‘Certainly not.’
‘The universal belief could hardly be kept up without some grounds,’ said Guy.
‘That would apply as well to fairies,’ said Philip.
‘Every one has an unexplained ghost story,’ said Amy.
‘Yes,’ said Philip; ‘but I would give something to meet any one whose ghost story did not rest on the testimony of a friend’s cousin’s cousin, a very strong-minded person.’
‘I can’t imagine how a person who has seen a ghost could ever speak of it,’ said Amy.
‘Did you not tell us a story of pixies at Redclyffe?’ said Laura.
‘O yes; the people there believe in them firmly. Jonas Ledbury heard them laughing one night when he could not get the gate open,’ said Guy.
‘Ah! You are the authority for ghosts,’ said Philip.
‘I forgot that,’ said Laura: ‘I wonder we never asked you about your Redclyffe ghost.’
‘You look as if you had seen it yourself,’ said Philip.
‘You have not?’ exclaimed Amy, almost frightened.
‘Come, let us have the whole story,’ said Philip. ‘Was it your own reflection in the glass? was it old sir Hugh? or was it the murderer of Becket? Come, the ladies are both ready to scream at the right moment. Never mind about giving him a cocked-hat, for with whom may you take a liberty, if not with an ancestral ghost of your own?’
Amy could not think how Philip could have gone on all this time; perhaps it was because he was not watching how Guy’s colour varied, how he bit his lip; and at last his eyes seemed to grow dark in the middle, and to sparkle with fire, as with a low, deep tone, like distant thunder, conveying a tremendous force of suppressed passion, he exclaimed, ‘Beware of trifling—’ then breaking off hastened out of the room.
‘What’s the matter?’ asked Mr. Edmonstone, startled from his nap; and his wife looked up anxiously, but returned to her book, as her nephew replied, ‘Nothing.’
‘How could you Philip?’ said Laura.
‘I really believe he has seen it!’ said Amy, in a startled whisper.
‘He has felt it, Amy—the Morville spirit,’ said Philip.
‘It is a great pity you spoke of putting a cocked hat to it,’ said Laura; ‘he must have suspected us of telling you what happened about Mrs. Brownlow.’
‘And are you going to do it now?’ said her sister in a tone of remonstrance.
‘I think Philip should hear it!’ said Laura; and she proceeded to relate the story. She was glad to see that her cousin was struck with it; he admired this care to maintain strict truth, and even opened a memorandum-book—the sight of which Charles dreaded—and read the following extract: ‘Do not think of one falsity as harmless, and another as slight, and another as unintended. Cast them all aside. They may be light and accidental, but they are an ugly soot from the smoke of the pit, for all that; and it is better that our hearts should be swept clean of them, without over care as to which is the largest or blackest.’
Laura and Amy were much pleased; but he went on to regret that such excellent dispositions should be coupled with such vehemence of character and that unhappy temper. Amy was glad that her sister ventured to hint that he might be more cautious in avoiding collisions.
‘I am cautious’, replied he, quickly and sternly; ‘I am not to be told of the necessity of exercising forbearance with this poor boy; but it is impossible to reckon on all the points on which he is sensitive.’
‘He is sensitive,’ said Laura. ‘I don’t mean only in temper, but in everything. I wonder if it is part of his musical temperament to be as keenly alive to all around, as his ear is to every note. A bright day, a fine view, is such real happiness to him; he dwells on every beauty of Redclyffe with such affection; and then, when he reads, Charles says it is like going over the story again himself to watch his face act it in that unconscious manner.’
‘He makes all the characters so real in talking them over,’ said Amy, ‘and he does not always know how they will end before they begin.’
‘I should think it hardly safe for so excitable a mind to dwell much on the world of fiction,’ said Philip.
‘Nothing has affected him so much as Sintram,’ said Laura. ‘I never saw anything like it. He took it up by chance, and stood reading it while all those strange expressions began to flit over his face, and at last he fairly cried over it so much, that he was obliged to fly out of the room. How often he has read it I cannot tell; I believe he has bought one for himself, and it is as if the engraving had a fascination for him; he stands looking at it as if he was in a dream.’
‘He is a great mystery,’ said Amy.
‘All men are mysterious,’ said Philip ‘but he not more than others, though he may appear so to you, because you have not had much experience, and also because most of the men you have seen have been rounded into uniformity like marbles, their sharp angles rubbed off against each other at school.’
‘Would it be better if there were more sharp angles?’ said Laura, thus setting on foot a discussion on public schools, on which Philip had, of course, a great deal to say.
Amy’s kind little heart was meanwhile grieving for Guy, and longing to see him return, but he did not come till after Philip’s departure. He looked pale and mournful, his hair hanging loose and disordered, and her terror was excited lest he might actually have seen his ancestor’s ghost, which, in spite of her desire to believe in ghosts, in general, she did not by any means wish to have authenticated. He was surprised and a good deal vexed to find Philip gone, but he said hardly anything, and it was soon bedtime. When Charles took his arm, he exclaimed, on finding his sleeve wet—‘What can you have been doing?’
‘Walking up and down under the wall,’ replied Guy, with some reluctance.
‘What, in the rain?’
‘I don’t know, perhaps it was.’
Amy, who was just behind, carrying the crutch, dreaded Charles’s making any allusion to Sintram’s wild locks and evening wanderings, but ever since the outburst about King Charles, the desire to tease and irritate Guy had ceased.
They parted at the dressing-room door, and as Guy bade her good night, he pushed back the damp hair that had fallen across his forehead, saying, ‘I am sorry I disturbed your evening. I will tell you the meaning of it another time.’
‘He has certainly seen the ghost!’ said silly little Amy, as she shut herself into her own room in such a fit of vague ‘eerie’ fright, that it was not till she had knelt down, and with her face hidden in her hands, said her evening prayer, that she could venture to lift up her head and look into the dark corners of the room.
‘Another time!’ Her heart throbbed at the promise.
The next afternoon, as she and Laura were fighting with a refractory branch of wisteria which had been torn down by the wind, and refused to return to its place, Guy, who had been with his tutor, came in from the stable-yard, reduced the trailing bough to obedience, and then joined them in their walk. He looked grave, was silent at first, and then spoke abruptly—‘It is due to you to explain my behaviour last night.’
‘Amy thinks you must have seen the ghost,’ said Laura, trying to be gay.
‘Did I frighten you?’ said Guy, turning round, full of compunction. ‘No, no. I never saw it. I never even heard of its being seen. I am very sorry.’
‘I was very silly,’ said Amy smiling.
‘But,’ proceeded Guy, ‘when I think of the origin of the ghost story, I cannot laugh, and if Philip knew all—’
‘Oh! He does not,’ cried Laura; ‘he only looks on it as we have always done, as a sort of