VERNER’S PRIDE.
BY THE AUTHORESS OF “EAST LYNNE.”
CHAPTER XLIII. MEETING THE NEWS.
Miss Deborah West did not believe in ghosts. Miss Deb, setting aside a few personal weaknesses and vanities, was a strong-minded female, and no more believed in ghosts than she did in Master Cheese’s delicate constitution, which required to be supplied with an unlimited quantity of tarts and other dainties to keep up his strength between meals. The commotion respecting Frederick Massingbird, that his ghost had arrived from Australia, and “walked,” reached the ears of Miss Deb. It reached them in this way.
Miss Deb and her sister, compelled to economy by the scanty allowance afforded by Dr. West, had no more helpmates in the household department than could be avoided, and the surgery boy, Bob, found himself sometimes pressed into aiding in the domestic service. One evening Miss Deb entered the surgery, and caught Master Cheese revelling in a hat-full of walnuts by gaslight. This was the evening of the storm, previously mentioned.
“Where’s Bob?” asked she. “I want a message taken to Mrs. Broom’s about those pickled mushrooms that she is doing for me.”
“Bob’s out,” responded Master Cheese. “Have a walnut, Miss Deb?”
“I don’t mind. Are they ripe?” answered Miss Deb.
Master Cheese, the greediest chap alive, picked out the smallest he could find, politely cracked it with his teeth, and handed it to her.
“You’ll not get Bob over to Broom’s at this hour,” cried he. “Jan can’t get him to Mother Hook’s with her medicine, unless it’s made up so that he can take it before dark. They have to send for it.”
“What’s that for?” asked Miss Deb.
Master Cheese cracked on at his walnuts.
“You have not heard the tale that’s going about, I suppose, Miss Deb?”
“I have not heard any tale,” she answered.
“And I don’t know that I must tell it you,” continued Master Cheese, filling his mouth with five or six quarters at once, unpeeled. “Jan ordered me to hold my tongue in-doors.”
“It would be more respectful, Master Cheese, if you said Mr. Jan,” rebuked Miss Deborah. “I have told you so often.”
“Who cares?” returned Master Cheese. “Jan doesn’t. The fact is, Miss Deb, that there’s a ghost about at night just now.”
“Have they got up that folly again? Rachel Frost rests a great deal quieter in her grave than some of you do in your beds.”
“Ah, but it’s not Rachel this time,” significantly responded Master Cheese. “It’s somebody else.”
“Who is it, then?” asked Miss Deb, struck with his manner.
“I’ll tell you if you won’t tell Jan. It’s—don’t start, Miss Deb—it’s Fred Massingbird’s.”
Miss Deb did not start. She looked keenly at Master Cheese, believing he might be playing a joke upon her. But there was no sign of joking in his countenance. It looked, on the contrary, singularly serious, not to say awe-struck, as he leaned forward to bring it nearer Miss Deborah’s.
“It is a fact that Fred Massingbird’s ghost is walking,” he continued. “Lots have seen it. I have seen it. You’d have heard of it, like every body else has, if you had not been Mrs. Verner’s sister. It’s an unpleasantly queer thing for her, you know, Miss Deb.”
“What utter absurdity!” cried Deborah.
“Wait till you see it, before you say it’s absurdity,” replied Master Cheese. “If it’s not Fred Massingbird’s ghost, it is somebody’s that’s the exact image of him.”
Miss Deborah sat down on a stone jar, and got Master Cheese to tell her the whole story. That he should put in a few exaggerations, and so increase the marvel, was only natural. But Deborah West heard sufficient to send her mind into a state of uneasy perplexity.
“You say Mr. Jan knows of this?” she asked.
“There’s nobody about that doesn’t know of it, except you and the folks at Verner’s Pride,” responded Master Cheese. “I say, don’t you go and inform Jan that you made me tell you, Miss Deb! You’ll get me into a row if you do.”
But this was the very thing that Miss Deb resolved to do. Not to get Master Cheese into a “row,” but that she saw no other way of allaying her uncertainty. Ghosts were utterly excluded from Deborah West’s creed; and why so many people should be suddenly testifying that Frederick Massingbird’s was to be seen, she could not understand. That there must be something in it more than the common absurdity of such tales, the state of Alice Hook appeared to testify.
“Can Bob be spared to go over to Broom’s in the morning?” she asked after a long pause of silence, given apparently to the contemplation of Master Cheese’s intense enjoyment of his walnuts; in reality, to deep thought.
“Well, I don’t know,” answered the young gentleman, who never was ready to accord the services of Bob in-doors, lest it might involve any little extra amount of exertion for himself. “There’s a sight of medicine to be taken out just now. Jan’s got a great deal to do, and I am nearly worked off my legs.”
“It looks like it,” retorted Miss Deborah. “Your legs will never be much the worse for the amount of work you do. Where’s Mr. Jan?”
“He went out to go to Hook’s,” replied Master Cheese, a desperately hard walnut proving nearly too much for his teeth. “He’ll take a round, I dare say, before he comes in.”
Deborah returned in-doors. Though not much inclined to reticence in general, she observed it now, saying nothing to Amilly. The storm came on, and they sat and watched it. Supper time approached, and Master Cheese was punctual. He found some pickled herrings on the table, of which he was uncommonly fond, and eat at them as long