Elster's Folly

"Not down yet," was the short response.

"Not down yet!" repeated Jabez in surprise, for Mrs. Gum was generally down by seven. "You've got that door open again, Rebecca. How many more times am I to tell you I won't have it?"

"It's the smoke," said Rebecca. "This chimbley always smokes when it's first lighted."

"The chimney doesn't smoke, and you know that you are telling a falsehood. What do you want with it open? You'll have that wild man darting in upon you some morning. How will you like that?"

"I'm not afeard of him," was the answer, as Rebecca got up from her knees. "He couldn't eat me."

"But you know how timid your mistress is," returned the clerk, in a voice of extreme anger. "How dare you, girl, be insolent?"

He shut the door as he spoke—one that opened from the kitchen to the back garden—and bolted it. Washing his hands, and drying them with a round towel, he went upstairs, and found Mrs. Gum—as he had now and then found her of late—in a fit of prostration. She was a little woman, with a light complexion, and insipid, unmeaning face—some such a face as Willy's had been—and her hair, worn in neat bands under her cap, was the colour of tow.

"I couldn't help it, Gum," she began, as she stood before the glass, her trembling fingers trying to fasten her black alpaca gown—for she had never left off mourning for their son. "It's past eight, I know; but I've had such an upset this morning as never was, and I couldn't dress myself. I've had a shocking dream."

"Drat your dreams!" cried Mr. Gum, very much wanting his breakfast.

"Ah, Gum, don't! Those morning dreams, when they're vivid as this was, are not sent for ridicule. Pike was in it; and you know I can't bear him to be in my dreams. They are always bad when he is in them."

"If you wanted your breakfast as much as I want mine, you'd let Pike alone," retorted the clerk.

"I thought he was mixed up in some business with Lord Hartledon. I don't know what it was, but the dream was full of horror. It seemed that Lord Hartledon was dead or dying; whether he'd been killed or not, I can't say; but an awful dread was upon me of seeing him dead. A voice called out, 'Don't let him come to Calne!' and in the fright I awoke. I can't remember what part Pike played in the dream," she continued, "only the impression remained that he was in it."

"Perhaps he killed Lord Hartledon?" cried Gum, mockingly.

"No; not in the dream. Pike did not seem to be mixed up in it for ill. The ill was all on Lord Hartledon; but it was not Pike brought it upon him. Who it was, I couldn't see; but it was not Pike."

Clerk Gum looked down at his wife in scornful pity. He wondered sometimes, in his phlegmatic reasoning, why women were created such fools.

"Look here, Mrs. G. I thought those dreams of yours were pretty nearly dreamed out—there have been enough of 'em. How any woman, short of a born idiot, can stand there and confess herself so frightened by a dream as to be unable to get up and go about her duties, is beyond me."

"But, Gum, you don't let me finish. I woke up with the horror, I tell you—"

"What horror?" interrupted the clerk, angrily. "What did it consist of? I can't see the horror."

"Nor can I, very clearly," acknowledged Mrs. Gum; "but I know it was there. I woke up with the very words in my ears, 'Don't let him come to Calne!' and I started out of bed in terror for Lord Hartledon, lest he should come. We are only half awake, you know, at these moments. I pulled the curtain aside and looked out. Gum, if ever I thought to drop in my life, I thought it then. There was but one person to be seen in the road—and it was Lord Hartledon."

"Oh!" said Mr. Gum, cynically, after a moment of natural surprise. "Come out of his vault for a morning walk past your window, Mrs. G.!"

"Vault! I mean young Lord Hartledon, Gum."

Mr. Gum was a little taken back. They had been so much in the habit of calling the new Lord Hartledon, Lord Elster—who had not lived at Calne since he came into the title—that he had thought of the old lord when his wife was speaking.

"He was up there, just by the turning of the road, going on to Hartledon. Gum, I nearly dropped, I say. The next minute he was out of sight; then I rubbed my eyes and pinched my arms to make sure I was awake."

"And whether you saw a ghost, or whether you didn't," came the mocking retort.

"It was no ghost, Gum; it was Lord Hartledon himself."

"Nonsense! It was just as much one as the other. The fact is, you hadn't quite woke up out of that fine dream of yours, and you saw double. It was just as much young Hartledon as it was me."

"I never saw a ghost yet, and I don't fear I ever shall, Gum. I tell you it was Lord Hartledon. And if harm doesn't befall him at Calne, as shadowed forth in my dream, never believe me again."

"There, that's enough," peremptorily cried the clerk; knowing, if once Mrs. Gum took up any idea with a dream for its basis, how impossible it was to turn her. "Is the key of that kitchen door found yet?"

"No: it never will be, Gum. I've told you so before. My belief is, and always has been, that Rebecca let it drop by accident into the waste bucket."

"My belief is, that Rebecca made away with it for her own purposes," said the clerk. "I caught her just now with the door wide open. She's trying to make acquaintance with the man Pike; that's what she's at."

"Oh, Gum!"

"Yes; it's all very well to say 'Oh, Gum!' but if you were below-stairs looking after her, instead of dreaming up here, it might be better for everyone. Let me once be certain about it, and off she goes the next hour. A fine thing 'twould be some day for us to find her head smothered in the kitchen purgatory, and the silver spoons gone; as will be the case if any loose characters get in."

He was descending the stairs as he spoke the last sentence, delivered in loud tones, probably for the benefit of Miss Rebecca Jones. And lest the intelligent Protestant reader should fear he is being introduced to unorthodox regions, it may be as well to mention that the "purgatory" in Mr. Jabez Gum's kitchen consisted of an excavation, two feet square, under the hearth, covered with a grating through which the ashes and the small cinders fell; thereby enabling the economical housewife to throw the larger ones on the fire again. Such wells or "purgatories," as they are called, are common enough in the old-fashioned kitchens of certain English districts.

Mrs. Gum, ready now, had been about to follow her husband; but his suggestion—that the girl was watching an opportunity to make acquaintance with their undesirable neighbour, Pike—struck her motionless.

It seemed that she could never see this man without a shiver, or overcome the fright experienced when she first met him. It was on a dark autumn night. She was coming through the garden when she discerned, or thought she discerned, a light in the abandoned shed. Thinking of fire, she hastily crossed the stile that divided their garden from the waste land, and ran to it. There she was confronted by what she took to be a bear—but a bear that could talk; for he gruffly asked her who she was and what she wanted. A black-haired, black-browed man, with a pipe between his teeth, and one sinewy arm bared to the elbow.

How Mrs. Gum tore away and tumbled over the stile in her terror, and got home again, she never knew. She supposed it to be a tramp, who had taken shelter there for the night; but finding to her dismay that the tramp stayed on, she had never overcome her fright from that hour to this.

Neither did her husband like the proximity of such a gentleman. They caused securer bolts to be put on their doors—for fastenings in small country places are not much thought about, people around being proverbially honest. They also had their shutters altered. The shutters to the windows, back and front, had holes in them in the form of a heart, such as you may have sometimes noticed. Before the wild-looking man—whose name came to be known as Pike—had been in possession of the shed a fortnight, Jabez Gum had the holes in his shutters filled-in and painted over. An additional security, said the neighbours: but poor timid Mrs. Gum could not overcome that first fright, and the very mention of the man set her trembling and quaking.

Nothing more was said of the dream or the apparition, real or fancied, of Lord Hartledon: Clerk Gum did not encourage the familiar handling of such topics in everyday life. He breakfasted, devoted an hour to his own business in the little office, and then put on his coat to go out. It was Friday morning. On that day and on Wednesdays the church was open for baptisms, and it was the clerk's custom to go over at ten o'clock and apprize the Rector of any notices he might have had.

Passing in at the iron gates, the large white house rose before him, beyond the wide lawn. It had been built by Dr. Ashton at his own expense. The old Rectory was a tumbledown, inconvenient place, always in dilapidation, for as soon as one part of it was repaired another fell through; and the Rector opened his heart and his purse, both large and generous, and built a new one. Mr. Gum was making his way unannounced to the Rector's study, according to custom, when a door on the opposite side of the hall opened, and Dr. Ashton came out. He was a pleasant-looking man, with dark hair and eyes, his countenance one of keen intellect; and though only of middle height, there was something stately, grand, imposing in his whole appearance.

"Is that you, Jabez?"

Connected with each other for so many years—a connection which had begun when both were young—the Rector and Mrs. Ashton had never called him anything but Jabez. With other people he was Gum, or Mr. Gum, or Clerk Gum: Jabez with them. He, Jabez, was the older man of the two by six or seven years, for the Rector was not more than forty-five. The clerk crossed the hall, its tessellated flags gleaming under the colours thrown in by the stained windows, and entered the drawing-room, a noble apartment looking on to the lawn in front. Mrs. Ashton, a tall, delicate-looking woman, with a gentle face, was standing before a painting just come home and hung up; to look at which the Rector and his wife had gone into the room.

It was the portrait of a sweet-looking girl with a sunny countenance. The features were of the delicate contour of Mrs. Ashton's; the rich brown hair, the soft brown eyes, and the intellectual expression of the face resembled the doctor's. Altogether, face and portrait were positively charming; one of those faces you must love at first sight, without waiting to question whether or not they are beautiful.

"Is it a good likeness, Jabez?" asked the Rector, whilst Mrs. Ashton made room for him with a smile of greeting.

"As like as two peas, sir," responded Jabez, when he had taken a long look. "What a face it is! Oftentimes it comes across my mind when I am not thinking of anything but business; and I'm always the better for it."

"Why, Jabez, this is the first time you have seen it."

"Ah, ma'am, you know I mean the original. There's two baptisms to-day, sir," he added, turning away; "two, and one churching. Mrs. Luttrell and her child, and the poor little baby whose mother died."

"Mrs. Luttrell!" repeated the Rector. "It's soon for her, is it not?"

"They want to go away to the seaside," replied the clerk. "What about that notice, sir?"

"I'll see to it before Sunday, Jabez. Any news?"

"No, sir; not that I've heard of. My wife wanted to persuade me she saw—"