“How curious! I wonder if it is true,” I said.
Isabel seemed dubious as to this.
“Papa says it sounds rather as if the story had been made up to suit the name,” she said.
“Then is your own house not very old?” I inquired.
“Not very – about eighty or a hundred years old,” she replied. “It was originally just a sort of shooting-box – for our family has owned land about here for longer than that – and then my great-uncle took it into his head to enlarge it and make it his home. Grimsthorpe House is older; it was originally a large farmhouse – indeed it is not, to look at, much better than that now, though the grounds are extensive.”
We had crossed the moor by this time, and the rest of the way was along a more sheltered road bordered with trees, and here and there a glimpse of cultivated fields, altogether a different kind of landscape, more like what I was accustomed to at my own home, and a few minutes more brought us to the entrance of the Manor-house as the Wynyards’ place was now called.
As we passed through the lodge-gates, Isabel leant towards me and whispered —
“The Grim House is half-a-mile farther on, on the edge of another part of the moor.”
Her father was standing at the front door to receive us. His welcome was most cordial and courtly, but I felt even more strongly than before that it would be very difficult for me to be at ease with him; and so I said, in other words, to Isabel when we were alone in the room she had taken me up to. A charming room it was, with windows on two sides, from one of which a peep of the moorland, with rising ground in the distance, was to be had, as Isabel pointed out to me.
“Yes,” I said, as I threw myself into a tempting arm-chair, “it is all delightful; only, Isabel, I do wish I didn’t feel so shy of your father!”
Isabel laughed.
“I can’t understand it,” she said. “I mean, I can’t understand your feeling shy of him. He is so exceedingly kind and gentle. At the same time – ” she hesitated.
“What?” I asked quickly.
“I could understand,” she replied, “feeling afraid of him if one had done anything wrong – more afraid than if he were severe. When I was a small child and got into scrapes, as all children do sometimes, his look of almost perplexed distress made me feel worse, far worse, than if he had scolded me in a commonplace way.”
“O Isabel!” I exclaimed, “you are making me feel far more frightened than before! I must be awfully careful while I’m here not to shock Mr Wynyard in any way. But I am so thoughtless and forgetful; and that reminds me how stupid it was of me to allude to the Grim House mystery before Maple.”
“Yes,” said Isabel, “I thought it best to give you a hint. I was sure you wouldn’t mind; for the best of servants gossip, and I should not have liked your maid to tell our servants that you and I had been talking about the Greys, though she is pretty sure to hear something about them while she is here. But, dear Regina, you really mustn’t take up the idea that papa is alarming! He is so pleased to have you here, and has said to me more than once that he hoped you would make me less of ‘an old woman,’ which he says I am in danger of becoming. I get anxious about the housekeeping and things like that, and sometimes papa says I am not enough out of doors.”
My spirits rose at this. I asked nothing better than to be out of doors from morning till night in this beautifully wild district.
“Your father won’t have to complain of your leading too quiet a life if he leaves you to me,” I said laughingly. “And the very first time we go out, Isabel, you will promise, won’t you, to show me the Grim House! And oh!” I went on, “you haven’t yet told me what has happened there just lately.”
“It sounds so little to tell,” said Isabel; “but if you could realise the utter isolation of these poor people, you would understand the sensation it has made. It is simply that they have had visitors for the first time in the memory of man!”
“What sort of visitors?” I asked eagerly.
“Two men – gentlemen – an old and a young one! They stayed at Grimsthorpe one night. They drove up in a fly from the station, and it fetched them again the next morning. You see I have kept my eyes and ears open as regards the mystery, for your benefit.”
“Did you see these men?” I asked.
“I am not quite sure, but I think I did see one of them,” was the reply. “I had been in the village, and coming home I met a stranger who asked me the way to the church. Our church is rather curious; nobody quite knows how it came to be there, it is so big a church for so tiny a place.”
“What was he like?” I inquired, thinking to myself that I should have been much more excited over the incident than Isabel appeared to be.
“It was almost dusk,” she answered. “But his voice was a very pleasant and cultivated one. He was young, and I think good-looking. I was half inclined to ask him if he was a stranger in the neighbourhood or something of that sort, for I saw he had come down a path which only leads to the Grim House, though it wasn’t till the next day that we heard of the wonderful event. It was Strott, of course, who told me of it!”
“I wonder who he was!” I said thoughtfully. “It certainly makes the whole still more interesting if they are beginning to have any communication with the outside world.”
“There is one thing,” said Isabel, “that I forgot to tell you. They really must be good people, for on one occasion they did break through their rule of never leaving their own grounds. It was when little Tony at the vicarage fell off a haystack and they feared for his life; he was insensible for many hours, and his mother was in despair. That same afternoon the fly drove up to the vicarage, and, to Mrs Franklin’s astonishment, the Misses Grey were announced! She could scarcely believe her ears, and she has often told me that the very excitement of their coming did her good.”
“How very queer it is that you forgot to tell me of it before!” I could not help interrupting.
“I just did forget,” said Isabel calmly. “You see we are so used to the Grim House strangeness that it doesn’t strike us in the same way as it strikes you.”
“And what were they like?” I asked, “and what had they come for?”
“To express their sympathy, and find out if they could be of any use,” said Isabel. “Mrs Franklin was greatly touched. Of course their faces were quite familiar, but she had never heard their voices before. She said they were very, very gentle and apologetic, and pathetically timid. There were tears in their eyes, and they murmured something about being so fond of children, and that their own younger brother had had an accident as a boy, which had injured him lastingly. There was nothing they could do to help, though Mrs Franklin said she wished she could have invented something. She thanked them, of course, heartily, and the next day they sent down for news of Tony, by that time out of danger, and Mrs Franklin began to hope it would lead to some intercourse with these poor sad ladies. But no; the Grim House closed up again, and from that day to this they have never been seen except at church.”
“Then it appears that the only way to decoy them out of their den would be for some of you to get very ill, or have an accident or trouble of some kind,” I said rather thoughtlessly.
Isabel gave a little shiver.
“Don’t talk of such things!” she exclaimed. “I am afraid I am naturally rather cowardly. I don’t know if you have found that out yet, Regina? You mustn’t despise me for it. Margaret consoles me by saying