_ PART I CHAPTER III. MISS IRMA GIVES AN AUDIENCE
"My name is Irma Maitland, and this is my brother Louis!" Such were the famous words with which, in response to law and order in the person of Constable Jacky Black, the tall smiling girl in the doorway of the Haunted House of Marnhoul saluted her "rescuers."
"And how came you to be occupying this house?" demanded Mr. Josiah Kettle, father of Joseph the inventive. He was quite unaware of the ghastly terrors with which his son had peopled the Great House, but as the largest farmer on the estate he felt it to be his duty to protect vested rights.
"In the same way that you enter your house," said the girl; "we came in with a key, and have been living here ever since!"
"Are you not feared?" piped a voice from the crowd. It was afterwards found that it was Kettle junior who had spoken.
"Afraid!" answered the girl scornfully, holding her head higher than ever; "do you think that a few foolish people firing at our windows could make us afraid? Can they, Louis?" And as she spoke she looked fondly down at her little brother.
He drew nearer to his sister, looking up at her with a winning confidence, and said in as manly a voice as he could compass, "Certainly not, Irma! But--tell them not to do it any more!"
"You hear what my brother says," said the girl haughtily. "Let there be no more of this!"
"But--in right of law and order, I must know more about this!" cried Constable Jacky, lifting up his staff again. Somehow, however, the magic had gone from his words. Every one now knew that his thunder had a hollow sound.
"Ah, you are the
gendarme--the official--the officer!" said the tall girl, with a more pronounced foreign accent than before, making him a little bow; "please go and tell your superiors that we are here because the place belongs to us--at least to my brother, and that I am staying to take care of him."
"But how did you come?" persisted the man in authority.
The tall girl looked over his head. Her glance, clear, cool, penetrating, scanned face after face, and then she said, as it were, regretfully, "There are no gentlefolk among you?"
There was the slightest shade of inquiry about words which might have seemed rude as a mere affirmation. Then she appeared to answer for herself, still with the same tinge of sadness faintly colouring her pride. "For this reason I cannot tell you how we came to be here."
Mr. Josiah Kettle felt called upon to assert himself.
"I have reason to believe," he said pompously, "that I am as good as any on the estate in the way of being a gentleman--me and my son Joseph. I am a Justice of the Peace, under warrant of the Crown, and so one day will my son Joseph--Jo, you rascal, come off that paling!"
But just then Jo Kettle had other fish to fry. From the bad eminence of the garden palisade he was devouring the new-comer with his eyes. As for me, I had shaken the hand of the lately adored Greensleeves from my arm.
The girl's glance stayed for an instant and no more upon the round and rosy countenance of Mr. Josiah Kettle, Justice of the Peace. She smiled upon him indulgently, but shook her head.
"I am sorry," she said, with gentle condescension, "that I cannot tell anything more to you. You are one of the people who broke our windows!"
Then Josiah Kettle unfortunately blustered.
"If you will not, young madam," he cried, "I can soon send them to you who will make you answer."
The young lady calmly took out of her pocket a dainty pair of ivory writing tablets, such as only the minister of the parish used in all Eden Valley, and he only because he had married a great London lady for his wife.
"I shall be glad of the name and address of the persons to whom you refer!" said Miss Irma (for so from that moment I began to call her in my heart).
"The factors and agents for this estate," Josiah Kettle enunciated grandly. The writing tablets were shut up with a snap of disappointment.
"Oh, Messrs. Smart, Poole & Smart," she said. "Why, I have known them ever since I was as high as little Louis."
Then she smiled indulgently upon Mr. Kettle, with something so easily grand and yet so sweet that I think the hearts of all went out to her.
"I suppose," she said, "that really you thought you were doing right in coming here and firing off guns without permission. It must be an astonishing thing for you to see this house of the Maitlands inhabited after so long. I do not blame your curiosity, but I fear I must ask you to send a competent man to repair our windows. For that we hold you responsible, Mr. Officer, and you, Mr. Justice of the Peace--you and your son Jo! Don't we, Louis?"
"I will see to that myself!" a voice, the same that had spoken before, came from the crowd. Miss Irma searched the circle without, however, coming to a conclusion. I do think that her glance lingered longer on my face than on any of the others, perhaps because Gerty Greensleeves was leaning on my shoulder and whispering in my ear. (What a nuisance girls are, sometimes!) So the glance passed on, with something in it at once calm and simple and high.
"If any of the gentlefolk of our station will call upon us," she went on, "we will tell
them how we came to be here--the clergyman of the parish--or----" here she hesitated for the first time, "or his wife."
Instinctively she seemed to feel the difficulty. "Though we are not of their faith!" she added, smiling once more as with the air of serene condescension she had shown all through.
Then she nodded, and swept a curtsey with an undulating grace which I thought to be adorable, in spite of the suspicion of irony in it.
"Good-bye, good people," she said, letting her eyes again run the circuit of the sea of faces, reinforced by those who had been firing their blunderbusses and horse-pistols (now carefully concealed) so uselessly at the back windows of the house. "We are obliged for your visit. Salute them, Louis!"
Obediently the child carried his hand to the curls on his brow in the same fashion I had seen soldiers do at the militia training on the Dumfries sands, but with the same smilingly tolerant air of receiving and acknowledging the homage of vassals which both of them had shown from the beginning.
Then Miss Irma smiled upon us all once more, nodded to me (I am sure of it), and without another word, shut the door in our faces. _