Chapter IV: The Fernhall Ghost

For a week after the reprieve recorded in the last chapter Snap and Towzer went about like cats who had been whipped for stealing cream. They honestly desired not to be led into temptation, and hoped that no one would leave the jug on the floor. For a week, perhaps, even if this had happened, these two penitent kittens would have made believe that they did not see it.

The holidays were now rapidly approaching, and the glorious July weather seemed expressly sent for the gorgeous frocks and sweetly pretty faces which would soon adorn playground and chapel during 'prize week.'

Snap and Towzer were in Frank Winthrop's study, Towzer getting his big brother's tea ready, and Snap looking on. After a while the conversation turned upon a subject of immense interest, just then, to all Fernhall boys.

'Major,' said Snap to Winthrop the elder, 'what do you fellows think of the ghost?'

'Think!' replied the monitor with wonderful dignity, 'why, that you lower school fellows have been getting out of your dormitories and playing tunes upon combs, jew's-harps, and other instruments of music, when you ought to have been asleep, with a lump of yellow soap between your jaws to keep you quiet.'

'Oh, stow that,' replied Snap, 'fellows don't play such tunes as the Head has heard for the last week on jew's-harps and combs. Either those fellows who belong to the "concert lot" had a hand in it, or there is something fishy about it. I say, Frank, be a good chap and tell us, are the Sixth in it?'

'The Sixth in it, I should think not,' replied Winthrop; 'but I can't answer for all the monitors, even if I wanted to.'

Snap winked at Towzer at this rather cautious denial, remarking:

'Well, it is a good thing the ghost has not forgotten his music. He has been here every year since Fernhall was a school.'

'Yes,' broke in Billy, lifting his snub nose from the depths of an empty coffee-cup, 'and to-night is the night of the Ninth; the night, you know, on which it walks round the Nix's garden and across the lawn.'

'Does it?' quoth Frank. 'Well, if it is wise, it won't walk across that lawn to-night. If it does, it will get snuff, I can tell you.'

'Why, Major, why should it get "bottled" to-night more than any other night, and who is to "bottle" a ghost?' inquired Snap indignantly.

'Never you mind, young 'un, but you may bet your bottom dollar that if the ghost walks to-night it will be walking in the quad at punishment drill for the rest of this term.'

As this was all the boys could get from their senior, they had to be content with it, and before long took their departure. At the bottom of the stairs Snap took Billy's arm, and conferred earnestly with him as to what the great man's prophecy might mean.

'Well, you see,' said Towzer, looking abnormally wise, 'old Frank is precious thick with the Beauty' (a daughter of 'the Head'), 'and after the match the other day I saw them having a long talk together, and, unless I am mistaken, he was showing her just the way the ghost ought to come.'

'By Jove, Towzer,' cried Snap, 'Scotland Yard won't have a chance with you when you grow up. One of the "Shilling Shocker" detectives would be a fool to you. You've got it, my lad; there is a deep-laid and terrible plot on foot, as the papers say, and one aimed at a time-honoured and respected institution, our friend the ghost. Let's go and see Elizabeth.'

Now Elizabeth was a lady, if a kind heart and gentle ways with small boys could make her one, although the humble office which she held was that of needlewoman at Fernhall. In these degenerate days a maid-servant and a wife together are supposed to mend me, tend me, and attach the fickle button to the too often deserted shirt. But they are only supposed to. They don't as a matter of fact, and indeed the manner of life of my buttons is decidedly loose. But in those old days the ancient needle-woman of Fernhall wielded no idle weapon. Her needle and thimble were the sword and shield with which she attacked and overcame the untidiness of four hundred boys, and in spite of the wild tugging at buttons and collars as the Irishman of the dormitory sang out 'Bell fast,' 'Double in,' while the last of the chapel chimes were in the air, no clean shirt at any rate came buttonless to the scratch.

To Elizabeth, then, the boys betook themselves, and, being special favourites, she took them into her own little snuggery, and they had tea again. Oh no, don't feel alarmed, gentle reader: two teas, ten teas if you like, matter nothing to Fernhall boys--their hides are elastic, and even the pancakes of Shrove Tuesday merely cause a slight depression of spirits for the next twenty-four hours.

'Now, 'Lizabeth, you dear old brick, we want you to tell us something. What's up to-night at "the house"?'

'Nothing that I know of, Master Winthrop, except that some of them officers is a coming up from their barracks to dinner with Miss Beauty and the other young ladies as is staying here.'

'Oh! o--o--oh, as the man said when the brickbat hit him where he'd meant to put his dinner; and what, Lizzie darling, may they be going to do after dinner?'

'Piano-punching, I suppose, dear, and a little chess with the governor; and then what----?'

'Bed? It will be slow for them, won't it?'

'No, Master Hales, piano-punching indeed, when Miss Beauty plays sweet enough to wake the blessed dead.'

'Did wake them, "Grannie," the other night, didn't she, and they seem to have taken an active share in the musical part of the entertainment?'

'There's no talking with such a random boy as you, but there, if you want to know, that's just what they have all come about. They say that when Miss Beauty was going to bed the other night she heard that soft, wailing music, like what we hear here every year just about this time, and she was so sure that there was something really unnatural about it that the Professor has given her leave to sit up with the other guests, and Captain Lowndes, and the rest in the monitors' common room, to see if they can catch the ghost, and for goodness sake don't you say as I told you, but if you knows the ghost tell him not to walk to-night, as the Professor says such nonsense must be stamped out for good. There now!'

Poor old Elizabeth looked as if she had committed a crime, and puffed and blew and pulled at her two little chin tufts (for, alas, she was bearded like the pard) in a way that nearly sent the boys into convulsions at her own tea-table. But they contained themselves (and about three plates full of muffins), and by-and-by departed.

There was a long and earnest conversation in a certain study that night. There was a surplice missing from amongst the properties of the choir, and then the four hundred wended sleepily from chapel to their dormitories.

In half an hour the lights were out in all windows save those of the head-master's house; stillness fell upon Fernhall; a big bright moon came out upon the scene and made those long grass meadows gleam like the silver sea just beyond them; a bat or two whirled about above the master's orchard, and but for them, and the merry party up at the house, Fernhall, once the smuggler's home, now the busy public school, slept to the lullaby of the summer waves.

* * * * * *

Fernhall slept, its busy brain as quiet as if no memories of an evil past hung thickly round that grey old house by the sea. Could it be that such evil deeds were done there in the storied days of old? At least there was some ground for the country folks' legends and superstitions. Not a rood of ground under or around the 'House' was solid; it was all a great warren, only that the tunnelling and burrowing had been done by men and not by conies.

Under the basement of the head-master's house were huge cellars, such cellars as would have appeared a world too wide even for the most bibulous of scholars. A cupboard of very tiny dimensions would have held all the strong liquors which our Head drank in a year. These cellars had two entrances, one from the house, and the other half a mile away, below what was now low-water mark. For year by year the waves encroach upon Fernhall, and in time those old smugglers who made and used these vaults will get their own again. They, no doubt, many of them, have gone to Davy Jones's locker, but their chief sleeps sound on shore, in a stately vault, which blazons his name and his virtues to the world. In his day smuggling was a remunerative and genteel profession, and he and all his race were past masters in the craft. Living far from the great centres of life, upon a bleak and dangerous coast, little notice was taken of the quiet old squire who yearly added acre to acre and whiled away the cheerless days with such innocent pursuits as sea-fishing and yachting.

Fernhall yokels say that the last squire and his wife did not agree. She was not a native of the Fernhall moorland, but a soft south-country thing with a laugh in her eye and bright clothes on her back when she first came amongst them; a parson's daughter, some said, but no one knew and few cared. Very soon she grew, like the rest of the people round her, silent, serious, or sad--a quiet grey shadow, with the laugh and bright clothes stored away perhaps somewhere with her memories of that sunny south. All at once her face was missed from church and market, but no one cared to ask whither she had gone. Someone, with grim Fernhall humour, suggested that the Squire had added to the 'spirits' in his subterranean vaults.

That was all, then, and to-night was the anniversary of her strange disappearance. There are nights when the world is still and you can feel that she is resting. There are other nights when the stillness is as deep, nay, deeper; but it is not the stillness of rest. The silence is throbbing and alive with some sad secret, and the listening earth is straining to catch it. This was such a night. The whitely gleaming grass stretched away until it reached a vague land of moonlit shadows. The waves were almost articulate in their meanings. The leaves of the poplars kept showing their white underside in the moonlight, until the whole trees swung in the night breeze, a grove of sheeted spectres. Anyone watching the scene was at once seized with the idea that something was going to happen, and, like the watchful stars and bending trees, strained every nerve to listen.

At last it came, faint and far off, sad but unutterably sweet, a low wail of plaintive music--so low that at first it seemed the mere coinage of an overwrought fancy. Nearer it came, and nearer, now growing into a full wave of sound, now ebbing away--the mere echo of a sigh, but always coming nearer and nearer, until it seemed to pause irresolutely by the gate which divides the master's garden from the monitors' lawn. Was it another fancy, or were there for a moment a crowd of white, eager faces pressed against the window which looks upon that lawn? Fancy assuredly, for the moon now gleamed back blankly from the glass. For a moment a little cloud no bigger than a man's hand passed over the moon, and as it cleared away a deep-drawn sigh attracted the watcher's eyes to the garden gate. The moon was full upon it; you could see it shake if it shook ever so little. In that listening midnight you could almost hear the flowers whispering to each other, but the gate neither creaked nor shook, and yet someone had passed through it, someone with bent head, and slow, tired feet, who sighed and told the beads of her rosary as she passed. The moonlight played strange tricks that night; it seemed to cling to and follow that silent figure, leaving a white track on the dew-laden grass. And now it paused for one moment before that window, through which those tear-dimmed eyes had so often and so longingly turned towards her own loved south, and as she paused the silence broke, the window was dashed open, and three athletic figures, figures of men who feared neither man nor devil, sprang out with shouts of laughter, surrounded that white figure, still so strangely quiet, and demanded--its name! At the open window from which the three had issued were now gathered half a dozen ladies, looking half amused, half frightened. Among them was Beauty, the Head's daughter.

With boisterous laughter, that jarred harshly upon the stillness of that midsummer night, the three had dashed upon their prey. Why, then, do they pause? It seemed to those who watched that some whisper had reached their ears and chilled their courage. For one moment the figure's arms were raised aloft, and then the men recoiled, and it passed on as if unconscious of these things of clay, steady and stately, with head bent, slow feet, and hands which still told the rosary beads. For a moment it stood large and luminous on the skyline of that hill which overhangs the sea, the favourite 'look-out' of the old lords of Fernhall; for a moment it raised its sheeted arms as if calling down a curse upon the fated mansion, and then floated seaward and was gone.

The chapel-bell tolled one, and again the Fernhall ghost had baffled the inquisitive investigations of disbelieving men, and had asserted itself in spite of the nineteenth century, the --th Regiment, and the new Head-master. In vain Beauty sought an explanation from her discomfited cavaliers; all she could elicit was that there was something uncanny about it, something not fit for ladies to hear, and she had better go to bed and think no more about it. It would not come again for a year, anyway. So, at last, mightily dissatisfied, the ladies went, and when the men were driving home to barracks long and heartily pealed their laughter and gallant Captain Lowndes vowed again and again that 'That boy would make a right good soldier, sir, hang me if he wouldn't! What was it he said again, the young scoundrel? "I've not a rag on except this surplice, Captain, and, by Jove, if you don't take your hands off I'll drop that. If the ladies don't like me in the spirit, I must appear in the flesh."'