suppose it is with being the eldest sister that it always seems my fate to receive the confidences of the rest of the family, and it was about this time, a fortnight or so after his arrival, that it began to strike me that Nat looked as if he had something on his mind.
"He is sure to tell me what it is, sooner or later," I said to myself. "Probably he has left some small debts behind him at school – only he did not look worried or anxious when he first came home."
The confidence was given. One afternoon Nat followed me into the library, where I was going to write some letters, and said he wanted to speak to me. I put my paper aside and waited.
"Leila," he began, "you must promise not to laugh at me."
This was not what I expected.
"Laugh at you – no, certainly not," I replied, "especially if you are in any trouble. And I have thought you were looking worried, Nat."
"Well, yes," he said, "I don't know if there is anything coming over me – I feel quite well, but – Leila," he broke off, "do you believe in ghosts?"
I started.
"Has any one – " I was beginning rashly, but the boy interrupted me.
"No, no," he said eagerly, "no one has put anything of the kind into my head – no one. It is my own senses that have seen – felt it – or else, if it is fancy, I must be going out of my mind, Leila – I do believe there is a ghost here in the play-room."
I sat silent, an awful dread creeping over me, which, as he went on, grew worse and worse. Had the thing – the Finster shadow – attached itself to us – I had read of such cases – had it journeyed with us to this peaceful, healthful house? The remembrance of the cold thrill experienced by Miss Larpent and myself flashed back upon me. And Nat went on.
Yes, the cold was the first thing he had been startled by, followed, just as in the gallery of our old castle, by the consciousness of the terrible shadow-like presence, gradually taking form in the moonlight. For there had been moonlight the last night or two, and Nat, in his skating ardour, had amused himself alone in the play-room after Dormy had gone to bed.
"The night before last was the worst," he said. "It stopped raining, you remember, Leila, and the moon was very bright – I noticed how it glistened on the wet leaves outside. It was by the moonlight I saw the – the shadow. I wouldn't have thought of skating in the evening but for the light, for we've never had a lamp in there. It came round the walls, Leila, and then it seemed to stop and fumble away in one corner – at the end where there is a bench, you know."
Indeed I did know; it was where our governess and I had been sitting.
"I got so awfully frightened," said Nat honestly, "that I ran off. Then yesterday I was ashamed of myself, and went back there in the evening with a candle. But I saw nothing: the moon did not come out. Only – I felt the cold again. I believe it was there – though I could not see it. Leila, what can it be? If only I could make you understand! It is so much worse than it sounds to tell."
I said what I could to soothe him. I spoke of odd shadows thrown by the trees outside swaying in the wind, for the weather was still stormy. I repeated the time-worn argument about optical illusions, etc., etc., and in the end he gave in a little. It might have been his fancy. And he promised me most faithfully to breathe no hint – not the very faintest – of the fright he had had, to Sophy or Dormy, or any one.
Then I had to tell my father. I really shrank from doing so, but there seemed no alternative. At first, of course, he pooh-poohed it at once by saying Dormy must have been talking to Nat about the Finster business, or if not Dormy, some one– Miss Larpent even! But when all such explanations were entirely set at nought, I must say poor father looked rather blank. I was sorry for him, and sorry for myself – the idea of being followed by this horrible presence was too sickening.
Father took refuge at last in some brain-wave theory – involuntary impressions had been made on Nat by all of us, whose minds were still full of the strange experience. He said he felt sure, and no doubt he tried to think he did, that this theory explained the whole. I felt glad for him to get any satisfaction out of it, and I did my best to take it up too. But it was no use. I felt that Nat's experience had been an "objective" one, as Miss Larpent expressed it – or, as Dormy had said at the first at Finster: "No, no, sister – it's something there– it's nothing to do with me."
And earnestly I longed for the time to come for our return to our own familiar home.
"I don't think I shall ever wish to leave it again," I thought.
But after a week or two the feeling began to fade again. And father very sensibly discovered that it would not do to leave our spare furniture and heavy luggage in the barn – it was getting all dusty and cobwebby. So it was all moved back again to the play-room, and stacked as it had been at first, making it impossible for us to skate or amuse ourselves in any way there, at which Sophy grumbled, but Nat did not.
Father was very good to Nat. He took him about with him as much as he could to get the thought of that horrid thing out of his head. But yet it could not have been half as bad for Nat as for the rest of us, for we took the greatest possible precautions against any whisper of the dreadful and mysterious truth reaching him, that the ghost had followed us from Finster.
Father did not tell Mr. Miles or Jenny about it. They had been worried enough, poor things, by the trouble at Finster, and it would be too bad for them to think that the strange influence was affecting us in the second house we had taken at their recommendation.
"In fact," said father with a rather rueful smile, "if we don't take care, we shall begin to be looked upon askance as a haunted family! Our lives would have been in danger in the good old witchcraft days."
"It is really a mercy that none of the servants have got hold of the story," said Miss Larpent, who was one of our council of three. "We must just hope that no further annoyance will befall us till we are safe at home again."
Her hopes were fulfilled. Nothing else happened while we remained at the Rectory – it really seemed as if the unhappy shade was limited locally, in one sense. For at Finster, even, it had never been seen or felt save in the one room.
The vividness of the impression of poor Nat's experience had almost died away when the time came for us to leave. I felt now that I should rather enjoy telling Phil and Nugent about it, and hearing what they could bring forward in the way of explanation.
We left Raxtrew early in October. Our two big brothers were awaiting us at home, having arrived there a few days before us. Nugent was due at Oxford very shortly.
It was very nice to be in our own house again, after several months' absence, and it was most interesting to see how the alterations, including a good deal of new papering and painting, had been carried out. And as soon as the heavy luggage arrived we had grand consultations as to the disposal about the rooms of the charming pieces of furniture we had picked up at Hunter's. Our rooms are large and nicely shaped, most of them. It was not difficult to make a pretty corner here and there with a quaint old chair or two and a delicate spindle-legged table, and when we had arranged them all – Phil, Nugent, and I, were the movers – we summoned mother and Miss Larpent to give their opinion.
They quite approved, mother even saying that she would be glad of a few more odds and ends.
"We might empower Janet Miles," she said, "to let us know if she sees anything very tempting. Is that really all we have? They looked so much more important in their swathings."
The
