Chapter VIII: Cunigunda Perseveres in Her Resolve

A few days after the occurrences related in the last chapter, I accompanied Aunt Jane to the old blind woman’s cottage. We had not been there for several weeks, for Aunt Jane had sprained her ankle just before the owners of Castle Hall arrived there, and was confined to her room in consequence. But the first day she was able to venture out we went to the cottage.

We found the old blind woman alone at her spinning-wheel, and we both thought she looked ill; and although she expressed the great pleasure she felt at hearing our footstep in her cottage again after a long absence, yet she seemed pre-occupied, and had an anxious look on her face, which we had never remarked before. It occurred to us both that she was perhaps rather disappointed with her new lady, and we soon discovered that our surmises were just.

“Great doings at the Castle,” she said; “very great, but not good, I do fear; and the old chapel--have you heard how they are going to make a ball-room of it?--and that, too, when they know what a judgment fell on Baron Hugh when he turned it into a banqueting-hall. No good will come of it: nothing but evil--nothing but evil,” she continued to mutter; and a look of pain and anxiety overclouded her usually serene face.

“And was it true that the Countess saw a ghost there?” I inquired, for some vague rumour of Cunigunda’s serious alarm had reached our ears.

“Like enough, like enough,” she said, hurriedly; “but ’twas not old Baron Hugh, ’twas her conscience smote her, but she had her warning, and yet she’s gone against her husband’s wishes, for he tried all he could to hold her back; if she’s going on to give that ball in the old chapel she’ll rue the day, and perhaps lose the inheritance, or maybe her life.”

“Do you really fear that?” said Aunt Jane; “I did not know you were so superstitious. So you really believe in ghosts?”

“Perhaps I do, and perhaps I don’t; but I do wish--well, never mind; I mustn’t be talking too much--least said soonest mended, so don’t ask me any more about them folks, but tell me some of your good thoughts.”

Then Aunt Jane talked and read to her for half an hour, and we took our leave, rather wondering at the alteration in her manner.

“Yet she does not look unhappy, only so pre-occupied and anxious; yet why should she care so much for what that roguish Countess does?”

Soon afterwards we heard that the Banqueting-room had been all repaired; a highly polished parquet of different coloured woods laid down; an old narrow gallery repaired for the musicians, opposite to the large carved black oak one at the further end, which the builder said was too much out of repair to be finished by the time the Countess required the room--therefore it was left untouched. Of course vague rumours of the fright experienced by Cunigunda soon reached our ears, and as it was a well-known fact in the neighbourhood that the sacrilegious Baron Hugh was said to haunt the ancient chapel, people attributed to the gay lady’s imagination that, having heard of it so much, she fancied that she saw him standing in the gallery.

Rumour also reached us--the revival of an old story which Aunt Jane remembered to have heard when she was a child--that the crypt under the old chapel was used in the last, and part of this century, by smugglers; and it was their interest to keep up the story of the ghost, in order to prevent anyone from entering that part of the ruined building.

The old stone floor of the chapel was very uneven, but we did not hear that the workmen who were now employed in placing the variegated parquet of different-coloured woods over it, had discovered any opening to the crypt which was said to be underneath, although we heard that they had found that on some of the stones of the old floor were monumental records of persons who were said to be buried underneath.

“Not a satisfactory flooring for a ball-room,” was Aunt Jane’s observation to the old village shoemaker, who generally told us the news about the Castle.

“No, indeed,” he said. “Can any good come of such a ‘sacrament?’ as old Mrs. Lacy, the housekeeper, was a-saying; but she never seed such a queer one as her foreign ladyship; but the Count he do count for something, and is a right down good man, and did all he could to stay her ladyship; and they say he’s going away to his own place in foreign parts.”

“I don’t wonder at that,” said Aunt Jane.

“No, mum; pertickly as, besides the young lords and barrownights that is sweet upon her ladyship, there’s a foreign count, too, as they say she likes the best of ’em all.”

“Could this be Carlo?” I thought, as I suddenly remembered what occurred in the London season. I say remembered, because since my illness many of the stirring events which had occurred to me during the last year, only came back by degrees to my mind.

Poor Carlo!--and now I felt more pity than either anger or love--pity that he should have become ensnared by that syren; but my still dulled senses prevented me from feeling much curiosity to know whether it was really Carlo. All my curiosity, all my best feelings were excited by a longing to know what Norah was doing--whether she would ever forgive Sir Alfred Rivers, whether he could ever become worthy of her.

As I said before, Aunt Jane seemed to evade the subject, as if she still feared that my mind would again break down; and, as I afterwards learnt, she purposely tried to interest me with the village gossip about Castle Hall. She thought it very likely that the ruined portion had long been the haunt of smugglers, for it was only four miles across the country to the coast, although there was no regular road leading to it, without going a round of ten or twelve miles; and she thought that probably some people might be still living who knew the secret of the old passages or vaults under the ruins; and perhaps they might have been still used as a lurking-place for illegal goods, or traffic of some kind.