Miss McKay, canny though she might be, was no Mrs Grundy. She was prepared to grant her students a reasonable number of late passes each term without wishing to find out how they spent the hours between lunch and lock-out. She disapproved of engaged students because she believed that their entanglements interfered with their studies, but she was a just and reasonable woman and was prepared to admit that it took all kinds to make a world, and, that microcosm of it, a college.
On the morning of the second Thursday in October, Miss Good applied for a late leave. The college secretary looked up the records.
‘It’s your third this term, Miss Good, but I’ll ring Miss McKay.’
‘How dreary of you, Louise! Come on! Be a sport! Give me a pass. Who’s to know?’
‘Miss McKay, of course.’ The secretary connected herself with the Principal. ‘Miss Good, asking for a late pass… she’s had two… Very good, Miss McKay.’ She put down the intercommunication receiver. ‘She says you can go ahead, but you’ve got to be in by eleven.’
‘The old sourpuss! Still, it’s better than nothing, although Barry will create, I expect. She’s always made it half-past before. Oh, well, if you’ll just give me the card… Thanks a lot.’
Thursday was the Calladale half-holiday. It had been arranged between the two principals that Highpepper should take Wednesdays, but this pious attempt at sabotage was frustrated weekly by the Highpepper students, who, if they had any desire to escort Calladales to the pictures and take them out to tea or supper, cut the Gordian knot by cutting the Thursday afternoon lectures and chores. This inspired cutting was accomplished by Mr Cleeves on the Thursday of Miss Good’s late pass, and an enjoyable time was had by both, Cleeves merely remarking, when his affianced referred to the cheese-paring dictum of Miss McKay, that, at any rate, eleven o’clock would be all right. There would be plenty of time for a four o’clock cinema followed by a dinner and drinks, and his Morris would get the girl back to Calladale before the expiration of her pass.
He was prepared to be as good as his word, but, as the car was within a mile of her college, Miss Good gave a sudden exclamation.
‘My ring! I must have left it in that cloakroom place! I took it off to wash my hands, and I must have forgotten to put it on again!’
‘Oh, damn!’ said Cleeves. ‘I’d better go back, I suppose. Good thing the place is an hotel and not just a pub. I’ll be able to get in all right. I’ll ask at the office. Look, I’ll put you down at your gates, if you don’t mind. That will save me a bit of time.’
‘Oh, yes. After all, you’ve still got another twenty-five miles to do. Oh, dear! I’m terribly sorry.’
‘Yes, you are a little chump. I’ll hang on to the ring when I get it, and let you have it back when I see you on Saturday.’
‘I only hope it’s still where I left it! Surely nobody would steal it, would they?—not in a nice hotel like that!’
Mr Cleeves was not prepared to bet on this, but he did not say so. He merely told his beloved not to fret, put her down at the gates of Calladale, turned the car and drove back at top speed to Garchester. Miss Good watched his rear lights until they disappeared round a bend, and then turned her steps towards the hostel, for she was not an in-college student.
The Calladale grounds, even apart from the acreage devoted to crops, pasture, hen-houses and piggeries, were extensive, forming, as they had done before the college took them over, the park and gardens of a very large mansion. There was no moon, and Miss Good, walking between tall rhododendrons on the half-mile trek to bed and board, began to realise that there was a vast difference between being driven in a smart, new Morris up to the students’ entrance and being compelled to walk the distance between the college gates and the hostel in eerie autumn darkness. She was not a nervous or a fanciful girl. Moreover, she had been born and brought up in a country vicarage and was accustomed to the absence of lights in country places. Nevertheless, she realised that she would not be sorry to leave the rhododendron walk behind her and emerge on to the neat gravel drive which ran between the open lawns that fronted the hostel. She tried not to remember that the college was said to be haunted.
Just as she was within sight of her goal, however, her blood froze and her ears pounded. She found herself sick with fright. Blocking the exit to the rhododendron walk was a dim figure tall enough to blot out the stars. It glimmered faintly white against the dark bushes. She stopped dead, gulping with terror. Then, with a sob, she turned in her tracks and tore for the gate. She did not look round until she was out in the road. Gasping and winded, she flung herself down in a ditch and lay there, shivering and terrified.
‘Don’t let it come! Don’t let it come!’ she thought wildly. But come it did, and by the light of the single lamp which illumined the entrance to the college grounds she saw that it was a horseman all in white, a shapeless, apparently headless, figure riding a big-boned grey. The horse was going at a walking pace, but when it was out on the road it began to trot.
The girl in the ditch got up and tore along the rhododendron avenue to the hostel. This time no sinister, ghostly horseman barred the way. Neither was the front door barred, but an apologetic maidservant informed her that the head of the hostel wished to speak to her in the morning.
In her study-bedroom a reproachful friend awaited her.
‘You are a fool! Why on earth didn’t you get back to time? Considine is rabid. You’ve probably ditched all our late passes until half-term.’
‘I’ve got an answer for her, but, of course, she won’t believe it.’
‘She might. She isn’t bad. Did you run out of juice on the way home? If so, I wouldn’t hand her that one. She won’t believe that, even if it’s true.’
‘She won’t be asked to believe it. I suppose you haven’t got an aspirin or something. I’ve had the most awful shock.’
‘Not…? I shouldn’t have thought…’
‘Of course not! He’s a lamb. No. The fact is—I think I’ve seen the college ghost.’
‘How many drinks did you have?’
‘No, really, I’m not joking. Get off my bed. I’ll tell you all about it in the morning. Oh, dear! I wish, just for once, we had dormitories instead of these little rooms. I’m scared to death. I know I shan’t sleep.’
She did sleep, however, youth and a certain amount of that which biteth like an adder assisting—indeed, insisting upon—kind nature’s sweet restorer. She awoke to a thin, late October sunshine and the consciousness that she was called upon to report to Miss Considine. In the clear light of day the ghost-story would sound palpably absurd. Better to make the lost engagement ring the excuse for overstaying her late leave, Miss Good decided. She advanced this plea. Miss Considine, a weather-beaten lady of fifty who taught the science and practice of vegetable gardening, looked concerned.
‘That very expensive ring?’ she asked. ‘Have you got it back?’
‘Well, no.’
‘You’ve lost it entirely?’
‘I—I hope not.’
‘Look here, Miss Good, come clean. What was your reason for overstaying your pass?’
Miss Good looked unhappy.
‘It was really about the ring,’ she said.
‘Yes?’
‘My—my fiancé went back for it. We’d got nearly back to college when I remembered I’d left it at the place where we had dinner. He brought me back to the gates and, honestly, Miss Considine, I’d have had heaps of time to get in before lock-up if I—if I—this is going to sound silly…’
‘If you mean that you saw someone on horseback in the college grounds, it may interest you to know that he trampled down my brussels sprouts. So—now?’
‘Yes, I did see someone on a horse. It was at the end of the rhododendron avenue. I ran back to the gate and hid in the ditch, and that’s what made me late.’