The Unknown Ajax

re-sown, but I daresay it’s in keeping with the rest as it is.”

“Well, I warned you how it would be. That is the window. The room was originally the best bedchamber, but after the accident—if it wasn’t a murder—none of the subsequent tenants cared to sleep in it, so it was reserved for the accommodation of guests.”

“Ay, it would be. It must go to his lordship’s heart to think he hasn’t a haunted room at the Place: I don’t doubt I’d have found myself in it if there had been one. Is this where the lady walks?”

“Oh, she walks all round the house, and in it, too, according to some! Very few of Aunt Matty’s servants ever stayed for long with her, but I never heard that they saw the ghost. They used to complain that they heard strange noises, but I fancy they wouldn’t have made anything of that if they hadn’t been warned by the villagers. None of them would dream of coming near the house after dark, of course.”

She led the way, as she spoke, towards the front of the house. Here the trees grew so close to the building that a branch of one giant elm almost brushed the roof, seeing which, Hugo said decidedly: “I’d have that down for a start. Eh, but it’s a fine old house!”

“I suppose it is,” Anthea replied, with a certain lack of enthusiasm. “It is older than the Place, I know, and said to be a good example of that style of ancient stone-building, but it has always seemed to me a dreadfully gloomy house.”

“If all that ivy were stripped away, and the bushes uprooted, and some of the trees felled, it wouldn’t be gloomy. I allow there’s no prospect on this side, but there should be as good a one, or better, as there is from the Place, on the garden side, once a clearance was made.”

“Is that what you would do?”

He nodded. “I would, if I meant to live here. I’ve a strong notion that we have only to let in some light and air to lay that ghost of yours.”

“But this is iconoclasm!” she exclaimed. “Lay the Darracott spectre? For shame! Have you no respect for tradition?”

He looked quizzically down at her. “Nay, that’s a matter of up-bringing,” he said. “I wasn’t reared to respect Darracott tradition. Come to think of it, I doubt if I’d respect a ghost that scared the servants out of my house, whatever way I’d been reared. Can we go inside?”

“Certainly—unless Spurstow has gone out, and left the doors locked,” she responded. “If he is in, he won’t accord us a very warm welcome, but don’t be dismayed! He has grown to be as eccentric as ever Aunt Matty was, and regards all visitors in the light of hostile invaders, but he won’t repel us with violence! He has lived for thirty years here, so you can’t wonder at it that he should be a trifle crusty.”

“So he’s not afraid of the ghost?”

“Oh, no! He holds poor Jane in great contempt—like you!”

“Do you believe she haunts the place?” Hugo asked, walking beside her up the weed-grown drive towards the house.

She hesitated. “N-no. At least—I don’t believe it at this moment, in broad sunlight, but—no, I shouldn’t care to come here at night! It isn’t only the villagers who have seen things: Richmond has, too.”

“Has he, indeed? What did he see?”

“A female form. He couldn’t imagine who it was at first. He says he went towards her, and suddenly she vanished. Ugh!”

“Well, if that’s all she does she’s welcome to haunt the place,” said the Major prosaically.

They trod up two worn stone steps into the flagged porch; but as Anthea grasped the rusted iron bellpull the door was opened by a grizzled man in a frieze coat. He looked the visitors over morosely, bade Anthea a grudging good-morning, and said that he had seen her coming up the drive, and supposed that she must be wanting something.

“Yes, I want to show the house to Major Darracott,” she replied cheerfully.

“If you’d have sent me word, Miss Anthea, you were coming here this day-morning I’d have had it ready to be shown,” said Spurstow, with considerable severity. “The rooms are all shut up, as well you know. You’ll have to bide while I get my keys.”

With these quelling words, he admitted them into the hall, and left them there while he went off, grumbling under his breath, to his own quarters. When he presently returned he found that the Major, having opened the shutters covering the windows at the back of the hall, was standing in rapt contemplation of the Cromwellian staircase, while Miss Darracott, holding her flounced skirt gathered in one hand, looked with a wry face at the dusty floor.

“It’s not my fault, miss,” said Spurstow, forestalling criticism. “You shouldn’t ought to have come without you gave me warning.”

“I can see I shouldn’t!” she retorted. “But I have come, and I mean to take Major Darracott over the house, even though it be knee-deep in dust, so you may as well make up your mind to it.”

This forthright speech appeared rather to please than to exacerbate the retainer. He gave a sour smile, and, with only a passing reference to the troublesome characteristics displayed by Miss Darracott in childhood, unlocked the door leading into the dining-parlour, and opened the shutters.

It would not have surprised Anthea if the Major’s wish to inspect the Dower House had deserted him long before their tour of the ground-floor had been completed. Dirty panes and encroaching ivy darkened the rooms; there were several patches of damp on the walls; most of the ceilings were ominously blackened above the old- fashioned fireplaces; every room smelled of must; and a final touch of melancholy was added by the furniture, which had been huddled together in the middle of each room, and covered with newspapers, old sheets, and scraps of sackcloth.

“I warned you what it would be like!” she told Hugo.

“Ay, it’s in bad repair, but it could be put to rights,” he answered.

“That could be done, but it will always be a dark, gloomy house.”

“Nay, if the ivy were stripped from it, and all those bushes cleared away, you’d never recognize it,” he said. “The best of the rooms face to the south-east, but the sun’s shut out by trees and shrubs.”

“Miss Matty, sir,” observed Spurstow, in hostile accents, “wouldn’t have the sun shining in, and fading the carpets.”

“Maybe she wouldn’t, but she wasn’t reared on the edge of the moors,” returned Hugo. “I’m not used to be shut in: I want room to breathe, and never mind the carpets!”

A disapproving sniff was the only answer vouchsafed to this. Spurstow then conducted the unwelcome visitors to the upper floor, and volunteered no further remark until Anthea, showing Hugo Jane Darracott’s bedchamber, asked whether her ghost had been seen there. He said repressively that he took no account of ghosts.

“The Major takes no account of them either,” said Anthea. “He thinks I’m telling him a Banbury story, but the house is haunted, isn’t it?”

“Folks say so,” Spurstow replied. “I never did, miss. I’m not one to talk, and I don’t scare easy. I’ve lived here thirty years and more, and it’s done me no harm. I don’t take any notice.”

Anthea gave an involuntary shiver, but the Major said: “Any notice of what?”

Spurstow looked at him under his brows. “Aught I hear,” he said.

“What do you hear?” enquired Anthea.

“Nothing, miss. It doesn’t worry me,” he said. “Time was when I’d get up out of my bed, thinking there was someone got into the house, but it was all foolishness: you can search from the cellars to the attics, but you’ll see naught. Leastways, I never did. It’s only footsteps, when all’s said.”

“Oh!” said Anthea rather faintly. “Only footsteps!”

“Now, you don’t want to listen to the silly stories folks tell, Miss Anthea!” said Spurstow roughly. “The rest’s naught but the wind in the trees, or an owl, maybe. There are nights when it sounds like someone was moaning outside here pitiful, but lor’ bless you, miss, the wind can make queer noises! I don’t heed it!”

Repressing an impulse to glance over her shoulder, Anthea moved rather closer to the Major, unexpectedly grateful for the presence of so large and solid a body. He looked down at her, and smiled reassuringly. “That makes another good reason for pushing the woodland back from the house,” he remarked. “As for the footsteps, I’d have in the rat-catcher!”