Chapter 16
'He makes all the characters so real in talking them over,' said Amy, 'and he does not always know how they will end before they begin.'
'I should think it hardly safe for so excitable a mind to dwell much on the world of fiction,' said Philip.
'Nothing has affected him so much as Sintram,' said Laura. 'I never saw anything like it. He took it up by chance, and stood reading it while all those strange expressions began to flit over his face, and at last he fairly cried over it so much, that he was obliged to fly out of the room. How often he has read it I cannot tell; I believe he has bought one for himself, and it is as if the engraving had a fascination for him; he stands looking at it as if he was in a dream.'
'He is a great mystery,' said Amy.
'All men are mysterious,' said Philip 'but he not more than others, though he may appear so to you, because you have not had much experience, and also because most of the men you have seen have been rounded into uniformity like marbles, their sharp angles rubbed off against each other at school.'
'Would it be better if there were more sharp angles?' said Laura, thus setting on foot a discussion on public schools, on which Philip had, of course, a great deal to say.
Amy's kind little heart was meanwhile grieving for Guy, and longing to see him return, but he did not come till after Philip's departure. He looked pale and mournful, his hair hanging loose and disordered, and her terror was excited lest he might actually have seen his ancestor's ghost, which, in spite of her desire to believe in ghosts, in general, she did not by any means wish to have authenticated. He was surprised and a good deal vexed to find Philip gone, but he said hardly anything, and it was soon bedtime. When Charles took his arm, he exclaimed, on finding his sleeve wet--'What can you have been doing?'
'Walking up and down under the wall,' replied Guy, with some reluctance.
'What, in the rain?'
'I don't know, perhaps it was.'
Amy, who was just behind, carrying the crutch, dreaded Charles's making any allusion to Sintram's wild locks and evening wanderings, but ever since the outburst about King Charles, the desire to tease and irritate Guy had ceased.
They parted at the dressing-room door, and as Guy bade her good night, he pushed back the damp hair that had fallen across his forehead, saying, 'I am sorry I disturbed your evening. I will tell you the meaning of it another time.'
'He has certainly seen the ghost!' said silly little Amy, as she shut herself into her own room in such a fit of vague 'eerie' fright, that it was not till she had knelt down, and with her face hidden in her hands, said her evening prayer, that she could venture to lift up her head and look into the dark corners of the room.
'Another time!' Her heart throbbed at the promise.
The next afternoon, as she and Laura were fighting with a refractory branch of wisteria which had been torn down by the wind, and refused to return to its place, Guy, who had been with his tutor, came in from the stable-yard, reduced the trailing bough to obedience, and then joined them in their walk. He looked grave, was silent at first, and then spoke abruptly--'It is due to you to explain my behaviour last night.'
'Amy thinks you must have seen the ghost,' said Laura, trying to be gay.
'Did I frighten you?' said Guy, turning round, full of compunction.
'No, no. I never saw it. I
'I was very silly,' said Amy smiling.
'But,' proceeded Guy, 'when I think of the origin of the ghost story, I cannot laugh, and if Philip knew all--'
'Oh! He does not,' cried Laura; 'he only looks on it as we have always done, as a sort of romantic appendage to Redclyffe. I should think better of a place for being haunted.'
'I used to be proud of it,' said Guy. 'I wanted to make out whether it was old Sir Hugh or the murderer of Becket, who was said to groan and turn the lock of Dark Hugh's chamber. I hunted among old papers, and a horrible story I found. That wretched Sir Hugh,--the same who began the quarrel with your mother's family--he was a courtier of Charles II, as bad or worse than any of that crew--'
'What was the quarrel about?' said Laura.
'He was believed to have either falsified or destroyed his father's will, so as to leave his brother, your ancestor, landless; his brother remonstrated, and he turned him out of doors. The forgery never was proved, but there was little doubt of it. There are traditions of his crimes without number, especially his furious anger and malice. He compelled a poor lady to marry him, though she was in love with another man; then he was jealous; he waylaid his rival, shut him up in the turret chamber, committed him to prison, and bribed Judge Jeffries to sentence him--nay it is even said he carried his wife to see the execution! He was so execrated that he fled the country; he went to Holland, curried favour with William of Orange, brought his wealth to help him, and that is the deserving action which got him the baronetcy!
He served in the army a good many years, and came home when he thought his sins would be forgotten. But do you remember those lines?' and Guy repeated them in the low rigid tone, almost of horror, in which he had been telling the story:--
'On some his vigorous judgments light, In that dread pause 'twixt day and night, Life's closing twilight hour; Round some, ere yet they meet their doom, Is shed the silence of the tomb, The eternal shadows lower.'
'It was so with him; he lost his senses, and after many actions of mad violence, he ended by hanging himself in the very room where he had imprisoned his victim.'
'Horrible!' said Laura. 'Yet I do not see why, when it is all past, you should feel it so deeply.'
'How should I not feel it?' answered Guy. 'Is it not written that the sins of the fathers shall be visited on the children? You wonder to see me so foolish about Sintram. Well, it is my firm belief that such a curse of sin and death as was on Sintram rests on the descendants of that miserable man.'
The girls were silent, struck with awe and dismay at the fearful reality with which he p.r.o.nounced the words. At last, Amy whispered, 'But Sintram conquered his doom.'
At the same time Laura gathered her thoughts together, and said, 'This must be an imagination. You have dwelt on it and fostered it till you believe it, but such notions should be driven away or they will work their own fulfilment.'
'Look at the history of the Morvilles, and see if it be an imagination,'
said Guy. 'Crime and bloodshed have been the portion of each--each has added weight and darkness to the doom which he had handed on. My own poor father, with his early death, was, perhaps, the happiest!'
Laura saw the idea was too deeply rooted to be treated as a fancy, and she found a better argument. 'The doom of sin and death is on us all, but you should remember that if you are a Morville, you are also a Christian.'
'He does remember it!' said Amy, raising her eyes to his face, and then casting them down, blus.h.i.+ng at having understood his countenance, where, in the midst of the gloomy shades, there rested for an instant the gleam which her mother had likened to the expression of Raffaelle's cherub.'
They walked on for some time in silence. At last Laura exclaimed, 'Are you really like the portrait of this unfortunate Sir Hugh?'
Guy made a sign of a.s.sent.
'Oh! It must have been taken before he grew wicked,' said Amy; and Laura felt the same conviction, that treacherous revenge could never have existed beneath so open a countenance, with so much of highmindedness, pure faith and contempt of wrong in every glance of the eagle eye, in the frank expansion of the smooth forehead.
They were interrupted by Mr. Edmonstone's hearty voice, bawling across the garden for one of the men. 'O Guy! are you there?' cried he, as soon as he saw him. 'Just what I wanted! Your gun, man! We are going to ferret a rabbit.'
Guy ran off at full speed in search of his gun, whistling to Bustle. Mr.
Edmonstone found his man, and the sisters were again alone.
'Poor fellow!' said Laura.
'You will not tell all this to Philip?' said Amy.
'It would show why he was hurt, and it can be no secret.'
'I dare say you are right, but I have a feeling against it. Well, I am glad he had not seen the ghost!'
The two girls had taken their walk, and were just going in, when, looking round, they saw Philip walking fast and determinedly up the approach, and as they turned back to meet him, the first thing he said was, 'Where is Guy?'
'Ferreting rabbits with papa. What is the matter?'
'And where is my aunt?'
Driving out with Charles and Charlotte. What is the matter?'
'Look here. Can you tell me the meaning of this which I found on my table when I came in this morning?'
It was a card of Sir Guy Morville, on the back of which was written in pencil, 'Dear P., I find hunting and reading don't agree, so take no further steps about the horse. Many thanks for your trouble.--G.M.'