by E. Nesbit
‘Hullo, old man,’ came his cheery voice, as he swung his bag into my carriage, ‘here’s luck. I was expecting a dull journey.’
‘Where are you off to?’ I asked, discretion still bidding me turn my eyes away, though I saw, without looking, that hers were red-rimmed.
‘To old Branbridge’s,’ he answered, shutting the door, and leaning out for a last word with his sweetheart.
‘Oh, I wish you wouldn’t go, John,’ she was saying in a low, earnest voice. ‘I feel certain something will happen.’
‘Do you think I should let anything happen to keep me, and the day after tomorrow our wedding day?’
‘Don’t go,’ she answered, with a pleading intensity that would have sent my Gladstone on to the platform, and me after it. But she wasn’t speaking to me. John Charrington was made differently – he rarely changed his opinion, never his resolutions.
He just touched the ungloved hands that lay on the carriage door.
‘I must, May. The old boy has been awfully good to me, and now he’s dying I must go and see him, but I shall come home in time for—’ The rest of the parting was lost in a whisper and in the rattling lurch of the starting train.
‘You’re sure to come?’ she spoke, as the train moved.
‘Nothing shall keep me,’ he answered, and we steamed out. After he had seen the last of the little figure on the platform, he leaned back in his corner and kept silence for a minute.
When he spoke it was to explain to me that his godfather, whose heir he was, lay dying at Peasemarsh Place, some fifty miles away, and he had sent for John, and John had felt bound to go.
‘I shall be surely back tomorrow,’ he said, ‘or, if not, the day after, in heaps of time. Thank Heaven, one hasn’t to get up in the middle of the night to get married nowadays.’
‘And suppose Mr Branbridge dies?’
‘Alive or dead, I mean to be married on Thursday!’ John answered, lighting a cigar and unfolding The Times.
At Peasemarsh station we said ‘goodbye’, and he got out, and I saw him ride off. I went on to London, where I stayed the night.
When I got home the next afternoon, a very wet one, by the way, my sister greeted me with:
‘Where’s Mr Charrington?’
‘Goodness knows,’ I answered testily. Every man since Cain has resented that kind of question.
‘I thought you might have heard from him,’ she went on, ‘as you give him away tomorrow.’
‘Isn’t he back?’ I asked, for I had confidently expected to find him at home.
‘No, Geoffrey’ – my sister always had a way of jumping to conclusions, especially such conclusions as were least favourable to her fellow creatures – ‘he has not returned, and, what is more, you may depend upon it, he won’t. You mark my words, there’ll be no wedding tomorrow.’
My sister Fanny has a power of annoying me which no other human being possesses.
‘You mark my words,’ I retorted with asperity, ‘you had better give up making such a thundering idiot of yourself. There’ll be more wedding tomorrow than ever you’ll take the first part in.’ A prophecy which, by the way, came true.
But though I could snarl confidently to my sister, I did not feel so comfortable when, late that night, I, standing on the doorstep of John’s house, heard that he had not returned. I went home gloomily through the rain. Next morning brought a brilliant blue sky, gold sun, and all such softness of air and beauty of cloud as go to make a perfect day. I woke with a vague feeling of having gone to bed anxious, and of being rather averse from facing that anxiety in the light of full wakefulness.
With my shaving-water came a letter from John which relieved my mind, and sent me up to the Fosters with a light heart.
May was in the garden. I saw her blue gown among the hollyhocks as the lodge gates swung to behind me. So I did not go up to the house, but turned aside down the turfed path.
‘He’s written to you too,’ she said, without preliminary greeting, when I reached her side.
‘Yes, I’m to meet him at the station at three, and come straight on to the church.’
Her face looked pale, but there was a brightness in the eyes and a softness about the mouth that spoke of renewed happiness.
‘Mr Branbridge begged him so to stay another night that he had not the heart to refuse,’ she went on. ‘He is so kind, but … I wish he hadn’t stayed.’
I was at the station at half-past two. I felt rather annoyed with John. It seemed a sort of slight to the beautiful girl who loved him, that he should come, as it were out of breath, and with the dust of travel upon him, to take her hand, which some of us would have given the best years of our life to take.
But when the three o’clock train glided in and glided out again, having brought no passengers to our little station, I was more than annoyed. There was no other train for thirty-five minutes; I calculated that, with much hurry, we might just get to the church in time for the ceremony; but, oh, what a fool to miss that first train! What other man would have done it?
The thirty-five minutes seemed a year, as I wandered round the station reading the advertisements and the timetables and the company’s bye-laws, and getting more and more angry with John Charrington. This confidence in his own power of getting everything he wanted the minute he wanted it, was leading him too far.
I hate waiting. Everyone hates waiting, but I believe I hate it more than anyone else does. The three-thirty-five was late too, of course.
I ground my pipe between my teeth and stamped with impatience as I watched the signals. Click. The signal went down. Five minutes later I flung myself into the carriage that I had brought for John.
‘Drive to the church!’ I said, as some one shut the door. ‘Mr Charrington hasn’t come by this train.’
Anxiety now replaced anger. What had become of this man? Could he have been taken suddenly ill? I had never known him have a day’s illness in his life. And even so he might have telegraphed. Some awful accident must have happened to him. The thought that he had played her false never, no, not for a moment, entered my head. Yes, something terrible had happened to him, and on me lay the task of telling his bride. I almost wished the carriage would upset and break my head, so that someone else might tell her.
It was five minutes to four as we drew up at the churchyard. A double row of eager onlookers lined the path from lych-gate to porch. I sprang from the carriage and passed up between them. Our gardener had a good front place near the door. I stopped.
‘Are they still waiting, Byles?’ I asked, simply to gain time, for of course I knew they were, by the waiting crowd’s attentive attitude.
‘Waiting, sir? No, no, sir; why it must be over by now.’
‘Over! Then Mr Charrington’s come?’
‘To the minute, sir; must have missed you somehow, and I say, sir,’ lowering his voice, ‘I never see Mr John the least bit so afore, but my opinion is he’s ’ad more than a drop; I wouldn’t be going too far if I said he’s been drinking pretty free. His clothes was all dusty and his face like a sheet. I tell you I didn’t like the looks of him at all, and the folks inside are saying all sorts of things. You’ll see, something’s gone very wrong with Mr John, and he’s tried liquor. He looked like a ghost, and he went in with his eyes straight before him, with never a look or a word for none of us; him that was always such a gentleman.’
I had never heard Byles make so long a speech. The crowd in the churchyard were talking in whispers, and getting ready rice and slippers to throw at the bride and bridegroom. The ringers were ready with their hands on the ropes, to ring out the merry peal as the bride and bridegroom should come out.
A murmur from the church announced them; out they came. Byles was right. John Charrington did not look himself. There was dust on his coat, his hair was disarranged. He seemed to have been in some row, for there was a black mark above his eyebrow. He was deathly pale. But his pallor was not greater than that of the bride, who might have been carved in ivory – dre
ss, veil, orange-blossoms, face and all.
As they passed out, the ringers stooped – there were six of them – and then, on the ears expecting the gay wedding peal, came the slow tolling of the passing bell.
A thrill of horror at so foolish a jest from the ringers passed through us all. But the ringers themselves dropped the ropes and fled like rabbits out into the sunlight. The bride shuddered, and grey shadows came about her mouth, but the bridegroom led her on down the path where the people stood with handfuls of rice; but the handfuls were never thrown, and the wedding bells never rang. In vain the ringers were urged to remedy their mistake; they protested, with many whispered expletives, that they had not rung that bell; that they would see themselves further before they’d ring anything more that day.
In a hush, like the hush in a chamber of death, the bridal pair passed into their carriage and its door slammed behind them.
Then the tongues were loosed. A babel of anger, wonder, conjecture from the guests and spectators.
‘If I’d seen his condition, sir,’ said old Foster to me as we drove off, ‘I would have stretched him on the floor of the church, sir, by Heaven I would, before I’d have let him marry my daughter!’
Then he put his head out the window.
‘Drive like hell,’ he cried to the coachman; ‘don’t spare the horses.’
We passed the bride’s carriage. I forebore to look at it, and old Foster turned his head away and swore.
We stood in the hall doorway, in the blazing afternoon sun, and in about half a minute we heard wheels crunching the gravel. When the carriage stopped in front of the steps, old Foster and I ran down.
‘Great Heaven, the carriage is empty! And yet—’
I had the door open in a minute, and this is what I saw:
No sign of John Charrington; and of May, his wife, only a huddled heap of white satin, lying half on the floor of the carriage and half on the seat.
‘I drove straight here, sir,’ said the coachman, as the bride’s father lifted her out, ‘and I’ll swear no one got out of the carriage.’
We carried her into the house in her bridal dress, and drew back her veil. I saw her face. Shall I ever forget it? White, white, and drawn with agony and horror, bearing such a look of terror as I have never seen since, except in dreams. And her hair, her radiant blonde hair, I tell you it was white like snow.
As we stood, her father and I, half mad with the horror and mystery of it, a boy came up the avenue – a telegraph boy. They brought the orange envelope to me. I tore it open.
John Charrington was thrown from the dog-cart on his way to the station at half-past one. Killed on the spot.
BRANBRIDGE, Peasemarsh Place.
And he was married to May Foster in our Parish Church at half-past three, in presence of half the parish!
‘I shall be married on Thursday dead or alive!’
What had passed in that carriage on the homeward drive? No one knows – no one will ever know.
Before a week was over they laid her beside her husband in the churchyard where they had kept their love-trysts.
This is the true story of John Charrington’s wedding.
NO. 17
I yawned. I could not help it. But the flat, inexorable voice went on.
‘Speaking from the journalistic point of view – I may tell you, gentlemen, that I once occupied the position of advertisement editor to the Bradford Woollen Goods Journal – and speaking from that point of view, I hold the opinion that all the best ghost stories have been written over and over again; and if I were to leave the road and return to a literary career I should never be led away by ghosts. Realism’s what’s wanted nowadays, if you want to be up-to-date.’
The large commercial paused for breath.
‘You never can tell with the public,’ said the lean, elderly traveller; ‘it’s like in the fancy business. You never know how it’s going to be. Whether it’s a clockwork ostrich or Samite silk or a particular shape of shaded glass novelty or a tobacco-box got up to look like a raw chop, you never know your luck.’
‘That depends on who you are,’ said the dapper man in the corner by the fire. ‘If you’ve got the right push about you, you can make a thing go, whether it’s a clockwork kitten or imitation meat, and with stories, I take it, it’s just the same – realism or ghost stories. But the best ghost story would be the realest one, I think.’
The large commercial had got his breath.
‘I don’t believe in ghost stories, myself,’ he was saying with earnest dullness; ‘but there was rather a queer thing happened to a second cousin of an aunt of mine by marriage – a very sensible woman with no nonsense about her. And the soul of truth and honour. I shouldn’t have believed it if she had been one of your flighty, fanciful sort.’
‘Don’t tell us the story,’ said the melancholy man who travelled in hardware; ‘you’ll make us afraid to go to bed.’
The well-meant effort failed. The large commercial went on, as I had known he would; his words overflowed his mouth, as his person overflowed his chair. I turned my mind to my own affairs, coming back to the commercial room in time to hear the summing up.
‘The doors were all locked, and she was quite certain she saw a tall, white figure glide past her and vanish. I wouldn’t have believed it if—’ And so on da capo, from ‘if she hadn’t been the second cousin’ to the ‘soul of truth and honour’.
I yawned again.
‘Very good story,’ said the smart little man by the fire. He was a traveller, as the rest of us were; his presence in the room told us that much. He had been rather silent during dinner, and afterwards, while the red curtains were being drawn and the red and black cloth laid between the glasses and the decanters and the mahogany, he had quietly taken the best chair in the warmest corner. We had got our letters written and the large traveller had been boring for some time before I even noticed that there was a best chair and that this silent, bright-eyed, dapper, fair man had secured it.
‘Very good story,’ he said; ‘but it’s not what I call realism. You don’t tell us half enough, sir. You don’t say when it happened or where, or the time of year, or what colour your aunt’s second cousin’s hair was. Nor yet you don’t tell us what it was she saw, nor what the room was like where she saw it, nor why she saw it, nor what happened afterwards. And I shouldn’t like to breathe a word against anybody’s aunt by marriage’s cousin, first or second, but I must say I like a story about what a man’s seen himself.’
‘So do I,’ the large commercial snorted, ‘when I hear it.’
He blew his nose like a trumpet of defiance.
‘But,’ said the rabbit-faced man, ‘we know nowadays, what with the advance of science and all that sort of thing, we know there aren’t any such things as ghosts. They’re hallucinations; that’s what they are – hallucinations.’
‘Don’t seem to matter what you call them,’ the dapper one urged. ‘If you see a thing that looks as real as you do yourself, a thing that makes your blood run cold and turns you sick and silly with fear – well, call it ghost, or call it hallucination, or call it Tommy Dodd; it isn’t the name that matters.’
The elderly commercial coughed and said, ‘You might call it another name. You might call it—’
‘No, you mightn’t,’ said the little man, briskly; ‘not when the man it happened to had been a teetotal Bond of Joy for five years and is to this day.’
‘Why don’t you tell us the story?’ I asked.
‘I might be willing,’ he said, ‘if the rest of the company were agreeable. Only I warn you it’s not that sort-of-a-kind-of-a-somebody-fancied-they-saw-a-sort-of-a-kind-of-a-something-sort of a story. No, sir. Everything I’m going to tell you is plain and straightforward and as clear as a time-table – clearer than some. But I don’t much like telling it, especially to people who don’t believe in ghosts.’
Several of us said we did believe in ghosts. The heavy man snorted and looked at his watch. And the man in the best c
hair began.
‘Turn the gas down a bit, will you? Thanks. Did any of you know Herbert Hatteras? He was on this road a good many years. No? Well, never mind. He was a good chap, I believe, with good teeth and a black whisker. But I didn’t know him myself. He was before my time. Well, this that I’m going to tell you about happened at a certain commercial hotel. I’m not going to give it a name, because that sort of thing gets about, and in every other respect it’s a good house and reasonable, and we all have our living to get. It was just a good ordinary, old-fashioned commercial hotel, as it might be this. And I’ve often used it since, though they’ve never put me in that room again. Perhaps they shut it up after what happened.
‘Well, the beginning of it was, I came across an old school-fellow; in Boulter’s Lock one Sunday it was, I remember. Jones was his name, Ted Jones. We both had canoes. We had tea at Marlow, and we got talking about this and that and old times and old mates; and do you remember Jim, and what’s become of Tom, and so on. Oh, you know. And I happened to ask after his brother, Fred by name. And Ted turned pale and almost dropped his cup, and he said, “You don’t mean to say you haven’t heard?” “No,” says I, mopping up the tea he’d slopped over with my handkerchief. “No; what?” I said.
‘“It was horrible,” he said. “They wired for me, and I saw him afterwards. Whether he’d done it himself or not, nobody knows; but they’d found him lying on the floor with his throat cut.” No cause could be assigned for the rash act, Ted told me. I asked him where it had happened, and he told me the name of this hotel – I’m not going to name it. And when I’d sympathised with him and drawn him out about old times and poor old Fred being such a good old sort and all that, I asked him what the room was like. I always like to know what the places look like where things happen.
‘No, there wasn’t anything specially rum about the room, only that it had a French bed with red curtains in a sort of alcove; and a large mahogany wardrobe as big as a hearse, with a glass door; and, instead of a swing-glass, a carved, black-framed glass screwed up against the wall between the windows, and a picture of “Belshazzar’s Feast” over the mantelpiece. I beg your pardon?’ He stopped, for the heavy commercial had opened his mouth and shut it again.