“If I speak it is in a joke,” said Mrs. Mills; “you don’t think I believe in anything of the sort?”
“I don’t admire that kind of joking,” Miss Hofland said. “Rhoda, come, if you have finished your breakfast it is quite time to begin lessons. I think we are a little late to-day.”
Hetty followed, heavy-eyed and heavy-hearted, her mind oppressed with the secret, which was a burden almost beyond her power of supporting. Should she tell Miss Hofland? she kept asking herself. Should she ask Mrs. Mills? And oh! what was it? it was no thief watching the house, of that Hetty was sure. The fantastic movements of the figure among those flower-beds came up before her eyes a hundred times, and made her almost cry out with terror. She remembered the very poise of the figure, light, with a little swing in the step. Could that be a ghost that moved in such a human way, not gliding, not mystical, as ghosts are described as being? Her head turned round as again and again the moonlight scene rose before her. It seemed impossible to get it out of her eyes. She closed them, to rest her hot strained eyeballs, and lo, there it was before her in those wonderful contrasts of black and white, so clear, so clear! the broad stretch of wistful silvery mist and distance behind, the black solid line of the moving object, the tall flowers drooping their heads, the trees gathering like spectators on every side. The hum of the voices near her was to Hetty’s ears like a monotonous murmur without meaning. When it came to her turn to read or answer a question, she raised a white face without intelligence to the governess. “My dear, you have not been attending,” Miss Hofland cried, astonished; but this by degrees changed into, “My dear, you must be ill. Is your head bad? have you caught cold? What is the matter?” Miss Hofland was very philosophical on her own account, but to the young people under her charge she was kind, and it was understood in her code of laws that a headache was always to be respected, being in some sort a girl’s only refuge in heartache and all other ills.
“I feel dreadfully stupid,” said Hetty, not knowing how to excuse herself.
“It is your head that is bad. You will be better if you will go and lie down,” said Miss Hofland; but this was a remedy that made Hetty shiver. Lie down with her face towards the window from which she had seen that sight, or, worse still, turning her back to it, so that the figure might be performing any kind of wild gyration behind her! This made the throbbing in her head and the fluttering at her heart worse than ever.
“Oh no!” she cried, “I don’t want to lie down; let me stay here—oh! let me stay with you. It is so much nicer to be with you.”
“Then lie down on the sofa,” said the governess, “and try to go to sleep. Poor little thing! how you are trembling, your nerves are all wrong. That’s what it is to have a nuit blanche when one is young.”
“Did you hear anything, Hetty? did you see anything?” cried little Rhoda in her ear, while Miss Hofland covered her up. Hetty, in the agony of her unwonted secret, did not know how to make any reply. She had never known what it was to have a secret before. To know something which she kept to herself seemed wrong to Hetty. If there ever was any little thing unknown to mamma, such as that project for the private paying of the bills, it was breathed to Janey. Little secrets about Christmas presents and suchlike—secrets so little, so innocent—were always shared with somebody. To have this dark knowledge in her heart, and nobody to tell it to, made Hetty’s heart sick. And Rhoda’s big eyes appealing to her made everything more difficult. She had heard nothing, not a sound, which made what she had seen still more weird and unearthly. And what did the child mean, whispering as if she had a secret too?
Hetty, however, slumbered a little in the warm room, with the protecting sense of society round her, and the hum of the voices in her ears. Nothing could happen there to her that would not be known. If that thing should really appear again, at least Miss Hofland would be there to see it too. This soothed and brought the ease of rest to the feverish brain.
But when night came again, and Hetty had to go to bed by herself in that room, with the window as usual open to the sky, and the formal flower-beds with the chrysanthemums all spread out in the moonlight, and the consciousness that Miss Hofland had turned the key in her door, and shut herself off from all possibility of appeal, Hetty’s sensations of alarm were indescribable. She rushed to the window and drew the curtains close that she might not see out; then, feeling still more intolerable the thought that outside, in the whiteness of the moon, that ghastly thing might be pacing, drew them back again in a panic, and gazed out in a trance of speechless terror. But the white light fell unbroken over the garden, and the long vista of the park opened before her, a wistful vacancy stretching to the sky, without a living thing to disturb the scene. Hetty stood clinging to the curtains, half hidden in their folds, as if she were herself afraid to be seen, for a long time, she did not know how long. But there was no movement or shadow upon the undisturbed stillness, and ghostly, motionless, half-frozen calm without. She stood there till she was chilled to the heart with cold; her fire had gone out; her candles were nearly burnt to the socket, and nature began to assert her rights. The stable clock shrilling all the hours close at hand, and the village clock booming in a minute after like a bass accompaniment, were half consoling, half alarming. Twelve! how long it took to strike! and was not this the hour “when churchyards yawn and graves give up——” Hetty hung upon the curtains, half unconscious, for a minute or two; if she had not grasped them so she would have fallen, and probably fainted. But the support of the heavy, thick folds, which sustained her slight little figure, kept her from that climax. And after a time she crept to bed and slept soundly, and woke wondering at herself; trying to laugh at herself; chiding herself for all this excitement. Her night’s rest had restored her nerves. She appeared at breakfast, if still a little tremulous, yet herself again, and smiled as she met Miss Hofland’s sympathetic inquiries, and Mrs. Mills’ keen look. Why did Mrs. Mills look at her with that gaze of suspicion? and little Rhoda, with her big eyes, seizing the first opportunity to whisper, “Did you hear anything?” The look and the question raised again a little flutter in her spirits, but she felt brave in the strength of her night’s sleep, and of the passage of time, which has always a soothing effect: and began to forget.