CHAPTER VIII.
THE JOURNEY
On the following day Emmie, escorted by Vibert and attended by Susan, started for her new home. Almost at the last moment Mr. Trevor found that important business would, for another day, delay his own departure; but all arrangements for the general move having been made, he would not defer it, preferring for the single night to sleep at a hotel in London.
The bustle of departure took from its pain; Emmie left her dear old home without a tear, though not without a sigh of regret. Vibert was in high spirits, for novelty has its charm, especially to a temperament such as his. Mr. Trevor had given to each of his sons a fishing-rod and a gun; and Vibert was already, in imagination, a first-rate angler and sportsman. It would have been difficult to have been dull in Vibert’s company during the journey. Sporting anecdotes, stories of adventures encountered by others, and anticipations of future ones of his own, interspersed with many a jest, amused not only Vibert’s sister, but their fellow-travellers in the same railway-carriage. The youth had none of his elder brother’s reserve, and took pleasure in attracting the notice of strangers, having a pleasant consciousness that in his case notice was likely to imply admiration also.
“That handsome lad seems to look on life as one long holiday, to be passed under unclouded sunshine,” thought a withered old gentleman, who looked as if all his days had been spent in a fog. “Poor boy! poor boy! he will soon be roused, by stern experience, from the pleasant dream in which he indulges now!”
About half-an-hour before sunset, the train in which the Trevors were making their journey approached the station of S – , the one at which they were to alight.
“Your new pony-chaise is to meet us, Emmie, so papa arranged,” observed Vibert; “but it must be a commodious chaise if it is to accommodate four persons, and all our lots of luggage. There are three boxes and a carpet-bag of mine in the van, besides I know not how many of yours. Then look here,” – Vibert glanced at the numerous et ceteras which showed that the young travellers had understood how to make themselves comfortable; “here’s a shawl, and a rug, and foot-warmer, a basket, a bag, three umbrellas, and a parasol, my hat-box, and a fishing-rod besides! Are all to be stowed away in the chaise? If so, it will need nice packing.”
“Bruce was to order a fly,” said Emmie.
“If he was to do it, he has done it,” observed Vibert; “one may count upon him as upon a church-clock. Now if I had had the arranging, I should have been so much taken up with trying the new pony-chaise, that I should have forgotten all about the old rattle-trap needed to carry the boxes. I wish that we had riding-horses. I shall never give papa peace till he buys me a hunter.”
The shrill railway whistle gave notice of approach to a station; the train slackened its speed, and then stopped; doors were flung open, and a number of passengers soon thronged the platform of S – .
“There is Bruce; he is looking out for us!” cried Emmie, as she stepped on the platform.
“Where is the pony-chaise?” asked Vibert, addressing his brother, who immediately joined the party. Susan was left to collect, as best she might, the numerous articles left in the railway-carriage.
“A lad is holding the pony just outside the station, and the fly is in waiting also,” was the answer of Bruce. “Where is the luggage, Vibert? the train only stops for five minutes at S – .”
“Susan will tell you all about it,” cried Vibert; “I’ve a bag and three boxes, one of them a gun-case, stowed away in the van. Mind that nothing is missing. Come, Emmie, I must get you out of the crowd,” and, drawing his sister’s arm within his own, Vibert rapidly made his way to the outside of the station, where a pretty basket-chaise, drawn by a white pony, was waiting.
“In with you, quick, Emmie!” cried Vibert, with the eager impatience of one about to effect an escape. No sooner had the young lady taken her seat than Vibert sprang in after her, seized the reins, caught up the whip, and calling to the lad who had acted as hostler, “My brother will pay you,” gave a sharp cut to the pony, which made the spirited little animal bound forward at a speed which raised a feeling of alarm in the timorous Emmie.
“Stop, Vibert, stop! you must not drive off; you must wait for Bruce!” she exclaimed.
“I’ll wait for no one!” cried Vibert, still briskly plying the whip. “Bruce would be wanting to drive; but this time he has lost the chance, – ha! ha! ha! There’s my brave little pony, does he not go at a spanking pace?”
“I wish that you would not drive so fast, it frightens me!” cried Emmie.
“Frightens you! nonsense, you little coward! Don’t you see that thick bank of clouds in which the sun is setting? We’ll have a thunderstorm soon, and that will frighten you more.”
“Oh, I hope and trust that the storm will not burst till we reach shelter!” cried Emmie, whose dread of thunder and lightning is already known to the reader.
“We are running a race with it, and we’ll be at the winning-post first!” exclaimed Vibert, who was enjoying the excitement, and who was rather amused than vexed to see his sister’s alarm.
“But, Vibert, you don’t even know the way to Myst Court! Oh, I wish that you had waited for Bruce!”
It had never occurred to the thoughtless lad that he might be driving in a wrong direction; so long as the pony went as fast as Vibert wished, he had taken it for granted that Myst Court would soon be reached. The station had been left far behind; the road was lonesome and wild; only one solitary boy was in sight; he was engaged in picking up boughs and twigs which a recent gale had blown down from the trees which bordered the way.
“We’ll ask yonder bare-footed bundle of rags to direct us,” said Vibert, and he drew up the panting pony when he reached the spot where the boy was standing.
“I say, young one, which is the way to Myst Court?” asked Vibert in a tone of command.
The boy stared at him, as if unaccustomed to the sight of strangers.
“Are we on the right road to the large house where Mrs. Myers used to live?” inquired Emmie.
“Ay, ay, but you’ll have to turn down yon lane just by the stile there,” said the urchin, pointing with his brown finger, and grinning as if a chaise with a lady in it were a rare and curious sight.
“I don’t believe that the rustic could have told us whether to turn to left or right,” said Vibert, as he whipped on the pony. “If he’s a fair specimen of my father’s tenants, we shall feel as if we had dropped down on the Fiji Islands.”
The direction given by the finger was, however, perfectly clear, and the Trevors were soon driving along a picturesque lane, where trees, still gay with autumnal tints, overarched the narrow way, and with their brown and golden leaves carpeted the sod beneath them.
“What a pretty rural lane!” exclaimed Emmie, as the chaise first turned off from the high-road; but admiration was soon forgotten in discomfort and fear. The lane was apparently not intended as a thoroughfare for carriages, at least in the season of winter. The ground was miry and boggy, and the pony with difficulty dragged the chaise. There were violent jerks when one side or other dropped into one of the deep ruts left by the wheels of the last cart that had passed that way. Vibert plied the whip more vigorously than before, and silenced his sister’s remonstrances by remarking how darkly the clouds were gathering in the evening sky. Young Trevor was but an inexperienced driver, and ever and anon the chaise was jolted violently over some loose stones, or driven so near to the hedge that Emmie had to bend sideways to avoid being struck by straggling bramble or branch. She mentally resolved never again to trust herself to Vibert’s driving.
“Will this lane never come to an end?” exclaimed Emmie, as the first heavy drop from an overshadowing mass of dark cloud fell on her knee. She was but imperfectly protected from rain; for Vibert, in his haste to dash off from the station before his brother could join him, had never thought of taking with him either umbrella or shawl for his sister.
“Here comes the rain with a vengeance, and this stupid beast flounders in the mud as if it were dragging a cannon instead of a chaise,” cried Vibert. “These country lanes drive one out of all patience! Ha! there’s the rumbling of distant thunder!”
“Oh! I trust that we shall reach home soon,” exclaimed Emmie, who, exposed to the heavy downpour, shivered alike from cold and from fear.
“I suspect that we shall never reach home at all by this lane,” said Vibert. “Take my word for it, that little wretch has directed us wrong; I have a great mind to turn the pony round, and get back to the high-road.”
“You can’t turn, the lane is too narrow; you would land us in the hedge!” exclaimed Emmie, who thought that the attempt would inevitably lead to an upset of the chaise. On struggled the steaming pony, down poured the pattering rain; Vibert, almost blinded by the shower and the gathering darkness, could scarcely see the road before him.
“The longest lane has a turning, – there is an opening before us at last!” exclaimed the young driver, as a turn in the winding road brought a highway to view. “We shall reach Myst Court like two drowned rats. Why on earth did you not bring an umbrella, Emmie? I could not think of everything at once.” Vibert had, indeed, thought but of himself.
The want of an umbrella was to Emmie by no means the worst part of her troubles; she was afraid that her brother had indeed been misdirected, and that they might be lost and benighted in a part of the country where they as yet were strangers, exposed to the perils of a thunderstorm, from which the nervous girl shrank with instinctive terror. Emmie had never hitherto even attempted to overcome her fear; and though her uncle’s words now recurred to her mind, the idea of encountering a thunderstorm after nightfall, without even a roof to protect her, put to flight any good resolutions that those words might have roused in her mind.
“There was a flash!” exclaimed Emmie, starting and putting her hands before her eyes. She pressed closer to her brother as if for protection.
“We shall have more soon; the storm comes nearer,” was the little comforting reply of Vibert. As he ended the sentence, the thunder-clap followed the flash. The pony pricked up his ears, and quickened his pace.
“I am glad that we are out of this miserable mouse-hole at last,” cried Vibert, pulling the left rein sharply as the light vehicle emerged from the narrow, miry lane into the broad and comparatively smooth highway.
At this moment the darkening landscape was suddenly lighted up by a flash intensely bright, followed almost immediately by a peal over the travellers’ heads. The terrified Emmie shrieked, and, losing all presence of mind, caught hold of her brother’s arm. The sharp turning out of the lane, the pony’s start at the flash, and the sudden grasp on the driver’s arm, acting together, had the effect which might have been expected. Down went pony and chaise, down went driver and lady, precipitated into the ditch which bordered the high-road.
CHAPTER IX.
NEW ACQUAINTANCE
Vibert shouting for help, Emmie shrieking, the pony kicking and struggling in vain attempts to scramble out of the ditch, rain rattling, thunder rolling, all made a confused medley of sounds, while the deepening darkness was ever and anon lit up by lightning-flashes.
“Oh, Vibert! dear Vibert! are you hurt?” cried the terrified Emmie, with whom personal fear did not counterbalance anxiety for her young brother’s safety.
“I’m not hurt; I lighted on a bramble-bush; I’ve got off with a few scratches,” answered Vibert, who had regained the road. “But where on earth are you, Emmie? Can’t you manage to get up?”
“No,” gasped Emmie; “the chaise keeps me down. Oh, there is the lightning again!” and she shrieked.
“Never mind the lightning,” cried Vibert impatiently. “How am I to get the pony on his legs? he’s kicking like mad; and, oh! do stop screaming, Emmie, you’re enough to drive any one wild. It was your pull and your shrieking that did all the mischief.”
Vibert had had little experience with horses, and to release, almost in darkness, a kicking pony from its traces, or set free a lady imprisoned by an overturned chaise, were tasks for which he had neither sufficient presence of mind nor personal strength. Glad would the poor lad then have been to have had Bruce beside him, Bruce with his firm arm and his strong sense, and that quiet self-possession which it seemed as if nothing could shake. Vibert felt in the emergency as helpless as a girl might have done. Now he pulled at the upturned wheel of the chaise, but without lifting it even an inch; then he caught up the whip which had dropped from his hand in the shock of the fall, but he knew not whether to use it would not but make matters worse. Vibert ran a few paces to seek for assistance, stopped irresolute, then hurried back, thinking it unmanly to leave his sister alone in her helpless condition.
Happily for poor Emmie, assistance was not long delayed. Not a hundred yards from the spot where the accident had taken place, two men were sheltering themselves from the violence of the rain in a half-ruined barn. The cries of the lady, the loud calls for aid from her brother, reached the ears of these men. Two forms were seen by Vibert quickly approaching towards him, and he shouted to them to make haste to come to the help of his sister.
“There’s a lady there, under the wheel,” said the shorter and elder man to the other, when the two had reached the fallen chaise. “You’d better look to her while I cut the beast’s traces; it’s lucky I have my knife with me,” and the speaker pulled a large clasp-knife out of his pocket.
The united efforts of the men, assisted by Vibert, soon were crowned with success. The pony, frightened and mud-bespattered, but not very seriously hurt, as soon as it was released from the harness, scrambled out of the ditch. The light basket-chaise was, without much difficulty, raised to its right position; and Vibert helped to lift up Emmie, who was half covered with mud, and almost in hysterics with fear.
“Come, come, there’s nothing to be terrified at now; the danger is over. You’re not hurt, are you?” asked Vibert, with some anxiety, for he loved his sister next to himself, though, it must be confessed, with a considerable space between.
Emmie scarcely knew whether she were injured or not. She was too much agitated at first to be able to answer her brother’s question.
“I don’t think that there are any bones broken; mud is soft,” said the shorter man. “I guess she’s more frightened than hurt.”
“Be composed, dear lady; the storm is clearing off,” observed the younger stranger, who had assisted Vibert in releasing Emmie from her distressing position, and who now helped to place her again in the chaise. This person’s gallantry of manner contrasted with the almost coarse bluntness of his elder and shorter companion. Vibert at once concluded that the two individuals who had accidentally appeared together belonged respectively to very different grades of society.
The man who had cut the traces had had string in his capacious pocket as well as a knife, and now occupied himself in making such a rough arrangement with the harness as might enable the pony to draw the chaise. He effected his purpose with no small skill; considering the imperfect light by which he worked.
“Are we in the right road for Myst Court?” inquired Vibert of this individual, as he was tying the last firm knot in the string.
“Myst Court!” repeated the man in a harsh, croaking tone, at the same time raising his head from its stooping position. “Are you some of the new folk as are coming to the old haunted house?”
The question was asked in a manner so peculiar that it arrested the attention even of Emmie. A flash of lightning occurred at the moment, not so vivid as that which had terrified her so much, but sufficiently so to light up the features of the elderly man. Miss Trevor was again and again to see that strange face, but at no time did she behold it without recalling the impression which it made on her mind when first shown by that gleam of blue lightning. The man might be sixty years of age; his nose was hooked, so that it resembled a beak; his eyes were so sunken in his head that in that transient glimpse they looked like dark eye-holes; his hair, rough, unkempt, and grizzled, hung in wet strands as low as his shoulders, surmounted by an old battered felt hat. Emmie felt afraid of him, though she could not have given any reason for her fear.
“Yes, we are to live at Myst Court,” replied Vibert. “Our father has just come into possession of the place.”
“Woe to him, then, for an evil spell is upon it!” muttered the man; and a distant rumble succeeded the words like an echo. “The thunder and lightning, the darkness and storm, the mistaken way, the stumbling horse, – omens of evil – omens of evil! These things do not happen by chance.”
“I wish that, instead of muttering unpleasant things, you would give a plain answer to a plain question, and not keep us shivering here!” said Vibert impatiently. “Are we, or are we not, on the direct road to Myst Court?”
“No, sir,” replied the taller stranger; “but by yon lane you can reach the high-road which leads straight from S – to the place of your destination.”
“Then that urchin did misdirect us!” exclaimed Vibert. “If I meet him again, I will break every stick in his faggot over his back! Must we really return through that slough of a lane, through which we have scarcely been able to struggle?”
“You must retrace your way,” said the stranger. “As far as the high-road my path is the same as your own, as I am returning to my quarters at S – . Perhaps you will permit me to occupy the vacant place in your chaise (I perceive that there is a back seat), as it would be a satisfaction to me to see the lady so far safe on the road. I shall do myself the honour of calling at Myst Court to-morrow, to inquire after her health. My name is Colonel Standish, at your service, and I serve beneath the star-spangled banner.”
“We shall be glad of your company, sir,” said Vibert; “and are much obliged for your ready help.”
“It is lucky that old Harper and I were at hand,” observed Standish, as he stepped into the low basket-chaise.
Vibert sprang into the front seat beside his sister, but before taking the reins from the hand of Harper, young Trevor pulled a shilling out of his waistcoat-pocket, and tendered it to the old man. There was light now afforded by the moon, for the rain had ceased, and through a rift in the clouds the radiant orb shone clearly.
“A silver shilling to him who has helped you to reach the haunted house,” said Harper, as he took the coin and thrust it into a deep pocket. “I trow there will be gold for him who shall show you the way to leave it!”
Vibert laughed; Emmie shivered, but that may have been from cold, for the night-air was clamp and chilly, and her clothes were saturated with rain. Vibert now turned the pony into the lane, but the creature limped, and had evidently some difficulty in dragging the chaise.
“The beast is lame,” observed Standish; “he has probably strained a leg in the fall. We gentlemen must walk through the lane, where the ground is so boggy.” The colonel sprang from the chaise, and his example was followed by Vibert.
At a slow pace the party proceeded along the tree-overshadowed way. The recent rain had increased the heaviness of the road, and the trees dripped moisture from their wet branches over the travellers’ heads. To Emmie, cold and damp as she was, and longing for shelter and rest, it seemed as if that wearisome lane would never come to an end.
Harper, uninvited, had joined himself to the party, and his peculiar croaking tones were frequently heard blending in converse with the clear voice of young Vibert, or the more manly accents of Standish. Emmie alone kept silence.
“Our friend Harper is a near neighbour of yours,” observed the colonel to Vibert. “He has fixed himself just outside the gate of your father’s grounds.”
“But I never pass through that gate,” croaked Harper. Neither Vibert nor Emmie felt any regret that their forbidding-looking neighbour should keep outside.
“You call the place haunted?” said Vibert.
“Haunted!” repeated Harper, muttering the word between his clenched teeth; and the old man shook his grizzled locks with so mysterious an air, that Vibert’s curiosity was roused. He began to question Harper on the traditions connected with the place.
The old man was not loath to speak on the subject, though he imparted his information, if such it could be called, only in broken fragments; giving as it were, glimpses of grisly horrors, and leaving his hearers to imagine the rest.
Then Standish followed up the theme, and recounted strange stories from the New World, – all “well-authenticated” as he declared; stories of haunted houses and apparitions, each tale more horrible than the last. Such relations would have tried Emmie’s nerves, even had the stories been told on some calm summer eve; but heard, as they were, in a dark, dreary lane, on a chilly November night, when she was wet, bruised, and trembling from the shock of a recent accident, tales of horror seemed to make the blood freeze to ice in her veins. Had Bruce been present, he would have discouraged such conversation; but sensational stories had charms for Vibert, and he never considered that they might work an evil effect on the sensitive mind of his sister.
At last the open road was regained, and Standish took leave of the Trevors. Rather to Emmie’s surprise, the colonel familiarly shook hands with herself as well as her brother, as if the night’s adventure had converted them into old friends. Vibert again sprang into the chaise; he was very impatient to get at last to the end of his wearisome journey, and urged the pony to as quick a pace as its lameness permitted over the smoother road.
The rest of the time of the drive was passed in silence. The way to Myst Court was clear enough from the brief directions given by Harper, of whom the travellers soon lost sight in the darkness, though he was following in the same track. Emmie had thought of inviting the old man to take the back seat in the chaise, but an intuitive feeling of repugnance prevented her from making the offer.
Glad were the weary travellers to reach the large iron gate which had been described as marking the entrance to the grounds of Myst Court. The gate had been left wide open to let them pass through. The drive up to the house was rather a long one. Emmie noticed only that it appeared to be through a thick wood, and that the chaise occasionally jolted over impediments in the way. To her great relief, the weary girl at length distinguished lights in some of the windows of a building which dimly loomed before her. There streamed forth also light from the open door, at which her brother Bruce was standing, watching for the arrival of the long-expected chaise.