The Haunted Room: A Tale

CHAPTER XIII.

WORK

On the following Sunday afternoon Emmie was sitting alone by the drawing-room window, with a devotional book in her hand, but her eyes resting on the fading glories of the woodland landscape, and her thoughts on her childhood’s home, when she was joined by her brother Bruce.

“I am glad to find you alone,” said Bruce, as he took a seat by his sister’s side; “I want to consult you, I need your help.”

Such words from the lips of the speaker were gratifying to Emmie; Bruce was ever more ready to give help than to ask it. Emmie closed her book, put it down, and was at once all attention.

“I have been making a little chart of the estate,” said Bruce, unrolling a paper which he placed before his sister.

“What are those square marks on it?” inquired Emmie, looking with interest at the neatly executed chart.

“These are cottages, – some larger, some smaller,” was the reply. “Those buildings marked in red are public-houses; those in green are farms. You observe that there is not a church or a school in the place; there is not one nearer than S – .”

“More’s the pity!” said Emmie.

“If you count, you will find that there are eighty-seven tenements of various kinds, and the dwellers in them are, of course, all tenants of our father. Give five individuals to each family, and you have four hundred and thirty-five souls on this estate, without a resident clergyman.”

“And what can bring so many people around us?” asked Emmie.

“I believe the dye-works,” answered her brother. “They give employment to most of the men who are not farm-labourers, and, as far as I have ascertained, to some of the women also.”

“Then the people are not very poor,” observed Emmie, with a look of relief; for she had been alarmed at the idea of more than four hundred beggars being quartered on her father’s estate.

“The men in work ought not to be very poor,” said Bruce; “but then there are sure to be widows, sick folk, and some too old for work. Besides this, improvidence, ignorance, and vice always bring misery in their train, and, from all that I have heard or seen, the people here are little better than heathens. The children run about like wild creatures; there is no one to teach them their duty to God or to man.”

“I hope that papa may in time set up a school,” said Emmie. – Compulsory education was a thing not yet introduced into England.

“I hope that he may; but he cannot do so at present,” observed Bruce. “I was talking with him on the subject on our way from church this morning. Our father’s expenses in educating Vibert and myself are heavy, and if either or both of us go to college they will be heavier still. Yet for these wretched tenants something should be done, and at once.”

“Papa intends gradually to repair or rebuild some of the cottages.”

“I am speaking of the people who inhabit the cottages,” interrupted Bruce; “the dirty, ignorant, swearing, lying creatures who are dropping off, year by year, from misery on this side of the grave to worse misery beyond it.”

Emmie looked distressed and perplexed. “What can be done for them?” she inquired.

“We must, in the first place, know them better, and so find out how to help them,” said Bruce. “You are aware that I have little time to spare from my studies, which it is my duty to prosecute vigorously. I can give but my Sunday evenings, and my father is quite willing that on them I should hold a night-school for boys in our barn.”

Emmie looked with smiling admiration on her young brother, about to undertake with characteristic resolution what she regarded as a Herculean task. But no trace of a smile lingered on her lips as Bruce calmly went on, —

“I can thus do something for the boys, but the care of the women and the girls naturally falls upon you.”

“Upon me!” cried Emmie, looking aghast.

“Visiting the poor,” continued Bruce, “is not a kind of business which our father can undertake; he has been accustomed to office-work all his life, and, as he told me to-day, he cannot begin at his age an occupation which is to him so utterly new.”

“It would be utterly new to me, and I dare not attempt cottage-visiting!” cried Emmie, whose benevolent efforts had hitherto been confined to subscribing to charities or missions, and working delicate trifles to be sold at fancy bazaars.

“You are young, dear,” observed Bruce Trevor.

“And that is just the reason why I should not be sent amongst all those dreadful people!” cried Emmie. “I might meet with rudeness, or drunkenness, or infectious cases. I cannot think how you could ever wish me to undertake such a work! Wait till I am forty or fifty years old before you ask me to visit these poor.”

“And in the meantime,” said Bruce, “children are growing up ignorant of the very first truths of religion; wretched women, who know no joy in this world, see no prospect of peace in another; the sick lack medicine, the hungry, food; the widow has no one to comfort her, and the dying – die without hope!”

Emmie clasped her hands, and looked pleadingly into the face of her brother. “Oh! what do you ask me to do?” she exclaimed; “do you want me to visit all these cottages, and the public-houses as well!”

“Not all the cottages, and most certainly not the public-houses,” answered Bruce with a smile. “See,” he continued, pointing to different parts of his chart, “I have marked with an E those dwellings which I thought that a lady might visit.”

“There are a fearful number of E’s,” said poor Emmie, very gravely surveying the paper.

“Nay, if you took but two cottages each day (that would be scarce half-an-hour’s work), in a month you would have visited all that I have marked for you,” said the methodical Bruce; “and in each you would have left some little book or striking tract, if you had found that the inmates could read.”

“I should be afraid to ask them if they could read or not,” cried Emmie. Bruce went on without heeding the interruption.

“You would keep a book, and mark down each day where you had called, with a slight notice of the state of each cottage, the name of its tenant, the number of the children, and such other particulars as would be of the utmost value to our father when he affords relief in money. It would be better, perhaps, for you to make it a rule not to give money yourself.”

“That is just the only thing that I could do!” exclaimed Emmie; “I dare not intrude into cottage homes without the excuse of coming to give charity to those who want.”

“The visits of a lady would not be deemed an intrusion,” said Bruce. He had some practical knowledge on the subject, having been for years at a private school where the ladies of the master’s family constantly visited the poor. “Your gentle courtesy will make you welcome wherever you go. Nor need you go alone, you can always take Susan with you.”

“Why not let Susan go by herself?” said Emmie, grasping eagerly at an idea which afforded a hope of escape from work which she disliked and dreaded.

“Susan has been trained for a lady’s-maid, and not for a Bible-woman,” said Bruce; “she is not fitted to act as your substitute, useful as she may prove as your helper. Nor would Susan be as readily welcomed amongst our tenants as would be a real lady, their landlord’s only daughter. Your position and education, Emmie, give you advantages which Susan would not possess; they are talents intrusted to you, which it would be a sin to bury.”

Emmie heaved a disconsolate sigh.

“Let me put the subject in a clearer light,” pursued Bruce. “What would you call the conduct of one of your servants who should, without your leave, ask another person to do the work which she herself had been engaged to perform?”

“I should call it indolence,” replied Emmie. Her brother added the word “presumption.”

“And if a soldier on the eve of a battle should hire a substitute to fight in his stead,” continued Bruce, “what would such an act appear to his comrades and captain?”

“Cowardice,” answered Emmie.

“There have been instances,” said Bruce, “of pilgrimages and penances, imposed on the wealthy, being performed by proxy! A poor man endured, for the sake of money, what the rich man believed to be the penalty of his own sins. What were such penances or pilgrimages, Emmie?”

“A mockery,” was the faltered reply.

“And if in man’s sight there are duties which we cannot make over to others without presumption, cowardice, and rendering the performance of them a solemn mockery, think you that the Divine Master looks with favour on services done by proxy? He intends the rich to come in contact with their poorer brethren. He claims from us not merely the money which we can easily give, but the words of our lips, the strength of our limbs, the thoughts of our brains, the time which is far more precious than gold. The work which your Master gives you to do, the special work, no substitute can perform.”

“Oh! I wish with all my heart and soul that we had never left Summer Villa, never come to Myst Hall!” exclaimed Emmie.

Bruce was a little disappointed that such an exclamation should be the only reply to his serious words. “You would surely not desire to pass through life putting aside every cross but the fanciful ornament which it is the fashion to wear!” he remarked with slight severity in his manner. “You have given yourself, body and soul, to a heavenly Master, – is it for Him or for you to choose your work? Is it a very hard command if He say to you now, ‘Work for one half-hour each day in My vineyard’?”

“I would rather work for six hours with my fingers quietly in my own room,” murmured Emmie.

“That is, you would select your own favourite kind of work, take merely what is pleasant and easy, and what suits your natural temper,” said Bruce. “There is nothing to thwart your will or try your temper in making pretty trifles, cultivating your accomplishments, or managing a small household such as ours.”

“There you are mistaken, Bruce,” observed Emmie, raising her head, which had drooped as she had uttered her former sentence. “It does try my courage to speak to our new servant Hannah, that masculine, loud-voiced, ill-tempered woman. I did but say to her this morning, in as gentle a way as I could, that I have a book of recipes, and that perhaps she could get some hints from it, as one of the gentlemen is rather particular as to cookery, and Hannah looked ready to fly at my face. I shall never venture to find fault with her again.”

“Emmie, Emmie, is this miserable timidity to meet you at every turn?” exclaimed Bruce. “Have you no spirit, no strength of will to wrestle it down, to rise above it?”

“I cannot help being timid,” sighed Emmie.

“Vibert might as well say that he cannot help being selfish,” said Bruce. “If you know that you have a besetting fault, it is not that you should sit down with folded hands and let it bind you, without so much as a struggle to shake yourself free.”

Bruce spoke with some warmth, for he spoke from his heart. It is so easy to point out what is the plain duty of others; it is so difficult frankly to acknowledge our own. The young man justly accused Emmie of neglecting the special work appointed for her by her Great Master, and of shrinking from fighting the good fight of faith. Himself resolute and courageous, with great power of self-control and self-denial, Bruce could make little allowance for failings which were not his own. But had Bruce no special work to do from which the natural man recoiled? had he no battle to fight against a besetting sin? Bruce’s appointed work lay close to him, though he did not choose to perceive it, and was virtually repeating Cain’s question, Am I my brother’s keeper? Bruce suffered pride to control his actions, and mar the work of grace in his soul. It would have been as arduous a work for him to “wrestle it down, to rise above it,” as it would have been to his timid sister to go forth and minister to the poor in the hovels surrounding Myst Court.

Emmie’s conscience was tender; she had a sincere desire to do what was right, blended with a natural wish to stand well in the opinion of a brother whom she admired and loved. Before the interview between them was ended, Emmie had promised to “attempt to break the ice” on the following day; but she inwardly shivered at the thought of the effort before her. How many have experienced this repugnance, this dread of obeying the Master’s call and entering His vineyard! – how many of those who have afterwards found in His work their joy and delight! Duty often, when viewed from a distance, wears an aspect forbidding and stern; but on closer approach she is found to have treasures in her hand, and flowers spring up in her path.

CHAPTER XIV.

EARLY IMPRESSIONS

Vibert had not finished his breakfast when Bruce, on the Monday morning, started on his walk to the town. Notwithstanding sundry remonstrances and hints from his father and Emmie, it was a full half-hour before the younger brother followed in the track of the elder. And very different was the careless, sauntering step of Vibert from the firm, quick tread of Bruce.

Mr. Trevor’s elder son returned alone in the dusk of evening, but this time Vibert was scarcely ten minutes behind him.

“Mr. Blair has a capital method of imparting knowledge; it will be our own fault if we do not make progress under him,” said Bruce to Emmie when he rejoined her in the drawing-room. “My tutor has given me plenty of work to do this evening, but I must spare an hour to refresh myself by hearing you sing. And you, dear, what have you been doing during my absence, and where have you been?”

Bruce was a little curious to know whether his fair sister had had courage to “break the ice.”

“Oh! I do not know what you will think of me, Bruce,” said Emmie, dropping her soft brown eyes. “I did intend to make a beginning of visiting the tenants; I had ruled lines in a book, that I might set down in order their names and all that you want to know; but – but – ”

“Let’s hear all about it,” said Bruce good-humouredly, taking a seat by his sister’s side: it was pleasant to the student to unbend after the hard work of the day.

“I could not go out in the morning, – that is to say, not conveniently,” began Emmie. “I had a long, long letter to write to Alice, and another to my aunt in Grosvenor Square; and I had orders to give to Hannah, and then to arrange with Susan about hanging pictures to adorn, or rather to hide the untidy walls of my own little room.”

“It would be far better to give up that room,” said Bruce. “You do not consider, Emmie, in what a bad position you put me by obliging me to occupy the other apartment.”

“How? – what do you mean?” cried Emmie, looking up with an expression of uneasiness on her face; “you do not find that you are disturbed by – ”

“Not by spectres,” replied Bruce, smiling; “but no one likes to appear to be the most selfish fellow in the world.”

“No one would ever think you selfish, dear Bruce; the cap does not fit you at all.”

“Therefore I have an objection to putting it on,” said Bruce Trevor; “I would leave the cap to Vibert, who, to judge by his conduct, may actually think it becoming. But enough of this. You know that I dislike retaining my luxurious quarters, but if you really prefer the small room, everything possible must be done to make it a gem of a room. Now tell me how you passed the rest of the day.”

“After luncheon papa called me to his study to copy out something for him,” said Emmie; “however, that did not take me long. Then I glanced over the Times, and read about such a horrible murder, committed in a country lane, that it made me feel more than ever afraid to venture beyond our grounds. Yet, to please you, dear Bruce, I rang the bell for Susan, and bade her get ready to accompany me in a walk to the hamlet.”

“I hope that you had a higher motive than that of pleasing me,” said her brother.

“I am not sure that I had, at least not then,” replied the truthful Emmie. “But, whatever my motive might be, it took Susan and me along the shrubbery as far as the entrance gate. At the further side of that gate, looking through the iron bars, as it seemed to me – like a bird of prey on the watch, stood Harper, with his beak-like nose, his hollow eyes, and his long shaggy hair. You know whom I mean, he is the strange old man whom we met on the night of the storm.”

“And who did good service by cutting the pony’s traces,” said Bruce.

“I wish that I felt more grateful to him for it,” observed Miss Trevor; “but I cannot without nervous dread think of Harper as I saw him on Friday night, with the gleam of blue lightning on his strange face and his flashing knife. Then he gave me such dreadful hints and warnings regarding the haunted room in Myst Court, – I shudder whenever I think of them now!”

“Cast them from your mind, they are rubbish,” said Bruce.

“As Susan and I advanced to the gate,” resumed Emmie, “I felt sure that Harper was sharply watching our movements. I hoped that he would soon go away, so, turning aside, I took three or four turns in the wood with Susan; but every time that we again approached the entrance, I saw that Harper was there. I so much disliked having to pass him, I so much feared that he would address me, that at last I gave up my intention of going to the hamlet to-day. I told Susan that the air felt damp and cold, and that I should put off paying my visits. So feeling, I must own, rather ashamed of myself, I returned to the house.”

“This is too absurd!” exclaimed Bruce, a little provoked, and yet at the same time amused by the frank confession of Emmie. “The hovel in which lives that man Harper is just outside the gate, so that if you are afraid of passing him, even when you have the trusty Susan to act as a bodyguard, you may as well consider yourself a state prisoner at once. So nothing was done to-day?”

“I wrote to London for two packets of Partridge’s illustrated fly-leaves,” said Emmie. “Uncle Arrows recommended them to me as very attractive and useful, and suited for cottage homes. I shall not attempt visiting until I receive the packets by post.”

“I have forestalled you,” said Bruce, “and have laid in already a fair stock of such ammunition to serve us in our warfare against ignorance and intemperance here. I can supply you at once with as many of the fly-leaves as there are homes in the hamlet.”

“Then I am not to have a day’s reprieve,” sighed the unwilling recruit.