Part 1 - Chapter 4. First Foot In The Haunted House

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_ PART I CHAPTER IV. FIRST FOOT IN THE HAUNTED HOUSE

To understand what a sensation these strange events made in Eden Valley, it is necessary that you should know something of Eden Valley itself and how it was governed.

Governed, you say? Was it not within the King's dominions, and governed like every other part of these his Majesty's kingdoms? Had we of the Wide Valley risen against constituted authority and filled all Balcary Bay between Isle Rathan and the Red Haven with floating tea-chests?

Well, not exactly; but many a score of stealthy cargoes had been carried past our doors on horse-back, pony-back, shelty-back--up by Bluehills and over the hip of Ben Tudor. And often, often from the Isle of Man fleet had twenty score of barrels been dropped overboard just in time to prevent the minions of the law, as represented by H.M. ship Seamew, sloop-of-war, from seizing them. So you will observe that the revolt of Eden Valley against authority, though not quite so complete as that of the late New England colonies, yet proceeded from the same motives.

Only, as it typo happened, the tea-chests which were spilt in Boston Harbour were finished so far as the brewing of tea was concerned, while the kegs and firkins dropped overboard were easily recoverable by such as were in the secret. In a day or two, the tide being favourable and the nights dark enough, these same kegs would be found reposing in bulk in the recesses of Brandy Knowe, next by Collin Mill--save for a few, left in well defined places--one being left at the Manse for the Doctor himself. That was within the very wall of the kirkyard, and under the shadow of the clump of yews which had dripped upon the tombstones that covered at least three of his predecessors. A second reposed under the prize cabbages belonging to General Johnstone (who, as a young officer of Marines, had simulated the courage of Admiral Byng before Minorca, and like that gallant seaman, narrowly escaped being shot for his pains). General Johnstone's gardener knew well where this keg was hidden. But it contained liquid well-nigh sacred in the eyes of his master, and he had far too much common-sense ever to presume to find it. A third came to anchor under a peat-stack belonging to Mr. Shepstone Oglethorpe, the only Episcopalian within the parish bounds, and the descendent of an English military family which had once held possession of the Maitland estates during the military dragonnades of Charles II and James II, but had been obliged to restore the mansion and most of the property after the Prince of Orange made good his landing with his "Protestant wind" at Torbay. Enough, however, remained to make Mr. Shepstone Oglethorpe the next man in the parish after the minister and the General. He was, besides, a pleasant, gossipy, young-old, fluttery bachelor--a great acquisition at four-hours tea-drinkings, and much more of a praise to them that do well than any sort of a terror to evil-doers.

These three constituted the general staff of our commonwealth, and in spite of occasional forgetfulnesses as to the declaration of the aforesaid kegs, parcels of French silks and Malines lace, to H.M.'s Supervisor of Customs, King George had no more loyal subjects than these highest authorities in Eden Valley, ecclesiastical, military and civil. Then, after due interval, came the farmers of Eden Valley, honest, far-seeing, cautious men, slow of action, slower still of speech--not at all to be judged by the standard of the richest of them, Mr. Josiah Kettle. He was, in fact, a mere incomer, who had been promoted a Justice of the Peace because, on the occasion of the last scare as to a French invasion, he had made and carried out large and remunerative contracts for the supply of the militia and other troops hastily got together to protect the Solway harbours from Dryffe Sands to the Back Shore.

The siege of the Haunted House of Marnhoul happened on a Friday, the last school-keeping day of the week. Saturday was employed by the parish in digesting the news and forming opinions for the consumpt of the morrow. Meantime there was a pretty steady stream of the curious along the Marnhoul road, but the padlock had been replaced, and only the broken bar bore token of the storm which had passed that way.

On Sunday, however, a small oblong scrap of white attracted the attention of the nearer curious. It was attached, at about the level of the eyes, to the unbroken bar of the gate of Marnhoul, and on being approached with due care, was found to bear the following mysterious inscription--

"Sir Louis Maitland of Marnhoul, Bart., and Miss Irma Sobieski Maitland receive every afternoon from 2 to 5."

Marnhoul, Galloway, June 21.

"Keep us a'!" was the universal exclamation of Eden Valley as it read this solemnizing inscription. It was generally believed to be a challenge to the lawyers and the powers in general to come at these hours and turn the young people out.

And many were the opinions as to the legality of such a course. Law was not generally understood in the Galloway of that date, and though the Sheriff Substitute rode through the village once a month to spend a night over the "cartes" with his friend the General, he too only laughed and rode on. He was well known to me at the head of his profession, and to have the ear of the Government. Such studied indifference, therefore, could only be put down to a desire to wink at the proceedings of the children, illegal and unprecedented as these might be.

But I must now say something about my own folk.

Though undoubtedly originally Highland, and, as my father averred, able to claim kindred with the highest of his name, the MacAlpines had long been domiciled in the south. My father was the son of a neighbouring minister, and had only escaped the fate of succeeding his father in the charge by a Highland aversion to taking the sacrament at the age when he was called upon to do so--in order that, by the due order of the Church of Scotland, he might be taken on his trials as a student in Divinity. He had also, about that date, further complicated matters by marrying my mother, Grace Lyon, the penniless daughter of a noted Cameronian elder of the parish of Eden Valley.

In order to support her, and (after a little) us, John MacAlpine had accepted a small school far up the glen, from which, after a year or two, on the appointment of Dr. Forbes to the parish, he had followed his old college friend to Eden Valley itself. Under his care the little academy had gradually been organized on the newest and best scholastic lines known to the time. Even for girls classics and mathematics played a prominent part. Samplers and knitting, which had previously formed a notable branch of the curriculum, were banished to an hour when little Miss Huntingdon taught the girls, locked in her own department like Wykliffites in danger of the fires of Tower Hill. And at such times my father almost ran as he passed the door of the infant school and thought of the follies which were being committed within.

"Samplers," he was wont to mutter, "samplers--when they might be at their Ovid!"

My mother--Gracie Lyon that was--had none of the stern blood of her Cameronian forebears, nor yet my father's tempestuous Norland mood. She was gentle, patient, with little to say for herself--like Leah, tender-eyed (in the English, not in the Hebrew sense)--and I remember well that as a child one of my great pleasures was to stroke her cheek as she was putting me to sleep, saying, "Mother, how soft your skin is. It is like velvet!"

"Aye," she would answer, with a sigh gentle as herself, "so they used to tell me!"

And I somehow knew that "they" excluded my father, but whom it included I did not know then nor for many a day after.

But my grandmother, my mother's mother--ah, there indeed you were in a different world! She dwelt in a large house on the edge of the Marnhoul woods. My grandfather had the lease of the farm of Heathknowes, with little arable land, but a great hill behind it on which fed black-faced sheep, sundry cattle in the "low parks," and by the river a strip of corn land sufficient for the meal-ark and the stable feeding of his four stout horses. Also on my father's behalf my uncles conducted the lonely saw-mill that ate and ate into the Great Wood and yet never got any farther. There might be seen machinery for making spools--with water-driven lathes, which turned these articles, variously known as "bobbins" and "pirns," literally off the reel by the thousand. It was a sweet, birch-smelling place and my favourite haunt on all holidays. William Lyon, my grandfather, had had a tempestuous youth, from which, as he said, he had been saved "by the grace of God and Mary Lyon."

"Many a sore day she had with me," he would confess to me, for he took pleasure in my society, "but got me buckled down at last!"

As my grandmother also kept me in the most affectionate but complete subjection, the fact that neither one nor the other of us dared disobey "Mary Lyon" was a sort of bond between us. Yet my grandmother was not a very tall nor yet to the outward eye a powerful woman. You had to look her in the eye to know. But there you saw a flash that would have cowed a grenadier. There was something masterful and even martial in her walk, in the way she attacked the enemy of the moment, or the work that fell to her hand. All her ways were dominating without ever being domineering. But in the house of Heathknowes all knew that she had just to be obeyed, and there was an end to it.

When my father and she clashed, it was like the meeting of Miltonic thunderclouds over the Caspian. But on the whole it was safe to wager that even then grandmother got her way. John MacAlpine first discharged his Celtic electricity, and then disengaged his responsibility with the shrug of the right shoulder which was habitual to him. After all, was there not always Horace in his pocket--which he would finger to calm himself even in the heat of a family dispute?

A great school-master was my father, far ben in the secrets of the ancient world--and such a man is always very much of a humanist. My grandmother, alert, clear, decided on all doctrinal points, argumentative, with all her wits fine-edged by the Shorter Catechism, could not abide the least haziness of outline in religious belief.

She did not agree with my grandfather's easier ways, but then he did not argue with her, being far too wise a man.

"Eh, William," she would say, "ye will carry even to the grave some rag of the Scarlet Woman. And at the end I will not be surprised to find ye sitting on some knowetap amang the Seven Hills!"

But at least my grandfather was a Cameronian elder, in the little kirk down by the ford, to which the Lyons had resorted ever since the days of the societies--long before even worthy Mr. MacMillan of Balmaghie came into the Church, ordaining elders, and, along with the pious Mr. Logan of Buittle, even ordaining ministers for carrying on the work of the faithful protesting remnant.

But my father, John MacAlpine, both by office and by temperament, belonged to the Kirk of Scotland as by law established. So indeed did nine-tenths of the folk in the parish of Eden Valley. The band of Cameronians at the Ford, and the forlorn hope of Episcopalians in their hewn-stone chapel with the strange decorations, built on the parcel of ground pertaining to Mr. Shepstone Oglethorpe, were the only non-Establishers in the parish. Yet both, nevertheless, claimed to be the only true Church of Scotland, claimed it fiercely, with a fervour sharpened by the antiquity of their claims and the smallness of their numbers. This was especially true of the Cameronians, who were ever ready to give a reason for the faith that was in them. The Episcopalians lacked the Westminster Catechisms as a means of intellectual gymnastic. So far, therefore, they were handicapped, and indeed reduced to the mere persistent assertion that they, and they alone, were the apostolic Church, and if any out of their communion were saved, it must only be by the uncovenanted mercies of God.

Yet, though not within the sacred triangle of gentility (as it was known in Eden Valley), of which the manse, the General's bungalow, and the residence of Mr. Shepstone Oglethorpe occupied the three angles, my grandmother was the first caller upon the lonely children in the great house of Marnhoul.

I shall never forget her indignation when I went in to the dairy and told her in detail what had happened--of the forcing of the gates, and the firing upon the back windows. My grandfather, seated within doors, in his great triangular easy-chair at his own corner of the wide fireplace, looked up and remarked in his serene and far-off fashion that "such proceedings filled him with shame and sorrow."

The words and still more the tone roused my grandmother.

"William Lyon," she said, standing before him in the clean middle of the hearth which she had just been sweeping, and threatening him with the brush (she would not have touched him for anything in the world, for she recognized his position as an elder). "Hear to ye--'shame and sorrow'! Aye, well may ye say it. Had I been there I would have 'sinned and sorrowed' them. To go breaking into houses with swords and staves, and firing off powder and shot--all to frighten a pair of poor bairns! Certes, but I would have sorted them to rights--with tongue, aye, and with arm also."

And at this point Mary Lyon advanced a step so fiercely and with such martial energy, that, well inured as my grandfather was to the generous outbursts of his wife, he moved his chair back with a certain alacrity.

"Mary," he remonstrated, "Mr. Shepstone Oglethorpe was with them. So at least I understand, and also Mr. Kettle, who is a Justice of the Peace--these in addition to the constable----"

He got no further. My grandmother swooped upon the names, as perhaps he expected. It was by no means the first time that, in order to draw off the hounds of his wife's wrath, he had skilfully drawn a red herring across the trail.

"Shepstone--Shepstone!" she cried, "a useless, daidling body! What was he ever good for in this world but to tie his neckcloth and twirl his cane? Oh aye, he can maybe button his 'spats'! That is, if he doesna get the servant lass to do it for him. And Josiah Kettle! William, I wonder you are not shamed, goodman--to sit there in your own hearth-corner and name such a hypocrite to me----"

"Stop there, Mary," said her husband; "only a man's Maker has the right to call him a hypocrite----"

"Well, I am an Elder's wife, and I'll e'en be his Viceroy. Josiah Kettle is a hypocrite, and I hae telled him so to his face--not once, but a score of times. He has robbed the widow. He has impoverished the orphan. Fegs, if I were a man, I could not keep my hands off him, and, 'deed, I have hard enough work as it is. If there was a man about the house worth his salt----"

"Forgive your enemies----" suggested my grandfather, "do good----"

"So I would--so I would," cried my grandmother, "but first I would give the best cheese out o' the dairy-loft to see Josiah ducked head over heels in Blackmire Dub! Forgive--aye, certainly, since it is commanded. But a bit dressing down would do the like o' him no harm, and then the Lord could take His own turn at him after!"

Thus did my grandmother address all who came into contact with her, and there is every reason to believe that she had more than once similarly exhorted Mr. Josiah Kettle, rich farmer and money-lender though he was. Yet it is equally certain that if Mr. Kettle had been stricken with a dangerous and deadly malady which made his nearest kin flee from him, it would have been my grandmother who would have flown to nurse him with the same robust and forcible tenderness with which she oversaw the teething and other ills incidental to her daughter's children.

"As for Jocky Black," continued my grandmother, "the pomp of the atomy--'In the name of the law,' says he--I'd law him! I would e'en nip his bit stick from his puir twisted fingers and gie him his paiks--that is, if it were worth the trouble! As for me, get me my bonnet, Jen--my best Sunday leghorn with the puce chenille in it--I must look my featest going to a great house to pay my respects. And you shall come too, Duncan!" (She turned to me with her usual alertness.) "Run home and tidy--quick! Bid your mother put on your Sunday suit. No, Jen, I will not take you to fright the poor things out of their wits. Afterwards, we shall see. But at first, Duncan there, if he gets over his blateness, will be more of their age, and fear them less."

"If all I hear be true," said my Aunt Jen, pursing up her mouth as if she had bitten into a crab apple, "the lassie is little likely to be feared of you or any mortal on the earth!"

"Maybe aye--maybe no," snapped my grandmother, "at any rate be off with you into the back kitchen and see that the dishes are washed, so as not to be a show to the public. You and Meg have so little sense that whiles I wonder that I am your mother."

"You are not Meg's mother that I ken of!" her daughter responded acridly.

"I am her mistress, and the greater fool to keep such a handless hempie about the house! You, Janet, I have to provide for in some wise--such being the will of the Lord--His and your father's there. Now then, clear! Be douce! Let me get on my cloak and leghorn bonnet."

My grandmother being thus accoutred, and I invested with a black jacket, knee-breeches, shoes, and the regulation fluffy tie that tickled my throat and made me a week-day laughing stock to all who dared, Mistress Mary Lyon and I started to make our first call at the Great House of Marnhoul. _

Read next: Part 1: Chapter 5. The Censor Of Morals

Read previous: Part 1: Chapter 3. Miss Irma Gives An Audience

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