“The face of your fancy,” slightingly returned Jan.
“I swear it was, then! There! There’s no mistaking him. The hedgehog on his cheek looked larger and blacker than ever.”
Master Cheese did not fail to talk of this abroad: the surgery boy, Bob, who had listened with open ears, did not fail to talk of it, and it spread throughout Deerham; additional testimony to that already accumulated. In a few days’ time, the commotion was at its height; nearly the only person who remained in ignorance of the reported facts being the master and mistress of Verner’s Pride, and those connected with them, relatives on either side.
That some great internal storm of superstition was shaking Deerham, Lionel knew. In his happy ignorance, he attributed it to the rumour which had first been circulated, touching Rachel’s ghost. He was an ear-witness to an angry colloquy at home. Some indispensable trifle for his wife’s toilette was required suddenly from Deerham one evening, and Mademoiselle Benoite ordered that it should be sent for. But not one of the maids would go. The French maid insisted, and there ensued a stormy war. The girls, one and all, declared they’d rather give up their service, than go abroad after nightfall.
When the fears and the superstitions came palpably in Lionel’s way, he made fun of it—as Jan might have done. Once or twice he felt half provoked, and asked the people, in a tone between earnest and jest, whether they were not ashamed of themselves. Little reply made they: not one of them but seemed to shrink from mentioning to Lionel Verner the name that the ghost had borne in life.
On nearly the last evening that it would be light during this moon, Mr. Bourne started from home to pay a visit to Mrs. Hook, the labourer’s wife. The woman had been ailing for some time: partly from natural illness, partly from chagrin—for her daughter Alice was the talk of the village—and she had now become seriously ill. On this day Mr. Bourne had accidentally met Jan: and, in conversing upon parish matters, he had inquired after Mrs. Hook.
“Very much worse,” was Jan’s answer. “Unless a change takes place, she’ll not last many days.”
The clergyman was shocked: he had not deemed her to be in danger. “I will go and see her to-day,” said he. “You can tell her that I am coming.”
He was a conscientious man; liking to do his duty: especially to those that were in sickness or trouble. Neither did he willingly break a specific promise. He made no doubt that Jan delivered the message: and therefore he went; though it was late at night when he started, other duties having detained him throughout the day.
His most direct way from the vicarage to Hook’s cottage, took him past the willow pond. He had no fear of ghosts, and therefore he chose it, in preference to going down Clay Lane, which was further round. The willow pool looked lonely enough as he passed it, its waters gleaming in the moonlight, its willows bending. A little further on, the clergyman’s ears became alive to the sound of sobs, as from a person in distress. There was Alice Hook, seated on a bench underneath some elm-trees, sobbing enough to break her heart.
However the girl might have got herself under the censure of the neighbourhood, it is a clergyman’s office to console, rather than to condemn. And he could not help liking pretty Alice: she had been one of the most tractable pupils in his Sunday-school. He addressed her as soothingly, as considerately, as though she were one of the first ladies in his parish: harshness would not mend the matter now. Her heart opened to the kindness.
“I’ve broke mother’s heart, and killed her!” cried she, with a wild burst of sobs. “But for me, she might ha’ve got well.”
“She may get well still, Alice,” replied the vicar. “I am going on to see her now. What are you doing here?”
“I am on my way, sir, to get the fresh physic for her. Mr. Jan, he said this morning as somebody was to go for it: but the rest have been out all day. As I came along, I got thinking of the time, sir, when I could go about by daylight with my head up, like the best of ’em; and it overcame me.”
She rose up, dried her eyes with her shawl, and Mr. Bourne proceeded onwards. He had not gone far, when something came rushing past him from the opposite direction. It seemed more like a thing than a man with its swift pace—and he recognised the face of Frederick Massingbird.
Mr. Bourne’s pulses stood still, and then gave a bound onwards. Clergyman though he was, he could not, for his life, have helped the queer feeling which came over him. He had sharply rebuked the superstition in his parishioners; had been inclined to ridicule Matthew Frost; had cherished a firm and unalterable belief that some foolish wight was playing pranks with the public; but all these suppositions and convictions faded in this moment: and the clergyman felt that that which had rustled past was the veritable dead-and-gone Frederick Massingbird, in the spirit or in the flesh.
He shook the feeling off—or strove to shake it. That it was Frederick Massingbird in the flesh, he did not give a second supposition to: and that it could be Frederick Massingbird in the spirit, was opposed to every past belief of the clergyman’s life. But he had never seen such a likeness: and, though the similarity in the features might be accidental, what of the black star?
He strove to shake the feeling off; to say to himself that some one, bearing a similar face, must be in the village; and he went on to his destination. Mrs. Hook was better: but she was lying in the place alone, all of them out somewhere or other. The clergyman talked to her and read to her: and then waited impatiently for the return of Alice. He did not care to leave the woman alone.
“Where are they all?” he asked, not having inquired before.
They were gone to the wake at Broxley, a small place some two miles distant. Of course! Had