Chapter IX: A Mysterious Encounter

I felt rather disappointed at this idea of the ghost of Baron Hugh being, after all, no ghost, but only a trick of the smugglers; and disposed to be angry with Aunt Jane for her matter-of-fact way of viewing the apparition.

“Surely,” I said, “if ever a sinner deserved to walk the earth after death--and even in Plato’s days such ghosts were said to appear--Baron Hugh, after desecrating the old church, and drinking himself to death, is doomed to haunt it evermore.”

“But I don’t think it was Baron Hugh at all. I gathered, from some words the blind dame involuntarily uttered, that it was a lady, a beautiful, pale, fair young lady, like her favourite Lady Alice.”

“Oh! did she? What, the one she was anxious to know whether Dorina was like? Well, that is strange.”

“Yes; but remember to say nothing of it,” she whispered, “to anyone else, for the poor woman seemed much afraid of having let out some dangerous secret. You, too, remarked how disinclined she has become lately to speak about the family at all, and how anxious she looked.”

“Yes, but happy, too, as if she had discovered something that had pleased her, or made her pleasantly anxious.”

At the moment we spoke about the supposition that the ghost was a lady, a half-witted and deaf old man was passing near, and when I happened to look round a few minutes afterwards, I saw that he was following us. He did not live in the village, but he sometimes came there to sell fish and shrimps; once he had been at Roland Grange with herrings, and Aunt Jane fancied that he was not so deaf or silly as he pretended to be, for his head was well-shaped, although his eyes had rather a vacant stare. When I looked back, he came up and offered us some shrimps, which Aunt Jane declined to purchase.

We were walking in the direction of Dame Jestico’s cottage, and the man still contrived to follow us, even after we had left the high road, and turned into the path across the fields. Aunt Jane turned round and told him that it was useless for him to bring his shrimps to the cottages, for the poor people would certainly not buy any. But she could not succeed in making him hear or understand. So she let him take his course, at the same time that she felt sure he had some motive in pretending deafness or stupidity.

When we entered the cottage the man sat down on a bench in the porch outside, and putting his basket of fish on the ground, leaned back, and stretched out his legs with a wearied and listless air. We found the little grand-daughter was with the old dame, and Aunt Jane told her to go and see what the man wanted.

“Who is it? Surely I know that step! It ’minds me of long, long ago!” asked the dame. And when Aunt Jane explained, she seemed much agitated, and was going to speak several times, but checked herself, with an apparently violent effort. She then endeavoured to get up from her chair, and moved in the direction of the porch. Aunt Jane supported her, and, as she seemed so anxious to approach the deaf man, we endeavoured to assist her tottering steps.

“Who are you?” she inquired, as she groped along the bench with her hand till she reached his shoulder. She then passed it quickly over his face, and felt a mark of an old scar on his forehead. “I thought you had died fifteen years ago,” she exclaimed. “And what has brought you here now?”

The man gave no answer, but looked as if he were trying to conceal the annoyance he felt at her recognition.

“Come, come,” she said, in the same tone, “tell me what you want, or I’ll----”

“I don’t want nothin’ at all, only to see if old friends remembered me.”

“What have you done with Eleanor? Tell me quick. Tell me at once, or, if you don’t, I’ll punish you.”

“I’ll tell ye, then, if you promise not to betray me, for in these parts I’m Joe Naylor, and you would spoil an honest man’s livelihood, what’s been wrong in his head ever since this blow,” he said, pointing to the mark on his forehead.

“I don’t believe you,” said the dame, “for well do I know how you came by that; but I promise not to say I know you, if you will tell me truly what you did with your poor wife.”

“She’s sleeping sound and peaceful in the deep blue sea,

‘Where the sun shines bright,
And the moon by night
It doth give more light
Than it does now here;
And now I’m near,
And you shed no tear
When I go away,
And have said my say--
But I can’t hear,
So good-bye, my dear.’”

And with a wild kind of startling laugh, the strange man jumped up and ran away.

“Is he mad, or what can he want?” inquired Aunt Jane of the old dame, who stood listening intently to his receding footsteps, which she seemed to hear long after they were inaudible to us.

“He’s gone up the wood-path, and no doubt will prowl about his old haunts on the Castle-hill.”

“Was he one of the smugglers who were said to have had their hiding-places there?”

“Who said he was?” inquired the dame, with an angry look. “I never said so, and come what will, I will never betray poor Eleanor’s husband. Beg pardon, dear lady, I’m forgetting myself; but my poor mind wanders, I know, sometimes, and now I’ll go and rest.”

We saw that she evidently did not like to speak about this mysterious man, so we led her back to her chair, and soon afterwards left her to repose.

As we walked home, we could not help wondering what the strange man’s motives could have been in thus seeking for the old dame’s recognition, and before strangers, too, when he seemed, at the same time, so anxious to be known only under his present evidently feigned name of Joe Naylor. But as the dame evidently wished that he should keep up this _incognito_, we determined to say nothing about our meeting with him to anyone.