CHAPTER XIV.

EARLY IMPRESSIONS.

Vibert had not finished his breakfast when Bruce, on the Monday morning, started on his walk to the town. Notwithstanding sundry remonstrances and hints from his father and Emmie, it was a full half-hour before the younger brother followed in the track of the elder. And very different was the careless, sauntering step of Vibert from the firm, quick tread of Bruce.

Mr. Trevor's elder son returned alone in the dusk of evening, but this time Vibert was scarcely ten minutes behind him.

"Mr. Blair has a capital method of imparting knowledge; it will be our own fault if we do not make progress under him," said Bruce to Emmie when he rejoined her in the drawing-room. "My tutor has given me plenty of work to do this evening, but I must spare an hour to refresh myself by hearing you sing. And you, dear, what have you been doing during my absence, and where have you been?"

Bruce was a little curious to know whether his fair sister had had courage to "break the ice."

"Oh! I do not know what you will think of me, Bruce," said Emmie, dropping her soft brown eyes. "I did intend to make a beginning of visiting the tenants; I had ruled lines in a book, that I might set down in order their names and all that you want to know; but--but--"

"Let's hear all about it," said Bruce good-humouredly, taking a seat by his sister's side: it was pleasant to the student to unbend after the hard work of the day.

"I could not go out in the morning,--that is to say, not conveniently," began Emmie. "I had a long, long letter to write to Alice, and another to my aunt in Grosvenor Square; and I had orders to give to Hannah, and then to arrange with Susan about hanging pictures to adorn, or rather to hide the untidy walls of my own little room."

"It would be far better to give up that room," said Bruce. "You do not consider, Emmie, in what a bad position you put me by obliging me to occupy the other apartment."

"How?--what do you mean?" cried Emmie, looking up with an expression of uneasiness on her face; "you do not find that you are disturbed by--"

"Not by spectres," replied Bruce, smiling; "but no one likes to appear to be the most selfish fellow in the world."

"No one would ever think you selfish, dear Bruce; the cap does not fit you at all."

"Therefore I have an objection to putting it on," said Bruce Trevor; "I would leave the cap to Vibert, who, to judge by his conduct, may actually think it becoming. But enough of this. You know that I dislike retaining my luxurious quarters, but if you really prefer the small room, everything possible must be done to make it a gem of a room. Now tell me how you passed the rest of the day."

"After luncheon papa called me to his study to copy out something for him," said Emmie; "however, that did not take me long. Then I glanced over the _Times_, and read about such a horrible murder, committed in a country lane, that it made me feel more than ever afraid to venture beyond our grounds. Yet, to please you, dear Bruce, I rang the bell for Susan, and bade her get ready to accompany me in a walk to the hamlet."

"I hope that you had a higher motive than that of pleasing me," said her brother.

"I am not sure that I had, at least not then," replied the truthful Emmie. "But, whatever my motive might be, it took Susan and me along the shrubbery as far as the entrance gate. At the further side of that gate, looking through the iron bars, as it seemed to me--like a bird of prey on the watch, stood Harper, with his beak-like nose, his hollow eyes, and his long shaggy hair. You know whom I mean, he is the strange old man whom we met on the night of the storm."

"And who did good service by cutting the pony's traces," said Bruce.

"I wish that I felt more grateful to him for it," observed Miss Trevor; "but I cannot without nervous dread think of Harper as I saw him on Friday night, with the gleam of blue lightning on his strange face and his flashing knife. Then he gave me such dreadful hints and warnings regarding the haunted room in Myst Court,--I shudder whenever I think of them now!"

"Cast them from your mind, they are rubbish," said Bruce.

"As Susan and I advanced to the gate," resumed Emmie, "I felt sure that Harper was sharply watching our movements. I hoped that he would soon go away, so, turning aside, I took three or four turns in the wood with Susan; but every time that we again approached the entrance, I saw that Harper was there. I so much disliked having to pass him, I so much feared that he would address me, that at last I gave up my intention of going to the hamlet to-day. I told Susan that the air felt damp and cold, and that I should put off paying my visits. So feeling, I must own, rather ashamed of myself, I returned to the house."

"This is too absurd!" exclaimed Bruce, a little provoked, and yet at the same time amused by the frank confession of Emmie. "The hovel in which lives that man Harper is just outside the gate, so that if you are afraid of passing him, even when you have the trusty Susan to act as a bodyguard, you may as well consider yourself a state prisoner at once. So nothing was done to-day?"

"I wrote to London for two packets of Partridge's illustrated fly-leaves," said Emmie. "Uncle Arrows recommended them to me as very attractive and useful, and suited for cottage homes. I shall not attempt visiting until I receive the packets by post."

"I have forestalled you," said Bruce, "and have laid in already a fair stock of such ammunition to serve us in our warfare against ignorance and intemperance here. I can supply you at once with as many of the fly-leaves as there are homes in the hamlet."

"Then I am not to have a day's reprieve," sighed the unwilling recruit.

"When a duty is before us, the sooner it is done the better," observed Bruce; "repugnance towards it only grows by delay. And I would advise you, dear Emmie, should you meet either of those men whose acquaintance you made in the storm, to be courteous--that you always are--but to avoid entering into conversation with them, especially with the so-called American colonel."

"Why, have you learned anything more about him?" inquired Emmie with interest.

"I made inquiries regarding him of Mr. Blair, as my father desired me to do," replied Bruce. "I find that this Standish has been for some weeks at S----; but where he comes from, why he came, and wherefore he remains in the place, nobody seems to know. He has had no introduction, as far as my tutor is aware, to any of the county families; but he has, it is said, been seen more than once quitting the small house which our great-aunt bequeathed to Mrs. Jessel."

"What can have taken him there?" cried Emmie.

"My tutor could throw no light on that subject, and told me that he spoke from mere hearsay, and put little faith in such gossip. One thing, however, is certain,--this colonel lives at the best hotel in the town, and in most luxurious style. He spares himself no indulgence, hires his hunter and follows the hounds, or drives about the country in a curricle and pair, and seems to be rolling in wealth. He is never seen in a place of worship, and, pushing as he is, has not made his way into any respectable circle. The less we have to say to this pseudo-colonel the better; I suspect him to be a charlatan and impostor."

"There's charity for you, and gratitude!" exclaimed Vibert, who, entering the room while Bruce was speaking, had heard his concluding sentence. "Here is a gentleman who came to our aid when we were in a dilemma, who has shown us courtesy and kindness, and he is to be condemned, unheard, as an impostor, because a pedant, who has never put foot in stirrup or fired a shot in his life, cannot understand a frank, bold, chivalrous nature. Blair thinks that all must be evil that does not just square with his old-fashioned notions. Emmie, you should stand up for your friend," added the youth more playfully, as he threw himself on an arm-chair, and stretched himself, after what he considered to be a long and tiresome walk, "for the colonel not only helped to pull you out of your ditch, but he told me that my sister is the prettiest girl that he has seen on this side of the big fish-pond."

"I hope that you do not encourage such impertinence," observed Bruce sternly.

"Oh, if the colonel dare to hint that my brother is the pleasantest fellow that he has met with, I'll resent the impertinence, I promise you," laughed Vibert.

Emmie foresaw, with uneasiness, more angry sparring between her two brothers, and, to turn the current of conversation, asked Vibert what he thought of the Blairs.

"Oh, our tutor is a learned professor, who has pored over books, and puzzled over problems, till he has grown into the shape of a note of interrogation," replied Vibert lightly. "As for his wife, she's a homely body, as clever men's wives usually are; Mrs. Blair looks like a housekeeper, but has not the merit of being a good one."

Bruce, whom the conversation did not greatly interest, had taken up a book.

"And her family?" inquired Emmie; "I suppose that you have made their acquaintance."

"We were all gathered together at early dinner, if one could call that a dinner at which there was nothing eatable," said the fastidious Vibert. "There was old Blair at one end of the table, hacking at a shoulder of mutton, and talking, as he did so, to Bruce about Sophocles and Euripides. There was Mrs. Blair at the other end, ladling out the potatoes. Bruce and I sat on one side, and three demure little chaps in pinafores on the other, like degrees of comparison, small, smaller, and smallest; dull, duller, and dullest. The children were so terribly well-behaved, that they never asked for anything (not that there was much to ask for), they never spoke a word, nor lifted their eyes from their plates, but wielded with propriety their forks and spoons; I think that only the eldest of the three was trusted with a knife. The little fellows' looks seemed to say, 'It is a matter of business, and not of play, to eat shoulder of mutton and boiled rice pudding, and drink water out of horn mugs.' The whole affair had such a nursery look about it, that I half expected to be provided with a pinafore, instead of a dinner napkin."

"You incorrigible boy!" laughed Emmie; "I think that the three degrees of comparison will become merry, merrier, and merriest in your company soon."

"They will have precious little of it, I can tell you that," said Vibert; "one such meal is enough for me. To say nothing of its intolerable dulness, the wine of Blair's table is insufferably bad, the mere washing out of casks, cheap trash!"--the lad distorted his handsome features into an expression of strong disgust. "Oh, _you_ did not mind it, Bruce," continued Vibert, as his brother glanced up from his book; "you are a water-drinker and no judge on the subject, but _I_ know what is what, and cheap wine of all things I detest. It ruins the constitution. I shall try if I cannot get something eatable and drinkable in the town; I hear that there is a capital _table d'hote_ at the White Hart."

"You are aware that the arrangement for our having luncheon at our tutor's being concluded, your taking the meal elsewhere must involve double expense," observed Bruce.

"Can't help that," said the youthful epicurean, shrugging his shoulders; "I can't work on coarse mutton and plain rice pudding, served up on plates of the old willow-pattern; specially as I seem likely to be starved at Myst Court, if we are to have no cook but Hannah. I am certain," continued Vibert, his bright eyes sparkling with fun as he turned to his sister--"I am certain that yesterday's boiled rabbits were my great-aunt's cats in disguise, and that the soup--faugh!--was simply the water in which they had been boiled! Why did we not bring our old cook to Myst Court?"

"We did not bring her, because she would not come," replied Emmie.

"I suppose that in an old haunted house, country cooks and country footmen are necessary evils, and must be endured," said Vibert, attempting to look philosophic. "But I hope that you, as mistress of the establishment, have spoken pretty sharply to Hannah. I hope that you have given her a fright."

"Hannah is a good deal more likely to give me one," answered the smiling Emmie. "I think of making over to you, Vibert, the office of scolding the cook."

"I should find that a more formidable task than that of facing all the ghosts of Myst Court," was the merry lad's playful reply.