The resonant hammering of a coffin-lid is no pleasant thing to hear, but those who have experience maintain that much more terrible is the soft swish of the bed-linen, the reeving and unreeving of the bed-tapes, when he who has fallen by the roadside is apparelled for burial, sinking gradually as the tapes are tied over, till the swaddled shape touches the floor and there is no protest against the indignity of hasty disposal.
At the last moment Lowndes was seized with scruples of conscience. “Ought you to read the service, from beginning to end?” said he to Spurstow.
“I intend to. You’re my senior as a civilian. You can take it if you like.”
“I didn’t mean that for a moment. I only thought if we could get a chaplain from somewhere, I’m willing to ride anywhere, and give poor Hummil a better chance. That’s all.”
“Bosh!” said Spurstow, as he framed his lips to the tremendous words that stand at the head of the burial service.
* * * *
After breakfast they smoked a pipe in silence to the memory of the dead. Then Spurstow said absently—
“’Tisn’t medical science.”
“What?”
“Things in a dead man’s eye.”
“For goodness’ sake leave that horror alone!” said Lowndes. “I’ve seen a native die of pure fright when a tiger chivied him. I know what killed Hummil.”
“The deuce you do! I’m going to try to see.” Arid the doctor retreated into the bathroom with a Kodak camera. After a few minutes there was the sound of something being hammered to pieces, and he emerged, very white indeed.
“Have you got a picture?” said Mottram. “What does the thing look like?”
“It was impossible, of course. You needn’t look, Mottram. I’ve torn up the films. There was nothing there. It was impossible.”
“That,” said Lowndes, very distinctly, watching the shaking hand striving to relight the pipe, “is a damned lie.”
Mottram laughed uneasily. “Spurstow’s right,” he said. “We’re all in such a state now that we’d believe anything. For pity’s sake let’s try to be rational.”
There was no further speech for a long time. The hot wind whistled without, and the dry trees sobbed. Presently the daily train, winking brass, burnished steel, and spouting steam, pulled up panting in the intense glare. “We’d better go on that,” said Spurstow. “Go back to work. I’ve written my certificate. We can’t do any more good here, and work’ll keep our wits together. Come on.”
No one moved. It is not pleasant to face railway journeys at mid-day in June. Spurstow gathered up his hat and whip, and, turning in the doorway, said—
“There may be Heaven-there must be Hell.
Meantime, there is our life here. We-ell?”
Neither Mottram nor Lowndes had any answer to the question.
THE WITHERED ARM, by Thomas Hardy
I
A Lorn Milkmaid
It was an eighty-cow dairy, and the troop of milkers, regular and supernumerary, were all at work; for, though the time of year was as yet but early April, the feed lay entirely in water-meadows, and the cows were “in full pail.” The hour was about six in the evening, and three-fourths of the large, red, rectangular animals having been finished off, there was opportunity for a little conversation.
“He do bring home his bride tomorrow, I hear. They’ve come as far as Anglebury today.”
The voice seemed to proceed from the belly of the cow called Cherry, but the speaker was a milking-woman, whose face was buried in the flank of that motionless beast.
“Hav’ anybody seen her?” said another.
There was a negative response from the first. “Though they say she’s a rosy-cheeked, tisty-tosty little body enough,” she added; and as the milkmaid spoke she turned her face so that she could glance past her cow’s tall to the other side of the barton, where a thin, fading woman of thirty milked somewhat apart from the rest.
“Years younger than he, they say,” continued the second, with also a glance of reflectiveness in the same direction.
“How old do you call him, then?”
“Thirty or so.”
“More like forty,” broke in an old milkman near, in a long white pinafore or “wropper,” and with the brim of his hat tied down, so that he looked like a woman. “A was born before our Great Weir was builded, and I hadn’t man’s wages when I laved water there.”
The discussion waxed so warm that the purr of the milk streams became jerky, till a voice from another cow’s belly cried with authority, “Now then, what the Turk do it matter to us about Farmer Lodge’s age, or Farmer Lodge’s new mis’ess? I shall have to pay him nine pound a year for the rent of every one of these milchers, whatever his age or hers. Get on with your work, or ’twill be dark afore we have done. The evening is pinking in a’ready.” This speaker was the dairyman himself, by whom the milkmaids and men were employed.
Nothing more was said publicly about Farmer Lodge’s wedding, but the first woman murmured under her cow to her next neighbour. “’Tis hard for she,” signifying the thin worn milkmaid aforesaid.
“O no,” said the second. “He ha’n’t spoke to Rhoda Brook for years.”
When the milking was done they washed their pails and hung them on a many-forked stand made as usual of the peeled limb of an oak-tree, set upright in the earth, and resembling a colossal antlered horn. The majority then dispersed in various directions homeward. The thin woman who had not spoken was joined by a boy of twelve or thereabout, and the twain went away up the field also.
Their course lay apart from that of the others, to a lonely spot high above the water-meads, and not far from the border of Egdon Heath, whose dark countenance was visible in the distance as they drew nigh to their home.
“They’ve just been saying down in barton that your father brings his young wife home from Anglebury tomorrow,” the woman observed. “I shall want to send you for a few things to market, and you’ll be pretty sure to meet ’em.”
“Yes, Mother,” said the boy. “Is Father married then?”
“Yes.… You can give her a look, and tell me what she’s like, if you do see her.”
“Yes, Mother.”
“If she’s dark or fair, and if she’s tall—as tall as I. And if she seems like a woman who has ever worked for a living, or one that has been always well off, and has never done anything, and shows marks of the lady on her, as I expect she do.”
“Yes.”
They crept up the hill in the twilight and entered the cottage. It was built of mud-walls, the surface of which had been washed by many rains into channels and depressions that left none of the original flat face visible, while here and there in the thatch above a rafter showed like a bone protruding through the skin.
She was kneeling down in the chimney-corner, before two pieces of turf laid together with the heather inwards, blowing at the red-hot ashes with her breath till the turves flamed. The radiance lit her pale cheek, and made her dark eyes, that had once been handsome, seem handsome anew. “Yes,” she resumed, “see if she is dark or fair, and if you can, notice if her hands be white; if not, see if they look as though she had ever done housework, or are milker’s hands like mine.”
The boy again promised, inattentively this time, his mother not observing that he was cutting a notch with his pocket-knife in the beech-backed chair.
II
The Young Wife
The road from Anglebury to Holmstoke is in general level, but there is one place where a sharp ascent breaks its monotony. Farmers homeward-hound from the former market-town, who trot all the rest of the way, walk their horses up this short incline.
The next evening while the sun was yet bright a handsome new gig, with a lemon-coloured body and red wheels, was spinning westward along the level highway at the h
eels of a powerful mare. The driver was a yeoman in the prime of life, cleanly shaven like an actor, his face being toned to that bluish-vermilion hue which so often graces a thriving farmer’s features when returning home after successful dealings in the town. Beside him sat a woman, many years his junior—almost, indeed, a girl. Her face too was fresh in colour, but it was of a totally different quality—soft and evanescent, like the light under a heap of rose-petals.
Few people travelled this way, for it was not a main road; and the long white riband of gravel that stretched before them was empty, save of one small scarce-moving speck, which presently resolved itself into the figure of a boy, who was creeping on at a snail’s pace, and continually looking behind him—the heavy bundle he carried being some excuse for, if not the reason of, his dilatoriness. When the bouncing gig-party slowed at the bottom of the incline above mentioned, the pedestrian was only a few yards in front. Supporting the large bundle by putting one hand on his hip, he turned and looked straight at the farmer’s wife as though he would read her through and through, pacing along abreast of the horse.
The low sun was full in her face, rendering every feature, shade, and colour distinct, from the curve of her little nostril to the colour of her eyes. The farmer, though he seemed annoyed at the boy’s persistent presence, did not order him to get out of the way; and thus the lad preceded them, his hard gaze never leaving her, till they reached the top of the ascent, when the farmer trotted on with relief in his lineaments having taken no outward notice of the boy whatever.
“How that poor lad stared at me!” said the young wife.
“Yes, dear; I saw that he did.”
“He is one of the village, I suppose?”
“One of the neighbourhood. I think he lives with his mother a mile or two off.”
“He knows who we are, no doubt?”
“O yes. You must expect to be stared at just at first, my pretty Gertrude.”
“I do—though I think the poor boy may have looked at us in the hope we might relieve him of his heavy load, rather than from curiosity.”
“O no,” said her husband off-handedly. “These country lads will carry a hundredweight once they get it on their backs; besides his pack had more size than weight in it. Now, then, another mile and I shall be able to show you our house in the distance—if it is not too dark before we get there.” The wheels spun round, and particles flew from their periphery as before, till a white house of ample dimensions revealed itself, with farm-buildings and ricks at the back.
Meanwhile the boy had quickened his pace, and turning up a by-lane some mile-and-a-half short of the white farmstead, ascended towards the leaner pastures, and so on to the cottage of his mother.
She had reached home after her day’s milking at the outlying dairy, and was washing cabbage at the doorway in the declining light. “Hold up the net a moment,” she said, without preface, as the boy came up.
He flung down his bundle, held the edge of the cabbage-net, and as she filled its meshes with the dripping leaves she went on, “Well, did you see her?”
“Yes; quite plain.”
“Is she ladylike?”
“Yes; and more. A lady complete.”
“Is she young?”
“Well, she’s growed up, and her ways be quite a woman’s.”
“Of course. What colour is her hair and face?”
“Her hair is lightish, and her face as comely as a live doll’s.”
“Her eyes, then, are not dark like mine?”
“No—of a bluish turn, and her mouth is very nice and red; and when she smiles, her teeth show white.”
“Is she tall?” said the woman sharply.
“I couldn’t see. She was sitting down.”
“Then do you go to Holmstoke church tomorrow morning: she’s sure to be there. Go early and notice her walking in, and come home and tell me if she’s taller than I.”
“Very well, Mother. But why don’t you go and see for yourself?”
“I go to see her! I wouldn’t look up at her if she were to pass my window this instant. She was with Mr. Lodge, of course. What did he say or do?”
“Just the same as usual.”
“Took no notice of you?”
“None.”
Next day the mother put a clean shirt on the boy, and started him off for Holmstoke church. He reached the ancient little pile when the door was just being opened, and he was the first to enter. Taking his seat by the font, he watched all the parishioners file in. The well-to-do Farmer Lodge came nearly last; and his young wife, who accompanied him, walked up the aisle with the shyness natural to a modest woman who had appeared thus for the first time. As all other eyes were fixed upon her, the youth’s stare was not noticed now.
When he reached home his mother said, “Well?” before he had entered the room.
“She is not tall. She is rather short,” he replied.
“Ah!” said his mother, with satisfaction.
“But she’s very pretty—very. In fact, she’s lovely.” The youthful freshness of the yeoman’s wife had evidently made an impression even on the somewhat hard nature of the boy.
“That’s all I want to hear,” said his mother quickly. “Now, spread the table-cloth. The hare you wired is very tender; but mind nobody catches you. You’ve never told me what sort of hands she had.”
“I have never seen ’em. She never took off her gloves”
“What did she wear this morning?”
“A white bonnet and a silver-coloured gownd. It whewed and whistled so loud when it rubbed against the pews that the lady coloured up more than ever for very shame at the noise, and pulled it in to keep it from touching; but when she pushed into her seat, it whewed more than ever. Mr. Lodge, he seemed pleased, and his waistcoat stuck out, and his great golden seals hung like a lord’s; but she seemed to wish her noisy gownd anywhere but on her.”
“Not she! However, that will do now.”
These descriptions of the newly married couple were continued from time to time by the boy at his mother’s request, after any chance encounter he had had with them. But Rhoda Brook, though she might easily have seen young Mrs. Lodge for herself by walking a couple of miles, would never attempt an excursion towards the quarter where the farmhouse lay. Neither did she, at the daily milking in the dairyman’s yard on Lodge’s outlying second farm, ever speak on the subject of the recent marriage. The dairyman, who rented the cows of Lodge, and knew perfectly the tall milkmaid’s history, with manly kindness always kept the gossip in the cow-barton from annoying Rhoda. But the atmosphere thereabout was full of the subject the first days of Mrs. Lodge’s arrival; and fom her boy’s description and the casual words of the other milkers, Rhoda Brook could raise a mental image of the unconscious Mrs. Lodge that was realistic as a photograph.
III
A Vision
One night, two or three weeks after the bridal return, when the boy had gone to bed, Rhoda sat a long time over the turf ashes that she had raked out in front of her to extinguish them. She contemplated so intently the new wife, as presented to her in her mind’s eye over the embers, that she forgot the lapse of time. At last, wearied by her day’s work, she too retired.
But the figure which had occupied her so much during this and the previous days was not to be banished at night. For the first time Gertrude Lodge visited the supplanted woman in her dreams. Rhoda Brook dreamed—since her assertion that she really saw, before falling asleep, was not to be believed—that the young wife, in the pale silk dress and white bonnet, but with features shockingly distorted, and wrinkled as by age, was sitting upon her chest as she lay. The pressure of Mrs. Lodge’s person grew heavier; the blue eyes peered cruelly into her face: and then the figure thrust forward its left hand mockingly, so as to make the wedding-ring it wore glitter in Rhoda’s eyes
. Maddened mentally, and nearly suffocated by pressure, the sleeper struggled; the incubus, still regarding her, withdrew to the foot of the bed, only, however, to come forward by degrees, resume her seat, and flash her left hand as before.
Gasping for breath, Rhoda, in a last desperate effort, swung out her right hand, seized the confronting spectre by its obtrusive left arm, and whirled it backward to the floor, starting up herself as she did so with a low cry.
“O, merciful heaven!” she cried, sitting on the edge of the bed in a cold sweat; “that was not a dream—she was here!”
She could feel her antagonist’s arm within her grasp even now—the very flesh and hone of it, as it seemed. She looked on the floor whither she had whirled the spectre, but there was nothing to be seen.
Rhoda Brook slept no more that night, and when she went milking at the next dawn they noticed how pale and haggard she looked. The milk that she drew quivered into the pail; her hand had not calmed even yet. and still retained the feel of the arm, She came home to breakfast as wearily as if it had been supper-time.
“What was that noise in your chimmer, mother, last night?” said her son. “You fell off the bed. surely?”
“Did you hear anything fall? At what time?”
“Just when the clock struck two.”
She could not explain, and when the meal was done went silently about her household works, the boy assisting her, for he hated going afield on the farms, and she indulged his reluctance. Between eleven and twelve the garden-gate clicked, and she lifted her eyes to the window. At the bottom of the garden, within the gate, stood the woman of her vision. Rhoda seemed transfixed.
“Ah, she said she would come!” exclaimed the boy, also observing her.
The Ghost Story Megapack Page 32