by Simon Stern
The wife of Henry Desmond had taken refuge in Holland or Germany with her children, and the descendants returned to England in 1593, during the reign of Queen Elizabeth.
One sunshiny autumn day, in the succeeding year, Captain Hugh Desmond stood at the Communion rails with Frances Maitland in Garthford Church, where they were united in marriage, and for many years enjoyed great happiness. They were blessed with a family of both sons and daughters. Under the dispensations made during his lifetime, subject to the discharge of certain conditions, which were fulfilled after his death, the whole of the Desmond estates, together with the freehold, for ever reverted to Captain Hugh Desmond, and his children inherited their rights.
The story of “The Haunted Chamber” is to this day a family legend, but “Miriam’s Ghost” was never seen or heard of from that Christmas night of Hugh Desmond’s vision.
THE VICAR’S GHOST by Lucy Farmer
CHAPTER I
A MYSTERIOUS VISITOR
It was a half promise to my aunt, Mrs. Jacka, of Porthmuree, that I wouldn’t relate the incidents of the scare we had at The Vicarage until the trouble had blown over; but as the whole business is now settled and done with, I feel released from my engagement, and may explain the awful mystery.
Folks down Porthmuree way tried to laugh us out of countenance; but Aunt Martha, whose married name is Jacka—a terribly suggestive name of donkeys—and how they never had any children is easy to account for. Aunt Jacka told me the whole story, and it came true almost in my very face.
Andrew Jacka—I nearly put two more letters on his name—was, when alive, the gardener at The Vicarage where I spent last Christmas-tide with little Charley, our eldest, in Cornwall. The place is very pretty, in a valley, near the sea. The church is quite a show building, and the tower is built “perpendicular,” as they call it there; and, of course, any one can see that. It’s no wonder! If it was horizontal, now, there would be something remarkable in it.
We reached the lodge which Mrs. Jacka, my aunt, still inhabits, and found a hearty welcome; a Christmas welcome, I may call it, and truly so. There were all kinds of hollies and ivys and red berries galore; a delicious smell of mince meat and apples—quite appetising—and a tea table spread out in a way which made me imagine that my late uncle was not so deserving of those two extra letters as I had fancied. He couldn’t have been that kind, and have left his widow so comfortable—and not even in black for him!
We were early at tea after our journey, and were just gossiping, when a knock came to the door, and little Charley ran to open it. He ran back quick enough, looking scared a bit, and saying,
“Mammy, it’s a man at the door—a clergyman.”
“Well, he won’t eat you, child,” cried my aunt, quick-like. “Don’t be a goose.”
I didn’t quite like her manner of speaking to the boy; though, having no children of her own, I could excuse her. But she rose up and went to the door in the dusk. She hadn’t gone long when she came back with a red face ruffling like a turkey-cock—making all allowances for genders—and without a word catches little Charley a slap on the shoulder-blade.
“Here, Aunt Martha, what’s this?” I cried. “What’s Charley done? I won’t have him beat by anyone except his father—so there!”
“A bit of a brat to invent such untruths!” she exclaimed. “If he was my child I’d pound him!”
“Well, he isn’t your child, aunt: and as you never had one you can’t be expected to understand. Wasn’t there anyone there, dear?” I said to him as he ran to my side.
“Yes, mammy,” he whispered; “I saw him.”
“A man, Charley?”
“Yes: a clergyman—a tall man with a red face like hers! It’s the truth.”
He pointed to Mrs. Jacka, who didn’t much relish the reference.
“I am sure the child did see the man, aunt,” said I. “He wouldn’t tell a falsehood—would you, Charley?”
“I saw him,” said the lad firmly. “He had a whip in his hand and spurs—golden spurs—on his boots.”
“Mercy on us!” screamed my Aunt Martha; “he’s come. Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear!”
She began to rock herself backwards and forwards like a see-saw, her apron thrown over her head, and groaning all the time as if in pain; a “hee-haw” kind of complaint, which came from her husband’s side, perhaps—most likely.
I didn’t heed her greatly, for, after her behaviour to the boy, I didn’t care very much about her fright; though, I will not deny it, curious to find out the cause.
Mind, it was rather fearsome. We two lone women in the lodge beside the wood, of a darkening winter evening well on towards Christmas—the 19th of December it was. No one nearer than The Vicarage up the long avenue, and a ghostly, creepy feeling in the rustling trees. Ugh! it was creepy!
After awhile as the fire burned up more cheerful and I had made little Charley shut the door, Aunt Martha took her apron off her head, and looked round.
“Come here,” she said, looking at Charley.
He wouldn’t stir. She called him again.
“I won’t hurt you, little silly,” continued my aunt. “Come here, I want you.”
“Go, Charley; auntie won’t hit you again, I’ll be bound,” says I, firm-like.
She looked at me steadily as if scenting the battle afar off, but there was no fight.
“I didn’t mean to hurt you, child,” said she, patting Charley’s cheek in quite a motherly way, for her. “Here’s sixpence for a Christmas box in advance. It wasn’t your fault, child. I am sorry I touched you.”
“Kiss auntie, Charley; she has made you a nice present. There’s a boy. Well, aunt, what’s happened?” said I.
“Don’t ask me, Lucy; I can’t tell you; it’s too dreadful any way,” she whispered.
Of course I knew quite well that this was only “put off.” A little pressing only was wanted, but I wasn’t going to press her, so changed the subject to something else. To my great surprise she went on quietly along the new track, and never breathed a syllable about the queer visitor, as long as Charley sat up.
It was a clear, cold moonlight night. As I tucked Charley up in the little bed in my room I could see the moon shining, and when I put the candle out the room was quite light. Charley promised to go to sleep, and so I left him; just closing the door so that we might hear him if he called out.
I found Aunt Martha in the sitting-room, knitting. As I came in she put her needles down in her lap, and looked at me steadily over her tortoise-shell spectacles.
“Well, Lucy?”
“Well, aunt. What’s the matter?”
“Isn’t it terrible? Ain’t you afraid?”
“Afraid of what, aunt?” I cried in surprise. “What’s terrible?”
“Why, that—that man!”
“Why? Who is he? Does he live here?”
“Live here! Lucy, listen. I am counted a sensible woman; isn’t it so?”
I said I had heard as much from her before. What then?
“Lucy Farmer, mark my words—ponder and digest them. That was no living man whom your Charley saw, and who we couldn’t see—it was a spirit!”
I flopped down into a chair all of a heap as aunt took up her needles, and, after a look round the room, began working again, with her face turned to the door, and glancing up now and then as if she expected something or somebody.
“A spirit! A ghost! You don’t mean it! Say you are only playing Christmas on me, Aunt Martha,” I said at last.
“I wish I could, Lucy. But I am sure, from your child’s description of the man, that it’s the old Vicar.”
“What! the dead Vicar?”
“Yes; the one what was drownded. He can’t rest in his grave; or, I should say, he can’t rest in the sea, because he wasn’t buried.”
“Did he fall into the sea, then?” I asked.
“He jumped in,” whispered my aunt as she glanced fearful-like around the room. “He was riding out from here one winter’s day�
��it was the nineteenth of December, eight-and-eighty years ago to-day, in the afternoon!”
“Well?” said I, as she paused.
“He was going over to the Nunnery yonder,” continued my aunt, putting down her needles again, “and wanted to go by way of the beach. He was mounted on his black horse, Neff, a fine sensible beast, and the Red Vicar rode him at the cliff.”
“Mercy on us! Go on, aunt.”
“But the horse wouldn’t jump the cliff, and the Vicar—Heaven forgive him—swore he’d go no other way. He whipped and spurred the animal, but it wouldn’t budge. At last the Vicar got in a towering passion. He dismounted, gave his horse a cut with the whip, took off his gilt spurs, put them in his tail-pocket; and, swearing he would go his own way, leaped down from the cliff.”
“Was he killed?”
“Dead as mutton,” replied Aunt Martha. “He sometimes appears spurs in hand, sometimes booted and spurred ready to mount his horse again. Many have seen him, and something always happens after he has been seen. We ought to tell the Vicar, for something will surely happen before Christmas, Lucy.”
I was silent. The idea of walking up the avenue at that time of the evening, while a ghost was haunting the place, was awful. Besides, Charley couldn’t be left alone in the lodge, and I said so. Aunt Martha made no reply.
“Has the ghost ever appeared before?” I asked, after a pause of silence which was almost more dreadful than anything.
“Yes,” she replied in a low voice. “He has come three times; and every time something has happened! Once the church was robbed—and there never had been a sacrilege here afore nor since. The next time young Fillian—a brave lad of eleven—was killed in the lane yonder by some most mysterious means in the storm—for a tempest always accompanies the appearance. And the last time the Manor House was ‘burgled,’ as Captain French called it. Robbed, he meant.”
“Well, aunt, we can’t go up to The Vicarage to-night,” I said. “If the storm should come on we might be drenched, and I am sure I would die if we met the ghost!”
“Hush!” said my aunt, suddenly. “Listen! Don’t you hear something?”
I listened with all my ears, and after a minute I fancied I could distinguish a moaning sound, which rose and fell in a curious, dull roar; but in the quieter intervals we could distinctly hear the clatter of a horse’s feet. The sound came nearer and nearer—the animal was galloping like mad. No one could have ridden at such a pace, I should say, on such a night along the country road.
My aunt made a dart at me and caught me by the arm.
“Lucy, we’re dead to a certainty! This is Neff, the galloping horse—the Red Vicar’s horse. Listen!”
We stood up, close together, trembling like aspens. The noise came nearer and nearer, and passed in a few seconds. As it died away in the distance, I went to the casement and threw it open. The murmuring sound was quite audible.
“It is the sea,” whispered my aunt. “The storm is brewing. Shut the window, Lucy, I bid you.”
I shut it, and sat down. Then, after a spell of thinking, I said:
“Aunt Martha, I don’t believe that horses have ghosts, and even so they wouldn’t make that clatter. Perhaps we have been mistaken after all!”
“Rubbish!” she replied. “I must say, Lucy, I am surprised. I thought you had more sense.”
With this remark, the clock was striking nine—being a full half-hour slow—my aunt took up a candlestick from the little sideboard, and walked away without even bidding me good-night.
“Cornish manners, perhaps,” I muttered to myself. “But Cornish or not, no one shall make me believe in the phantoms of dead horses rushing about country roads—before twelve o’clock at night, any way!”
But we hadn’t done with the ghosts yet.
CHAPTER II
THE MAN ON HORSEBACK
In the morning the wind was blowing like mad, the trees were all bending in the direction away from the sea, and the roar of the wind in the branches, added to the loud murmur of the waves on the beach, made up a most alarming noise to one not accustomed to ghostly storms.
There wasn’t much rain—not heavy rain but it made up in thickness, and drifted in like smoke and steam, wetting everything in a second, and tasted of salt. But, notwithstanding the weather, aunt and I determined to go up to The Vicarage, and warn the Vicar about the ghost of his fore-runner.
“There’s something going to happen,” my aunt kept saying, until at last I began to wish that something would happen to her tongue for a while.
We struggled through the avenue facing the sea-way against the wind, and in about ten minutes we came in sight of the house amongst the bare trees, which were bending and tossing and complaining about the way in which the wind was treating them.
We went boldly up to the side-door, round the laurel and hydrangea bushes, and enquired for the Vicar. The young girl who came to the door told us we couldn’t see him. He was very busy packing up and would be off to London in the afternoon!
“Going to London!” exclaimed my aunt. “Never! Why, who’s to christen Mary Hadwen’s child the day after to-morrow? and all arranged special!”
“I’m sure I don’t know,” replied the girl. “He told me this morning that he wasn’t to be disturbed when I knocked at his door. Mrs. Mumbles has a holiday and George (the groom) is off after the mare. Master goes at four o’clock.”
“A nice time to go riding about Cornish roads,” I thought. “Which way is he going up to London?” I asked.
But bless ye, that girl didn’t know. Why, if it had been me, I would have found out all about it in no time. She hadn’t been long at The Vicarage, I supposed. She was pert enough, anyway, but prettier than any widower should have in his house in my opinion.
“Rubbish!” said my aunt, afterwards, “and him an old man of over sixty, and a real old gentleman too. Rubbish, Lucy!”
Rubbish or not, I didn’t like that girl, and said so. But as we couldn’t see the Vicar, and weren’t likely to, he being engaged in packing up, we had to go home again, driven up the avenue by the wind, and continually having to turn round and face it because of its interference with our skirts—a regular bother on a windy day—and lucky we were private.
“What did that pert young woman say about the groom, and the mare, aunt?” says I, as we turned away home.
“George has gone after it somewhere. I wonder where! What will the Vicar do without it? He has only the one animal.”
“Aunt,” said I, stopping and turning round to the wind, “listen to me. Don’t you remember that we heard a runaway animal last night, pounding down the road in a terrible way. Perhaps the Vicar’s mare was frightened, and ran away when the ghost of the other horse came into the stable.”
My aunt shook her head, and then settled her bonnet and hair, being flustered.
“Lucy, my dear, mark my words, there’s a great danger hanging over this place. A magpie darted out of our copse this morning, and the chimney smoked, which is sure signs. Mercy on us! listen to the wind; there will be wrecks to-night, and a spring tide, too. Come home.”
We struggled on, and didn’t dare to put our noses outside the cottage all day. You never saw anything like that storm. The wind tore up the trees and smashed branches; birds were dashed to pieces on the perpendicular tower of the church—aye, jackdaws were killed in the very roof—found dead in the gutters on the next Sunday. The swish of the rain, and the clouds of spray which were swept over the cliff, you’ll hardly believe. Great masses of white stuff come up the hill, like birds, people told me; and next day, when we were all on the run because of the Vicar, I myself saw lumps of foam lying in the fields.
Little Charley was afraid of the roaring in the chimney, and we were glad enough, I can tell you, when one of the keepers came in about six o’clock to see how we were. He trembled a bit when we told him about the ghost.
“We’ll keep a look-out to-night,” he said, as he went away up to the village, buffeted by the wind
, and regularly blown round the corner.
“Why will they keep a look-out, aunt?” I asked.
“Because of the Vicar’s ghost,” she replied. “It is sure to appear in the church to-night—at least it is said to come there and walk. A dim light, like a corpse candle, is to be seen by those who have the courage to go out. You’ll hear the people presently.”
“I’ve never seen a ghost,” I began.
“You don’t mean that you think of going out to look for it?” shouted aunt, staring at me as if I had seven heads.
“Well, if others go, why shouldn’t I? Nothing from the next world can harm us,” I said.
“Can’t it?” she retorted, with a sniff. “An appearance killed poor young Fillian, and he eleven years old——”
“He was out in the storm, aunt, wasn’t he?”
“Well, suppose he was! Would the storm crush his skull in, and lay him by the roadside—a tangled corpse? No wind as ever blew could punch in people’s skulls! Don’t tell me! There’s true, real danger out to-night. It’s terrible, so it is!”
Of course I said no more. The storm seemed abating, and about ten o’clock we were both thinking of going to bed when a quick knocking was heard at the door.
We sat still as mice, and looked at each other. My aunt’s face was the colour of tallow, and I daresay mine wasn’t much better. I couldn’t stir an inch to save my life. The ghost had come again!
“It’s there!” gasped my aunt. “Mercy on us! Pray, Lucy!”
If you’ll credit me, I couldn’t! I could no more repeat a prayer that minute, though were half-a-dozen at my finger-ends, and all the Creed on the tip of my tongue. No use. I couldn’t speak, and the knocking continued.
Suddenly my aunt whispered, “Send the boy; it won’t hurt him!”
Send Charley—in his nightdress too—to meet a wandering ghost of a suicided parson! Not I! You wouldn’t catch me sacrificing an innocent lamb like him to the Evil One. I rose up then myself, and, with a quaking at my heart and a quaver in my voice, called out, “Who’s there?”
“It’s me—Robinson,” replied the keeper. “I’ve heard a rumour as there’s somethin’ up at The Vicarage, and I’ve come down to see after it.”