by Simon Stern
The concluding apostrophe was addressed to her shoe-strings. She tied the shoe, giving the knot a good tug as additional security.
“Now, then, come undone again, and I’ll—— Bless me! where’s she gone?”
In raising her head, Mary Barber missed her sister.
“Hester!” she called out, raising her voice to its utmost pitch, “Hester, where be you got to!”
The air took away the sound, and a bird aloft seemed to echo it, but there was no other answer.
“Well, this beats bull-baiting,” ejaculated Mary Barber, in the broad country phraseology in vogue in those days, “I’d better pinch myself to see whether I be awake or dreaming.”
She passed over the stile again, and stood a moment to revolve matters.
“She must have gone off somewhere on the run while I’d got my eyes down on that dratted shoe,” was the conclusion the woman came to. “And more idiot she, when she knows running always brings on that queer pain at her heart.”
Mary Barber continued her way across the field, and then, instead of pursuing her road to Worcester, she turned aside to the house of the Pickerings. She gave a sharp knock.
“One would think you were all dead,” she cried, as a maid-servant opened the door. “They are gone, I suppose.”
“Yes, they are gone,” was the girl’s reply. “My missis left about ten minutes since.”
“More than that, I know,” was the answering remark. “What made her come and meet me, Betsey?”
“She didn’t come,” said Betsey.
“She did come,” said Mary Barber.
“She did not,” persisted the servant.
“Why, goodness gracious me, girl! do you want to persuade me out of my senses?” retorted Mary Barber in anger. “She came on as far as the Hollow Field, and sat herself on the stile there, waiting for me to come up. I’ve got the use of my eyes, I hope.”
“Well, I don’t know,” returned the girl dubiously. “I was with her at the moment she was starting, and I’m sure she’d no thought of going then. She was just going out at this door, eating her bit of bread and butter, when she turned back into the parlour and put down her green parasol, telling me to bring her small silk umbrella instead; it might rain, she said, fair it looked. ‘And make haste, Betsey,’ she says to me, ‘for it don’t want two minutes of the half hour, and I shan’t get to All Saints’ in time.”
“What half hour?” asked Mary Barber in a hard disputing sort of tone.
“The half hour after ten. Sure enough, in a minute or two our clock struck it.”
“Your clock must be uncommon wrong in its reckoning then,” was the woman’s rejoinder. “At half-past ten she was stuck on the stile looking out for me. It’s about ten minutes ago.”
It was about ten minutes since her mistress went out, but Betsey did not venture to contend further. Mary Barber always put down those who differed from her.
“After all, she has not took her umbrella,” resumed the girl, “I couldn’t find it in the stand, off by the kitchen; all the rest of the umbrellas was there, but not missis’s silk one, and when I ran back to tell her I thought it must be upstairs, she had gone. Gone at a fine pace too, Mrs. Barber, which you know is not good for her, for she was already out of sight, so I just shut the door and drew the bolt. It’s a pity she drove it off so late.”
“What made her drive it off?”
“Well, there was one or two reasons. Her new fawn gown, such beauty it is, never was sent home till this morning—l’d let that fashionable Miss Reynolds make me another, I would!—and when missis had got it on, it wouldn’t come to in the waist by the breadth of your two fingers, and she’d got her pain very bad, and couldn’t be squeezed. So she had to fold it up again, and put on her turned puce——”
“I saw,” interrupted Mary Barber, cutting the revelation short. I say, Betsey, what’s her shawl? It looked to me like one of them Chaney crapes.”
“It’s the most lovely Chaney crape you ever saw,” replied the girl enthusiastically. “Mr. Richard made it a present to her. She didn’t want to wear it, she said it was too grand, but he laughed at her. The fringe was that depth.”
“And now, you obstinate thing,” sharply put in Mary Barber, as the girl was extending her hands to show the depth of the fringe, “how could I have seen her in her puce gown, and how could I have seen her in the shawl unless she had to come to meet me? I should as soon have expected to see myself in a satin train with flounces as her in a Chaney crape shawl; and Richard must have more money than wit to have bought it.”
“And where is she now, then?” asked Betsey, to whom the argument certainly appeared conclusive. “Gone on by herself to the church?”
“Never you mind!” returned Mary Barber, not choosing to betray her ignorance upon the unsatisfactory point. Don’t you contradict your betters again, Betsey Marsh.”
Betsey humbly took the reproof.
“Why could she not have had a carriage, and went properly?” resumed Mary Barber. “It might have cost him money, but a son’s marriage comes but once in a lifetime.”
“The carriage came, and took off Mr. Richard, and she wouldn’t go in it,” said the girl. And then she proceeded, dropping her voice to a whisper, to tell of the unpleasantness of the previous evening, and of the subsequent events of the morning. Mr. William was up first, and went out without breakfast, leaving word he was gone to the office as usual, and should not attend the wedding. This she had to tell her mistress and Mr. Richard when they came down stairs; her mistress seemed dreadfully grieved, she looked white as a sheet, and as soon as breakfast was over she wrote a letter, and sent Hill with it into Worcester to Mr. William. “It was to tell him to come back and dress himself, and go with her to the wedding, I know,” concluded the girl, “and that’s why, waiting for him, she would not go with Mr. Richard when the carriage came, and why she stayed herself to the last minute. But Mr. William never came: and Hill’s not come back either.”
“Then why on earth did she come to meet me, instead of making the best of her way to church?” demanded Mary Barber.
“It’s what she didn’t do,” retorted the girl; “she never had no thoughts of going to meet you.”
“If you say that again, I’ll—— Why, who’s this?”
The closing of the little iron gate at the foot of the garden had caused her to turn, and she saw William Pickering. He was flushed with the rapid walk from the town—conveyances were not to be hired at hasty will then in Worcester as they are now.
“What can have become of mother, Mary?” William Pickering exclaimed. “I’m going home to see after her. She’s not at Mrs. Law’s.”
“Why, where’s she got to?” responded Mary Barber. “I’ll tell you what, William Pickering,” quickly added the woman, an idea flashing across her, “she’s gone demented, with the quarrelling of you two boys, and has wandered away in the fields! I told you how strangely she stared at me from the stile.”
“Nonsense!” said the young man.
“Is it nonsense! It—— Whatever do you people want?” broke off Mary Barber. For the persons she had noticed were surrounding them in a strange manner, hemming them in ominously. The officer laid his arm upon William Pickering.
“I am sorry to say that I must make you prisoner, sir.”
“What for?” coolly asked William.
“For murder!” was the answer. And as the terrible words fell on Mary Barber’s ear a wild thought crossed her bewildered brain— Could he have murdered his mother? Of course it was only her own previous train of ideas, connected with the non-appearance of her sister, that induced it.
Not so, however. Amidst the dire confusion that seemed at once to reign; amid the indignant questionings of the bridal party, who came flocking out in their gay attire, the particulars were made known. Mr. Stone, the old clerk, had been found dead on the office floor, an ugly wound in the back of his head. Richard Pickering, in his terror, cast a yearning, beseeching glance on h
is brother, as much as to say, surely it has not come to this!
The events of the morning, as connected with this, appeared to have been as follows: Mr. Stone had gone to the office at nine o’clock, as usual, and there to his surprise, found Wm. Pickering opening the letters. The latter said he was not going to his brother’s wedding, and the old clerk reproved him for it. William did not like this; one word led to another, and several harsh things were spoken. So far the office servant testified, a man named Dance, whose work lay chiefly in the warehouse amongst the hop-pockets, and who had come in for orders. They were still “jangling,” Dance said, when he left them. Subsequent to this, William Pickering went out to the warehouse, and to one or two more places. On his return, he found that his mother’s out-door man-of-all-work, Hill, had left a note for him; a large brewer in the town, named Corney, was also waiting to see him on business. When Mr. Corney left he opened the note, the contents of which may as well be given:
“William! you have never directly disobeyed me yet. I charge you, come back once, and go with me to the Church. Do you know that I have passed three parts of the night on my knees, praying that things may be cleared up between you and your brother!
“Your loving Mother.”
After that nothing clearly was known. William Pickering said that when he quitted the office to go home, in obedience to his mother’s mandate, he left Mr. Stone at his desk writing; but a short while afterwards the old clerk was found lying on the floor, with a terrible wound in the back of his head. It was quite evident he had been struck down while bending over the desk. The man Dance, who was sought for in the warehouse, and found, spoke of the quarrelling he had heard, and hence the arrest of William Pickering.
Mary Barber’s first thought, amidst the confusion and the shock, was of her sister. If not broken to her softly, the news might kill her; and the woman, abandoning cake, and wine, and company, before she had seen them, started off there and then in search of Mrs. Pickering, not knowing in the least where to look for her, but taking naturally the way to her home.
“Surely she’ll be coming in to join ’em, and I shall perchance meet her,” was the passing thought.
Not Mrs. Pickering did Mary Barber meet, but Hill, the man. He was coming down the road in a state of excitement, and Mary Barber stared in blank disbelief at his news; his mistress had been found on her bed—dead.
In an incredibly short time the woman seemed to get there, and met the surgeon coming out of the house. It was quite true Mrs. Pickering was dead. With her face looking as if it were turned to stone, Mary Barber went up to the chamber. Betsey, the servant, her tears dropping fast, told the tale.
When Mary Barber and Mr. William had departed, she bolted the door again, and went back to her work in the kitchen. By-and-bye, it occurred to her to wonder whether the silk umbrella was safe up-stairs, or whether it had been lost from the stand; a few weeks before, one of their cotton umbrellas had been taken by a tramp. She ran up into her mistress’s room to look, and there was startled by seeing her mistress. She was sitting in an arm chair by the bed-side, her head leaning sideways on its back, and her left hand pressed on her heart. On the bed lay the silk umbrella, its cover partially taken off, and by its side a bit of bread and butter, half eaten. At the first moment the girl thought she was asleep; but when she saw her face she knew it was something worse. Running out of the house in terror, she met Hill, who was then returning from Worcester, and sent him for the nearest surgeon. He came, and pronounced her to be quite dead. “She must have been dead,” he said, about an hour.
“What time was that?” interrupted Mary Barber, speaking sharply in her emotion.
“It was half-past eleven.” There could not be the slightest doubt as to the facts of the case. “It was the oddest thing, and I thought it at the time, though it went out of my mind again, that she should have disappeared from sight so soon,” sobbed Betsey.
Mary Barber made no comment; strange awe was stealing over her. This had occurred at half-past ten. It was at precisely that time she saw her sister on the stile.
“Betsey,” she presently said, her voice subdued to a whisper, “if your mistress had really gone out, as you supposed, was there any possibility of her coming in later without your knowledge?”
“No there was not; she couldn’t have done it,” was the answer to the question; and Mary Barber had felt perfectly certain that it had not been possible, though she asked it. The only way to Mrs. Pickering’s from the stile was the path she had taken herself, and she knew her sister had not gone on before her.
“I never unbolted either of the doors, back or front, after she (as I thought) went out, except when I undid the front door for you,” resumed the girl. “I don’t dare to be in the house by myself with ’em open since that man frightened me last winter. No, no; missis neither went out nor came in; she just went upstairs to her room, and died. The doctor says he don’t suppose she had a moment’s warning.”
It must have been so. Mary Barber gazed at all; and an awful conviction came over her, that it was her sister’s spirit she had seen on the stile. Never from that hour did she quite lose the sensation of nameless dread it brought in its wake.
“You see, now, Mrs. Barber, you must have been mistaken in thinking my missis went to meet you,” said Betsey.
Mary Barber made no answer; she only looked out straight before her with a gaze that seemed to be very far away.
William Pickering was taken before magistrates in the Guildhall for examination, late in the afternoon. His brother attended it, and—very much to her own surprise—so did Mary Barber. The accusation and the facts had revolved themselves into something tangible out of their original confusion; the prisoner was able to understand the grounds they had against him; and the solicitor, whom he called to his assistance, drove up in a gig to Mrs. Pickering’s, and took possession of Mary Barber.
“What’s the good of your whirling me off to the Guildhall?” she respectfully asked of him, three times over, as he drove back into Worcester. “I don’t know anything about it; I never was inside that office of the Pickerings’ in all my life.”
“You’ll see,” said the lawyer, with a smile.
One thing was satisfactory—that old Mr. Stone had come to life again. The blow, though a very hard one, had stunned, but not killed him; he was, in fact, not injured beyond a reasonable probability of recovery. He had no knowledge of his assailant; whoever it was had come behind him, as he sat bending over his desk, and struck him down unawares.
The Guildhall was crowded; a case exciting so much interest had rarely occurred in Worcester.
After hearing evidence at the trial, which fully acquitted Wm. Pickering, one of the witnesses named Dance was suspected.
“I have an idea, Richard,” said William, “that the guilty man is Dance. Take care that he does not escape. If he has done this, he may also have been the pilferer of your petty cash. Try and get it all cleared up, for the sake of the mother’s peace.”
“For the sake of the mother’s peace!” echoed Richard, with an aching heart. “Poor William little dreams of the blow in store for him.”
He did not dream, Richard Pickering; he acted. Giving a hint to the officer to look after Dance, he pressed up to his brother, then being released from custody.
“William,” he whispered, “tell me the truth in this solemn moment—and it is more sadly solemn than you are as yet cognisant of—have you really not touched that missing money? As I lay awake last night thinking of it, I began to fancy I might have been making a mistake all through. If so——”
“If so, we shall be the good friends that we used to be,” heartily interrupted William, as he clasped his brother’s ready hand. “On my sacred word, I never touched it; I could not do so: and you must have been prejudiced to fancy it. I’ll lay any money Dance will turn out to have been the black sheep. Both looks and tones were false as he gave his evidence.”
And William Pickering was right. Dance was effectu
ally “looked after” that night that some ugly facts came out, and he was quietly taken into custody. True enough, the black sheep had been nobody else. He had skilfully pilfered the petty sums of money; he had struck down Mr. Stone as he sat at his desk, to take a couple of sovereigns he saw lying in it. The old gentleman recovered, and gave evidence on the trial at the following March Assizes, and Richard and William Pickering from henceforth were more closely knit together.
But the singular circumstances attendant on the death of Mrs. Pickering—her apparition (for it could be nothing less), that appeared to Mary Barber—became public property. People in talking of it, mostly with timid glances backward and hushed voices, grew to call it “The Ghost of the Hollow Field,” and for a long while neither girl nor woman would pass through it alone.
THE WICKED EDITOR’S CHRISTMAS DREAM by Alice Mary Vince
He was a very good editor, as Editors go, though some of them do not go very far; just a little given to promise where he never meant to perform, which after all is a frailty common to all mankind, and not exclusively confined to Editors, so he must not be judged too harshly. Besides, neither his faults or his virtues have anything to do with his dream. It was his Christmas dinner which brought about all that. He was never quite sure himself whether it was the goose, or the pudding, or the walnuts, possibly the punch. In my opinion the blame should be divided equally between the four, with perhaps a rather sharper reprimand to the punch. It happened in front of a great big Christmas fire in his own dining room, but he did not know that until it was all over. He thought he was in his sanctum at the office, and that the telephone bell was ringing. He never was accustomed to answer the summons quickly, and he did not answer it quickly now. It kept on persistently, and then he looked up and addressed the unoffending instrument as though it were a dilatory office boy. He was just going leisurely towards it when straight from it came something to meet him—something thin, and weird, and wavy—which he instantly recognised as the inevitable Christmas Ghost. He had a great dislike to all ghosts, but a particular aversion to the Christmas species. They were so moral, so improving, so bent on doing good. At other seasons of the year ghosts content themselves with tapping, creaking, and occasionally pulling the clothes off your bed, but at Christmas they always become priggish and apt to rake up things you would far sooner forget all about. The Editor saw that he was about to be bored, and he sighed deeply as he asked: