A. L. O. E. - The Haunted Room - A Tale

“But, Vibert, you don’t even know the way to Myst Court! Oh, I wish that you had waited for Bruce!”

It had never occurred to the thoughtless lad that he might be driving in a wrong direction; so long as the pony went as fast as Vibert wished, he had taken it for granted that Myst Court would soon be reached. The station had been left far behind; the road was lonesome and wild; only one solitary boy was in sight; he was engaged in picking up boughs and twigs which a recent gale had blown down from the trees which bordered the way.

“We’ll ask yonder bare-footed bundle of rags to direct us,” said Vibert, and he drew up the panting pony when he reached the spot where the boy was standing.

“I say, young one, which is the way to Myst Court?” asked Vibert in a tone of command.

The boy stared at him, as if unaccustomed to the sight of strangers.

“Are we on the right road to the large house where Mrs. Myers used to live?” inquired Emmie.

“Ay, ay, but you’ll have to turn down yon lane just by the stile there,” said the urchin, pointing with his brown finger, and grinning as if a chaise with a lady in it were a rare and curious sight.

“I don’t believe that the rustic could have told us whether to turn to left or right,” said Vibert, as he whipped on the pony. “If he’s a fair specimen of my father’s tenants, we shall feel as if we had dropped down on the Fiji Islands.”

The direction given by the finger was, however, perfectly clear, and the Trevors were soon driving along a picturesque lane, where trees, still gay with autumnal tints, overarched the narrow way, and with their brown and golden leaves carpeted the sod beneath them.

“What a pretty rural lane!” exclaimed Emmie, as the chaise first turned off from the high-road; but admiration was soon forgotten in discomfort and fear. The lane was apparently not intended as a thoroughfare for carriages, at least in the season of winter. The ground was miry and boggy, and the pony with difficulty dragged the chaise. There were violent jerks when one side or other dropped into one of the deep ruts left by the wheels of the last cart that had passed that way. Vibert plied the whip more vigorously than before, and silenced his sister’s remonstrances by remarking how darkly the clouds were gathering in the evening sky. Young Trevor was but an inexperienced driver, and ever and anon the chaise was jolted violently over some loose stones, or driven so near to the hedge that Emmie had to bend sideways to avoid being struck by straggling bramble or branch. She mentally resolved never again to trust herself to Vibert’s driving.

“Will this lane never come to an end?” exclaimed Emmie, as the first heavy drop from an overshadowing mass of dark cloud fell on her knee. She was but imperfectly protected from rain; for Vibert, in his haste to dash off from the station before his brother could join him, had never thought of taking with him either umbrella or shawl for his sister.

“Here comes the rain with a vengeance, and this stupid beast flounders in the mud as if it were dragging a cannon instead of a chaise,” cried Vibert. “These country lanes drive one out of all patience! Ha! there’s the rumbling of distant thunder!”

“Oh! I trust that we shall reach home soon,” exclaimed Emmie, who, exposed to the heavy downpour, shivered alike from cold and from fear.

“I suspect that we shall never reach home at all by this lane,” said Vibert. “Take my word for it, that little wretch has directed us wrong; I have a great mind to turn the pony round, and get back to the high-road.”

“You can’t turn, the lane is too narrow; you would land us in the hedge!” exclaimed Emmie, who thought that the attempt would inevitably lead to an upset of the chaise. On struggled the steaming pony, down poured the pattering rain; Vibert, almost blinded by the shower and the gathering darkness, could scarcely see the road before him.

“The longest lane has a turning, – there is an opening before us at last!” exclaimed the young driver, as a turn in the winding road brought a highway to view. “We shall reach Myst Court like two drowned rats. Why on earth did you not bring an umbrella, Emmie? I could not think of everything at once.” Vibert had, indeed, thought but of himself.

The want of an umbrella was to Emmie by no means the worst part of her troubles; she was afraid that her brother had indeed been misdirected, and that they might be lost and benighted in a part of the country where they as yet were strangers, exposed to the perils of a thunderstorm, from which the nervous girl shrank with instinctive terror. Emmie had never hitherto even attempted to overcome her fear; and though her uncle’s words now recurred to her mind, the idea of encountering a thunderstorm after nightfall, without even a roof to protect her, put to flight any good resolutions that those words might have roused in her mind.

“There was a flash!” exclaimed Emmie, starting and putting her hands before her eyes. She pressed closer to her brother as if for protection.

“We shall have more soon; the storm comes nearer,” was the little comforting reply of Vibert. As he ended the sentence, the thunder-clap followed the flash. The pony pricked up his ears, and quickened his pace.

“I am glad that we are out of this miserable mouse-hole at last,” cried Vibert, pulling the left rein sharply as the light vehicle emerged from the narrow, miry lane into the broad and comparatively smooth highway.

At this moment the darkening landscape was suddenly lighted up by a flash intensely bright, followed almost immediately by a peal over the travellers’ heads. The terrified Emmie shrieked, and, losing all presence of mind, caught hold of her brother’s arm. The sharp turning out of the lane, the pony’s start at the flash, and the sudden grasp on the driver’s arm, acting together, had the effect which might have been expected. Down went pony and chaise, down went driver and lady, precipitated into the ditch which bordered the high-road.

Vibert shouting for help, Emmie shrieking, the pony kicking and struggling in vain attempts to scramble out of the ditch, rain rattling, thunder rolling, all made a confused medley of sounds, while the deepening darkness was ever and anon lit up by lightning-flashes.

“Oh, Vibert! dear Vibert! are you hurt?” cried the terrified Emmie, with whom personal fear did not counterbalance anxiety for her young brother’s safety.

“I’m not hurt; I lighted on a bramble-bush; I’ve got off with a few scratches,” answered Vibert, who had regained the road. “But where on earth are you, Emmie? Can’t you manage to get up?”

“No,” gasped Emmie; “the chaise keeps me down. Oh, there is the lightning again!” and she shrieked.

“Never mind the lightning,” cried Vibert impatiently. “How am I to get the pony on his legs? he’s kicking like mad; and, oh! do stop screaming, Emmie, you’re enough to drive any one wild. It was your pull and your shrieking that did all the mischief.”

Vibert had had little experience with horses, and to release, almost in darkness, a kicking pony from its traces, or set free a lady imprisoned by an overturned chaise, were tasks for which he had neither sufficient presence of mind nor personal strength. Glad would the poor lad then have been to have had Bruce beside him, Bruce with his firm arm and his strong sense, and that quiet self-possession which it seemed as if nothing could shake. Vibert felt in the emergency as helpless as a girl might have done. Now he pulled at the upturned wheel of the chaise, but without lifting it even an inch; then he caught up the whip which had dropped from his hand in the shock of the fall, but he knew not whether to use it would not but make matters worse. Vibert ran a few paces to seek for assistance, stopped irresolute, then hurried back, thinking it unmanly to leave his sister alone in her helpless condition.