From Out the Vasty Deep by Mrs. Belloc Lowndes

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FROM OUT THE VASTY DEEP

BY

MRS. BELLOC LOWNDES

1921

TO

A.H. FASS

The owner of the real "Wyndfell Hall"

in memory of
many happy hours spent there
by his friend the writer

Glendower:

"_I can call spirits from the vasty deep_."

Hotspur:

"_Why, so can I; or so can any man: But will they come, when you
do call for them_?"

Henry IV.

FROM OUT THE VASTY DEEP

CHAPTER I

"I always thought that you, Pegler, were such a very sensible woman."

The words were said in a good-natured, though slightly vexed tone; and a
curious kind of smile flitted over the rather grim face of the person to
whom they were addressed.

"I've never troubled you before in this exact way, have I, ma'am?"

"No, Pegler. That you certainly have not."

Miss Farrow looked up from the very comfortable armchair where she was
sitting--leaning back, with her neatly shod, beautifully shaped feet
stretched out to the log fire. Her maid was standing a little to the
right, her spare figure and sallow face lit up by the flickering,
shooting flames, for the reading-lamp at Miss Farrow's elbow was heavily
shaded.

"D'you really mean that you won't sleep next door to-night, Pegler?"

"I wouldn't be fit to do my work to-morrow if I did, ma'am." And Miss
Farrow quite understood that that was Pegler's polite way of saying
that she most definitely did refuse to sleep in the room next door.

"I wish the ghost had come in here, instead of worrying you!" As the
maid made no answer to this observation, her mistress went on, turning
round so that she could look up into the woman's face: "What was it
exactly you _did_ see, Pegler?" And as the other still remained silent,
Miss Farrow added: "I really do want to know! You see, Pegler--well, I
need hardly tell you that I have a very great opinion of you."

And then, to the speaker's extreme surprise, there came a sudden change
over Pegler's face. Her pale countenance flushed, it became discomposed,
and she turned her head away to hide the springing tears.

Miss Farrow was touched; as much touched as her rather hard nature would
allow her to be. This woman had been her good and faithful friend, as
well as servant, for over twelve years.

She sprang up from her deep chair with the lightness of a girl, though
she was over forty; and went and took the other's hand. "Pegler!" she
exclaimed. "What's the matter, you dear old thing?"

But Pegler wrenched away her hand, rather ungraciously. "After two such
nights as I've had," she muttered, "it's no wonder I'm a bit upset."

Excellent maid though she was--Miss Farrow had never known anyone who
could do hair as Pegler could--the woman was in some ways very
unconventional, very unlike an ordinary lady's maid.

"Now do tell me exactly what happened?" Miss Farrow spoke with a mixture
of coaxing and kindly authority. "What do you think you saw? I need
hardly tell you that _I_ don't believe in ghosts." As the maid well
knew, the speaker might have finished the sentence with "or in anything
else." But that fact, Pegler being the manner of woman she was, did not
detract from the affection and esteem in which she held her lady. You
can't have everything--such was her simple philosophy--and religious
people do not always act up to their profession. Miss Farrow, at any
rate in her dealings with Pegler, was always better than her word. She
was a kind, a considerate, and an intelligent mistress.

So it was that, reluctantly, Pegler made up her mind to speak. "I'd like
to say, ma'am," she began, "that no one said nothing to me about that
room being haunted. You was the first that mentioned it to me, after I'd
spoken to you yesterday. As you know, ma'am, the servants here are a job
lot; they don't know nothing about the house. 'Twasn't till to-day that
one of the village people, the woman at the general shop and post
office, let on that Wyndfell Hall was well known to be a ghosty place."

There was a pause, and then Pegler added: "Still, as you and I well
know, ma'am, tales don't lose nothing in the telling."

"Indeed they don't! Never mind what the people in the village say. This
kind of strange, lonely, beautiful old house is sure to be said to be
haunted. What _I_ want to know is what _you_ think you saw, Pegler--"
The speaker looked sharply into the woman's face.

"I don't like to see you standing, ma'am," said Pegler inconsequently.
"If you'll sit down in your chair again I'll tell you what happened to
me."

Miss Farrow sank gracefully down into her deep, comfortable chair.
Again she put out her feet to the fire, for it was very cold on this
23rd of December, and she knew she had a tiring, probably a boring,
evening before her. Some strangers of whom she knew nothing, and cared
less, excepting that they were the friends of her friend and host,
Lionel Varick, were to arrive at Wyndfell Hall in time for dinner. It
was now six o'clock.

"Well," she said patiently, "begin at the beginning, Pegler. I wish
you'd sit down too--somehow it worries me to see you standing there.
You'll be tempted to cut your story short."

Pegler smiled a thin little smile. In the last twelve years Miss Farrow
had several times invited her to sit down, but of course she had always
refused, being one that knew her place. She had only sat in Miss
Farrow's presence during the days and nights when she had nursed her
mistress through a serious illness--then, of course, everything had been
different, and she had had to sit down sometimes.

"The day before yesterday--that is the evening Miss Bubbles arrived,
ma'am--after I'd dressed you and you'd gone downstairs, and I'd unpacked
for Miss Bubbles, I went into my room and thought how pleasant it
looked. The curtains was drawn, and there was a nice fire, as you know,
ma'am, which Mr. Varick so kindly ordered for me, and which I've had the
whole week. Also, I will say for Annie that even if she is a temporary,
she is a good housemaid, making the girls under her do their work
properly."

Pegler drew a long breath. Then she went on again: "I sat down just for
a minute or two, and I turned over queer--so queer, ma'am, that I went
and drew the curtains of one of the windows. Of course it's a much
bigger room than I'm generally accustomed to occupy, as you know, ma'am.
And I just threw up the window--it's what they call a guillotine
window--and there I saw the water, you know, ma'am, in what they call
the moat--"

"Yes," said Miss Farrow languidly. "Yes, Pegler, go on."

"As I looked down, ma'am, I had an awful turn. There seemed to me to be
something floating about in the water, a little narrow thing like a
child's body--and--and all on a sudden a small white face seemed to look
up into mine! Oh, it was 'orrible!" Pegler did not often drop an aitch,
but when she did so forget herself, she did it thoroughly.

"As I went on looking, fascinated-like"--she was speaking very slowly
now--"whatever was down there seemed to melt away. I didn't say nothing
that evening of what had happened to me, but I couldn't keep myself from
thinking of it. Well, then, ma'am, as you know, I came and undressed
you, and I asked you if you'd like the door kept open between our two
rooms. But you said no, ma'am, you'd rather it was shut. So then I went
to bed."

"And you say--you admit, Pegler--that nothing _did_ happen the night
before last?"

Pegler hesitated. "Nothing happened exactly," she said. "But I had the
most awful feeling, ma'am. And yes--well, something did happen! I heard
a kind of rustling in the room. It would leave off for a time, and, then
begin again. I tried to put it down to a mouse or a rat--or something of
that sort."

"That," said Miss Farrow quietly, "was probably what it was, Pegler."

As if she had not heard her lady's remark, the maid went on: "I'd go
off to sleep, and then suddenly, I'd awake and hear this peculiar
rustle, ma'am, like a dress swishing along--an old-fashioned, rich, soft
silk, such as ladies wore in the old days, when I was a child. But that
dress, the dress I heard rustling, ma'am, was a bit older than that."

"What _do_ you mean, Pegler?"

The maid remained silent, her eyes were fixed; it was as if she had
forgotten where she was.

"And what exactly happened last night?"

"Last night," said Pegler, drawing a long breath, "last night, ma'am--I
know you won't believe me--but I saw the spirit!"

Miss Farrow looked up into the woman's face with an anxious, searching
glance.

She felt disturbed and worried. A great deal of her material
comfort--almost, she might have truly said, much of her happiness in
life--depended on Jane Pegler. In a sense Blanche Farrow had but two
close friends in the world--her host, Lionel Varick, the new owner of
Wyndfell Hall; and the plain, spare, elderly woman standing now before
her. She realized with a sharp pang of concern what Pegler's mental
defection would mean to her. It would be dreadful, _dreadful_, if Pegler
began seeing ghosts, and turning hysterical.

"What was the spirit like?" she asked quietly.

And then, all at once, she had to suppress a violent inclination to
burst out laughing. For Pegler answered with a kind of cry, "A 'orrible
happarition, ma'am!"

Miss Farrow could not help observing a trifle satirically: "That
certainly sounds most unpleasant."

But Pegler went on, speaking with a touch of excitement very unusual
with her: "It was a woman--a woman with a dreadful, wicked, spiteful
face! Once she came up close to my bed, and I wanted to scream out, but
I couldn't--my throat seemed shut up."

"D'you mean you actually saw what you took to be a ghost?"

"I did see a ghost, ma'am; not a doubt of it! She walked up and down
that room in there, wringing her hands all the time--I'd heard the
expression, ma'am, but I'd never seen anyone do it."

"Did anything else happen?"

"At last she went over to the window, and--and I'm afraid you won't
believe me, ma'am--but there seemed no curtains there any more, nothing
but just an opening into the darkness. I saw her bend over--" An
expression of terror came over the woman's face.

"But how could you _see_ her," asked Miss Farrow quickly, "if there was
no light in the room?"

"In a sort of way," said Pegler somberly, "the spirit was supplying the
light, as it were. I could see her in the darkness, as if she was a lamp
moving about."

"Oh, Pegler, Pegler!" exclaimed Miss Farrow deprecatingly.

"It's true, ma'am! It's true as I'm standing here." Pegler would have
liked to add the words "So help me God!" but somehow she felt that these
words would not carry any added conviction to her mistress. And, indeed,
they would not have done so, for Miss Farrow, though she was much too
polite and too well-bred ever to have said so, even to herself, did not
believe in a Supreme Being. She was a complete materialist.

"And then, ma'am, after a bit, there it would begin, constant-like, all
over again."

"I don't understand...."

"I'd go to sleep, and tell myself maybe that it was all a dream--argue
with myself, ma'am, for I'm a sensible woman. And then all at once I'd
hear that rustle again! I'd try not to open my eyes, but somehow I felt
I must see what was happening. So I'd look at last--and there she'd be!
Walking up and down, walking up and down, her face--oh, ma'am, her face
staring-like most 'orrible--and wringing her hands. Then she'd go over
to the window, lean out, and disappear, down into the black water!"

In a calmer tone Pegler added: "The moat used to be much bigger and
deeper than it is now, ma'am--so they all say."

"All?" said Miss Farrow sharply. "Who do you mean by 'all'?"

"The people about the place, ma'am."

"I can't help wishing, Pegler, that you hadn't told this strange story
to the servants. You see it makes it so awkward for Mr. Varick."

Pegler flushed uncomfortably. "I was that scared," she murmured, "that I
felt I must tell somebody, and if you tell one, as I did, you tell all.
I'm sorry I did it, ma'am, for I'm afraid I've inconvenienced you."

"It can't be helped," said Miss Farrow good-naturedly. "I know you
wouldn't have done it if you could have helped it, Pegler. But of course
in a way it's unlucky."

"I've pointed out to them all that there never is but one room haunted
in a house as a rule," said the maid eagerly, "and I think they all
quite sees that, ma'am. Besides, they're very pleased with Mr. Varick.
You know what he did to-day, ma'am?"

"No," said Miss Farrow, looking up and smiling, "what did he do?"

"He called them all together, without distinction of class, so to speak,
ma'am, and he told them that if he was pleased with the way in which his
Christmas party went off, he'd give them each a five-pound note at the
end of the month. It made them forget the haunted room, I can tell you,
ma'am!" She added grudgingly, "He _is_ a kind gentleman, and no
mistake."

"Indeed he is! I'm glad that you see that now, Pegler." Miss Farrow
spoke with a touch of meaning in her voice. "I did a very good turn for
myself when I got him out of that queer scrape years ago."

"Why yes, ma'am, I suppose you did." But Pegler's tone was not as hearty
as that of her lady.

There was a pause. "Then what have you settled to do about to-night?"

"If you don't mind, ma'am--I'm arranging to sleep in what they call the
second maid's room. There is a bell through, ma'am, but you'll have to
go into the next room to ring it, for you know, ma'am, that it's the
next room that ought to have been your room by rights."

"I wish now that I'd taken it and put you in here," said Miss Farrow
ruefully.

"They're going to keep up a good fire there. So when you go in you won't
get a chill."

"That does seem luxurious," said Miss Farrow, smiling. She loved luxury,
and it was pleasant to think that there should be a fire kept up in an
empty room just so that she shouldn't feel a chill when she went in for
a moment to ring for her maid!

"By the way, I hope there's a fireplace in your room, Pegler"--the words
were uttered solicitously.

"No, there isn't, ma'am. But I don't mind that. I don't much care about
a fire."

"There's no accounting for taste!"

Miss Farrow took up her book again, and Pegler, as was her way, slid
noiselessly from the room--not through the door leading into the haunted
chamber, but out on to the beautiful panelled landing, now gay with
bowls of hothouse flowers which had come down from London that morning
by passenger train, and been brought by car all the way from Newmarket.

CHAPTER II

The book Miss Farrow held in her hand was an amusing book, the latest
volume of some rather lively French memoirs, but she put it down after a
very few moments, and, leaning forward, held out her hands to the fire.
They were not pretty hands: though small and well-shaped, there was
something just a little claw-like about them; but they were very white,
and her almond-shaped nails, admirably manicured, gleamed in the soft
red light.

Yes, in spite of this stupid little _contretemps_ about Pegler, she was
glad indeed that circumstances over which she had had rather more
control than she liked to think had made it impossible for her to go out
to Monte Carlo this winter. She had been sharply vexed, beside herself
with annoyance, almost tempted to do what she had never yet done--that
is, to ask Lionel Varick, now so delightfully prosperous, to lend her a
couple of hundred pounds. But she had resisted the impulse, and she was
now glad of it.

After all, there's no place like dear old England at Christmas time. How
much nicer, too, is a bachelor host than a hostess! A bachelor host? No,
not exactly a bachelor host, for Lionel Varick was a widower. Twice a
widower, if the truth were known. But the truth, fortunately, is not
always known, and Blanche Farrow doubted if any other member of the
circle of friends and acquaintances he had picked up in his
adventurous, curious life knew of that first--now evidently by him
almost forgotten--marriage. It had taken place years ago, when Varick
was still a very young man, and to a woman not of his own class. They
had separated, and then, rather oddly, come together again. Even so, her
premature death had been for him a fortunate circumstance.

It was not Varick who had told Blanche Farrow of that painful episode of
his past life. The story had come to her knowledge in a curious,
accidental fashion, and she had thought it only fair to tell him what
she had learned--and then, half reluctantly, he had revealed something
of what he had suffered through that early act of folly. But they had
only spoken of it once.

Varick's second marriage, Miss Farrow was almost tempted to call it his
real marriage, the news of which he had conveyed to his good friend in a
laconic note, had surprised her very much.

The news had found her far away, in Portugal, where, as just a few
English people know, there is more than one Casino where mild gambling
can be pursued under pleasant conditions. Blanche Farrow would have been
hurt if someone had told her that in far-away Portugal Lionel Varick and
his affairs had not meant quite so much to her as they would have done
if she had been nearer home. Still, she had felt a pang. A man-friend
married is often a man-friend marred. But she had been very glad to
gather, reading between the lines of his note, that the lady in question
was well off. Varick was one of those men to whom the possession of
money is as essential to life as the air they breathe is to most human
beings. Till this unexpected second marriage of his he had often been
obliged to live on, and by, his wits.

Then, some months later--for she and Varick were not given to writing to
one another when apart, their friendship had never been of that
texture--she had received a sad letter from him saying that his wife was
seriously ill. The letter had implied, too, that he ought to have been
told, before the marriage had taken place, that his wife's family had
been one riddled with consumption. Blanche had written back at once--by
that time she was a good deal nearer home than Portugal, though still
abroad--asking if she could "do anything?" And he had answered that no,
there was nothing to be done. "Poor Milly" had a horror of sanatoriums,
so he was going to take her to some quiet place on the south coast. He
had ended his note with the words: "I do not think it can last long now,
and I rather hope it won't. It is very painful for her, as well as for
me." And it had not lasted very long. Seven weeks later Miss Farrow had
read in the first column of the _Times_ the announcement: "Millicent,
only daughter of the late George Fauncey, of Wyndfell Hall, Suffolk, and
the beloved wife of Lionel Varick."

She had been surprised at the addition of the word "beloved." Somehow it
was not like the man she thought she knew so well to put that word in.

That was just over a year ago. But when she had met Varick again she had
seen with real relief that he was quite unchanged--those brief months of
wedded life had not apparently altered him at all. There was, however,
one great difference--he was quite at ease about money. That was
all--but that was a great deal! Blanche Farrow and Lionel Varick had at
any rate one thing in common--they both felt a horror of poverty, and
all that poverty implies.

Gradually Miss Farrow had discovered a few particulars about her
friend's dead wife. Millicent Fauncey had been the only child of a
rather eccentric Suffolk squire, a man of great taste, known in the art
world of London as a collector of fine Jacobean furniture, long before
Jacobean furniture had become the rage. After her father's death his
daughter, having let Wyndfell Hall, had wandered about the world with a
companion till she had drifted across her future husband's path at an
hotel in Florence.

"What attracted me," Lionel Varick had explained rather awkwardly on the
only occasion when he had really talked of his late wife to Blanche
Farrow, "was her helplessness, and, yes, a kind of simplicity."

Blanche had looked at him a little sharply. She had never known Lionel
attracted by weakness or simplicity before. All women seemed attracted
by him--but he was by no means attracted by all women.

"Poor Milly didn't care for Wyndfell Hall," he had gone on, "for she
spent a very lonely, dull girlhood there. But it's a delightful place,
and I hope to live there as soon as I can get the people out to whom it
is now let. 'Twon't be an easy job, for they're devoted to it."

Of course he had got them out very soon, for, as Blanche Farrow now
reminded herself, Lionel Varick had an extraordinary power of getting
his own way, in little and big things alike.

It was uncommonly nice of Lionel to have asked her to be informal
hostess of his first house party! Unluckily it was an oddly composed
party, not so happily chosen as it might have been, and she wondered
uneasily whether it would be a success. She had never met three of the
people who were coming to-night--a Mr. and Miss Burnaby, an
old-fashioned and, she gathered, well-to-do brother and sister, and
their niece, Helen Brabazon. Miss Brabazon had been an intimate friend,
Miss Farrow understood the only really intimate friend, of Lionel
Varick's late wife. He had spoken of this girl, Helen Brabazon, with
great regard and liking--with rather more regard and liking than he
generally spoke of any woman.

"She was most awfully kind to me during that dreadful time at Redsands,"
he had said only yesterday. And Blanche had understood the "dreadful
time" referred to the last weeks of his wife's life. "I've been to the
Burnabys' house a few times, and I've dined there twice--an infamously
bad cook, but very good wine--you know the sort of thing?"

Remembering that remark, Blanche now asked herself why Lionel had
included these tiresome, old-fashioned people in his party. Then she
told herself that it was doubtless because the niece, who lived with
them, couldn't leave them to a solitary Christmas.

Another guest who was not likely to add much in the way of entertainment
to the party was an enormously rich man called James Tapster. Tapster
was a cynical, rather unpleasant person, yet on one occasion he had
helped Varick out of a disagreeable scrape.

If the host had had his way there would also have been in the party a
certain Dr. Panton. But at the last moment he had had to "chuck." There
was a hope, however, that he might be able to come after Christmas. Dr.
Panton was also associated with the late Mrs. Varick. He had attended
her during the last long weeks of her life.

Blanche Farrow's face unconsciously brightened as she remembered Sir
Lyon Dilsford. He was an intelligent, impecunious, pleasant kind of man,
still, like his host, on the sunny side of forty. Sir Lyon was "in the
City," as are now so many men of his class and kind. He took his work
seriously, and spent many hours of each day east of Temple Bar. By way
of relaxation he helped to run an Oxford College East-End Settlement. "A
good chap,"--that was how Blanche summed him up to herself.

Lionel had asked her if she could think of any young people to ask, and
she had suggested, with some hesitation, her own niece, Bubbles Dunster,
and Bubbles' favourite dancing partner, a young man called Bill
Donnington. Bubbles had arrived at Wyndfell Hall two days ago.
Donnington had not been able to leave London till to-day.

Bubbles? Blanche Farrow's brows knit themselves as she thought of her
niece, namesake, and godchild.

Bubbles was a strange girl, but then so many girls are strange nowadays!
Though an only child, and the apple of her widowed father's eyes, she
had deliberately left her home two years ago, and set up for herself in
London, nominally to study art. At once she had become a great
success--the kind of success that counts nowadays. Bubbles' photograph
was always appearing in the _Sketch_ and in the _Daily Mirror_. She was
constantly roped in to help in any smart charity affair, and she could
dance, act, and sell, with the best. She was as popular with women as
with men, for there was something disarming, attaching, almost elfish,
in Bubbles Dunster's charm. For one thing, she was so good-natured, so
kindly, so always eager to do someone a good turn--and last, not least,
she had inherited her aunt's cleverness about clothes! She dressed in a
way which Blanche Farrow thought ridiculously _outre_ and queer, but
still, somehow, she always looked well-dressed. And though she had never
been taught dressmaking, she could make her own clothes when put to it,
and was always willing to help other people with theirs.

Hugh Dunster, Bubbles' father, did not often favour his sister-in-law
with a letter, but she had had a letter from him three days ago, of
which the most important passage ran: "I understand that Bubbles is
going to spend Christmas with you. I wish you'd say a word to her about
all this spiritualistic rot. She seems to be getting deeper and deeper
into it. It's impairing her looks, making her nervous and almost
hysterical--in a word, quite unlike herself. I spoke to her some time
ago, and desired her most earnestly to desist from it. But a father has
no power nowadays! I have talked the matter over with young Donnington
(of whom I sometimes suspect she is fonder than she knows), and he quite
agrees with me. After all, she's a child still, and doesn't realize what
_vieux jeu_ all that sort of thing is. I insisted on reading to her
'Sludge, the Medium,' but it made no impression on her! In a sense I've
only myself to thank, for I used to amuse myself in testing her amazing
thought-reading powers when she was a little girl."

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