Twenty-Five Ghost Stories
to see me, what a real delight it was to have got me at last under his
roof, and what a good time we would have together, like the old days
over again.
He had sent my luggage up to my room, which was ready for me, and he
bade me make haste and dress for dinner.
So saying he took me through a paneled hall, up an old oak staircase,
and showed me my room, which, hurried as I was, I observed was hung
with tapestry, and had a large four-post bed, with velvet curtains,
opposite the window.
They had gone in to dinner when I came down, despite all the haste I
made in dressing; but a place had been kept for me next Lady Lynton.
Besides my hosts, there were their two daughters, Colonel Lynton, a
brother of Sir Francis, the chaplain, and some others, whom I do not
remember distinctly.
After dinner there was some music in the hall, and a game of whist in
the drawing-room, and after the ladies had gone upstairs, Lynton and I
retired to the smoking-room, where we sat up talking the better part of
the night. I think it must have been near three when I retired. Once in
bed I slept so soundly that my servant’s entrance the next morning
failed to arouse me, and it was past nine when I awoke.
After breakfast and the disposal of the newspapers, Lynton retired to
his letters, and I asked Lady Lynton if one of her daughters might show
me the house. Elizabeth, the eldest, was summoned, and seemed in no way
to dislike the task.
The house was, as already intimated, by no means large; it occupied
three sides of a square, the entrance and one end of the stables making
the fourth side. The interior was full of interest--passages, rooms,
galleries, as well as hall, were paneled in dark wood and hung with
pictures. I was shown everything on the ground
floor, and then on the first floor. Then my guide proposed that we
should ascend a narrow, twisting staircase that led to a gallery. We did
as proposed, and entered a handsome long room or passage leading to a
small chamber at one end, in which my guide told me her father kept
books and papers.
I asked if anyone slept in this gallery, as I noticed a bed and
fireplace, and rods by means of which curtains might be drawn, enclosing
one portion where were bed and fireplace, so as to convert it into a
very cosy chamber.
She answered “No;” the place was not really used, except as a playroom;
though, sometimes, if the house happened to be very full--in her
great-grandfather’s time--she had heard that it had been occupied.
By the time we had been over the house, and I had also been shown the
garden and the stables, and introduced to the dogs, it was nearly one
o’clock. We were to have an early luncheon, and to drive afterwards to
see the ruins of one of the grand old Yorkshire abbeys.
This was a pleasant expedition, and we got back just in time for tea,
after which there was some reading aloud. The evening passed much in the
same way as the preceding one, except that Lynton, who had some
business, did not go down into the smoking-room, and I took the
opportunity of retiring early in order to write a letter for the Indian
mail, something having been said as to the prospect of hunting the next
day.
I had finished my letter, which was a long one, together with two or
three others, and had just got into bed, when I heard a step overhead,
as of someone walking along the gallery, which I now knew ran
immediately above my room. It was a slow, heavy, measured tread which I
could hear getting gradually louder and nearer, and then as gradually
fading away, as it retreated into the distance.
I was startled for a moment, having been told that the gallery was
unused; but the next instant it occurred to me that I had been told it
communicated with a chamber where Sir Francis kept books and papers. I
knew he had some writing to do, and I thought no more on the matter.
I was down the next morning at breakfast in good time. “How late you
were last night,” I said to Lynton, in the middle of breakfast. “I heard
you overhead after one o’clock.”
Lynton replied rather shortly: “Indeed you did not, for I was in bed
last night before twelve.”
“There was someone certainly moving overhead last night,” I answered,
“for I heard his steps as distinctly as I ever heard anything in my life
going down the gallery.”
Upon which Colonel Lynton remarked that he had often fancied he had
heard steps on the staircase, when he knew that no one was about. He was
apparently disposed to say more, when his brother interrupted him
somewhat curtly, as I fancied, and asked me if I should feel inclined
after breakfast to have a horse and go out and look for the hounds. They
met a considerable way off, but if they did not find in the coverts they
would first draw, a thing not improbable, they would come our way, and
we might fall in with them about one o’clock and have a run. I said
there was nothing I should like better. Lynton mounted me on a very nice
chestnut, and the rest of the party having gone out shooting, and the
young ladies being otherwise engaged, he and I started about eleven
o’clock for our ride.
It was a beautiful day, soft, with a bright sun, one of those beautiful
days which so frequently occur in the early part of November.
On reaching the hilltop where Lynton had expected to meet the hounds, no
trace of them was to be discovered. They must have found at once, and
run in a different direction. At three o’clock, after we had eaten our
sandwiches, Lynton reluctantly abandoned all hopes of falling in with
the hounds, and said we would return home by a slightly different route.
We had not descended the hill before we came on an old chalk quarry and
the remains of a disused kiln.
I recollected the spot at once. I had been here with Sir Francis on my
former visit, many years ago. “Why, bless me!” said I; “do you remember,
Lynton, what happened here when I was with you before? There had been
men engaged removing chalk, and they came on a skeleton under some depth
of rubble. We went together to see it removed, and you said you would
have it preserved till it could be examined by some ethnologist or
anthropologist, any one of those dry-as-dusts, to decide whether the
remains were dolichocephalous or brachycephalous--whether British,
Danish, or--modern. What was the result?”
Sir Francis hesitated a moment, and then answered, “It is true, I had
the remains removed.”
“Was there an inquest?”
“No. I had been opening some of the tumuli on the Wolds. I had sent a
crouched skeleton and some skulls to the Scarsborough museum. This, I
was doubtful about--whether it was a prehistoric interment--in fact, to
what date it belonged. No one thought of an inquest.”
On reaching the house, one of the grooms who took the horses, in answer
to a question from Lynton, said that Colonel and Mrs. Hampshire had
arrived about an hour ago, and that, one of the horses being lame, the
carriage in which they had driven over from Castle Frampton was to put
up for the night. In the drawing-room we found Lady Lynton pouring out
tea for her husband’s sister and her husband, who, as we came in,
exclaimed: “We have come to beg a night’s lodging.”
It appeared that they had been on a visit in the neighborhood, and had
been obliged to leave at a moment’s notice in consequence of a sudden
death in the house where they were staying, and that, in the
impossibility of getting a fly, their hosts had sent them over to
Byfield.
“We thought,” Mrs. Hampshire went on to say, “that as we were coming
here the end of next week, you would not mind having us a little sooner;
or that, if the house were quite full, you would be willing to put us up
anywhere till Monday, and let us come back later.”
Lady Lynton interposed with the remark that it was all settled; and
then, turning to her husband, added: “But I want to speak to you for a
moment.”
They both left the room together.
Lynton came back almost immediately, and, making an excuse to show me,
on a map in the hall, the point to which we had ridden, said, as soon as
we were alone, with a look of considerable annoyance: “I am afraid we
must ask you to change your room. Shall you mind very much? I think we
can make you quite comfortable upstairs in the gallery, which is the
only room available. Lady Lynton has had a good fire lit; the place is
really not cold, and it will be only for a night or two. Your servant
has been told to put your things together, but Lady Lynton did not like
to give orders to have them actually moved before my speaking to you.”
I assured him that I did not mind in the very least; that I should be
quite as comfortable upstairs; but that I did mind very much their
making such a fuss about a matter of that sort with an old friend like
myself.
Certainly nothing could look more comfortable than my new lodging when I
went upstairs to dress. There was a bright fire in the large grate, an
arm-chair had been drawn up beside it, and all my books and writing
things had been put in, with a reading-lamp in the central position, and
the heavy tapestry curtains were drawn, converting this part of the
gallery into a room to itself. Indeed, I felt somewhat inclined to
congratulate myself on the change. The spiral staircase had been one
reason against this place having been given to the Hampshires. No lady’s
long dress trunk could have mounted it.
Sir Francis was necessarily a good deal occupied in the evening with his
sister and her husband, whom he had not seen for some time. Colonel
Hampshire had also just heard that he was likely to be ordered to Egypt,
and when Lynton and he retired to the smoking-room, instead of going
there I went upstairs to my own room to finish a book in which I was
interested. I did not, however, sit up long, and very soon went to bed.
Before doing so, I drew back the curtains on the rods, partly because I
like plenty of air where I sleep, and partly also because I thought I
might like to see the play of the moonlight on the floor in the portion
of the gallery beyond where I lay, and where the blinds had not been
drawn.
I must have been asleep for some time, for the fire, which I had left in
full blaze, was gone to a few sparks wandering among the ashes, when I
suddenly awoke with the impression of having heard a latch click at the
further extremity of the gallery, where was the chamber containing books
and papers.
I had always been a light sleeper, but on the present occasion I woke at
once to complete and acute consciousness, and with a sense of stretched
attention which seemed to intensify all my faculties. The wind had
risen, and was blowing in fitful gusts round the house.
A minute or two passed, and I began almost to fancy I must have been
mistaken, when I distinctly heard the creak of the door, and then the
click of the latch falling back into place. Then I heard a sound on the
boards as of one moving in the gallery. I sat up to listen, and as I did
so I distinctly heard steps coming down the gallery.
I heard them approach and pass my bed; I could see nothing, all was
dark; but I heard the tread proceeding toward where were the uncurtained
and unshuttered windows, two in number; but the moon shone through only
one of these, the nearest--the other was dark, shadowed by the chapel or
some other building at right angles. The tread seemed to me to pause now
and again, and then continue as before.
I now fixed my eyes intently on the one illumined window, and it
appeared to me as if some dark body passed across it; but what? I
listened intently, and heard the step proceed to the end of the gallery,
and then return.
I again watched the lighted window, and immediately that the sound