had better do nothing in a hurry,” observed Susan Pearl, a sensible, pleasant-looking woman, who had been Emmie’s attendant when she was a child, and who acted as her lady’s-maid now. “You may find that second thoughts are best, when the matter in question is throwing up a good place.”
“Then master had better have his second thoughts too,” observed John, as he stretched out his hand for the walnut pickle. “A week of Myst Court was quite enough for me, I assure you. If you were to see how the mortar is starting from the brickwork, how the plaster is peeling from the ceilings, and how the furniture is faded; if you were to hear the windows shaking and rattling as if they had a fit of the ague, the boards creaking, and the long passages echoing, you would think any sensible man well out of so dreary a prison.”
“Plaster and paint can be put on anew, a carpet deadens echoes, and curtains keep out draughts. As for windows rattling, a peg will stop that,” observed Susan, who was not easily daunted.
“Outside the house it’s as bad as within,” pursued John. “The drive is green with moss and grass, and the piece of water with duckweed; the trees grow so thick together that you can’t see ten yards before you; and your ears are dinned with the cawing of rooks.”
“Weeding and clearing will do wonders,” said Susan; “if Miss Emmie were set in a coal-yard, she would manage to make flowers grow there.”
“Are there good shops near?” inquired Ann, the housemaid, who wore a cap of the newest pattern, trimmed with the gayest of ribbons.
“Shops!” echoed John, as if amazed at the question. “Why, the very baker and grocer have to come in their carts from S – , and there’s nothing like a gentleman’s house within several miles of Myst Court.”
“I’ll give warning to-morrow,” said Ann. “As well be transported at once, as go to such a heathenish out-of-the-way place as that is!”
“I suppose that Myst Court is overrun with rats and mice,” observed Mullins the cook.
“Not a bit of it,” answered John, laughing. “Thieving rats and mice would have had a hard life of it with old Mrs. Myers’ nine and thirty cats and kittens to serve as a rural police.”
“La, John, you’re joking! nine and thirty!” exclaimed the women-servants in a breath.
“I’m not joking,” replied the footman; “I counted them, – black, white, gray, and tabby, long hair and short hair, blue eyes and green eyes! Mrs. Myers cared a deal more for her cats than she did for her tenants’ children. No, no, the rats and mice would find no safe corner in that big old house, unless in the shut-up, haunted chamber.”
Whenever these last two words were pronounced, curiosity was certain to be roused, and questioning to follow. Three voices now spoke at once.
“Do you think that the place is really haunted?”
“Did you see any ghosts?”
“What do the servants say about that chamber?”
The last question, which was Susan’s, was that to which John gave reply.
“The cook and the housemaid at Myst Court say that for certain they’ve heard odd noises, a sighing, and a rattling, and a howling o’ nights,” said the footman, looking as mysterious as his plump, well-fed face would allow him to do.
“On windy nights, I suppose,” said the sensible Susan. “I’ve heard a sighing, and a rattling, and a howling even here in Summer Villa.”
“Let him tell us more!” cried Ann impatiently, for John’s countenance showed that he had a great deal more to impart. The footman prefaced his tale by deliberately laying down his knife and fork, though cold beef lay still on his plate; this was a token that honest John was indeed in solemn earnest. He began in a lowered tone, while every head was bent forward to listen: —
“Mrs. Jael Jessel, the old lady’s attendant, told me that she had twice passed a ghost in the corridor, and once on the stairs. It was a tall figure in white, – at least seven feet high, – and it had great round eyes like carriage-lamps staring upon her.”
Ann and the cook uttered exclamations, and exchanged glances of horror; but Susan quietly remarked, “If Mrs. Jessel really saw such a sight once, she was a stout-hearted woman to stay to see it a second time, and a third. Did this brave lady’s-maid look much the worse for meeting her ghost?”
“No,” replied John, a little taken aback by the question. “Mrs. Jessel is a stout, comfortable-looking person. I suppose that she got used to seeing odd sights.”
Susan burst into a merry laugh. “John, John,” she cried, “this Mrs. Jessel has been taking a rise out of you. She saw that you were soft, and wanted to make an impression.” Susan was helping herself to butter, which, perhaps, supplied her with the simile of which she made use.
“Mrs. Jessel did not stay at Myst Court for nothing,” said John, who, possibly, wished to give a turn to the conversation; “she had not waited on Mrs. Myers for more than three years, yet the old lady left her five hundred pounds, a nice little furnished house just outside the Myst woods, and all the cats and kittens, which she could not trust to the care of strangers.”
“It was made worth her while to live in a haunted house,” observed Ann.
“I thought at first,” continued John, who had taken up his knife and fork, and was using them to good purpose, – “I thought at first that I might as well put my best foot forward, for that it would be no bad thing to have a wife with five hundred pounds and a house to start with; and,” he added slyly, “with such a live-stock to boot, one might have done a little business in the furrier’s line. But – ”
“But, but, – speak out!” cried Ann with impatience; “what comes after the ‘but’?”
“Somehow I didn’t take to Mrs. Jessel,” said John, “and shouldn’t have cared to have married her, had the five hundred pounds been five thousand instead.”
“What’s against her?” inquired the cook.
“Nothing that I know of,” said John; “but when you see her, you’ll understand what I mean.”
“I’ll not see her; I’m not going to Myst Court; I could not abide being so far from London,” observed the cook.
“I shall give miss warning to-morrow!” cried Ann.
“And what will you do?” inquired John of Susan.
“Stay by the family, to be sure,” was the answer. “Would I leave my young lady now, just when her heart is heavy? for heavy it is, I am certain of that. While she was dressing for dinner, Miss Emmie could hardly keep in her tears. It is no pleasure to her to leave a home like Summer Villa, where she has nothing to cross her, and everything to please. There’s not a day but Miss Alice, or some other friend, comes dropping in to see her; nor a week that passes without some sight or amusement in London. At the age of nineteen, a young lady like Miss Trevor does not willingly leave such a pleasant place as this for a dreary, deserted old country-house.”
“Poor miss! I pity her from my soul!” cried Ann.
“With a pity that would leave her to see none but new faces in her household!” said the indignant Susan. “No; I’ll stick by my young lady through thick and thin, were she to go to the middle of Africa. I’ve been with her these ten years, ever since she lost her poor mother, and I will not desert her now.”
“You don’t believe in ghosts,” observed John.
“I believe my Bible,” replied Susan gravely; “I read there that I have a Maker far too wise and good to allow His servants to be troubled by visitors from another world. This ghost-fearing is all of a piece with fortune-telling, and spirit-rapping, and all such follies, after which weak-brained people run. Simple faith in God turns out faith in such nonsense, as daylight puts an end to darkness.”
Susan was not laughed at for her little lecture as ten years before she might have been. Her long period of service and her tried character had given her influence,