The Woman in Black Page 3

  “And what, my good woman?” he asked.

  Here Mrs. Mathews beckoned to him to return, and stepped towards him herself.

  “It’s not safe to be out late o’ nights for everybody,” she said mysteriously.

  “Why, nurse, do you still want to treat me like a baby? What is there to be afraid of? Are there robbers about?”

  “Worse than that, it may be! There be strange tales in these parts—”

  “A fig for tales!” said the Captain, snapping his fingers. “What are they about? Turnip-headed ghosts, I suppose. Well, nurse, I never knew that you were superstitious before. We’ll have a good talk on the subject some other time. Goodbye! I don’t want to be later than I can help, and a good walk will do me good!”

  “I know you of old, Sir Ashleigh, for a wilful man, and a wilful man must e’en have his own way, but don’t forget as I warned you!” shouted the old servant, as the Captain hurried his departure. Carruthers only waved his hand, for the clack, clack, clack of the old woman’s interminable tongue was getting on his nerves.

  Nurse Mathews gazed after him, shook her head, and returned to the lodge.

  “What on earth does the well-meaning old idiot mean by her warning?” thought Carruthers. “That’s what comes from being a peasant; and I now remember she hails from Lancashire, and the superstition of the people there is proverbial. Who has not heard of the Lancashire witches and their absurd doings? Yes, that accounts for it. These peasants are all alike.”

  Now Carruthers, like all men of healthy and well-balanced mind, was not prone to superstition; but on the other hand, he was not such an obstinate sceptic as to persistently deny, without an attempt at investigation, certain mysteries which have been hastily and ignorantly styled supernatural. For him the supernatural did not exist. Everything was natural—even a ghost!

  “What! a ghost natural!” exclaims the reader. Certainly, my friend. And here I am not referring to any vulgar case of mere imposture, but to the real bona-fide old-fashioned ghost, believed in by our ancestors, who were not quite such idiots as some superficial, flippant persons of today find it pleasant to imagine.

  “How do you make that out?” a sceptical reader inquires.

  “I thought that modern education had banished once and for all these superstitions of our ignorant ancestors, and rightly consigned them to the limbo of the past.” Not so fast, my dear sir; your modern education had apparently advanced you very little. I freely admit it has given you more conceit, made you a greater prig than you were before; but that is all. I do not wish here to enter upon a dissertation about the occult in nature, as there are many books upon the subject, and any of my readers who are honestly and intelligently interested in the question may, by studying them, discover the raison d’étre of those strange phenomena for themselves; and, perhaps the gratifying result will be that they will think more and talk less on a difficult and profoundly interesting subject.

  Carruthers, as we said before, was not an unreasoning sceptic in reference to things occult, when he had them on the best authority, and when they would bear investigation; but he was deaf on principle to silly village gossip because it was without reliable proof and authority. The warning words of his old nurse passed by him like the wind.

  The day was unusually fine, the sky clear and bright, the air balmy and caressing; and, being sensitive to outward influences, he felt in high spirits and in no humour to indulge in gloomy anticipations.

  He walked on with a buoyant step, eagerly drinking in the beauties of nature, as if they were part of himself as, indeed, they were.

  The distant corn-fields, the pale blue hills beyond, with their enveloping haze, appeared to melt into the sky, while the russet slopes and valleys of the middle distance, the fine elms and other trees nearer the foreground, all of which he had known, admired, and loved from a boy, were all fraught with some sad and tender associations.

  He recalled the time when he was a lad of about fourteen and had a boyish attachment to one Phyllis Brown, a girl about his own age, the daughter of a woodcutter, who lived in the most picturesque cottage he ever remembered to have seen. He had not yet reached it; but there, yes, there was the green lane where they were wont to meet; and a little way further on was the very seat where they had so often watched the glories of sunset and had kissed and looked into each other’s eyes as if heaven itself was only there. Oh, the innocence and purity of those early attachments!

  How near to heaven are our souls in those sublime moments! “How silly! How ridiculous” sneers the cynical man of the world.

  “How decidedly improper!” ejaculates some grim spinster who has never risen above the lowest Sunday School plane.

  “They both deserve to be soundly whipped and sent to bed fasting!”

  Many things had happened to Carruthers since the days of his youth which were calculated to wipe out all memory of that innocent, and therefore, happy time; but now, under some strange influence, perhaps sent to save him from coming danger, all came back to him clearly and distinctly.

  He murmured to himself:

  “Pretty, tender-hearted little Phyllis! How he loved her, and how she loved him” Where was she now? Perhaps gone to service, poor little rosebud! Maybe she is married to some bumpkin of her own class, and has now grown coarse and material, with a large family of brats at her heels. Should I ever see her again? Her cottage home cannot be far off now. Why, good heavens, surely that is the spot, and, eh, what? No! As I live they have pulled down the cottage and built, oh horror! a brand new public house on its site.”

  This was too much for the romantic nature of our hero. He stood stock-still with his indignant eyes fixed on the desecrated spot.

  At length, with a deep sigh and slackened pace, he approached the gaudy building, which was closed, the day being Sunday. A commonplace looking man, in his Sunday clothes, was leaning against a lamp-post smoking.

  This worthy, whom Carruthers rightly guessed to be the landlord, looked up as he passed, and the captain spoke to him.

  “You are the landlord of this tavern, I suppose?”

  “At your service, sir,” was the answer.

  “Perhaps you can tell me how long this inn has been built?”

  “Aye, that I can sir,” answered the man. “It’s getting on for eleven years come Michaelmas, as I built it myself, in place of the old, rubbishy cottage as I bought of a woodcutter, named Brown.”

  “You know Brown, then?” inquired Carruthers.

  “Aye, sir, he was a man with a large family, all since growed up and gone out to service.”

  “Did you say all of them?” inquired the captain.

  “Well, sir, let me think a bit. Yes, nearly all of them; except one as died—a girl about sixteen, called Phyllis—and a prettier, sweeter lass you couldn’t meet in a day’s march.”

  “Poor girl!” murmured the captain, and before he spoke again he had to master his emotion. “What was the cause of her death?”

  “Why, sir, some said it was consumption; others—”

  “Yes, the others, what did they say?” demanded Carruthers.

  “Well, sir, I don’t give credit to all the gossip of the countryside; but many people do say that the poor, pretty lass died pining for the love of a handsome young squire.”

  “Ah!” exclaimed Carruthers, with painfully assumed indifference; though he was obliged to turn his back on the man for a short time, gaze at the sky, and then look at his watch.

  “Yes, sir, I expect we shall get it a bit later on—the rain and thunder, I mean. It has been very ’ot all day,” said the man in reference to the captain’s study of the rapidly gathering rain clouds.

  “Yes, I think you are right,” said Carruthers. Presently he went on: “And the father—Brown, I think you said that was his name—what became of him?”

  “He was terrible cut up at the death of his favourite daughter, was the old man. He said as how it was witchcraft; but Lord, sir, the country folks about ’ere be that superstitious—there, it beats all, it does,” said the enlightened publican.

  “I know it,” our hero answered. “It is so in all country places; but I imagine that a great deal of it is dying out now.”

  “Well, I don’t know, sir; it may be in some places, but not about ’ere. Why, sir, they actually believes about ‘ere in vampyres as disguises themselves in a beautiful form and sucks the blood of innocent babes and kills ’em! There, sir, such ignorance as that beats me, it do!”

  “Ah, well, superstition is very hard to die!” said the captain; “but tell me,” he added, “what became of the old man, Brown?”

  “Oh, yes; beg pardon for not answering you before! Why, he married again and went to Australia; and no one never ’eard of him no more.”

  “Thanks for your information. It is very interesting. I have been in these parts before, and remember the little cottage. Tell me, how far is it to Abbotswood?”

  “A good fifteen miles; but it’s not easy to get there ’cross country after dark, ’less you knows the roads like your own pocket.”

  “Oh, I know the road well enough, thank you; good day!”

  And Carruthers walked off hurriedly, glad to be alone with his thoughts and memories and able to brood over his emotions without interruption.

  ♦ ♦ ♦

  CHAPTER V

  A STRANGE MEETING

  “Poor little Phyllis!” muttered Carruthers, as he walked on with quickened step, while the sun sank slowly in the west and gave every promise of a splendid but stormy sunset. “Poor girl, poor girl! And that was to be the end of our early love! . . . Perhaps better so. I could not have endured to see her develop into a coarse, vulgar woman, united to some drunken drudge of a husband, with a lot of untidy children at her heels. . . . Well,
well, rest her soul, poor girl! But to say that she died through pining for love of me is, at the least, doubtful. . . . . Dying for love only occurs in story books. . . . I should like, however, to know the truth. . . . It was probably consumption brought about by a neglected cold; but as to witchcraft having anything to do with it, that, I think, is too absurd to believe. . . . It is surprising how ready the rustic mind is to put everything down to the supernatural that baffles its understanding.”

  Thus Carruthers mused as he strode on in the now fast-deepening twilight, stopping at intervals as he watched the great orb of day descend below the horizon in flaming colours of gold and purple! “How grand! How gorgeous a spectacle!” he muttered, as he stood rooted to the spot with his greedy eyes fixed on the afterglow. What noble thoughts did it call forth? What sublime, unspeakable feelings stirred within him? Soon the radiant colours faded into a uniform grey, enveloping the brilliant scene in hues of sombre sadness.

  Soft memories of Phyllis would arise in his heart, and the scene before him appeared to harmonise with his melancholy feelings.

  But being a robust, healthy man, he shook off this unusual mood, comforting himself with the following sophistry: “Bah! she was but a child! We were both children. . . . It was, after all, only boy and girl play. . . . Had she lived what could she have been to me? Besides, I had forgotten her.”

  Carruthers had been walking for some time now, and the darkness had gradually risen from the earth, like a series of gauze veils, and only a few stars were visible. The sound of a distant church bell reminded him it was Sunday, and, a few miles further on, the lights from a church window stood out from the surrounding shadows. This, he thought, could be no other than the very ancient church of St. Cuthbert, that had been built on the ruins of some heathen temple in the early dawn of Christianity. Carruthers knew it well, and indeed, had often strolled through the churchyard with Phyllis in his boyhood, trying to decipher the epitaphs of the old, moss-covered tombstones. He remembered a gigantic yew tree with its gnarled, widely spreading, serpent-like roots that tradition said was standing before the present church was built. Its age was even estimated to be sixteen hundred years. Would it be there now? And the old vicar whom he had known, would he still be in the land of the living?

  A mist was now rising which, together with the deepening twilight, obscured his path, but he groped his way along until his foot encountered an obstacle. Stretching forth his hand he discovered that it was the low stone wall which enclosed the churchyard. He knew now that he was only about a mile distant from Abbotswood. The church bell had stopped, but the light through the stained-glass windows reached him through the trees. His walk had been a long one, and he felt that he needed a rest. He resolved to enter the church, and vaulted over the low wall, and, in doing so, almost fell into an open grave on the other side, but he dexterously avoided this unpleasant experience, and entered the edifice by a side door. The congregation, he observed, was exceedingly meagre. He sat down in one of the seats near the door, and looked around. Yes, there was the old man whom he had last seen hale and hearty, but who was now old and decrepit. The vicar gave out the hymn which precedes the sermon. A hymn-book lay before him, and he was busying himself in finding the one to be sung, when, looking up for an instant, he perceived that he was not alone in the pew. A lady, dressed in deep mourning, apparently a widow, tall, graceful, and youthful, had entered unseen, while he was turning over the pages of the book. Seeing that she was without one he offered to share his with her; and took the opportunity to scan her features, which struck him as romantically beautiful, though her skin was of an almost ghostly pallor, from which her rather deeply set black and flashing eyes stood out in the boldest relief. Her hair was of a purple blackness; her lips full, brilliantly red and prominent; the shape, however, was that of a perfect Cupid’s bow. She had taken off one glove from the hand with which she held the hymn-book, and the Captain noticed, with keen eyes, that it was small and delicately shaped, but that the fingers were rather too pointed at the tips, and the nails, although filbert-shaped, grew over them and assumed the appearance of claws. This peculiarity he had before noticed in consumptive people; but not to so great a degree. He rapidly summed up the lady to be a young widow still mourning for the death of her dearly loved husband, and who was, partly through grid on the verge of consumption.

  The warm sympathy of the soldier was aroused for her. He felt drawn to her by a mysterious power. It was a compound feeling, partly love and partly sympathy; but it was, at least, a strong feeling of interest, in addition to the pity and admiration which she had aroused.

  “So young and so unfortunate and unhappy!” he said to himself as his glance rested oftener on her pale, romantic beauty than on the printed page.

  He noticed that her voice did not join in the singing, and when the hymn was finished she mutely thanked him with a smile, and slight inclination of her head, raising her deep, flashing eyes momentarily at the same time.

  What deep magnetic power was there in that brief, almost furtive glance, that caused his heart and nerves to thrill and throb as neither had ever done before?—It was a mixture of keen delight and keener pain.

  He must find out who she was. He would not let her pass away out of his life.

  No; he would follow her, if necessary, to the ends of the earth rather than that. As this thought and resolution flashed through brain and heart, the venerable vicar had ascended the pulpit, and soon gave his text, which happened to be from Ezekiel, chapter xxxvii, and part of the twelfth verse: “I will open your graves and cause you to come up out of your graves.”

  It struck Carruthers as an unusual one, and he wondered what the vicar would make of it in his sermon.

  The vicar repeated the strangely weird text, and then he slowly examined the thin congregation. His eye soon alighted on the Lady in Black seated near Carruthers, and at once fixed there in a stony stare. The colour left his face, his eyes appeared to almost start from their sockets, his jaw dropped, and with a wild exclamation, he fell senseless to the bottom of his pulpit. There was an immediate stir amongst the worshippers, and the verger, who, fortunately, was a very tall, powerful man, hurried up the pulpit stairs, and carried the spare, thin form of the vicar down the steps, through the church, into the vestry.

  A storm had been gathering its forces since sunset, and now, ripe for destruction, burst in all its fury. Vivid flashes tore the dark, heavy clouds in quick succession, and the detonations of thunder claps which followed each other at quicker and quicker intervals caused the old church to shake to its foundations, and, indeed, appeared to threaten to bury the congregation, already pale with terror, under its crumbling ruins. They hesitated whether to brave the storm and rush for home or to wait for the fury of the storm to lessen. The lightning did abate, in time, and the people left the church. When Carruthers looked around for his companion, to his utter astonishment, she had disappeared.

  ♦ ♦ ♦

  CHAPTER VI

  THE TEMPTRESS

  When Ashleigh Carruthers found himself deserted by his companion, he, without a moment’s delay, instinctively started in pursuit of her. Uncovered by an umbrella, he braved the pelting rain, and rushing down a sloping pathway which led to the high road to Abbotswood, he ran on inspired by the hope of overtaking the woman who had so strangely bewitched him. The rain came down with increased violence; and, after a time, he looked round for a temporary place of shelter. At last he reached a sort of small natural alcove, rather shallow, and covered with brambles, which grew on a rocky bank above. He entered the place, and, at first, thought he was alone. Presently, however, he heard the rustle of a woman’s dress. He turned suddenly to learn who was so near him; and, in doing so, touched the shoulder of his companion. The lightning was nearly over, but at this moment a most vivid flash made everything in the place visible, and revealed to him the features of the woman for whom he was searching.

  “I beg your pardon; I thought I was alone in this strange place of shelter,” apologised the Captain, whose eyes had lighted up with pleasure.