“P’r’aps master did wisely to keep on Mrs. Myers’ servants, for he’d hardly have got London folk to stay in his dismal country house, even on double wages. We’ll have you at the Soho registry before three months are over.”
“Time will show,” said Susan.
“Them people down at Myst Court are accustomed to the kind of life they lead there,” continued the loquacious Mrs. Mullins, “and that’s the reason they don’t mind it. Frogs like their ditch because they’ve never known anything better; and I suppose that folk in a haunted house get used to ghosts, as eels are used to skinning.”
“Or learn not to be frightened at shadows,” said Susan.
“I’m not frightened; don’t you fancy that shadows keep me from going to Myst Court,” cried the cook. “But I could never stand a place where the butcher – as John says – comes but twice a week in the winter; no cook could abide that.”
“It seems that Mrs. Myers’ cook did,” observed Susan.
“She’s no cook!” exclaimed Mrs. Mullins, with an emphatic snort of disdain: “she’s had nothing to keep her hand in, and don’t know a vol-au-vent from a soufflet! Why, Mrs. Myers never saw company, never asked a friend to a meal! John says that for five days out of the seven the old lady dined on mutton-broth, and the other two on barley-gruel! John told me that he could hardly touch the dinners which Hannah prepared; he is used to have things so very different,” added Mrs. Mullins with professional pride.
“If Hannah’s cooking satisfied master and his son, John might have been satisfied too,” observed Susan.
“Oh, Mr. Trevor is never partic’lar about his food; and as for Master Bruce, John says that he was so much taken up about arrangements, and alterations, and improvements, that he would not have noticed if the stew had been made of old shoes. But Master Vibert, he’s not so easily pleased; he likes his dainty bits, his sauces, and his sweeties; there is some satisfaction in dishing up a dinner for him! He’ll soon find out that this Hannah knows just as much of cooking as I do of cow-milking, and there will be a worrit in the house.” Mrs. Mullins folded her hands complacently at the thought of how much her own valuable services would be regretted, and then inquired, in an altered tone, “Is the captain going to Myst Court with the rest of the party?”
“No; I am sorry to say that the captain leaves this to-morrow,” said Susan. “He is before long to start on another cruise, and as he has much business to do in the docks, he needs to stop for awhile in London. The carriage which takes the captain away is to drop Miss Emmie at the house of her friend, Miss Alice, to whom she wishes to say good-bye. My poor dear young lady! every day brings its good-bye to her now. It will be well when Friday comes, and the move to Myst Court is fairly over.”
“I’d never go into a new house on a Friday; it’s unlucky,” observed Mrs. Mullins, as she turned away and went off to the kitchen.
CHAPTER V.
HAUNTED ROOMS
November has come with nights of drizzle and mornings of fog. The dreariness of the weather without adds to the sense of discomfort within the half-dismantled house. The carpet has been taken from the staircase, and the old family clock no longer is heard striking the hours. The drawing-room is much changed in appearance from what it was when the reader was first introduced into the Trevors’ cheerful abode. It is evening, and the family are sitting together, with the exception of the master of the house, who is busy in his study with lawyers’ papers and parchment deeds before him. The light of the drawing-room lamp falls on a scanty amount of furniture; for sofa, arm-chair, and piano have all been packed up for removal to the new home. No ornament of china, no graceful vase relieves the bareness of the white mantelpiece; the mirror has been taken away, no trace remains of pictures except square marks on the wall. The guitar has vanished from view; the globe of gold-fish is now the property of a friend; the ferns have been sent to the greenhouse of an aunt in Grosvenor Square.
Emmie sits at the table with her lace-work beside her, but her needle is idle. Bruce, the most actively occupied of the party, is drawing plans of cottages, and jotting down in his note-book estimates of expenses. The captain has a book in his hand, but makes slow progress with its contents. Vibert is glancing over a number of Punch. The party have been for the last ten minutes so silent that the pattering of the November rain on the window-panes is distinctly heard.
“I hope that we shall not have such weather as this when we go to our new home,” said Vibert, as with a yawn he threw down his paper. “The place will need at least sunshine to make it look a degree more lively than a lunatic asylum. ’Tis lucky that our queer old great-aunt did not take it into her head to paint the house black, inside and outside, and put in her will that it must remain so, as a compliment to her husband, who has been dead for the last fifty years. Fancy bricking up the best bed-room!”
“Such an act proves that Mrs. Myers was in a very morbid state of mind,” said the captain.
“What a misfortune!” observed Emmie.
“Misfortune! I should rather call it weakness – absurdity,” said Bruce, sternly glancing up from his drawing.
“I should call it a sin, a downright sin,” cried Vibert. “Such a shame it is to make what might have been a jolly country-house into a sort of rural Newgate! I’m afraid that even our best friends will not care to visit us there. Why, I asked pretty little Alice to-day whether she were coming to brighten us up at Christmas, and she actually answered that she was rather afraid of haunted houses, especially on dark winter nights.”
Bruce smiled a little disdainfully; and the captain suggested that perhaps the fair lady was jesting.
“Not a bit of it,” answered Vibert; “Alice was as much in earnest as were all our servants when they gave us warning, because not one of them but plucky Susan would go to Myst Court. Why, I’d bet that Emmie herself is shivery-shakery at the idea of the house being haunted, and that she’ll not care to walk at night along the passages lest she should meet some tall figure in white.”
Emmie coloured, and looked so uncomfortable, that her uncle, who noticed her embarrassment, effected a diversion in her favour by giving a turn to the conversation.
“I have been tracing a parallel in my mind,” he observed, “between the human soul and the so-called haunted dwelling. Most persons have in the deepest recess of the spiritual man some secret chamber, where prejudice shuts out the light, where self-deception bricks up the door. Into this chamber the possessor himself in some cases never enters to search out and expel the besetting sin, which, unrecognized, perhaps lurks there in the darkness.”
“You speak of our hearts?” asked Emmie.
“I do,” replied her uncle. “It is my belief that not one person in ten thousand knows the ins and outs, the dark corners, the hidden chambers, of that which he bears in his own bosom.”
“Every Christian must,” said Bruce; “for every Christian is bound to practise the duty of self-examination.”
“I hope that you don’t call every one who does not practise it a heathen or a Turk,” cried Vibert. “All that dreadful hunting up of petty peccadilloes, and confessing a string of them at once, is, at least to my notion, only fit work for hermits and monks!”
“We are not talking about confession, but simply about self-knowledge,” observed the captain.
“Oh, where ignorance is bliss,” began Vibert gaily; but his brother cut short the misapplied quotation with the remark, “Ignorance of ourselves must be folly.”
Vibert took up again the comic paper which he had laid down, and pretended to re-examine the pictures. But for the captain’s presence the youth would have begun to whistle, to show how little he cared for Bruce’s implied rebuke; for, as Vibert had often told Emmie, he had no notion of being “put down” by his brother.
“Do you think it easy to acquire self-knowledge?”