The Red Court Farm: A Novel (Vol. 2 of 2)

by Mrs. Henry Wood

Is it of any use to go on mystifying you, my reader? Perhaps from the first you have suspected the truth. Any way, it may be better to solve the secret, for time is growing limited, as it was solved that night to Mary Anne and Richard Thornycroft. The ghost, prowling about still, was looking out for Richard, its sole object all along; but it was Robert Hunter himself and not his ghost. For Robert Hunter was not dead.

He had been in London all the while they mourned him so, as much alive as any of his mourners, quite unconscious that he was looked upon as murdered, and that the county coroner had held an inquest on his body. A week since, he had come down from London to Coastdown, had come in secret, not caring to show himself in the neighbourhood, and not daring to show himself openly to the Thornycrofts. He wanted to obtain an interview with Mary Anne; but to want it was a great deal easier than to get it, in consequence of that extravagant and hasty oath imposed upon him by Richard. According to its terms, he must not write to any one of the inmates of the Red Court Farm; he must not enter it; he must not show himself at Coastdown; and he could only hit upon the plan of coming down en cachette, keeping himself close by day, and watching for Richard at night. Not a very brilliant scheme, but he could think of no better; and, singular perhaps to say, there was no bar to his speaking to Richard if he met him; if the spirit of the oath provided against that, the letter did not; and Robert Hunter's business was urgent. So he came down to Jutpoint, walked over at night, and took up his quarters in a lonely hut that he knew of behind the churchyard, inhabited by a superannuated fisherman, old Parkes. The aged fisherman, of dim sight and failing memory, did not know his guest; he was easily bribed not to tell of his sojourn; and the rumours of the ghost had not penetrated to him. In that hut Hunter lay by day, and watched from the churchyard by night, as being a likely spot to see Richard, who used often to pass and repass it on his way to and from the heath, and an unlikely one to be seen and recognised by the public. With that convenient tomb of old Marley's to shelter behind whenever footsteps approached, he did not fear. Unfortunately, it was necessary that he should look out to see whether the footsteps were not Richard's; and this looking out had brought about all the terror. His retreating place, when people had intruded into the churchyard, Isaac for one, was under a shelving gravestone at the back of the church, where none would think of looking. And there he had been on the watch, never dreaming that he was being mistaken for his own ghost, for he knew nothing of his supposed murder.

In little more than half-a-dozen sentences this was revealed to Mary Anne Thornycroft. It was the last night that he could stay: and he had resolved, in the fear of having to go back to London with his errand unexecuted, to accost any one of the Thornycroft family that might approach him, although by so doing the oath was infringed. As their voices were borne on the night air to the ear of Richard, sufficient evidence that Hunter was a living man, a load fell from his heart. In the first blissful throb of the discovery, the thought that surged through him, turning darkness into light, was, "If he is alive, I am no murderer." He ran forward, gained the spot where they stood, grasped Hunter's hand and well-nigh embraced him. He, the cold, stern, undemonstrative Richard Thornycroft! he, with all his dislike of Hunter!

Do you consider well what that joy must be--relief from the supposed committed crime of murder? The awful nightmare that has been weighing us down: the sin that has been eating away our heartstrings! Some of us may have faintly experienced this in a vision during sleep.

"I do not understand it, Hunter," whispered Richard, his words taking a sobbing sound as they burst from his heaving breast in the intensity of his emotion. "It is like awaking from some hideous dream. If I shot you down, how is it that you are here?"

"You never shot me down. Old Parkes has been driving at some obscure tale about young Hunter being shot from the heights; but I treated it as a childish old man's fancies. Mary Anne, too, is wearing mourning for me, she says, though ostensibly put on for Lady Ellis, and came here to have speech of my ghost. I thought ghosts had gone out with the eighteenth century."

All three felt bewildered; idea after idea crowding on their minds: not one of them as yet clear or tangible. Mary Anne could not so soon overcome the shivering sensation that, had been upon her, and caught hold of her brother's arm for support. There was much of explanation to be had yet.

"Let us go and sit down in the church porch," she said; "we shall be quiet there."

They walked round the narrow path towards it. It was on the side of the church facing the Red Court. The brother and sister placed themselves on one bench: Hunter opposite. The moonlight streamed upon them, but they were in no danger there of being observed by any chance passer-by; for the hedge skirting the ground on that side was high and thick.

"That night," began Richard, "after you had gone away, what brought you back again?"