by Ellen Wood
“What was Robin doing?” interrupted Mr. Bourne.
“Sir, I suppose it’s just some fancy or other that he has got into his head, as he used to get after the poor child died. Mr. Verner has just asked me whether he is sane, but there’s nothing of that sort wrong about him. You mind the clump of trees that stands out, sir, between here and the brick-field, by the path that would lead to Verner’s Pride?” added old Matthew in an altered tone.
“Yes,” said Mr. Bourne.
“I had just got past it, sir, when I saw a figure crossing that bare corner from the other trees. A man’s shape, it looked like. Tall and shadowy it was, wearing what looked like a long garment, or a woman’s riding-habit, trailing nearly on the ground. The very moment my eyes fell upon it, I felt that it was something strange, and when the figure passed me, turning its face right upon me — I saw the face, sir.”
Old Matthew’s manner was so peculiar, his pause so impressive, that Mr. Bourne could only gaze at him, and wait in wonder for what was coming.
“Sir, it was the face of one who has been dead these two years past — Mr. Frederick Massingbird.”
If the rector had gazed at old Matthew before, he could only stare now. That the calm, sensible old man should fall into so extraordinary a delusion, was incomprehensible. He might have believed it of Deerham in general, but not of Matthew Frost.
“Matthew, you must have been deceived,” was his quiet answer.
“No, sir. There never was another face like Mr. Frederick Massingbird’s. Other features may have been made like his — it’s not for me to say they have not — but whose else would have the black mark upon it? The moonlight was full upon it, and I could see even the little lines shooting out from the cheek, so bright was the night. The face was turned right upon me as it passed, and I am as clear about its being his as I am that it was me looking at it.”
“But you know it is a thing absolutely impossible,” urged Mr. Bourne. “I think you must have dreamt this, Matthew.”
Old Matthew shook his head. “I wouldn’t have told you a dream, sir. It turned me all in a maze. I never felt the fatigue of a step all the way home after it. When I got in, I couldn’t eat my supper; I couldn’t go to bed. I sat up thinking, and the wife, she came in and asked what ailed me that I didn’t go to rest. I had got no sleep in my eyes, I told her, which was true; for, when I did get to bed, it was hours afore I could close ‘em.”
“But, Matthew, I tell you that it is impossible. You must have been mistaken.”
“Sir, until last night, had anybody told me such a thing, I should have said it was impossible. You know, sir, I have never been given to such fancies. There’s no doubt, sir; there’s no doubt that it was the spirit of Mr. Frederick Massingbird.”
Matthew’s clear, intelligent eye was fixed firmly on Mr. Bourne’s — his face, as usual, bending a little forward. Mr. Bourne had never believed in “spirits”; clergymen, as a rule, do not. A half smile crossed his lips.
“Were you frightened?” he asked.
“I was not frightened, sir, in the sense that you, perhaps, put the question. I was surprised, startled. As I might have been surprised and startled at seeing anybody I least expected to see — somebody that I had thought was miles away. Since poor Rachel’s death, sir, I have lived, so to say, in communion with spirits. What with Robin’s talking of his hope to see hers, and my constantly thinking of her; knowing also that it can’t be long, in the course of nature, before I am one myself, I have grown to be, as it were, familiar with the dead in my mind. Thus, sir, in that sense, no fear came upon me last night. I don’t think, sir, I should feel fear at meeting or being alone with a spirit, any more than I should at meeting a man. But I was startled and disturbed.”
“Matthew,” cried Mr. Bourne, in some perplexity, “I had always believed you superior to these foolish things. Ghosts might do well enough for the old days, but the world has grown older and wiser. At any rate, the greater portion of it has.”
“If you mean, sir, that I was superior to the belief in ghosts, you are right. I never had a grain of faith in such superstition in my life; and I have tried all means to convince my son what folly it was of him to hover round about the Willow Pond, with any thought that Rachel might ‘come again.’ No, sir, I have never been given to it.”
“And yet you deliberately assure me, Matthew, that you saw a ghost last night!”
“Sir, that it was Mr. Frederick Massingbird, dead or alive, that I saw, I must hold to. We know that he is dead, sir, his wife buried him in that far land; so what am I to believe? The face looked ghastly white, not like a person’s living.”
Mr. Bourne mused. That Frederick Massingbird was dead and buried, there could not be the slightest doubt. He hardly knew what to make of old Matthew. The latter resumed.
“Had I been flurried or terrified by it, sir, so as to lose my presence of mind, or if I was one of those timid folks that see signs in dreams, or take every white post to be a ghost, that they come to on a dark night, you might laugh at and disbelieve me. But I tell it to you, sir, as you say, deliberately; just as it happened. I can’t have much longer time to live, sir; but I’d stake it all on the truth that it was the spirit of Mr. Frederick Massingbird. When you have once known a man, there are a hundred points by which you may recognise him, beyond possibility of being mistaken. They have got a story in the place, sir, to-day — as you may have heard — that my poor child’s ghost appeared to Dan Duff last night, and that the boy has been senseless ever since. It has struck me, sir, that perhaps he also saw what I did.”
Mr. Bourne paused. “Did you say anything of this to Mr. Verner?”
“Not I, sir. As I tell you, I felt like a guilty man in his presence, one with something to hide. He married Mr. Fred’s widow, pretty creature, and it don’t seem a nice thing to tell him. If it had been the other gentleman’s spirit, Mr. John’s, I should have told him at once.”
Mr. Bourne rose. To argue with old Matthew in his present frame of mind, appeared to be about as useless a waste of time as to argue with Susan Peckaby on the subject of the white donkey. He told him he would see him again in a day or two, and took his departure.
But he did not dismiss the subject from his thoughts. No, he could not do that. He was puzzled. Such a tale from one like old Matthew — calm, pious, sensible, and verging on the grave, made more impression on Mr. Bourne than all Deerham could have made. Had Deerham come to him with the story, he would have flung it to the winds.
He began to think that some person, from evil design or love of mischief, must be personating Frederick Massingbird. It was a natural conclusion. And Matthew’s surmise, that the same thing might have alarmed Dan Duff, was perfectly probable. Mr. Bourne determined to ascertain the latter fact, as soon as Dan should be in a state of sufficient convalescence, bodily and mentally, to give an account. He had already paid one visit to Mrs. Duff’s — as that lady informed Lionel.
Two or three more visits he paid there during the day, but not until night did he find Dan revived. In point of fact, the clergyman penetrated to the kitchen just after that startling communication had been made by Dan. The women were standing in consternation when the vicar entered, one of them strongly recommending that the copper furnace should be heated, and Dan plunged into it to “bring him round.”
“How is he now?” began Mr. Bourne. “Oh! I see; he is sensible.”
“Well, sir, I don’t know,” said Mrs Duff. “I’m afraid as his head’s a-going right off. He persists in saying now that it wasn’t the ghost of Rachel at all — but somebody else’s.”
“If he was put into a good hot furnace, sir, and kep’ at a even heat up to biling pint for half an hour — that is, as near biling as his skin could bear it — I know it ‘ud do wonders,” spoke up Mrs. Chuff. “It’s a excellent remedy, where there’s a furnace convenient, and water not short.”
“Suppose you allow me to be alone with him for a few minutes,” suggested Mr. Bourne. “We will try an
d find out what will cure him; won’t we, Dan?”
The women filed out one by one. Mr. Bourne sat down by the boy, and took his hand. In a soothing manner he talked to him, and drew from him by gentle degrees the whole tale, so far as Dan’s memory and belief went. The boy shook in every limb as he told it. He could not boast immunity from ghostly fears as did old Matthew Frost.
“But, my boy, you should know that there are no such things as ghosts,” urged Mr. Bourne. “When once the dead have left this world, they do not come back to it again.”
“I see’d it, sir,” was Dan’s only argument — an all sufficient one with him. “It was stood over the pool, it was, and it turned round right upon me as I went up. I see the porkypine on his cheek, sir, as plain as anything.”
The same account as old Matthew’s!
“How was the person dressed?” asked Mr. Bourne. “Did you notice?”
“It had got on some’at long — a coat or a skirt, or some’at. It was as thin as thin, sir.”
“Dan, shall I tell you what it was — as I believe? It was somebody dressed up to frighten you and other timid persons.”
Dan shook his head. “No, sir, ’twasn’t. ’Twas the ghost of Mr. Frederick Massingbird.”
CHAPTER LIII.
MASTER CHEESE’S FRIGHT — OTHER FRIGHTS.
Strange rumours began to be rife in Deerham. The extraordinary news told by Dan Duff would have been ascribed to some peculiar hallucination of that gentleman’s brain, and there’s no knowing but that the furnace might have been tried as a cure, had not other testimony arisen to corroborate it. Four or five different people, in the course of as many days — or rather nights — saw, or professed to have seen, the apparition of Frederick Massingbird.
One of them was Master Cheese. He was one night coming home from paying a professional visit — in slight, straightforward cases Jan could trust him — when he saw by the roadside what appeared to be a man standing up under the hedge, as if he had taken his station there to look at the passers-by.
“He’s up to no good,” quoth Master Cheese to himself. “I’ll go and dislodge the fellow.”
Accordingly Master Cheese turned off the path where he was walking, and crossed the waste bit — only a yard or two in breadth — that ran by the side of the road. Master Cheese, it must be confessed, did not want for bravery; he had a great deal rather face danger of any kind than hard work; and the rumour about Fred Massingbird’s ghost had been rare nuts for him to crack. Up he went, having no thought in his head at that moment of ghosts, but rather of poachers.
“I say, you fellow—” he was beginning, and there he stopped dead.
He stopped dead, both in step and tongue. The figure, never moving, never giving the faintest indication that it was alive, stood there like a statue. Master Cheese looked in its face, and saw the face of the late Frederick Massingbird.
It is not pleasant to come across a dead man at moonlight — a man whose body has been safely reposing in the ground ever so long ago. Master Cheese did not howl as Dan Duff had done. He set off down the road — he was too fat to propel himself over or through the hedge, though that was the nearest way — he took to his heels down the road, and arrived in an incredibly short space of time at home, bursting into the surgery and astonishing Jan and the surgery boy.
“I say, Jan, though, haven’t I had a fright?”
Jan, at the moment, was searching in the prescription-book. He raised his eyes, and looked over the counter. Master Cheese’s face had turned white, and drops of wet were pouring off it — in spite of his bravery.
“What have you been at?” asked Jan.
“I saw the thing they are talking about, Jan. It is Fred Massingbird’s.”
Jan grinned. That Master Cheese’s fright was genuine, there could be no mistaking, and it amused Jan excessively.
“What had you been taking?” asked he, in his incredulity.
“I had taken nothing,” retorted Master Cheese, who did not like the ridicule. “I had not had the opportunity of taking anything — unless it was your medicine. Catch me tapping that! Look here, Jan. I was coming by Crow Corner, when I saw a something standing back in the hedge. I thought it was some poaching fellow hiding there, and went up to dislodge him. Didn’t I wish myself up in the skies? It was the face of Fred Massingbird.”
“The face of your fancy,” slightingly returned Jan.
“I swear it was, then! There! There’s no mistaking him. The hedgehog on his cheek looked larger and blacker than ever.”
Master Cheese did not fail to talk of this abroad; the surgery boy, Bob, who had listened with open ears, did not fail to talk of it, and it spread throughout Deerham; additional testimony to that already accumulated. In a few days’ time, the commotion was at its height; nearly the only persons who remained in ignorance of the reported facts being the master and mistress of Verner’s Pride, and those connected with them, relatives on either side.
That some great internal storm of superstition was shaking Deerham, Lionel knew. In his happy ignorance, he attributed it to the rumour which had first been circulated, touching Rachel’s ghost. He was an ear-witness to an angry colloquy at home. Some indispensable trifle for his wife’s toilette was required suddenly from Deerham one evening, and Mademoiselle Benoite ordered that it should be sent for. But not one of the maids would go. The Frenchwoman insisted, and there ensued a stormy war. The girls, one and all, declared they’d rather give up their service, than go abroad after nightfall.
When the fears and the superstitions came palpably in Lionel’s way, he made fun of them — as Jan might have done. Once or twice he felt half provoked; and asked the people, in a tone between earnest and jest, whether they were not ashamed of themselves. Little reply made they; not one of them but seemed to shrink from mentioning to Lionel Verner the name that the ghost had borne in life.
On nearly the last evening that it would be light during this moon, Mr. Bourne started from home to pay a visit to Mrs. Hook, the labourer’s wife. The woman had been ailing for some time; partly from natural illness, partly from chagrin — for her daughter Alice was the talk of the village — and she had now become seriously ill. On this day Mr. Bourne had accidentally met Jan; and, in conversing upon parish matters, he had inquired after Mrs. Hook.
“Very much worse,” was Jan’s answer. “Unless a change takes place, she’ll not last many days.”
The clergyman was shocked; he had not deemed her to be in danger. “I will go and see her to-day,” said he. “You can tell her that I am coming.”
He was a conscientious man; liking to do his duty, and especially kind to those that were in sickness or trouble. Neither did he willingly break a specific promise. He made no doubt that Jan delivered the message, and therefore he went; though it was late at night when he started, other duties having detained him throughout the day.
His most direct way from the vicarage to Hook’s cottage, took him past the Willow Pond. He had no fear of ghosts, and therefore he chose it, in preference to going down Clay Lane, which was farther round. The Willow Pool looked lonely enough as he passed it, its waters gleaming in the moonlight, its willows bending. A little farther on, the clergyman’s ears became alive to the sound of sobs, as from a person in distress. There was Alice Hook, seated on a bench underneath some elm-trees, sobbing enough to break her heart.
However the girl might have got herself under the censure of the neighbourhood, it is a clergyman’s office to console, rather than to condemn. And he could not help liking pretty Alice; she had been one of the most tractable pupils in his Sunday-school. He addressed her as soothingly, as considerately, as though she were one of the first ladies in his parish; harshness would not mend the matter now. Her heart opened to the kindness.
“I’ve broke mother’s heart, and killed her!” cried she, with a wild burst of sobs. “But for me, she might have got well.”
“She may get well still, Alice,” replied the vicar. “I am going on to see her now. W
hat are you doing here?”
“I am on my way, sir, to get the fresh physic for her. Mr. Jan, he said this morning as somebody was to go for it; but the rest have been out all day. As I came along, I got thinking of the time, sir, when I could go about by daylight with my head up, like the best of ‘em; and it overcame me.”
She rose up, dried her eyes with her shawl, and Mr. Bourne proceeded onwards. He had not gone far, when something came rushing past him from the opposite direction. It seemed more like a thing than a man, with its swift pace — and he recognised the face of Frederick Massingbird.
Mr. Bourne’s pulses stood still, and then gave a bound onwards. Clergyman though he was, he could not, for his life, have helped the queer feeling which came over him. He had sharply rebuked the superstition in his parishioners; had been inclined to ridicule Matthew Frost; had cherished a firm and unalterable belief that some foolish wight was playing pranks with the public; but all these suppositions and convictions faded in this moment; and the clergyman felt that that which had rustled past was the veritable dead-and-gone Frederick Massingbird, in the spirit or in the flesh.
He shook the feeling off — or strove to shake it. That it was Frederick Massingbird in the flesh he did not give a second supposition to; and that it could be Frederick Massingbird in the spirit, was opposed to every past belief of the clergyman’s life. But he had never seen such a likeness; and though the similarity in the features might be accidental, what of the black star?
He strove to shake the feeling off; to say to himself that some one, bearing a similar face, must be in the village; and he went on to his destination. Mrs. Hook was better; but she was lying in the place unattended, all of them out somewhere or other. The clergyman talked to her and read to her; and then waited impatiently for the return of Alice. He did not care to leave the woman alone.