From Out the Vasty Deep by Mrs. Belloc Lowndes

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"I think some of us ought to go up to bed now" she said, turning round.
"It isn't late yet, but I'm sure we're all tired. And we've had rather
an exciting evening."

There was a good deal of hand-shaking, and a little talk of plans for
the morrow. Bubbles had come over, and joined the others, but she was
still curiously abstracted.

"Where's Mr. Burnaby?" she asked suddenly. "Wasn't he at the seance?"

"He's gone to bed," said his sister shortly.

Her host was handing the old lady a bedroom candle, and she was looking
up at him with a kind of appeal in her now troubled and bewildered face.

"I feel I owe you an apology," he said in a low voice. "Bubbles Dunster
has always possessed extraordinary powers of thought-reading. I remember
hearing that years ago, when she was a child. But of course I had no
idea she had developed the gift to the extent she now has--or I should
have forbidden her to exercise it to-night."

After the three other women had all gone upstairs, Blanche Farrow
lingered a moment at the bottom of the staircase; and Varick, having
shepherded Sir Lyon, young Donnington, and James Tapster into the hall,
joined her for a few moments.

"Bubbles is an extraordinary young creature," he said thoughtfully. "I
shouldn't have thought it within the power of any human being to impress
me as she impressed me to-night. What a singular gift the girl has!"

Somehow Blanche felt irritated. "She has a remarkable memory," she said
dryly. "And also the devil's own impudence, Lionel." And then she told
him of the few words she had overheard at dinner of the winter Miss
Burnaby had spent in Austria a matter of forty years ago.

"Yes, that's all very well! But it doesn't account for her absolutely
correct description of my mother, or--or--"

"Yes?" said his companion sharply.

"Well--of her mention of the word 'arbour.' The last time I saw my
mother alive was in the arbour of our horrible little garden at
Bedford."

"That," said Blanche thoughtfully, "was, I admit, pure thought-reading.
Good-night, Lionel."

Varick remained standing at the foot of the staircase for quite a long
while.

Yes, it had been thought-reading, of course. But very remarkable, even
so. It was years since he had thought of that last painful talk with his
mother. She had warned him very seriously of certain--well,
peculiarities of his character. The long-forgotten words she had used
suddenly leapt into his mind as if written in letters of fire: "Your
father's unscrupulousness, matched with my courage, make a dangerous
combination, my boy."

As he lit a cigarette, his hand shook a little, but the more he thought
of it, the more he told himself that for all that had occurred with
relation to himself to-night there was an absolutely natural
explanation.

Take the second figure Bubbles had described? It was obviously that of
the woman on whom he had allowed his mind to dwell uneasily, intensely,
this afternoon. She was his only enemy--if you could call the crazy
creature who had been poor Milly's companion an enemy.

The odious personality of the absurdly named Julia Pigchalke was still
very present to him as he turned and joined his men guests in the
beautiful camber-roofed and linen-panelled room known as the hall. She
was the one fly, albeit a very small fly, in the ointment of his deep
content.

CHAPTER V

It was a good deal more than an hour later--in fact nearer twelve than
eleven o'clock--when young Donnington got up from the comfortable chair
where he had been ensconced, and put down the book which he had been
reading.

All the other men of the party, with the exception of old Mr.
Burnaby--who had gone to bed for good after his dramatic bolt from the
drawing-room--had disappeared some time ago. But Donnington had stayed
on downstairs, absorbed in a curious, privately printed book containing
the history of Wyndfell Hall.

Suddenly his eyes fell on the following passage:

"Every piece of the furniture in 'the White Parlour,' as it is still
called, is of historic value and interest. To take but one example.
A low, high-backed chair, covered with _petit point_ embroidery,
is believed to have been the _prie-dieu_ on which the Princesse
de Lamballe knelt during the whole of the night preceding her terrible
death. In a document which was sold with the chair in 1830, her
servant--who, it appears, had smuggled the chair into the
prison--recounts the curious fact that the poor Princess had a
prevision that she was to be _torn in pieces_. She spent the last
night praying for strength to bear the awful ordeal she knew lay
before her."

Donnington shut the book. "That's strange!" he muttered to himself as
he got up.

After putting the book back in the bookcase where he had found it, he
stood and looked round the splendid apartment with a mixture of interest
and delighted attention.

Yes, this wonderful old "post and panel" dwelling was the most beautiful
of the many beautiful old country houses with which he had made
acquaintance in the last two or three years; and it was awfully good of
Bubbles to have got him asked here! Even if she hadn't actually
suggested he should come, he knew that of course he owed his being here
to her.

The queer, enigmatic, clever girl had the whole of Donnington's
steadfast heart. Since he had first met Bubbles--only some eighteen
months ago, but it now seemed an eternity--all life had been different.

At first she had at once repelled, attracted, and shocked him. He had
been much taken aback when she had first proposed coming to see him,
unchaperoned, in the modest rooms he occupied in Gray's Inn. Then, after
she had twice invited herself to tea, her constant comings seemed quite
natural. Sometimes she would be accompanied by a friend, either another
girl or a man, and they would form a merry, happy little party of three
or four. But of course he was far, far happiest when she came alone.
Almost from the first moment there had been a kind of instinctive
intimacy between them, and very soon she had learnt to rely on him--even
to take his advice about little things--and to come to him with all her
troubles.

Bubbles Dunster had already been what Donnington in his own mind called
"deeply bitten" with spiritualism before they had met; yet he had known
her for some considerable time before she had allowed him to know it.
Even now she tried, ineffectually, to keep him outside all that
concerned that part of her life. But, as he once had told her with more
emotion than he generally betrayed, he would have followed her down to
hell itself.

There came a cloud over his honest face as he thought of what had
happened this very evening. And yet, and yet he had to admit that even
now he could never make up his mind--he never knew, that is, how far
what took place was due to a supernatural agency, or how much to
Bubbles' uncanny quickness and cleverness.

What was more strange, considering how well he knew her, Donnington did
not really know how much she herself believed in it all. As a
rule--probably because she knew how anxious and troubled he felt about
the matter--Bubbles would very seldom discuss with him any of the
strange happenings in which she was so absorbed. And yet, now and again,
almost as if in spite of herself, she would ask him if he would care to
come to a seance, or invite him to witness an exceptionally remarkable
manifestation at some psychic friend's house.

It had early become impossible for him, apart from everything else, to
accept the easy "all rot" theory, for Bubbles' occult gifts were really
very remarkable and striking. They had become known to the now large
circle of intelligent people who make a study of psychic phenomena, and
among them, just because she was an "amateur," she was much in request.

But it had never occurred to him, from what he had been told of the
party now gathered together, that there would be the slightest attempt
at the sort of thing which had happened to-night. He felt sharply
irritated with Miss Farrow, whom he had never liked, and also with
Lionel Varick. He knew that Bubbles' father had written to her aunt; he
had himself advised it, knowing, with that shrewd, rather pathetic
instinct which love gives to some natures, that Bubbles thought a great
deal of her aunt--far more, indeed, than her aunt did of her. He told
himself that he would speak to Miss Farrow to-morrow--have it out with
her.

Rather slowly and deliberately, for he was a rather slow and deliberate
young man, he put out the lights of the three seven-branched
candlesticks which illumined the beautiful old room; and, as he moved
about, he suddenly became aware that nearly opposite the door giving
into the staircase lobby was a finely-carved, oak, confessional-box.
What an odd, incongruous ornament to have in a living-room!

The last bedroom candlestick had gone, and temporarily blinded by the
sudden darkness, he groped his way up the broad, shallow stairs to the
corridor which he knew ultimately led to his room.

He was setting his feet cautiously one before the other on the landing,
his eyes by now accustomed to the grey dimness of a winter night, for
the great window above the staircase was uncurtained, when _Something_
suddenly loomed up before him, and he felt his right arm gripped.

He gave a stifled cry. And then, all at once, he knew that it was
Bubbles--only Bubbles! He felt her dear nearness rushing, as it were,
all over him. It was all he could do to prevent himself from taking her
in his arms.

"Bill? That _is_ you, isn't it?" she asked in a low whisper. "I'm so
frightened--so frightened! I should have come down long ago--but I
thought some of the others were still there. Oh! I wish I'd come down!
I've been waiting up here so long--and oh, Bill, I'm very cold!" She was
pressing up close to him, and he put his arm round her--in a protecting,
impersonal way.

"I wish we could go and sit down somewhere," she went on plaintively.
"It's horrible talking out here, on the landing. I suppose it wouldn't
do, Bill, for you to come into my room?"

"No, that wouldn't do at all," he said simply. "But look here,
Bubbles--would you like to go downstairs again, into the hall? It's
quite warm there,"--he felt that she was really shivering.

"I'm cold--I'm cold!"

"Put on something warmer," he said--or rather ordered. "Put on your fur
coat. Is it downstairs? Shall I go and fetch it?"

She whispered, "It's in my room--I know where it is. I know exactly
where Pegler put it."

She left him standing in the corridor, and went back into her room. The
door was wide open, and he could see that she was wearing a white
wrapper covered with large red flowers--some kind of Eastern, wadded
dressing-gown. He heard a cupboard door creak, and then she came out of
the room dragging her big fur coat over her dressing-gown; but he saw
that her feet were bare--she had not troubled to put on slippers.

"Go back," he said imperiously, "and put some shoes on, Bubbles--you'll
catch your death of cold."

How amazing, how incredible, this adventure would have appeared to him
even a year ago! But it seemed quite natural now--simply wilful Bubbles'
way. There was nothing Bubbles could do which would surprise Donnington
_now_.

"Don't shut your door," he muttered. "It might wake someone up. Just
blow out the candles, and leave the door open."

She obeyed him; and then he took her arm--again blinded by the sudden
obscurity in which they were now plunged.

"I hate going downstairs," she said fretfully. "Somehow I feel as if
downstairs were full of Them!"

"Full of _them_?" he repeated. "What on earth do you mean, Bubbles?"

And Bubbles murmured fearfully: "You know perfectly well what I mean.
And it's all my fault--all my fault!"

He whispered rather sternly back: "Yes, Bubbles, it _is_ your fault. Why
couldn't you leave the thing alone just for a little while--just through
the Christmas holidays?"

"I felt so tempted," she muttered. "I forget who it was who said
'Temptation is so pleasing because it need never be resisted.'"

He uttered an impatient exclamation under his breath.

"Let's sit down on the staircase," she pleaded, "I'm warmer now. I think
this would be a nice place to sit down."

She sank down on one of the broad, low steps just below the landing, and
pulled him down, nestling up close to him. "Oh, Bill," she whispered,
"it _is_ a comfort to be with you--a real comfort. You don't know what
I've gone through since I came up to bed. I felt all the time as if
Something was trying to get at me--something cruel, revengeful,
miserable!"

"You ate too much at dinner," he said shortly. "You oughtn't to have
taken that brandy-cherries ice."

They had very soon got past the stage during which Donnington had tried
to say pretty things to Bubbles.

"Perhaps I did"--he felt the gurgle of amusement in her voice. "I was
very hungry, and the food here is very good. It must be costing a lot of
money--all this sort of thing. How nice to be rich! Oh, Bill, how _very_
nice to be rich!"

"I don't agree," he said sharply. "Varick doesn't look particularly
happy, that I can see."

"I wonder if Aunt Blanche would marry him _now_?"

"I don't suppose he'd give her the chance--now."

It wasn't a very chivalrous thing to say, or hear said, and Bubbles
pinched him so viciously that he nearly cried out.

"You're not to talk like that of my Aunt Blanche. Quite lately--not
three months ago--someone asked her to marry him for the thousandth
time! But of course she said no--as I shall do to you, a thousand times
too, if we live long enough."

She waited a moment, then said slowly: "Her man's rather like you. He's
very much what you will be, Bill, in about thirty years from now--a
plain, good, priggish old fellow. Of course you know who it is? Mark
Gifford, of the Home Office. Aunt Blanche only keeps in with him because
he's very useful to her sometimes."

And then she added, with a touch of strange cruelty, "Just as _I_ shall
always keep in with you, Bill, however tiresome and disagreeable you may
be! Just because I find you so useful. You're being useful now; I don't
feel frightened any more."

She drew herself from the shelter of his strong, protecting arm, and
slid along the polished step till she leant against the banister. He
could just see the whiteness of her little face shining out of the big
fur collar.

"If you're feeling all right again," he said rather coolly, "I think
we'd both better go to bed. Speaking for myself, I feel sleepy!"

But she was sliding towards him again, and again she clutched his arm.
"No, no," she whispered. "Let's wait just a little longer, Bill. I--I
don't feel quite comfortable in that room. I wonder if they'd give me a
new room to-morrow? It's funny, I'm not a bit frightened at what they
call the haunted room here--the room that's next to Aunt Blanche's, in
the other wing of the house. A woman who killed her little stepson is
supposed to haunt that room."

"I know," said Donnington shortly. "I've been reading about it in a book
downstairs. _I_ shouldn't care to sleep in a room where such a thing had
been done--ghost or no ghost!"

And then Bubbles said something which rather startled him. "Bill," she
whispered, leaning yet closer to him, "_I_ raised that ghost two nights
ago."

"What do you mean?" he asked sternly.

"I mean that Aunt Blanche and that tiresome Pegler of hers had already
been here a week and nothing had happened. And then--the first night I
was in the house the ghost appeared!"

She was shivering now, and, almost unwillingly, he put his arm round
her again. "Rot!" he exclaimed. "Don't let yourself think such things,
Bubbles--"

"I know you don't believe it, Bill, but I _have_ got the power of
raising Them."

"I don't know whether I believe it or not," he said slowly. "And I--I
sometimes wonder if _you_ believe it, Bubbles, or if you're only
pretending?"

There was a pause. And then Bubbles said in a strange tone: "'Tisn't a
question of believing it now, Bill. I _know_ it's true! I wish it
wasn't."

"If it's true," he said, "or even if you only believe it's true, what on
earth made you do what you did to-night?"

"It was so deadly," she exclaimed, "so deadly dull!" She yawned. "You
see, I can't help yawning even at the recollection of it!"

And in the darkness her companion smiled.

"I felt as if I wanted to wake them all up! Also I felt as if I wanted
to know something more about them than I did. Also"--she hesitated.

"Yes?" he said questioningly.

"I rather wanted to impress Aunt Blanche." The words came slowly,
reluctantly.

"I wonder what made you want to do that?" asked Donnington dryly.

"Somehow--well, you know, Bill, that sort of cool unbelief of hers
stings me. She's always thought I make it all up as I go along."

"You do sometimes," he said in a low voice.

"I used to, Bill--but I don't now: it isn't necessary."

He turned rather quickly. "Honest Injun, Bubbles?"

"Yes. Honest Injun!" There was a pause. "What do you think of Varick?"
she suddenly whispered.

"I think _Mr._ Varick," answered Donnington coldly, "is a thoroughly
nice sort of chap. I like his rather elaborate, old-fashioned manners."

"He's a queer card for all his pretty manners," muttered Bubbles; and
somehow Donnington felt that something else was on the tip of her tongue
to say, but that she had checked herself, just in time.

"I wish," he said earnestly, "I do wish, Bubbles, that you and I could
have a nice, old-fashioned Christmas. They sent up to-night to know if
Mr. Varick would allow some of his holly to be cut for decorating the
church--why shouldn't we go down to-morrow and help? Do, Bubbles--to
please me!"

"I will," she said penitently. "I will, dearest."

Donnington sighed--a short, quick sigh. He could remember the exquisite
thrill it had given him when she had first uttered the word--in a crowd
of careless people. Now, when Bubbles called him "dearest" it did not
thrill him at all, for he knew she said it to a great many people--and
yet it always gave him pleasure to hear her utter the dear, intimate
little word to him.

"Get up and go to bed, you naughty girl!" he said good-humouredly, but
there was a great deal of tenderness in his low, level tone.

She rose quickly to her feet. All her movements were quick and lightsome
and free. There was a touch of Ariel about Bubbles, so Bill Donnington
sometimes told himself.

They walked up the few shallow steps together, she still very close to
him. And then, when they were opposite her door, she exclaimed, but in
a very low whisper: "Now you must say the prayer with me--for me!"

"The prayer? What _do_ you mean, Bubbles?"

"You know," she muttered:

"Matthew, Mark, Luke and John,
Bless the bed that I lie on--

"What's after that?" she asked.

He went on, uttering the quaint words very seriously, very reverently:

"Four corners to my bed,
Four Angels round my head;
One to watch and one to pray,
One to keep all fears away"--

"No," she exclaimed fretfully. "'One to keep my soul in bed.' That's
what _I_ say. I don't want my poor little soul to go wandering about
this beautiful, terrible old house when I'm asleep. Good-night, Goody
goody!"

She put up her face as a child might have done, and he bent down and
kissed her, as he might have kissed a wilful, naughty child who had just
told him she was sorry for something she had done.

"God bless you," he said huskily. "God bless and keep you from any real
harm, Bubbles my darling."

CHAPTER VI

As regarded Lionel Varick, the second day of his house-party at Wyndfell
Hall opened most inauspiciously, for, when approaching the dining-room,
he became aware that the door was not really closed, and that Mr.
Burnaby and his niece were having what seemed to be an animated and even
angry discussion.

"I don't like this place, and I don't care for your fine friend, Mr.
Varick--" Such was the very unpleasant observation which the speaker's
unlucky host overheard.

There came instant silence when he pushed open the door, and Helen with
heightened colour looked up, and exclaimed: "My uncle has to go back to
London this morning. Isn't it unfortunate? He's had a letter from an old
friend who hasn't been in England for some years, and he feels he must
go up and spend Christmas with _him_, instead of staying with us here."

Varick was much taken aback. He didn't believe in the old friend. His
mind at once reverted to what had happened the night before. It was the
seance which had upset Mr. Burnaby--not a doubt of it! Without being
exactly unpleasant, the guest's manner this morning was cold, very
cold--and Varick himself was hard put to it to hide his annoyance.

He had taken a great deal of trouble in the last few months to
conciliate this queer, disagreeable, rather suspicious old gentleman,
and he had thought he had succeeded. The words he had overheard when
approaching the dining-room showed how completely he had failed. And now
Bubbles Dunster, with her stupid tomfoolery, was actually driving Mr.
Burnaby away!

But Mr. Burnaby's host was far too well used to conceal his thoughts,
and to command his emotions, to do more than gravely assent, with an
expression of regret. Nay more, as some of the others gradually lounged
in, and as the meal became a trifle more animated, he told himself that
after all Mr. Burnaby might have turned out a spoil-sport, especially
with regard to a secret, all-important matter which he, the convener of
this curiously assorted Christmas party, had very much at heart.

Even so, for the first time in their long friendship, he felt at odds
with Blanche Farrow. She ought to have stopped the seance the moment she
saw whither it was tending! His own experience of Bubbles' peculiar gift
had been very far from agreeable, and had given him a thoroughly bad
night. That strange, sinister evocation of his long-dead mother had
stirred embers Varick had believed to be long dead--embers he had done
his best, as it were, to stamp out from his memory.

Another thing which added to his ill-humour was the fact that Bubbles,
alone of the party, had not come down to breakfast. In such matters she
was an absolute law unto herself; but whereas during the first two days
of the girl's stay at Wyndfell Hall her host had been rather glad to
miss her at breakfast--it had been a cosy little meal shared by him and
Blanche--he now resented her absence. He told himself angrily that she
ought to have been there to help to entertain everybody, and to cheer up
sulky James Tapster. The latter had asked: "Where's Miss Bubbles?" with
an injured air--as if he thought she ought to be forming part of the
excellent breakfast.

Mr. Burnaby was determined to get away from Wyndfell Hall as soon as
possible, and by eleven o'clock the whole party, excepting Bubbles, was
in the hall, bidding him good-bye. And then it was that Varick suddenly
realized with satisfaction that both Miss Burnaby and Helen regarded the
departure of their kinsman with perfect equanimity. Was it possible that
Helen was _glad_ her uncle and guardian was leaving her alone--for once?
The thought was a very pleasant one to her present entertainer and host.

Even so, after he and Blanche Farrow turned away from the porch where
they had been speeding the parting guest, she noticed that Varick looked
more annoyed, more thoroughly put out, than she had ever seen him--and
she had seen him through some rather bad moments in the long course of
their friendship!

"I hope Bubbles won't try on any more of her thought-reading
tomfoolery," he said disagreeably. "What happened last night has driven
Mr. Burnaby away."

"I think you're wrong," said Blanche quickly. "I'm certain he received
the letter of which he spoke."

"I don't agree with you"; and it was with difficulty that Varick
restrained himself from telling her what he had overheard the unpleasant
old man say to his niece.

"I think we shall get on all the better without him," said Blanche
decidedly.

She vaguely resented the way in which Varick spoke of Bubbles. After
all, the girl had come to Wyndfell Hall out of the purest good
nature--in order to help them through with their party.

"Oh, well, I daresay you're right." (He couldn't afford to quarrel with
Blanche.) "And I forgot one thing. I've heard from Panton--"

"You mean your doctor friend?" she said coldly.

"Yes, and he hopes to be here sooner than he thought he could be. He's a
good chap, Blanche"--there came a note of real feeling into Varick's
voice--"awfully hard-worked! I hope we'll be able to give him a good
time."

"He'll have to sleep in the haunted room."

"That won't matter. He wouldn't believe in a ghost, even if he saw one!
Be nice to him, for my sake; he was awfully good to me, Blanche."

And Blanche Farrow softened. There was a very good side to her friend
Lionel. He was one of those rare human beings who are, in a moral sense,
greatly benefited by prosperity. In old days, though his attractive,
dominant personality had brought him much kindness, and even friendship,
of a useful kind, his hand had always been, as Blanche Farrow knew well,
more or less against every man. But now?--now he seemed to look at the
world through rose-coloured glasses.

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