's boots, and the sound of Le Brun in swift pursuit.
"Take care, monsieur," he cried up the stairs to me.
"By heaven they are robbers—murderers! Help! help!" roared Gray from behind; and as the real apparition came gliding up, he fired his pistol at it. The unexpected sound of the weapon, so close to my ear, too, stunned me for a moment; but I recovered myself directly, and flung myself on him, in fear lest he had his second pistol, too, and might fire at me. The real goblin continued to advance, and I felt Gray tremble with terror in my arms as it survived the shot.
An unwonted boldness came over me. I felt myself committed to be brave.
"Villain!" I muttered in his ear, "you would swindle my descendant out of all he has?"
"No—forgive me. I will not take a sou."
"His acceptance—where is it? Give it me." He shuddered.
"I will give it to you," he said.
I released him, and followed to the lamp-lighted chamber. The other apparition creaked after him, too, and at the door I gave it the precedence. It was well I did so. The sudden light seemed to make Gray bold, for snatching up the other pistol he levelled it at the Simon Pure, and before I could utter a word, fired. The shot must have passed clean through the breast of the Mysterious Stranger—he only bowed.
Gray was now in mortal fear.
"Give up that bill," I said in solemn, pedal tones. He drew it frantically from his pocket, and, leaping up, gave it to the mysterious one.
"Go to th——" he began, with a sort of ferocious recklessness. The next moment he was sprawling on the floor. The Goblin reached out his hand, and struck Gray, as it seemed, lightly with it. I would have raised him. I motioned to do so; but my original touched me on the shoulder, handed me the bill, and motioned to me to follow. I did not like his notes of hand—his signature by mark on Gray's face—I therefore at once obeyed. Le Brun had vanished.
The stranger led me by the old route till we were again close to the tottering cow-house. Here he paused, as on the last occasion, and was, perhaps, preparing to disappear again.
"One moment, sir," I said. "Be good enough to explain yourself more plainly than you did last night. However much I may admire your acting, and it has beaucoup de l'Esprit about it, family arrangements will prevent me from again assisting——"
He nodded as though he quite understood me, advanced to the side of the shed, stopped under a sort of window, and then, deliberately sitting down on the grass, began to pull off his boots. I gazed at him in amazement, and was about to address him again, when a little cloud sailed across the moon, and for a moment shaded all the place. As it passed away, and I looked to our mysterious visitant and my mysterious Original, no remains of him were to be seen—except the boots.
At this moment Le Brun joined me. I was the first (as before and as ever) to throw aside my natural fears, and I advanced to the spot. There were two highly polished Bluchers, side by side, as if they waited till the occupant of the cow-house was out of bed and shaved. I took one of them up. Something inside chinked. I reversed it, and three Napoleons fell upon the turf.
I was wondering why a French farmer-ghost should choose a Blucher to deliver Napoleons into an Englishman's hands, when Le Brun, finding nothing in the other boot, suggested that it would be well to get Gray out of the neighborhood, and perhaps the three Napoleons might be useful to him. To this I agreed at once, though I was somewhat dissatisfied with the little fellow for the small share he had taken in the risks of the evening.
I went to the room where the gambler was; he was evidently in mortal fear. I put down the Napoleons on the table, and then in those deep, pedal, and ecclesiastical notes, which have so often hymned my congregation to repose, informed him that friends of John Finnis were in the town, that he was proclaimed to the authorities, and that he had better leave the neighborhood for ever. With this I left him, joined Le Brun, and was soon on my way back to Honfleur.
"It was well I drew the shot from his pistols," said Le Brun, as we were parting. I did not then see any latent meaning in his words, nor would he ever afterwards answer any questions on the subject. I had forgotten to remove my ghostly dresses and decorations, and Grace and Emma both uttered gentle screams as I stalked into their presence. My tale was soon told, and we retired to rest.
Here the whole tale ends. As the events I recorded recede into the past, I begin almost to doubt the truth of them. But I have one living evidence—now I am glad to say not single—and Le Brun may fairly lay it to me that he has at this moment the most agreeable little lady in all Normandy for his wedded wife. I am not aware if Boots still visits the glimpses of the moon at St. Sauveur, for soon after these events I was obliged to return to my parish to put down the Popish fooleries which I found my hack had begun to introduce. If, however, he does, I only hope his reappearance will be as useful as in the above little narrative, but the Brown, the Gray—and the narrator have now done with him for ever.