"I am sure there must be secret galleries and haunted chambers and all sorts of dreadful places. I telephoned to Mr. Jawkins to inquire, but he answered, "Not as I know of, miss." I suppose he is so fearfully practical he wouldn"t care if a real ghost met him in a remote wing."
"What a pity we didn"t live in the last century when people still gave ghosts the benefit of the doubt," said Lord Brompton, sadly. "Now we are certain that there never were any."
"But we may still run across a skeleton in a closet," said the girl.
"Oh, yes. But who, by the way, is Mr. Jawkins?"
"Have you never heard of Mr. Jarley Jawkins, the famous country-house agent and individual caterer?"
Lord Brompton shook his head.
"He is indeed a remarkable man," she continued. "When we decided to come to England my father telephoned to Jawkins, who immediately sent out a list of country-seats. We chose this and made arrangements with him to supply us with guests at so much a head. A regular country-house party--a duke and d.u.c.h.ess, one or two financially embarra.s.sed n.o.blemen, a disestablished bishop, a professional beauty, a poet-peer, and several other attractions. Oh, Jawkins is wonderful. They are all coming to-day.
Won"t it be fun? But it may seem rude to ask you to meet such people? I am sorry. You will be almost the only guest not hired for the occasion.
It was very inconsiderate of me."
"That"s all right," said the young lord. "Perhaps I may find an opening here. I"m looking out for a job. Possibly you may not be aware, Miss Windsor, that the porter"s lodge, which I occupy at present, is my sole piece of property. I will send my card to Jawkins. By the way, does he conduct them in person?"
"Oh, yes. He comes on the first day to introduce them. Jawkins is a most amusing man. He is enormously rich and a great _bon-vivant_. He has a retinue of thoroughly trained servants whom he dispatches to his customers, and everything he supplies is in the most perfect taste. He has but one weakness: he loves a lord and is the sworn enemy of the new _regime_. Don"t you look forward with interest to the feast to-night? I shall give you a professional beauty to take into dinner; and of course I shall go in with the man of the highest rank. But here we are," she said, as they reached the upper terrace in front of the house.
"What a superb dog you have, Miss Windsor. What is his name?" said Lord Brompton, gazing with admiration at the n.o.ble creature, who stood on the threshold, panting after his run.
"His name is Bayard."
"Ah, Miss Windsor, I perceive that you still recognize the glamour of a lordly t.i.tle in the matter of naming your pets. The Chevalier Bayard smacks of royal prerogative."
"Pardon me; Bayard is named after an American statesman who was contemporary with my great-grandfather. But isn"t he a beauty? He cost $1000. There is not another of his variety in the United States."
"I should like to go to America," said Lord Brompton, pensively, as he entered the familiar library now renovated by the taste of Jawkins. "My views have changed materially on many questions since we last met. I can see that things here are likely to be in a chaotic state for a long time to come, whereas your inst.i.tutions have become permanent."
"But you ought to wish to remain and help your fellow-countrymen to better things, Lord Brompton. Look at that line of ancestors," she exclaimed. "You ought to do something worthy of them."
The ex-peer shook his head. "I have ambition, I think, thanks largely to my friendship with you two summers ago; but the outlook is very gloomy.
England is in the hands of professional politicians. There is no chance for gentlemen in political life."
"But the King may come to his own again," she murmured, in pity for his mood. "Your t.i.tle is unimpeached at his exiled court."
"I have doubts as to the desirability of a return to the old order of things, even if there were hopes of success. It is useless to fight against the spirit of the age. The King is old and fat."
"I saw the King riding in a herdic in Boston a few days before we sailed," said Maggie. "He was stopping at the old Province House. Poor sovereign, he looked dest.i.tute."
"He is very poor. What was saved from the wreck is in the hands of Bugbee, the London banker. The court has since been moved to the South End. But a monarchy is surely vastly preferable to our present administration. President Bagshaw is a disgrace to any civilized community, to say nothing of an ideal republic."
"There is the ancestor who looks like you," said she, pointing to the portrait of a cavalier wearing hat and plume and long mustaches. "But is there no hope from the opposition?" she inquired.
"I cannot yet bring myself to sympathize with the Liberals, although their leader, Richard Lincoln, is a great and upright man. While the King lives I can no more be disloyal to the House of Hanover than my namesake up there could have been to his master"s cause. Still, I feel we are living in an age when opinions are no more secure from revolution than dynasties."
"Speaking just now of the Chevalier Bayard reminds me that Jawkins mentioned as one of the guests he had procured for the occasion--"
"Like so much plate or china," interrupted the quondam peer, bitterly.
"Sir John Dacre," continued Miss Windsor, without regard to his petulance.
"John Dacre?" he cried, with interest.
"Yes. Do you know him?"
"Know him! He was one of my dearest college friends. He is a man of the utmost dignity of soul and consummate breeding."
"Jawkins spoke of him with positive awe as a gentleman of the old school. "He is a chevalier _sans peur et sans reproche_, miss," said he, "and one of my choicest specimens. He is more precious than Sevres china; but at present he declines pay.""
"St. George and the dragon!" cried Lord Brompton, "what would Dacre say could he hear the comparison? Jawkins"s life would not be worth an hour"s purchase. We regarded John Dacre at Oxford as the ideal of a chivalric nature."
"You interest me greatly," said she. "But what has he been doing since you graduated?"
"We have not met, but I have heard of him as loyal and devoted to the royal cause when the outlook was darkest. I shall find him the same n.o.ble, ardent soul as ever, I have not a doubt. Like enough his zeal will be the needful spur to my flagging spirit."
They had been wandering through the s.p.a.cious mansion as they talked, but so absorbed were they in the conversation that the changes in the arrangement of the ancient heirlooms of the once ill.u.s.trious house of Ripon made but little impression upon Lord Brompton. Weary at last with their wanderings the twain seated themselves upon a broad leather couch, from which they could command a view of a magnificent stained-gla.s.s mullioned window, which dated back to the days of George the First. The half light of the apartment was perhaps a begetter of remembrances, for they began to talk of the past, if indeed so short a period back as two summers deserves to be so ent.i.tled. Through Lord Brompton"s thoughts floated an inquiry as to whether he was not in love with his companion, for, if not, why this joyous sense of re-acquisition on his part? He had never forgotten the pleasant, happy hours pa.s.sed in La Belle France, and here they were come again, and he was visiting side by side with her whose smile had been their harbinger.
"But I am forgetting, Lord Brompton, the object of our coming here," she exclaimed at last. "I want to know the secrets of Ripon House. Where is the haunted chamber?"
Geoffrey smiled, and rising from his seat walked to the other side of the room and touched a spring in the wainscot. A panel flew to one side and revealed a narrow aperture.
"Follow me if you have a brave heart," he cried, looking back.
The apartment in which they were sitting was the library and this exit was a curious winding staircase, which gradually grew less dark as they proceeded. At last they found themselves in a sort of antechamber, scarcely large enough to turn about in, formed by a bay or projection.
There was an oak seat with the Ripon arms carved on the back. Above it a tiny window, showing the great thickness of the wall, let in a few rays of light.
"Sit down--sh!" said Lord Brompton, and he put his finger to his lips and nodded toward a low door which was visible a few feet beyond. "It is there."
"Oh, this is delightful. Is it a real, genuine, ancestral ghost?"
"In that chamber the Lady Marian Ripon, an ancestress of mine, is said to have died of a broken heart. Her husband, the great-grandson of the Lord Brompton whose portrait you think I resemble, was killed at Teb, and three days after her body was borne to the tomb. This was her private chamber, and here her spirit is said still to linger. It is not a very original ghost, but its authenticity is unquestioned."
"Have you ever crossed the threshold?" asked the girl, with mock solemnity.
"Not since childhood, and then only in fear and trembling."
"This is beginning to be positively weird and uncanny," she murmured, "but I propose to defy the spectre and enter."
"Have a care--have a care. But you have no key, Miss Windsor."
She was shaking the handle, which seemed loose and flimsy. "Help me. It is not fastened," she cried.
They bent their united strength upon the door, which creaked, groaned, and finally burst open with a crash, causing the dust to fly so that Maggie gave a little shriek of dismay. Complete silence and darkness followed the onslaught, and then with a whisper of "Who"s afraid?" she drew forth a lamp of diminutive proportions and Etruscan design, and turning the crank produced a brilliant electric flame, which permeated the damp and gloom of the ghostly chamber.
Here was, indeed, a monument to decay and mould of the past. A room rife with the cobwebs of ages met their vision where the moth-eaten remains of once gorgeous hangings competed for utter fustiness with the odor of the rotting beams and the dismal aspect of the furniture, some of which had actually fallen to pieces, as though further stability had been incompatible with the long absence of human life. The place seemed almost too desolate for a ghost other than a very morbid spirit in search of penance. In the centre of the room lay in hopeless confusion a pile of all sorts and varieties of garments, many of them of most antiquated description. Plumed hats and velvet knee-breeches of the cavalier period, Jersey jackets and tea-gowns, with Watteau plaits, such as were in fashion when Victoria was queen, were mingled with articles of a more recent date. On the top lay an open volume, the pages of which were brown with dust. Maggie picked it up and read:
"Howe"er it be, it seems to me "Tis only n.o.ble to be good; Kind hearts are more than coronets And simple faith than Norman blood."