Man and Maid. Nesbit Edith

face. It made two ghostly, gliding steps forward, and my heart stood still. I had not thought it possible for a man to experience so sharp a pang of sheer terror. I had masqueraded as one of the ghosts in this accursed house. Well, the other ghost – the real one – had come to meet me. I do not like to dwell on that moment. The only thing which it pleases me to remember is that I did not scream or go mad. I think I stood on the verge of both.

      The ghost, I say, took two steps forward; then it threw up its arms, the lighted taper it carried fell on the floor, and it reeled back against the door with its arms across its face.

      The fall of the candle woke me as from a nightmare. It fell solidly, and rolled away under the table.

      I perceived that my ghost was human. I cried incoherently: “Don’t, for Heaven’s sake – it’s all right.”

      The ghost dropped its hands and turned agonised eyes on me. I tore off my cloak and hat.

      “I – didn’t – scream,” she said, and with that I sprang forward and caught her in my arms – my poor, pink lady – white now as a white rose.

      I carried her into the powdering-room, and left one candle with her, extinguishing the others hastily, for now I saw what in my extravagant folly had escaped me before, that my ghost exhibition might bring the whole village down on the house. I tore down the long corridor and double locked the doors leading from it to the staircase, then back to the powdering-room and the prone white rose. How, in the madness of that night’s folly, I had thought to bring a brandy-flask passes my understanding. But I had done it. Now I rubbed her hands with the spirit. I rubbed her temples, I tried to force it between her lips, and at last she sighed and opened her eyes.

      “Oh – thank God – thank God!” I cried, for indeed I had almost feared that my mad trick had killed her. “Are you better? oh, poor little lady, are you better?”

      She moved her head a little on my arm.

      Again she sighed, and her eyes closed. I gave her more brandy. She took it, choked, raised herself against my shoulder.

      “I’m all right now,” she said faintly. “It served me right. How silly it all is!” Then she began to laugh, and then she began to cry.

      It was at this moment that we heard voices on the terrace below. She clutched at my arm in a frenzy of terror, the bright tears glistening on her cheeks.

      “Oh! not any more, not any more,” she cried. “I can’t bear it.”

      “Hush,” I said, taking her hands strongly in mine. “I’ve played the fool; so have you. We must play the man now. The people in the village have seen the lights – that’s all. They think we’re burglars. They can’t get in. Keep quiet, and they’ll go away.”

      But when they did go away they left the local constable on guard. He kept guard like a man till daylight began to creep over the hill, and then he crawled into the hayloft and fell asleep, small blame to him.

      But through those long hours I sat beside her and held her hand. At first she clung to me as a frightened child clings, and her tears were the prettiest, saddest things to see. As we grew calmer we talked.

      “I did it to frighten my cousin,” I owned. “I meant to have told you to-day, I mean yesterday, only you went away. I am Lawrence Sefton, and the place is to go either to me or to my cousin Selwyn. And I wanted to frighten him off it. But you, why did you – ?”

      Even then I couldn’t see. She looked at me.

      “I don’t know how I ever could have thought I was brave enough to do it, but I did want the house so, and I wanted to frighten you – ”

      “To frighten me. Why?”

      “Because I am your cousin Selwyn,” she said, hiding her face in her hands.

      “And you knew me?” I asked.

      “By your ring,” she said. “I saw your father wear it when I was a little girl. Can’t we get back to the inn now?”

      “Not unless you want every one to know how silly we have been.”

      “I wish you’d forgive me,” she said when we had talked awhile, and she had even laughed at the description of the pallid young man on whom I had bestowed, in my mind, her name.

      “The wrong is mutual,” I said; “we will exchange forgivenesses.”

      “Oh, but it isn’t,” she said eagerly. “Because I knew it was you, and you didn’t know it was me: you wouldn’t have tried to frighten me.”

      “You know I wouldn’t.” My voice was tenderer than I meant it to be.

      She was silent.

      “And who is to have the house?” she said.

      “Why you, of course.”

      “I never will.”

      “Why?”

      “Oh, because!”

      “Can’t we put off the decision?” I asked.

      “Impossible. We must decide to-morrow – to-day I mean.”

      “Well, when we meet to-morrow – I mean to-day – with lawyers and chaperones and mothers and relations, give me one word alone with you.”

      “Yes,” she answered, with docility.

      “Do you know,” she said presently, “I can never respect myself again? To undertake a thing like that, and then be so horribly frightened. Oh! I thought you really were the other ghost.”

      “I will tell you a secret,” said I. “I thought you were, and I was much more frightened than you.”

      “Oh well,” she said, leaning against my shoulder as a tired child might have done, “if you were frightened too, Cousin Lawrence, I don’t mind so very, very much.”

      It was soon afterwards that, cautiously looking out of the parlour window for the twentieth time, I had the happiness of seeing the local policeman disappear into the stable rubbing his eyes.

      We got out of the window on the other side of the house, and went back to the inn across the dewy park. The French window of the sitting-room which had let her out let us both in. No one was stirring, so no one save she and I were any the wiser as to that night’s work.

      It was like a garden party next day, when lawyers and executors and aunts and relations met on the terrace in front of Sefton Manor House.

      Her eyes were downcast. She followed her Aunt demurely over the house and the grounds.

      “Your decision,” said my great-uncle’s solicitor, “has to be given within the hour.”

      “My cousin and I will announce it within that time,” I said and I at once gave her my arm.

      Arrived at the sundial we stopped.

      “This is my proposal,” I said: “we will say that we decide that the house is yours – we will spend the £20,000 in restoring it and the grounds. By the time that’s done we can decide who is to have it.”

      “But how?”

      “Oh, we’ll draw lots, or toss a halfpenny, or anything you like.”

      “I’d rather decide now,” she said; “you take it.”

      “No, you shall.”

      “I’d rather you had it. I – I don’t feel so greedy as I did yesterday,” she said.

      “Neither do I. Or at any rate not in the same way.”

      “Do – do take the house,” she said very earnestly.

      Then I said: “My cousin Selwyn, unless you take the house, I shall make you an offer of marriage.”

      “Oh!” she breathed.

      “And when you have declined it, on the very proper ground of our too slight acquaintance, I will take my turn at declining. I will decline the house. Then, if you are obdurate,