Page:Once a Week Volume 7.djvu/534

 526 between her shaking lips. “I saw its every feature, sir.”

“Porcupine and all?” retorted Jan, ironically.

“Porkypine and all, sir. I’m not sure that I should have knowed it at first, but for the porkypine.”

What were they to do with the girl? Leave her there, and go? Jan, who was more skilled in ailments than Mr. Bourne, thought it possible that the fright had seriously injured her.

“You must go to bed at once,” said he. “I’ll just say a word to your father.”

Jan was acquainted with the private arrangements of the Hooks’ household. He knew that there was but one sleeping apartment for the whole family—the room above where the sick mother was lying. Father, mother, sons and daughters all slept there together. The “house” consisted of the kitchen below and the room above it: there were many such on the Verner estate.

Jan, carrying the candle to guide him, went softly up the creaky staircase. The wife was sleeping. Hook was sleeping, too, and snoring heavily. Jan had something to do to awake him: shaking seemed useless.

“Look here,” said he, in a whisper, when the man was aroused, “Alice has had a fright, and I think she will perhaps be ill through it. If so, mind you come for me without loss of time. Do you understand, Hook?”

Hook signified that he did.

“Very well,” replied Jan. “Should—”

“What’s that! what’s that?”

The alarmed cry came from the mother. She had suddenly awoke.

“It’s nothing,” said Jan. “I only had a word to say to Hook. You go to sleep again, and sleep quietly.”

Somehow Jan’s presence carried reassurance with it to most people. Mrs. Hook was contented. “Is Ally not come in yet?” asked she.

“Come in, and down stairs,” replied Jan. “Good night. Now,” said he to Alice, when he returned to the kitchen, “you go on to bed and get to sleep: and don’t get dreaming of ghosts and goblins.”

They were going out at the door, the clergyman and Jan, when the girl flew to them in a fresh attack of terror.

“I daren’t be left alone,” she gasped. “Oh, stop a minute! Pray stop, till I be gone up-stairs.”

“Here,” said Jan, making light of it. “I’ll marshal you up.”

He held the candle, and the girl flew up the stairs as fast as young Cheese had flown from the ghost. Her breath was panting, her bosom throbbing. Jan blew out the candle, and he and Mr. Bourne departed, merely shutting the door. Labourers’ cottages have no fear of midnight robbers.

“What do you think now?” asked Mr. Bourne, as they moved along.

Jan looked at him.

“You are not thinking, surely, that it is Fred Massingbird’s ghost!”

“No. But I should advise Mr. Verner to place a watch, and have the thing cleared up—who it is, and what it is.”

“Why Mr. Verner?”

“Because it is on his land that the disturbance is occurring. This girl has been seriously frightened.”

“You may have cause to know that before many hours are over,” answered Jan.

“Why! you don’t fear that she will be seriously ill?”

“Time will show,” was all the answer given by Jan. “As to the ghost, I’ll either believe in him, or disbelieve him, when I come across him. If he were a respectable ghost, he’d confine himself to the churchyard, and not walk in unorthodox places, to frighten folks.”

They looked somewhat curiously at the seat near which Alice had fallen; at the willow pond, further on. There was no trace of a ghost about then—at least, that they could see—and they continued their way. In emerging upon the high road, who should they meet but old Mr. Bitterworth and Lionel, arm in arm. They had been to an evening meeting of the magistrates at Deerham, and were walking home together.

To see the vicar and surgeon of a country village in company by night, imparts the idea that some one of its inhabitants may be in extremity. It did so now to Mr. Bitterworth:

“Where do you come from?” he asked.

“From Hook’s,” answered Jan. “The mother’s better to-night: but I have had another patient there. The girl Alice has seen the ghost, or fancied that she saw it, and was terrified out of her senses.”

“How is she going on?” asked Mr. Bitterworth.

“Physically, do you mean, sir?”

“No, I meant morally, Jan. If all accounts are true, the girl has been losing herself.”

“Law!” said Jan. “Deerham has known that this many a month past. I’d try and stop it, if I were Lionel.”

“Stop what?” asked Lionel.

“I’d build ’em better dwellings,” composedly went on Jan. “They might be brought up to decency then.”

“It is true that decency can’t put its head into such dwellings as that of the Hooks,” observed the vicar. “People have accused me of showing leniency to Alice Hook, since the scandal has been known; but I cannot show harshness to her when I think of the home the girl was reared in.”

The words pricked Lionel. None could think worse of the homes than he did. He spoke in a cross tone: we are all apt to do so, when vexed with ourselves.

“What possesses Deerham to show itself so absurd just now? Ghosts! They only affect fear, it is my belief.”

“Alice Hook did not affect it, for one,” said Jan. “She may have been frightened to some purpose. We found her lying on the ground, insensible. They are stupid, though, all the lot of them.”

“Stupid is not the name for it,” remarked Lionel. “A little superstition, following on Rachel’s peculiar death, may have been excusable,