“You could see from your room,” she explained. “But here you can see it really is in the chapel.”
An almost full moon gave a cool steady light to the scene. There was no wind.
“What a calm, clear night,” I said.
“The sort of night when ghosts would walk,” whispered Alice. I glanced at her; her gray eyes were wide; her little figure tense.
“You’re not afraid?” I asked.
She shivered. “I don’t know. I think I should be if I saw…the ghost of Beau.”
“You won’t,” I assured her. “Don’t be afraid, Alice.”
“But if he…walks.”
“The dead don’t, I’m sure of it.”
“If they’re angry, if they hate someone living…if someone had set fire to the sanctuary…”
“Alice,” I said, “you are letting your imagination run riot.”
“But there is the light, Mrs. Verlaine.”
“Perhaps you thought you saw a light.”
“I’ve seen it several times. There is a light in the chapel. That’s not imagination.”
“It could be someone on the road.”
“It’s too far away. Besides, it’s right there in the chapel…You can see it from this window. It moves about in the chapel, and then it goes out. I’ve seen it more than once since Mr. Napier came home.”
“There could be many explanations. People might meet there.”
“Lovers, you mean, Mrs. Verlaine?”
“Anybody. Why shouldn’t they?”
“It’s an eerie place. Besides it’s trespassing and if people were trespassing they wouldn’t show lights to betray themselves, would they? Look. Look! There it is!”
She was right. I saw the light distinctly. It seemed as though it were held stationary against the window which I remembered seeing in the burned-out ruin.
I stared and could not entirely suppress a shiver. Who was there with the light? Who had gone to the ruin in the copse after dark for the purpose of haunting it? I was determined to find out.
Alice whispered: “It’s the ghost of Beau.”
“No, no…that’s absurd. But it could be someone pretending to be.”
“But who would? Who would…dare?”
I did not answer her. I said: “Would you like to come down there now with me?”
She shrank away from me. “Oh…no, Mrs. Verlaine. He—he might be angry. He might do something terrible to us. He might—”
“Who?”
“Beau.”
I said: “I don’t believe that. Beau is dead. And whoever is showing that light is very much alive. I want to know who it is. Don’t you?”
She lowered her eyes and then lifted them to my face. “Yes, I do, but something terrible could happen to us if we went down there.”
“What do you think would happen to us?”
“We might be turned to stone. He might change us into one of those figures on the altar. I always think they look as though they were once people.”
“Oh, Alice!” I scolded.
She gave a nervous laugh. “I know I’m silly, but I should be so frightened.” She seemed to believe I was going myself for she caught my hand and cried: “Mrs. Verlaine, please don’t go there. Please…please!”
I was gratified that she should be so concerned for me. I said gently: “But, Alice, this is the sort of thing that should be investigated. No one should be allowed to play tricks like this.”
“Yes, but don’t go now, Mrs. Verlaine. Perhaps some of us could go with you. But not now…please.”
“All right. But Alice I don’t accept this idea of a ghost, you know. I am certain that we shall find a perfectly logical explanation if we look for it.”
“Do you really?”
“I most certainly do.”
“What a comfort.”
“Now, Alice, I think you should forget about this light.”
“Yes,” she sighed, “otherwise I shall think about it in bed tonight and I shan’t be able to sleep.”
“Have you a good book to read?”
She nodded. “It’s Evelina. It’s fascinating, Mrs. Verlaine. It’s all about a young lady’s adventures in society.”
“Why, Alice, I believe you would like to be a young lady in society.”
She smiled and I was pleased because I could see that the fear and the morbid imaginings engendered by the light in the chapel were already receding. “Well,” she said, “I can imagine it, Mrs. Verlaine, though it could never happen to me. Allegra is always reminding me that although I live in a big house and enjoy some of the privileges of the family, I am only the housekeeper’s daughter.”
“Never mind, Alice. It is really what you are that counts.”
“Do you think so?”
“I am sure of it. Now you get back to Evelina and don’t give another thought to that mysterious light which I’m determined shan’t be a mystery much longer.”
“You don’t like mysteries, do you?”
“Who doesn’t want to solve them?”
“A lot of people don’t bother. Perhaps they’re like me and imagine what happened. But you want to know. Like what happened to Miss Brandon.”
“I daresay a number of people want to know that.”
“But they never will now, I suppose.”
“One can never be sure what will be discovered.”
“No.” She was thoughtful. Then she said: “That’s what makes it all so exciting, doesn’t it?”
I agreed and went back to my room.
I was not really as unconcerned about the mysterious light as I had led Alice to believe. There seemed no doubt that someone was playing tricks; it was someone who wanted to pretend the place was haunted, and keep alive the memory of Beaumont Stacy. As if that were necessary! No, that was hardly the answer. The haunting was meant to imply, I was sure, that the ghost of Beaumont was in revolt against Napier’s return.
It was silly, childish, miserable and vengeful; and I was more angry than the situation warranted.
Napier undoubtedly had his enemies—and that did not surprise me.
Returning to my room I went to the window seat and looked out over the grounds. The moon had waned slightly since the night of my concert. I thought of the moonlit garden and of Napier who was trying to put the past behind him and I wondered who it was who was determined that he should not. Who would go to the copse and wave a light about in the hope that it would be believed his beautiful brother had returned because he was displeased. It was childish. And yet it was just the way to keep the story alive.
I looked across the lawns to the copse. Alice was right, it was not so easy to make out the ruin here as it was higher up. In fact I could not see the chapel—only the dark smudge of firs which was the copse.
The chapel had been destroyed by fire after Napier came back. Who had done that? Was it the same one who now “haunted it” by waving a light about after dark?
I felt a desire to lay the ghost, to stop this childishness—and the reason was that I wanted to know what Napier would be like if he were no longer living in the shadow of the past. Much the same, was the answer to that. Just because of a few moments in that garden, when I was decidedly not my usual practical self, I was ready to endow him with all sorts of qualities which he undoubtedly did not possess.
“The maternal instinct, dear Caro,” Pietro would have said. He had mocked that in me on one occasion when I was anxious because he had walked through the streets for hours in the rain contemplating some cadenza which had failed to please him.