"You hear what my brother says," said the girl haughtily. "Let there be no more of this!"
"But--in right of law and order, I must know more about this!" cried Constable Jacky, lifting up his staff again. Somehow, however, the magic had gone from his words. Every one now knew that his thunder had a hollow sound.
"Ah, you are the _gendarme_--the official--the officer!" said the tall girl, with a more p.r.o.nounced foreign accent than before, making him a little bow; "please go and tell your superiors that we are here because the place belongs to us--at least to my brother, and that I am staying to take care of him."
"But how did you come?" persisted the man in authority.
The tall girl looked over his head. Her glance, clear, cool, penetrating, scanned face after face, and then she said, as it were, regretfully, "There are no gentlefolk among you?"
There was the slightest shade of inquiry about words which might have seemed rude as a mere affirmation. Then she appeared to answer for herself, still with the same tinge of sadness faintly colouring her pride. "For this reason I cannot tell you how we came to be here."
Mr. Josiah Kettle felt called upon to a.s.sert himself.
"I have reason to believe," he said pompously, "that I am as good as any on the estate in the way of being a gentleman--me and my son Joseph. I am a Justice of the Peace, under warrant of the Crown, and so one day will my son Joseph--Jo, you rascal, come off that paling!"
But just then Jo Kettle had other fish to fry. From the bad eminence of the garden palisade he was devouring the new-comer with his eyes. As for me, I had shaken the hand of the lately adored Greensleeves from my arm.
The girl"s glance stayed for an instant and no more upon the round and rosy countenance of Mr. Josiah Kettle, Justice of the Peace. She smiled upon him indulgently, but shook her head.
"I am sorry," she said, with gentle condescension, "that I cannot tell anything more to you. You are one of the people who broke our windows!"
Then Josiah Kettle unfortunately bl.u.s.tered.
"If you will not, young madam," he cried, "I can soon send them to you who will make you answer."
The young lady calmly took out of her pocket a dainty pair of ivory writing tablets, such as only the minister of the parish used in all Eden Valley, and he only because he had married a great London lady for his wife.
"I shall be glad of the name and address of the persons to whom you refer!" said Miss Irma (for so from that moment I began to call her in my heart).
"The factors and agents for this estate," Josiah Kettle enunciated grandly. The writing tablets were shut up with a snap of disappointment.
"Oh, Messrs. Smart, Poole & Smart," she said. "Why, I have known them ever since I was as high as little Louis."
Then she smiled indulgently upon Mr. Kettle, with something so easily grand and yet so sweet that I think the hearts of all went out to her.
"I suppose," she said, "that really you thought you were doing right in coming here and firing off guns without permission. It must be an astonishing thing for you to see this house of the Maitlands inhabited after so long. I do not blame your curiosity, but I fear I must ask you to send a competent man to repair our windows. For that we hold you responsible, Mr. Officer, and you, Mr. Justice of the Peace--you and your son Jo! Don"t we, Louis?"
"I will see to that myself!" a voice, the same that had spoken before, came from the crowd. Miss Irma searched the circle without, however, coming to a conclusion. I do think that her glance lingered longer on my face than on any of the others, perhaps because Gerty Greensleeves was leaning on my shoulder and whispering in my ear. (What a nuisance girls are, sometimes!) So the glance pa.s.sed on, with something in it at once calm and simple and high.
"If any of the gentlefolk of our station will call upon us," she went on, "we will tell _them_ how we came to be here--the clergyman of the parish--or----" here she hesitated for the first time, "or his wife."
Instinctively she seemed to feel the difficulty. "Though we are not of their faith!" she added, smiling once more as with the air of serene condescension she had shown all through.
Then she nodded, and swept a curtsey with an undulating grace which I thought to be adorable, in spite of the suspicion of irony in it.
"Good-bye, good people," she said, letting her eyes again run the circuit of the sea of faces, reinforced by those who had been firing their blunderbusses and horse-pistols (now carefully concealed) so uselessly at the back windows of the house. "We are obliged for your visit. Salute them, Louis!"
Obediently the child carried his hand to the curls on his brow in the same fashion I had seen soldiers do at the militia training on the Dumfries sands, but with the same smilingly tolerant air of receiving and acknowledging the homage of va.s.sals which both of them had shown from the beginning.
Then Miss Irma smiled upon us all once more, nodded to me (I am sure of it), and without another word, shut the door in our faces.
CHAPTER IV
FIRST FOOT IN THE HAUNTED HOUSE
To understand what a sensation these strange events made in Eden Valley, it is necessary that you should know something of Eden Valley itself and how it was governed.
Governed, you say? Was it not within the King"s dominions, and governed like every other part of these his Majesty"s kingdoms? Had we of the Wide Valley risen against const.i.tuted authority and filled all Balcary Bay between Isle Rathan and the Red Haven with floating tea-chests?
Well, not exactly; but many a score of stealthy cargoes had been carried past our doors on horse-back, pony-back, shelty-back--up by Bluehills and over the hip of Ben Tudor. And often, often from the Isle of Man fleet had twenty score of barrels been dropped overboard just in time to prevent the minions of the law, as represented by H.M. ship _Seamew_, sloop-of-war, from seizing them. So you will observe that the revolt of Eden Valley against authority, though not quite so complete as that of the late New England colonies, yet proceeded from the same motives.
Only, as it typo happened, the tea-chests which were spilt in Boston Harbour were finished so far as the brewing of tea was concerned, while the kegs and firkins dropped overboard were easily recoverable by such as were in the secret. In a day or two, the tide being favourable and the nights dark enough, these same kegs would be found reposing in bulk in the recesses of Brandy Knowe, next by Collin Mill--save for a few, left in well defined places--one being left at the Manse for the Doctor himself. That was within the very wall of the kirkyard, and under the shadow of the clump of yews which had dripped upon the tombstones that covered at least three of his predecessors. A second reposed under the prize cabbages belonging to General Johnstone (who, as a young officer of Marines, had simulated the courage of Admiral Byng before Minorca, and like that gallant seaman, narrowly escaped being shot for his pains). General Johnstone"s gardener knew well where this keg was hidden. But it contained liquid well-nigh sacred in the eyes of his master, and he had far too much common-sense ever to presume to find it.
A third came to anchor under a peat-stack belonging to Mr. Shepstone Oglethorpe, the only Episcopalian within the parish bounds, and the descendent of an English military family which had once held possession of the Maitland estates during the military dragonnades of Charles II and James II, but had been obliged to restore the mansion and most of the property after the Prince of Orange made good his landing with his "Protestant wind" at Torbay. Enough, however, remained to make Mr.
Shepstone Oglethorpe the next man in the parish after the minister and the General. He was, besides, a pleasant, gossipy, young-old, fluttery bachelor--a great acquisition at four-hours tea-drinkings, and much more of a praise to them that do well than any sort of a terror to evil-doers.
These three const.i.tuted the general staff of our commonwealth, and in spite of occasional forgetfulnesses as to the declaration of the aforesaid kegs, parcels of French silks and Malines lace, to H.M."s Supervisor of Customs, King George had no more loyal subjects than these highest authorities in Eden Valley, ecclesiastical, military and civil. Then, after due interval, came the farmers of Eden Valley, honest, far-seeing, cautious men, slow of action, slower still of speech--not at all to be judged by the standard of the richest of them, Mr. Josiah Kettle. He was, in fact, a mere incomer, who had been promoted a Justice of the Peace because, on the occasion of the last scare as to a French invasion, he had made and carried out large and remunerative contracts for the supply of the militia and other troops hastily got together to protect the Solway harbours from Dryffe Sands to the Back Sh.o.r.e.
The siege of the Haunted House of Marnhoul happened on a Friday, the last school-keeping day of the week. Sat.u.r.day was employed by the parish in digesting the news and forming opinions for the consumpt of the morrow. Meantime there was a pretty steady stream of the curious along the Marnhoul road, but the padlock had been replaced, and only the broken bar bore token of the storm which had pa.s.sed that way.
On Sunday, however, a small oblong sc.r.a.p of white attracted the attention of the nearer curious. It was attached, at about the level of the eyes, to the unbroken bar of the gate of Marnhoul, and on being approached with due care, was found to bear the following mysterious inscription--
"Sir Louis Maitland of Marnhoul, Bart., and Miss Irma Sobieski Maitland receive every afternoon from 2 to 5."
Marnhoul, Galloway, June 21.
"Keep us a"!" was the universal exclamation of Eden Valley as it read this solemnizing inscription. It was generally believed to be a challenge to the lawyers and the powers in general to come at these hours and turn the young people out.
And many were the opinions as to the legality of such a course. Law was not generally understood in the Galloway of that date, and though the Sheriff Subst.i.tute rode through the village once a month to spend a night over the "cartes" with his friend the General, he too only laughed and rode on. He was well known to me at the head of his profession, and to have the ear of the Government. Such studied indifference, therefore, could only be put down to a desire to wink at the proceedings of the children, illegal and unprecedented as these might be.
But I must now say something about my own folk.
Though undoubtedly originally Highland, and, as my father averred, able to claim kindred with the highest of his name, the MacAlpines had long been domiciled in the south. My father was the son of a neighbouring minister, and had only escaped the fate of succeeding his father in the charge by a Highland aversion to taking the sacrament at the age when he was called upon to do so--in order that, by the due order of the Church of Scotland, he might be taken on his trials as a student in Divinity.
He had also, about that date, further complicated matters by marrying my mother, Grace Lyon, the penniless daughter of a noted Cameronian elder of the parish of Eden Valley.
In order to support her, and (after a little) _us_, John MacAlpine had accepted a small school far up the glen, from which, after a year or two, on the appointment of Dr. Forbes to the parish, he had followed his old college friend to Eden Valley itself. Under his care the little academy had gradually been organized on the newest and best scholastic lines known to the time. Even for girls cla.s.sics and mathematics played a prominent part. Samplers and knitting, which had previously formed a notable branch of the curriculum, were banished to an hour when little Miss Huntingdon taught the girls, locked in her own department like Wykliffites in danger of the fires of Tower Hill. And at such times my father almost ran as he pa.s.sed the door of the infant school and thought of the follies which were being committed within.
"Samplers," he was wont to mutter, "samplers--when they might be at their Ovid!"
My mother--Gracie Lyon that was--had none of the stern blood of her Cameronian forebears, nor yet my father"s tempestuous Norland mood. She was gentle, patient, with little to say for herself--like Leah, tender-eyed (in the English, not in the Hebrew sense)--and I remember well that as a child one of my great pleasures was to stroke her cheek as she was putting me to sleep, saying, "Mother, how soft your skin is.
It is like velvet!"
"Aye," she would answer, with a sigh gentle as herself, "so they used to tell me!"
And I somehow knew that "they" excluded my father, but whom it included I did not know then nor for many a day after.