Ghost

by Louise Welsh

  I used to ask that question myself in the early days of their engagement, but after a certain evening in August I never asked it again. I was coming home from the Club through the churchyard. Our church is on a thyme-grown hill, and the turf about it is so thick and soft that one’s footsteps are noiseless.

  I made no sound as I vaulted the low wall and threaded my way between the tombstones. It was at the same instant that I heard John Charrington’s voice and saw her. May was sitting on a low, flat gravestone, her face turned towards the full splendour of the setting sun. Its expression ended, at once and for ever, any question of love for him; it was transfigured to a beauty I should not have believed possible, even to that beautiful little face.

  John lay at her feet, and it was his voice that broke the stillness of the golden August evening.

  “My dear, I believe I should come back from the dead, if you wanted me!”

  I coughed at once to indicate my presence, and passed on into the shadow fully enlightened.

  The wedding was to be early in September. Two days before, I had to run up to town on business. The train was late, of course, for we were on the South-Eastern, and as I stood grumbling with my watch in my hand, whom should I see but John Charrington and May Foster. They were walking up and down the unfrequented end of the platform, arm-in-arm, looking into each other’s eyes, careless of the sympathetic interest of the porters.

  Of course I knew better than to hesitate a moment before burying myself in the booking-office, and it was not till the train drew up at the platform that I obtrusively passed the pair with my Gladstone, and took the corner in a first-class smoking-carriage. I did this with as good an air of not seeing them as I could assume. I pride myself on my discretion, but if John were travelling alone, I wanted his company. I had it.

  “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 –…” 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 first part in.”

  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 up 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 her 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 lives 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?

  That 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 someone 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 – dress, 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 the 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 of 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 dogcart 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.

  Thus is the story of John Charrington’s wedding.

  THRAWN JANET

  Robert Louis Stevenson

  Robert Louis Stevenson (1850–1894) is the author of Treasure Island, The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde and a swathe of novels, poetry, essays, short stories and travel writing. He was born in Edinburgh into a family of lighthouse engineers on his father’s side, and lawyers and church ministers on his mother’s. Stevenson made a stab at studying both engineering and law but was suited to neither. Plagued by ill-health from childhood, he was nevertheless an enthusiastic traveller. He was married to Fanny Osbourne and died in Samoa.

  The Reverend Murdoch Soulis was long minister of the moorland parish of Balweary, in the vale of Dule. A severe, bleak-faced old man, dreadful to his hearers, he dwelt in the last years of his life, without relative or servant or any human company, in the small and lonely manse under the Hanging Shaw. In spite of the iron composure of his features, his eye was wild, scared, and uncertain; and when he dwelt, in private admonitions, on the future of the impenitent, it seemed as if his eye pierced through the storms of time to the terrors of eternity. Many young persons, coming to prepare themselves against the season of the Holy Communion, were dreadfully affected by his talk. He had a sermon on 1st Peter, v. and 8th, “The devil as a roaring lion,” on the Sunday after every seventeenth of August, and he was accustomed to surpass himself upon that text both by the appalling nature of the matter and the terror of his bearing in the pulpit. The children were frightened into fits, and the old looked more than usually oracular, and were, all that day, full of those hints that Hamlet deprecated. The manse itself, where it stood by the water of Dule among some thick trees, with the Shaw overhanging it on the one side, and on the other many cold, moorish hilltops rising toward the sky, had begun, at a very early period of Mr. Soulis’s ministry, to be avoided in the dusk hours by all who valued themselves upon their prudence; and guidmen sitting at the clachan alehouse shook their heads together at the thought of passing late by that uncanny neighbourhood. There was one spot, to be more particular, which was regarded with especial awe. The manse stood between the highroad and the water of Dule with a gable to each; its back was toward the kirktown of Balweary, nearly half a mile away; in front of it, a bare garden, hedged with thorn, occupied the land between the river and the road. The house was two stories high, with two large rooms on each. It opened not directly on the garden, but on a causewayed path, or passage, giving on the road on the one hand, and closed on the other by the tall willows and elders that bordered on the stream. And it was this strip of causeway that enjoyed among the young parishioners of Balweary so infamous a reputation. The minister walked there often after dark, sometimes groaning aloud in the instancy of his unspoken prayers; and when he was from home, and the manse door was locked, the more daring schoolboys ventured, with beating hearts, to “follow my leader” across that legendary spot.

  This atmosphere of terror, surrounding, as it did, a man of God of spotless character and orthodoxy, was a common cause of wonder and subject of inquiry among the few strangers who were led by chance or business into that unknown,
outlying country. But many even of the people of the parish were ignorant of the strange events which had marked the first year of Mr. Soulis’s ministrations; and among those who were better informed, some were naturally reticent, and others shy of that particular topic. Now and again, only, one of the older folk would warm into courage over his third tumbler, and recount the cause of the minister’s strange and solitary life.

  *

  Fifty years syne, when Mr. Soulis cam’ first into Ba’weary, he was still a young man – a callant, the folk said – fu’ o’ book learnin’ and grand at the exposition, but, as was natural in sae young a man, wi’ nae leevin’ experience in religion. The younger sort were greatly taken wi’ his gifts and his gab; but auld, concerned, serious men and women were moved even to prayer for the young man, whom they took to be a self-deceiver, and the parish that was like to be sae ill-supplied. It was before the days o’ the moderates – weary fa’ them; but ill things are like guid – they baith come bit by bit, a pickle at a time; and there were folk even then that said the Lord had left the college professors to their ain devices an’ the lads that went to study wi’ them wad hae done mair and better sittin’ in a peat-bog, like their forbears of the persecution, wi’ a Bible under their oxter and a speerit o’ prayer in their heart. There was nae doubt, onyway, but that Mr. Soulis had been ower lang at the college. He was careful and troubled for mony things besides the ae thing needful. He had a feck o’ books wi’ him – mair than had ever been seen before in a’ that presbytery; and a sair wark the carrier had wi’ them, for they were a’ like to have smoored in the Deil’s Hag between this and Kilmackerlie. They were books o’ divinity, to be sure, or so they ca’d them; but the serious were o’ opinion there was little service for sae mony, when the hail o’ God’s Word would gang in the neuk of a plaid. Then he wad sit half the day and half the nicht forbye, which was scant decent – writin’ nae less; and first, they were feared he wad read his sermons; and syne it proved he was writin’ a book himsel’, which was surely no fittin’ for ane of his years and sma’ experience.