CHAPTER XVII.

THE SPINET.

It was tea-time when Cristiane appeared again from her bedroom, where she had fled in her anger with Cylmer. She came straight to Ismay, where she sat in the drawing-room with her mother, and kissed her penitently.

“I was horrid this morning,” she observed childishly. “But Miles was so stupid. You forgive me, don’t you?”

“I haven’t any need”--smiling, for she could have had no greater service done to her. “But I had to go for a walk by myself this afternoon, and I got drenched.”

“The rain came on slowly enough,” Cristiane laughed, listening for a minute to the driving flood that rustled at the windows. “But you are such a town person! You might have known it was coming.”

“I had to go out. I couldn’t sleep last night. It was very funny”--with sudden animation--“perhaps you know something about it?”

“What was funny?” Cristiane moved a little as Thomas arrived with the tea, and began to arrange the table close to the two girls.

“Why--the music! I don’t suppose you were playing on the piano at two in the morning, were you? For some one was.”

She looked at Cristiane with a little, puzzled frown. Then she started.

Thomas, his face like ashes, had dropped the cream-jug; as he stood staring at the ruin she caught his eyes on her in beseeching warning.

“I was asleep,” said Cristiane. “Oh, Thomas, never mind! There is plenty of cream, you needn’t look like that.”

“Yes, miss! No, miss! I’m very sorry,” the old man said confusedly. “I will fetch some more.”

“What did you say about a piano? You must have been dreaming.”

“I suppose I was”--slowly. “But I thought I woke up and heard some one playing a queer tune on a piano. But, of course, it was a dream!” She finished quietly, for there was something in the old servant’s face to make her hold her tongue.

“It is rather odd,” Cristiane said, as she carried Mrs. Trelane’s cup to her, “for Jessie had the same dream once, and Thomas nearly ate her for telling it. She is his daughter, you know.”

Ismay drank her tea as lazily as usual, and watched her chance to slip away after a while.

Last night’s music had been no dream, and Thomas’ face had mystified her. As soon as Cristiane and her mother was settled at a game of Halma for chocolates, she departed unnoticed, and sought Thomas, who was in his pantry.

Miss Trelane walked in and closed the door behind her.

“Why did you look at me like that in the drawing-room, Thomas?” she asked, with a bluntness very foreign to her. “Why did not you want me to speak of last night?”

The old man turned from the decanters he was filling.

“Because I won’t have Miss Cristiane made nervous,” he said doggedly. “That’s why, Miss Trelane.”

“How could it make her nervous to know I heard a piano in the night? Robbers don’t play on pianos, Thomas.”

“It’s not robbers I’m thinking of, and if you’re wise you’ll not mention it again, miss,” he spoke imploringly.

“I’ll speak of it now, once for all, then,” she said. “For I know it wasn’t a dream, and you can’t scold me like you did Jessie”--with her lovely smile.

“Jessie’s a fool, for all her forty years,” he grumbled, “if she told you that.”

“She didn’t, it was Miss Cristiane. Listen, Thomas! Last night I woke up, broad awake, as I never do, and I heard quite plainly some one playing a queer tinkling tune on a piano, somewhere up-stairs. It sounded so uncanny that I sat up to listen, and then I got out of bed and found my door was open into the hall; out there I heard the music plainer still, and it made me feel cold. But I thought I’d go and see who it was.”

The old man stood staring at her, his face twitching.

“Well, I went up-stairs, in the dark, till I got to a hall I didn’t know, and from a room that opened off it I heard that music as plainly as you hear me now! But the door was shut.”

“You didn’t go in? For God’s sake, Miss Trelane, never go in!” His voice, full of horror, startled her.

“Why? Who’s there? Who was playing that piano?”

“No one”--heavily. “And it’s no piano, but a spinet that belonged to Sir Gaspard’s grandmother. It’s haunted, that’s what it is, and to hear it means trouble to this house. Jessie heard it before the master was killed. But Miss Cristiane knows naught of it, and don’t you tell her.”

“It’s mice in the strings,” she said. “Anything else is nonsense.” Yet with a shudder she remembered the thing had played a tune. “If you think it’s haunted, why don’t you break it up?”

“Because we can’t. It isn’t healthy in that room,” he stammered. “Before Lady Le Marchant died I was in there with one of the footmen, and we opened the thing and looked all through it. There wasn’t a sign of mice. And when we turned from it, it began to play, first a scale, and then a tune that queer that we couldn’t move. And there in broad daylight a wind went by us that was cold like snow. I’ve never been in there since.”

He wiped his forehead that was wet.

“There must be something inside that’s like a musical-box,” she said, more to herself than to him. But he shook his head.

“There’s naught. I’ve seen it and I know. ’Tis the fingers of her that plays it--and God knows that’s enough! Pray to Him that you never see her, Miss Trelane”--reverentially.

“Did any one ever?” she breathed sharply.

“Yes! She walks--all over the house--of nights like this,” he admitted unwillingly. “But I have the servants all sleep in the new wing, else we’d have ne’er a one. But you stay in your bed, miss, and you’ll never see her. And don’t tell Miss Cristiane; her father never let her hear of any such tales.”

“I won’t tell her; for one thing, I don’t believe in it,” Ismay said sharply. But she showed no sign of leaving the pantry.

“Who was the ghost, Thomas, and what did she do, that she walks?”--seating herself on one end of his table.

“She was a Lady Le Marchant,” he began sullenly, but at her interested face he warmed suddenly to his tale. “You’ll give your word you’ll not tell Miss Cristiane?” he promised.

“Not I,” she answered, her elbows on her knees, her chin in the palm of her hand, in a curious crouching attitude that brought her eyes full on his as he faced her.

“Go on, Thomas.”

“Well, then, she was a Lady Le Marchant. And her husband, Sir Guy, fairly doted on her; but she was a childless woman, and given up to pleasure and dancing, and the like. She had lovers by the score, but she never cared for one of them beyond the first day or so. Fair she was, they say; as fair as you, Miss Trelane”--glancing at her flaxen hair--“and ’tis her picture hangs in the room with the spinet. ’Twas done by a foreign artist Sir Guy had over from Italy, and that man the lady loved.

“While the picture was being painted Sir Guy noticed nothing, but when ’twas done, and the man still stayed on, he wondered. And one day he saw them kissing. She was playing the tune she loved best of all on that spinet, and the foreign artist was behind her. And, not seeing her husband, she throws back her head, and the man kisses her lips.

“They say Sir Guy was a proud man. Anyhow, he turned and went away as if he’d seen nothing.

“But that night he told her, as she was singing herself that ungodly tune she was forever playing on the spinet.

“Whatever he said no one knows. But it must have maddened her, for she whipped up a knife that was on a table and stabbed him to the heart.

“He put out his hands to her, and one of them marked the dress she had on with a stain of blood on the breast. But he lay dead in his chair, and she with his blood wet on her gown went down-stairs to the artist, and told him plump and plain what she’d done for his sake. And he would have none of her.”

“He was a fool; she must have been good stuff,” observed his listener musingly. “But I don’t know. She should have known him better first.”

“She was good stuff, Miss Trelane,” the old man went on quietly. “For when he laid her crime before her, and told her he loved her no more, she never even answered him. Just turned away silent, and up-stairs to the room where Sir Guy lay dead.

“They say she played that tune then, in that room with a murdered man to listen; played it for the last time. For one of the servants heard it as he passed. And she heard him, too, for she opened the door and called him.

“‘James,’ she says, ‘come here. Did you hear me playing just now?’

“‘Madam, yes,’ he answers. ‘’Tis all writ out in a book in the library. You can see it if you like, miss.’

“‘And did you know the tune?’

“’Twas the one you’re so fond of, my lady.’ And he wondered at her for asking, and for sitting without a light, for the room was dark and he could not see into it.

“‘You’ll have no chance to forget it, you and those that come after you,’ she says very slow. ‘When I’m gone you’ll hear it, and always for evil. When you hear it’--and she laughed till he thought she was crazy--‘you’ll remember I told you that in my dying hour.’

“Then she draws herself up and speaks out loud and grand till they heard her through the house.

“‘Come in, man, and look at your master! He lies dead, and I killed him; for I was weary of his face;’ and before he could know what she meant, she had struck that bloody knife into her own breast, for she was a strong woman, and she knew where to find her heart.”

“Is that all?” Ismay spoke with a curious effort, like one in a dream.

“All. Except that ’twas a stormy night like this will be, and ’tis those times that she walks. And her spinet plays yet, and no one ever heard it for good, or went into that room for luck.”

“I’d like to, Thomas,” she said quietly.

“Don’t you go,” he warned her. “For you might be frightened and run, and them stairs outside and the rails of them are fairly crumbling with dry-rot. If you tripped and fell against them, as like as not the banisters would give way with you, and you’d fall to your death into the great hall below. Mind now, Miss Trelane, for that’s the truth.”

“What would you do if you saw her, Thomas?” she queried idly.

“Me--miss?” he said shamefully. “Well! I’d run and get out of her way, behind a locked door, and so would Jessie. As for the maids, they don’t know, and if they did, they’d be gone without waiting to see her.”

Ismay slipped off the table.

“Thank you, Thomas,” she said. “I won’t tell Miss Cristiane, or any one else. But it’s a queer story.”

“Too queer when you know it’s true,” he muttered. “Excuse me, miss, but the dressing-bell has rung.”

“All right. I’m going.”

But as she went slowly up the stairs she laughed to herself, and the laugh was short and ugly.

Surely she had found a weapon at last to do her good service against Marcus Wray.

“To hear is to know,” she thought; “but I hope it may be a long time before I hear his voice in this house. But at least I will be prepared.”