Man and Maid

“Well – no,” she said. “The fact is – I wanted frightfully to see the house; in fact, I’ve come miles and miles on purpose, but there’s no one to let me in.”

“The people at the lodge?” I suggested.

“Oh no,” she said. “I – the fact is I – I don’t want to be shown round. I want to explore!”

She looked at me critically. Her eyes dwelt on my right hand, which lay on the sundial. I have always taken reasonable care of my hands, and I wore a good ring, a sapphire, cut with the Sefton arms: an heirloom, by the way. Her glance at my hand preluded a longer glance at my face. Then she shrugged her pretty shoulders.

“Oh well,” she said, and it was as if she had said plainly, “I see that you are a gentleman and a decent fellow. Why should I not look over the house in your company? Introductions? Bah!”

All this her shrug said without ambiguity as without words.

“Perhaps,” I hazarded, “I could get the keys.”

“Do you really care very much for old houses?”

“I do,” said I; “and you?”

“I care so much that I nearly broke into this one. I should have done it quite if the windows had been an inch or two lower.”

“I am an inch or two higher,” said I, standing squarely so as to make the most of my six-feet beside her five-feet-five or thereabouts.

“Oh – if you only would!” said she.

“Why not?” said I.

She led the way past the marble basin of the fountain, and along the historic yew avenue, planted, like all old yew avenues, by that industrious gardener our Eighth Henry. Then across a lawn, through a winding, grassy, shrubbery path, that ended at a green door in the garden wall.

“You can lift this latch with a hairpin,” said she, and therewith lifted it.

We walked into a courtyard. Young grass grew green between the grey flags on which our steps echoed.

“This is the window,” said she. “You see there’s a pane broken. If you could get on to the window-sill, you could get your hand in and undo the hasp, and – ”

“And you?”

“Oh, you’ll let me in by the kitchen door.”

I did it. My conscience called me a burglar – in vain. Was it not my own, or as good as my own house?

I let her in at the back door. We walked through the big dark kitchen where the old three-legged pot towered large on the hearth, and the old spits and firedogs still kept their ancient place. Then through another kitchen where red rust was making its full meal of a comparatively modern range.

Then into the great hall, where the old armour and the buff-coats and round-caps hang on the walls, and where the carved stone staircases run at each side up to the gallery above.

The long tables in the middle of the hall were scored by the knives of the many who had eaten meat there – initials and dates were cut into them. The roof was groined, the windows low-arched.

“Oh, but what a place!” said she; “this must be much older than the rest of it – ”

“Evidently. About 1300, I should say.”

“Oh, let us explore the rest,” she cried; “it is really a comfort not to have a guide, but only a person like you who just guesses comfortably at dates. I should hate to be told exactly when this hall was built.”

We explored ball-room and picture gallery, white parlour and library. Most of the rooms were furnished – all heavily, some magnificently – but everything was dusty and faded.

It was in the white parlour, a spacious panelled room on the first floor, that she told me the ghost story, substantially the same as my porter’s tale, only in one respect different.

“And so, just as she was leaving this very room – yes, I’m sure it’s this room, because the woman at the inn pointed out this double window and told me so – just as the poor lovers were creeping out of the door, the cruel father came quickly out of some dark place and killed them both. So now they haunt it.”

“It is a terrible thought,” said I gravely. “How would you like to live in a haunted house?”

“I couldn’t,” she said quickly.

“Nor I; it would be too – ” my speech would have ended flippantly, but for the grave set of her features.

“I wonder who will live here?” she said. “The owner is just dead. They say it is an awful house, full of ghosts. Of course one is not afraid now” – the sunlight lay golden and soft on the dusty parquet of the floor – “but at night, when the wind wails, and the doors creak, and the things rustle, oh, it must be awful!”

“I hear the house has been left to two people, or rather one is to have the house, and the other a sum of money,” said I. “It’s a beautiful house, full of beautiful things, but I should think at least one of the heirs would rather have the money.”

“Oh yes, I should think so. I wonder whether the heirs know about the ghost? The lights can be seen from the inn, you know, at twelve o’clock, and they see the ghost in white at the window.”

“Never the black one?”

“Oh yes, I suppose so.”

“The ghosts don’t appear together?”

“No.”

“I suppose,” said I, “whoever it is that manages such things knows that the poor ghosts would like to be together, so it won’t let them.”

She shivered.

“Come,” she said, “we have seen all over the house; let us get back into the sunshine. Now I will go out, and you shall bolt the door after me, and then you can come out by the window. Thank you so much for all the trouble you have taken. It has really been quite an adventure…”

I rather liked that expression, and she hastened to spoil it.

“… Quite an adventure going all over this glorious old place, and looking at everything one wanted to see, and not just at what the housekeeper didn’t mind one’s looking at.”

She passed through the door, but when I had closed it and prepared to lock it, I found that the key was no longer in the lock. I looked on the floor – I felt in my pockets, and at last, wandering back into the kitchen, discovered it on the table, where I swear I never put it.

When I had fitted that key into the lock and turned it, and got out of the window and made that fast, I dropped into the yard. No one shared its solitude with me. I searched garden and pleasure grounds, but never a glimpse of pink rewarded my anxious eyes. I found the sundial again, and stretched myself along the warm brick of the wide step where she had sat: and called myself a fool.

I had let her go. I did not know her name; I did not know where she lived; she had been at the inn, but probably only for lunch. I should never see her again, and certainly in that event I should never see again such dark, soft eyes, such hair, such a contour of cheek and chin, such a frank smile – in a word, a girl with whom it would be so delightfully natural for me to fall in love. For all the time she had been talking to me of architecture and archæology, of dates and periods, of carvings and mouldings, I had been recklessly falling in love with the idea of falling in love with her. I had cherished and adored this delightful possibility, and now my chance was over. Even I could not definitely fall in love after one interview with a girl I was never to see again! And falling in love is so pleasant! I cursed my lost chance, and went back to the inn. I talked to the waiter.

“Yes, a lady in pink had lunched there with a party. Had gone on to the Castle. A party from Tonbridge it was.”

Barnhurst Castle is close to Sefton Manor. The inn lays itself out to entertain persons who come in brakes and carve their names on the walls of the Castle keep. The inn has a visitors’ book. I examined it. Some twenty feminine names. Any one might be hers. The waiter looked over my shoulder. I turned the pages.

“Only parties staying in the house in this part of the book,” said the waiter.