The Unknown Ajax

His eyes were on Spurstow as he spoke, but that worthy said nothing. There was nothing acquiescent in his silence, however; his expression was that of one who might, had he chosen to do so, have made further and more alarming disclosures; and Anthea could only be glad that nothing more remained to be seen of the house than the cellars and the servants’ quarters. The Major obligingly disclaimed any interest in these, so they went downstairs again, followed by Spurstow, who broke his silence to inform them that whenever it rained the roof leaked in a dozen places. If they had gone up into the attics, he said, they would have seen the buckets placed there to catch the drips.

On this depressing note they departed, Spurstow, slightly mellowed by the douceur bestowed upon him by the Major, holding open the door for them, and even going so far as to say that they would always be welcome.

“If we were welcome, I’d be sorry for anyone that was unwelcome,” remarked Hugo, as they retraced their steps to the wicket-gate. “Did you say he’d been the old lady’s butler?”

“Yes, but he was never trained to be a butler. Aunt took him out of the stables, because none of the butlers she hired from London ever stayed with her above a month. She didn’t care about his manners, and I must own that he was amazingly faithful to her, and, I think, fond of her, in his rough way. She let him do just as he pleased, and, of course, when she took to living in one room he managed everything, and never cheated her out of a groat, what’s more. He was born and bred on the estate, and his father and grandfather before him, but even Grandpapa wouldn’t have wondered at it if he had feathered his nest at Aunt Matty’s expense. She left him an annuity, but only quite a small one, which was why, I suppose, he was willing to stay on alone in the Dower House. I wouldn’t have done so for a fortune! Didn’t he make your blood run cold when he said it was only footsteps? Just as though that made everything right! I thought it made everything ten times eerier, didn’t you?”

“Ay, he did it very well,” agreed Hugo.

She looked quickly up at him. “Did it very well? Do you mean he was trying to frighten us? It didn’t seem so to me. He made so little of it! He even said the wind was to blame for the moaning noise.”

Hugo chuckled. “So he did! If you could have seen your own face, lass! Not that I think it was you he was trying to scare away. What I did think was that as soon as he suspected I’d a notion of living in the Dower House myself he did all he could to set me against it.”

She knit her brows. “Yes, I suppose that’s possible,” she said, after considering for a minute or two. “Unless you hired him with the house, which is not very likely, he would be obliged to leave, and I daresay—No, it can’t be that! The house was known to be haunted long before he came to it!”

“If it was half as badly haunted as he’d have us believe, our great-grandmother wouldn’t have gone to live there in the first place, let alone have stayed there till she died!” replied Hugo. “Nay, lass! Spurstow wants to keep people away from it. That might be because he’s afraid of being turned out: I’m not saying it isn’t, but what I suspect is that he’s got some other reason—and a havey-cavey one at that!—for scaring the people roundabout here with his talk of footsteps and pitiful meanings!”

“But Richmond saw the ghost!” she argued. “One or two of the villagers have seen it, too, though not as clearly as he did. Old Buttermere said it was a white thing, that glided over the ground, and vanished into the shrubbery.”

“And a very good place for it to vanish, too,” said Hugo, wholly unimpressed. “Give me a sheet, and a night without too much moonlight, and I’ll engage to do the same!”

“And the form Richmond mistook for a living person?”

“If Richmond came up here expecting to see the ghost of Jane Darracott,” he suggested, after a moment, “and in fact saw that old rascal, draped in a sheet, the likelihood is that his imagination took hold of him, and made him ready to swear he’d seen a deal more than he did see. It’s a queer thing, imagination—and I’d say Richmond’s was a lively one.”

She thought this over, saying at the end of her cogitations: “Well, if you are right, Hugo, I daresay I can guess why Spurstow wishes to keep everyone away from the Dower House. Indeed, I wonder that it shouldn’t have occurred to any of us! Depend upon it, the house is being used by free-traders!”

Chapter 11

The Major received this suggestion without any visible signs of surprise or disapproval; but after turning it over in his mind, he said: “I don’t know much about smuggling, but I should have thought the Dower House would have been too far from the coast to be of use.”

“No, why? It’s not much more than ten miles, and you may be sure that those who carry the run goods inland know the Marsh so well that they can find their way on the darkest of nights. They must wish to store the goods as far from the shore as they may, because the land-guard keep their strictest watch on the dwellings nearest to the coast, but they can’t go very far, on account of the darkness. The goods are landed on moonless nights, you see: the darks is what they call them.”

“Ay, they’d have to be. Do the smuggling vessels sail close in to the shore, of do the landsmen row out to them?”

“Well, I don’t know precisely. I think they very often land their cargoes in creeks, and gaps, but sometimes, I believe, they cast the goods overboard at high tide. I remember once, when I was a child, that the tide-waiters captured a cargo of tea which had been thrown overboard. It was packed in oilskin bags, made to look like mackerel pots, my nurse told me. She knew a great deal about the trade: I expect her brothers had to do with it.”

He could not help grinning at her cheerful unconcern, but he was somewhat startled, and said incredulously: “You nurse’s brothers were smugglers?”

“Not master-smugglers, but hired to help carry the goods up from the shore,” she explained. “They worked on their father’s farm, and were perfectly respectable, I assure you!”

“Nay!” he protested.

She smiled. “Well, quite as respectable as their fellows at all events. You don’t understand, Hugo! In Kent and Sussex almost everyone has to do with smuggling in some way or another. The farm labourers hire themselves out as porters, and the farmers themselves sometimes lend their horses, and nearly always allow their barns to be used as hiding-places. We, of course, don’t have any dealings with smugglers, but if we found ankers in one of our outhouses we shouldn’t say a word about it. No one would! Why, Grandpapa told us once how a cargo of brandy was stored in Guldeford Church, with the Vicar knowing all about it, and saying from the pulpit that there would be no service on the following Sunday because the roof needed repair! Grandpapa could tell you hundreds of stories about smuggling: he used to do so when we were children, and he was in a good humour: we thought it a high treat!”

“I’ll be bound you did,” Hugo said.

She detected a little dryness in his voice, and said, with a touch of impatience: “I collect you think it very shocking! I daresay it may be, but it is not so regarded in Kent. When Grandpapa was a young man, he says there was scarcely a magistrate to be found who would commit a man charged with smuggling.”

“So that made all right,” he nodded.

“No, of course it didn’t! I only meant—well, to show you why we don’t think it such a dreadful crime as you do!”

“Nay, you don’t know what I think,” he said, smiling down at her.

“You will not be much liked here if you show yourself to be at enmity with the Gentlemen,” she warned him.

“That’s bad,” he said, gravely shaking his head.

She said no more then, but the subject came up again later in the day, when Richmond asked Hugo how he had fared at the Dower House. It was Anthea who answered, exclaiming: “Richmond, do you think that odious old man is trying to keep everyone away from the house?”

“Yes, of course he is!” he replied, laughing. “You know he hates visitors! Besides, if we took to paying him visits, he’d be obliged to bestir himself, and scrub the floors. Was he crusty?”

“Yes, and worse! He made my blood run cold, with his talk of footsteps, and moaning, and paying no heed to the things he hears! I began to have that horrid feeling that there was