Chapter 9

Laura was standing before her looking-glass straightening the curls that her rapid walk had disarranged, when her attention was caught by certain unusual sounds in the house. There was a hurrying of distant feet--calls, as though from the kitchen region--and lastly, the deep voice of Mr. Helbeck. Miss Fountain paused, brush in hand, wondering what had happened.

A noise of fluttering skirts, and a cry for "Laura!"--Miss Fountain opened her door, and saw Augustina, who never ran, hurrying as fast as her feebleness would let her, towards her stepdaughter.

"Laura!--where is my sal volatile? You gave me some yesterday, you remember, for my headache. There's somebody ill, downstairs."

She paused for breath.

"Here it is," said Laura, finding the bottle, and bringing it. "What's wrong?"

"Oh, my dear, such an adventure! There's an old man fainted in the kitchen. He came to the back door to ask for a light for his lantern. Mrs. Denton says he was shaking all over when she first saw him, and as white as her apron. He told her he'd seen the ghost! 'I've often heard tell o' the Bannisdale Lady,' he said, 'an now I've seen her!' She asked him to sit down a minute to rest himself, and he fainted straight away. He's that old Scarsbrook, you know, whose wife does our washing. They live in that cottage by the weir, the other end of the park. I must go! Mrs. Denton's giving him some brandy--and Alan's gone down. Isn't it an extraordinary thing?"

"Very," said Laura, accompanying her stepmother along the passage. "What did he see?"

She paused, laying a restraining hand on Augustina's arm--cudgelling her brains the while. Yes! she could remember now a few contemptuous remarks of Mr. Helbeck to Father Leadham on the subject of a ghost story that had sprung up during the Squire's memory in connection with the park and the house--a quite modern story, according to Helbeck, turning on the common motive of a gypsy woman and her curse, started some forty years before this date, with a local success not a little offensive, apparently, to the owner of Bannisdale.

"What did he see?" repeated the girl. "Don't hurry, Augustina; you know the doctor told you not. Shall I take the sal volatile?"

"Oh, no!--they want me." In any matter of doctoring small or great, Augustina had the happiest sense of her own importance. "I don't know what he saw exactly. It was a lady, he says--he knew it was, by the hat and the walk. She was all in black--with 'a Dolly Varden hat'--fancy the old fellow!--that hid her face--and a little white hand, that shot out sparks as he came up to her! Did you ever hear such, a tale? Now, Laura, I'm all right. Let me go. Come when you like."

Augustina hurried off; Laura was left standing pensive in the passage.

"H'm, that's unlucky," she said to herself.

Then she looked down at her right hand. An old-fashioned diamond ring with a large centre stone, which had been her mother's, shone on the third finger. With an involuntary smile, she drew off the ring, and went back to her room.

"What's to be done now?" she thought, as she put the ring in a drawer. "Shall I go down and explain--say I was out for a stroll?"--She shook her head.--"Won't do now--I should have had more presence of mind a minute ago. Augustina would suspect a hundred things. It's really dramatic. Shall I go down? He didn't see my face--no, that I'll answer for! Here's for it!"

She pulled out the golden mass of her hair till it made a denser frame than usual round her brow, looked at her white dress--shook her head dubiously--laughed at her own flushed face in the glass, and calmly went downstairs.

She found an anxious group in the great bare servants' hall. The old man, supported by pillows, was stretched on a wooden settle, with Helbeck, Augustina, and Mrs. Denton standing by. The first things she saw were the old peasant's closed eyes and pallid face--then Helbeck's grave and puzzled countenance above him. The Squire turned at Miss Fountain's step. Did she imagine it--or was there a peculiar sharpness in his swift glance?

Mrs. Denton had just been administering a second dose of brandy, and was apparently in the midst of her own report to her master of Scarsbrook's story.

"'I wor just aboot to pass her,' he said, 'when I nawticed 'at her feet made noa noise. She keäm glidin--an glidin--an my hair stood reet oop--it lifted t'whole top o' my yed. An she gaed passt me like a puff o' wind--as cauld as ice--an I wor mair deed nor alive. An I luked afther her, an she vanisht i' th' varra middle o' t' path. An my leet went oot--an I durstn't ha gane on, if it wor iver so--so I juist crawled back tet hoose----'"

"The door in the wall!" thought Laura. "He didn't know it was there."

She had remained in the background while Mrs. Denton was speaking, but now she approached the settle. Mrs. Denton threw a sour look at her, and flounced out of her way. Helbeck silently made room for her. As she passed him, she felt instinctively that his distant politeness had become something more pronounced. He left her questions to Augustina to answer, and himself thrust his hands into his pockets and moved away.

"Have you sent for anyone?" said Laura to Mrs. Fountain.

"Yes. Wilson's gone in the pony cart for the wife. And if he doesn't come round by the time she gets here--some one will have to go for the doctor, Alan?"

She looked round vaguely.

"Of course. Wilson must go on," said Helbeck from the distance. "Or I'll go myself."

"But he is coming round," said Laura, pointing.

"If yo'll nobbut move oot o' t' way, Miss, we'll be able to get at 'im," said Mrs. Denton sharply. Laura hastily obeyed her. The housekeeper brought more brandy; then signs of returning force grew stronger, and by the time the wife appeared the old fellow was feebly beginning to move and look about him.

Amid the torrent of lamentations, questions, and hypotheses that the wife poured forth, Laura withdrew into the background. But she could not prevail on herself to go. Daring or excitement held her there, till the old man should be quite himself again.

He struggled to his feet at last, and said, with a long sigh that was still half a shudder, "Aye--noo I'll goa home--Lisbeth."

He was a piteous spectacle as he stood there, still trembling through all his stunted frame, his wrinkled face drawn and bloodless, his grey hair in a tragic confusion. Suddenly, as he looked at his wife, he said with a clear solemnity, "Lisbeth--I ha' got my death warrant!"

"Don't say any such thing, Scarsbrook," said Helbeck, coming forward to support him. "You know I don't believe in this ghost business--and never