Виктория Холт - The Mask of the Enchantress

"Ah, but rich important gentlemen don't like waiting one little minute while others is served. I had it from Jim Fenner." (He was our stationmaster, porter and man of all work at the station.) "There he was standing on the platform ranting and raging while the fly went off carrying your young lady in it. He kept saying, 'Where is it going? How far?" And old Jim he says, all upset like, because he could see this was a real gentleman, Jim says, 'Well, sir, it won't be that long. 'Tas only gone to Crabtree Cottage on the green with the young lady.' 'Crabtree Cottage,' he roars, 'and where might that be?'' Tis only on the green, sir. There by the church. Not much more than a stone's throw. The young lady could walk it in ten minutes. But she always takes the fly like and books it to bring her back to catch her train.' Well, that seemed to satisfy him and he said he'd wait. He asked Jim a lot of questions. He turned out to be a talkative sort of gentleman when he wasn't angry. He got all civil like and gave Jim five shillings. It's not every day Jim sees the likes of that. He says he hopes that gentleman stays a long time."

I couldn't stay talking to Matty, of course, so I left her and ran back to the cottage. It was getting dark early now and we left school in twilight. Miss Brent had said we should leave at three o'clock in winter because that would give the children who lived farther away time to get home before darkness fell. In the summer we finished at four. We started at eight in the morning instead of nine as in the summer and it was quite dark at eight.

Aunt Amelia was putting some leaves together. She said: "I'm going to take these to the church, Suewellyn. They're for the altar. It's a pity there are no flowers at this time of the year. Vicar was saying it looked bare after the autumn flowers were finished, so I said I would find some leaves and we would use them. He seemed to think it was a good idea. You can come with me."

I put my school bag in my room and dutifully went downstairs. We crossed the green to the church.

There was a hushed silence there. The stained glass windows looked different without the sun or even the gaslight to shine on them. I should have been a little scared to be there alone, afraid that the figure of Christ on the cross might come down and tell me how wicked I was. I thought that the pictures in the stained glass windows might come alive. There was a good deal of torturing in them and there was my old acquaintance St. Stephen up there, who seemed to have such a bad time on earth. Our footsteps rang out eerily on the stone flags.

"We shall have to hurry, Suewellyn," said Aunt Amelia. "It will be quite dark very soon."

We mounted the three stone steps to the altar.

"There!" said Aunt Amelia. "They'll make some sort of show. I think I had better put them in water. Here, Suewellyn, take this jar and fill it at the pump."

I took it and ran out of the church. The graveyard was just outside. The gravestones looked like old men and women kneeling down, their faces hidden in gray hoods.

The pump was a few yards from the church. To reach it I had to make my way past some of the oldest gravestones. I had read the inscriptions on them many times when we came out of church. People had been laid under them a long, long time ago. Some of the dates on them went back to the seventeenth century. I ran past them to the pump and vigorously began pumping the water and filling the pot.

As I did so I heard a sudden footstep. I looked over my shoulder. It had grown darker since Aunt Amelia and I entered the church. I felt a shiver run down my spine. I had the feeling that someone ... something was watching me.

I turned back to the pump. One had to work hard to get the water and it wasn't easy working the pump with one hand and holding the jar with the other.

My hands were shaking. Don't be silly, I said to myself. Why shouldn't someone else come to the churchyard? Perhaps it was the vicar's wife returning home to the vicarage or one of the devoted church workers who also had the idea of adorning the altar.

I had filled the jar too full. I tipped a little water out. Then I heard the sound again. I gasped with horror. A figure was standing there among the gravestones. I was sure it was a ghost who had risen from the tomb.

I gave a startled cry and ran as fast as I could to the church porch. The water in the jar slopped over and splashed down the front of my coat. But I had reached the sanctuary of the church.

There I paused for a moment to look over my shoulder. I could see no one.

Aunt Amelia was waiting impatiently at the altar.

"Come along, come along," she said.

I handed the jar to her. My hands were wet and cold and I was shivering.

"There's not enough here," she scolded. "Why, you careless girl, you've spilled it."

I stood firmly. "It's dark out there," I said stubbornly. Nothing would have induced me to go back to the pump.

"I suppose it will have to do," she said grudgingly. "Suewellyn, I don't know why you can't do things properly."

She arranged the leaves and we left the church. I kept very close to her as we crossed the graveyard and came out to the green.

"Not what I should have liked for the altar," said Aunt Amelia. "But they'll have to do."

I could not sleep that night. I kept dozing and thinking I was at the pump in the graveyard. I imagined the ghost starting up from the ground and coming out to frighten people. It had certainly frightened me. I had always thought of ghosts as misty white transparent beings. When I came to think of it, as far as the gloom and my fear would allow me, this one had been fully dressed. It was a man, a very tall man in a shiny black hat. I hadn't had time to notice very much else about him except the steadiness of his gaze. And that had been directed straight at me.

At last I slept and so deeply that I awoke late next morning.

Aunt Amelia surveyed me with a grim expression when I went down to breakfast. She had not given me a call. She never did. I was supposed to wake at the right time myself and get to school at the appointed hour. It was something to do with Discipline, for which Aunt Amelia had as great a reverence as she had for Respectability.

I was, consequently, late for school and Miss Brent, who believed the teaching of the necessity of Punctuality was as important as the three Rs, said that if I could not come on time I should stay behind for half an hour and write out the Creed before I left school.

It would mean, of course, that I shouldn't have time to call on Matty.

The day passed and at three o'clock I was seated at my desk writing out "I believe in God the Father ..." and when I came to "conceived" saying the little rhyme to myself, "I before E except after C," and I had finished it in twenty minutes. I then took it to Miss Brent's sitting room upstairs, knocked on the door and handed it to her. She glanced through it, nodded and said: "You'd better be quick. You'll be home before dark. And, Suewellyn, do try to be on time. It's bad manners not to be."

I said: "Yes, Miss Brent," very meekly and ran off.

If I took the short cut across the churchyard, which would save a few minutes, I might just have time to look in on Matty and tell her about the ghost I had seen in the churchyard on the previous day. If I were late home I could tell Aunt Amelia I had been kept in to write "I believe." She would nod grimly and show her approval of Miss Brent's action.

To go across the churchyard after the previous day's experience seemed a little strange. But it was typical of me—and perhaps this goes a little way to explain what happened later—that the fact of my fear gave the churchyard special fascination for me. It was not quite dark. It had been a brighter day than yesterday and the sun was a great red ball on the horizon. I was afraid; I was tingling with a mixture of apprehension and excitement, but somehow I felt myself drawn almost involuntarily to the churchyard.