"I think I may be of help to you in both cases," said Miss Halcombe, rising. "Let us go, Mr. Hartright, at once, and do the best we can together."
I had the door in my hand to open it for her--but I stopped, on a sudden, to ask an important question before we set forth.
"One of the paragraphs of the anonymous letter," I said, "contains some sentences of minute personal description. Sir Percival Glyde"s name is not mentioned, I know--but does that description at all resemble him?"
"Accurately--even in stating his age to be forty-five----"
Forty-five; and she was not yet twenty-one! Men of his age married wives of her age every day--and experience had shown those marriages to be often the happiest ones. I knew that--and yet even the mention of his age, when I contrasted it with hers, added to my blind hatred and distrust of him.
"Accurately," Miss Halcombe continued, "even to the scar on his right hand, which is the scar of a wound that he received years since when he was travelling in Italy. There can be no doubt that every peculiarity of his personal appearance is thoroughly well known to the writer of the letter."
"Even a cough that he is troubled with is mentioned, if I remember right?"
"Yes, and mentioned correctly. He treats it lightly himself, though it sometimes makes his friends anxious about him."
"I suppose no whispers have ever been heard against his character?"
"Mr. Hartright! I hope you are not unjust enough to let that infamous letter influence you?"
I felt the blood rush into my cheeks, for I knew that it HAD influenced me.
"I hope not," I answered confusedly. "Perhaps I had no right to ask the question."
"I am not sorry you asked it," she said, "for it enables me to do justice to Sir Percival"s reputation. Not a whisper, Mr. Hartright, has ever reached me, or my family, against him. He has fought successfully two contested elections, and has come out of the ordeal unscathed. A man who can do that, in England, is a man whose character is established."
I opened the door for her in silence, and followed her out. She had not convinced me. If the recording angel had come down from heaven to confirm her, and had opened his book to my mortal eyes, the recording angel would not have convinced me.
We found the gardener at work as usual. No amount of questioning could extract a single answer of any importance from the lad"s impenetrable stupidity. The woman who had given him the letter was an elderly woman; she had not spoken a word to him, and she had gone away towards the south in a great hurry. That was all the gardener could tell us.
The village lay southward of the house. So to the village we went next.
XII
Our inquiries at Limmeridge were patiently pursued in all directions, and among all sorts and conditions of people. But nothing came of them. Three of the villagers did certainly a.s.sure us that they had seen the woman, but as they were quite unable to describe her, and quite incapable of agreeing about the exact direction in which she was proceeding when they last saw her, these three bright exceptions to the general rule of total ignorance afforded no more real a.s.sistance to us than the ma.s.s of their unhelpful and un.o.bservant neighbours.
The course of our useless investigations brought us, in time, to the end of the village at which the schools established by Mrs. Fairlie were situated. As we pa.s.sed the side of the building appropriated to the use of the boys, I suggested the propriety of making a last inquiry of the schoolmaster, whom we might presume to be, in virtue of his office, the most intelligent man in the place.
"I am afraid the schoolmaster must have been occupied with his scholars," said Miss Halcombe, "just at the time when the woman pa.s.sed through the village and returned again. However, we can but try."
We entered the playground enclosure, and walked by the schoolroom window to get round to the door, which was situated at the back of the building. I stopped for a moment at the window and looked in.
The schoolmaster was sitting at his high desk, with his back to me, apparently haranguing the pupils, who were all gathered together in front of him, with one exception. The one exception was a st.u.r.dy white-headed boy, standing apart from all the rest on a stool in a corner--a forlorn little Crusoe, isolated in his own desert island of solitary penal disgrace.
The door, when we got round to it, was ajar, and the school-master"s voice reached us plainly, as we both stopped for a minute under the porch.
"Now, boys," said the voice, "mind what I tell you. If I hear another word spoken about ghosts in this school, it will be the worse for all of you. There are no such things as ghosts, and therefore any boy who believes in ghosts believes in what can"t possibly be; and a boy who belongs to Limmeridge School, and believes in what can"t possibly be, sets up his back against reason and discipline, and must be punished accordingly. You all see Jacob Postlethwaite standing up on the stool there in disgrace. He has been punished, not because he said he saw a ghost last night, but because he is too impudent and too obstinate to listen to reason, and because he persists in saying he saw the ghost after I have told him that no such thing can possibly be. If nothing else will do, I mean to cane the ghost out of Jacob Postlethwaite, and if the thing spreads among any of the rest of you, I mean to go a step farther, and cane the ghost out of the whole school."
"We seem to have chosen an awkward moment for our visit," said Miss Halcombe, pushing open the door at the end of the schoolmaster"s address, and leading the way in.
Our appearance produced a strong sensation among the boys. They appeared to think that we had arrived for the express purpose of seeing Jacob Postlethwaite caned.
"Go home all of you to dinner," said the schoolmaster, "except Jacob.
Jacob must stop where he is; and the ghost may bring him his dinner, if the ghost pleases."
Jacob"s fort.i.tude deserted him at the double disappearance of his schoolfellows and his prospect of dinner. He took his hands out of his pockets, looked hard at his knuckles, raised them with great deliberation to his eyes, and when they got there, ground them round and round slowly, accompanying the action by short spasms of sniffing, which followed each other at regular intervals--the nasal minute guns of juvenile distress.
"We came here to ask you a question, Mr. Dempster," said Miss Halcombe, addressing the schoolmaster; "and we little expected to find you occupied in exorcising a ghost. What does it all mean? What has really happened?"
"That wicked boy has been frightening the whole school, Miss Halcombe, by declaring that he saw a ghost yesterday evening," answered the master; "and he still persists in his absurd story, in spite of all that I can say to him."
"Most extraordinary," said Miss Halcombe "I should not have thought it possible that any of the boys had imagination enough to see a ghost.
This is a new accession indeed to the hard labour of forming the youthful mind at Limmeridge, and I heartily wish you well through it, Mr. Dempster. In the meantime, let me explain why you see me here, and what it is I want."
She then put the same question to the schoolmaster which we had asked already of almost every one else in the village. It was met by the same discouraging answer Mr. Dempster had not set eyes on the stranger of whom we were in search.
"We may as well return to the house, Mr. Hartright," said Miss Halcombe; "the information we want is evidently not to be found."
She had bowed to Mr. Dempster, and was about to leave the schoolroom, when the forlorn position of Jacob Postlethwaite, piteously sniffing on the stool of penitence, attracted her attention as she pa.s.sed him, and made her stop good-humouredly to speak a word to the little prisoner before she opened the door.
"You foolish boy," she said, "why don"t you beg Mr. Dempster"s pardon, and hold your tongue about the ghost?"
"Eh!--but I saw t" ghaist," persisted Jacob Postlethwaite, with a stare of terror and a burst of tears.
"Stuff and nonsense! You saw nothing of the kind. Ghost indeed! What ghost----"
"I beg your pardon, Miss Halcombe," interposed the schoolmaster a little uneasily--"but I think you had better not question the boy. The obstinate folly of his story is beyond all belief; and you might lead him into ignorantly----"
"Ignorantly what?" inquired Miss Halcombe sharply.
"Ignorantly shocking your feelings," said Mr. Dempster, looking very much discomposed.
"Upon my word, Mr. Dempster, you pay my feelings a great compliment in thinking them weak enough to be shocked by such an urchin as that!" She turned with an air of satirical defiance to little Jacob, and began to question him directly. "Come!" she said, "I mean to know all about this. You naughty boy, when did you see the ghost?"
"Yestere"en, at the gloaming," replied Jacob.
"Oh! you saw it yesterday evening, in the twilight? And what was it like?"
"Arl in white--as a ghaist should be," answered the ghost-seer, with a confidence beyond his years.
"And where was it?"
"Away yander, in t" kirkyard--where a ghaist ought to be."
"As a "ghaist" should be--where a "ghaist" ought to be--why, you little fool, you talk as if the manners and customs of ghosts had been familiar to you from your infancy! You have got your story at your fingers" ends, at any rate. I suppose I shall hear next that you can actually tell me whose ghost it was?"
"Eh! but I just can," replied Jacob, nodding his head with an air of gloomy triumph.