“My arm.” She reluctantly showed the withered skin.
“Ah!—’tis all a-scram!” said the hangman, examining it.
“Yes,” said she.
“Well,” he continued, with interest, “that is the class o’ subject, I’m bound to admit! I like the look of the wownd; it is as suitable for the cure as any I ever saw. ’Twas a knowing-man that sent ’ee, whoever he was.”
“You can contrive for me all that’s necessary?” she said breathlessly.
“You should really have gone to the governor of the jail, and your doctor with ’ee, and given your name and address—that’s how it used to be done, if I recollect. Still, perhaps, I can manage it for a trifling fee.”
“O, thank you! I would rather do it this way, as I should like it kept private.”
“Lover not to know, eh?”
“No—husband.”
“Aha! Very well. I’ll get ’ee a touch of the corpse.”
“Where is it now?” she said, shuddering.
“It?—he, you mean; he’s living yet. Just inside that little small winder up there in the glum.” He signified the jail on the cliff above.
She thought of her husband and her friends. “Yes, of course,” she said; “and how am I to proceed?”
He took her to the door. “Now, do you be waiting at the little wicket in the wall, that you’ll find up there in the lane, not later than one o’clock. I will open it from the inside, as I shan’t come home to dinner till he’s cut down. Goodnight. Be punctual; and if you don’t want anybody to know ’ee, wear a veil. Ah—once I had such a daughter as you!”
She went away, and climbed the path above, to assure herself that she would be able to find the wicket next day. Its outline was soon visible to her—a narrow opening in the outer wall of the prison precincts. The steep was so great that, having reached the wicket, she stopped a moment to breathe: and, looking back upon the water-side cot, saw the hangman again ascending his outdoor staircase. He entered the loft or chamber to which it led, and in a few minutes extinguished his light.
The town clock struck ten, and she returned to the White Hart as she had come.
IX
A Rencounter
It was one o’clock on Saturday. Gertrude Lodge, having been admitted to the jail as above described, was sitting in a waiting-room within the second gate, which stood under a classic archway of ashlar, then comparatively modern, and bearing the inscription, ‘COVNTY JAIL: 1793.’ This had been the façade she saw from the heath the day before. Near at hand was a passage to the roof on which the gallows stood.
The town was thronged, and the market suspended; but Gertrude had seen scarcely a soul. Having kept her room till the hour of the appointment, she had proceeded to the spot by a way which avoided the open space below the cliff where the spectators had gathered; but she could, even now, hear the multitudinous babble of their voices, out of which rose at intervals the hoarse croak of a single voice uttering the words, “Last dying speech and confession!” There had been no reprieve, and the execution was over; but the crowd still waited to see the body taken down.
Soon the persistent woman heard a trampling overhead, then a hand beckoned to her, and, following directions, she went out and crossed the inner paved court beyond the gate-house, her knees trembling so that she could scarcely walk. One of her arms was out of its sleeve, and only covered by her shawl.
On the spot at which she had now arrived were two trestles, and before she could think of their purpose she heard, heavy feet descending stairs somewhere at her back. Turn her head she would not, or could not, and, rigid in this position, she was conscious of a rough coffin passing her borne by four men. It was open, and in it lay the body of a young man, wearing the smockfrock of a rustic, and fustian breeches. The corpse had been thrown into the coffin so hastily that the skirt of the smockfrock was hanging over. The burden was temporarily deposited on the trestles.
By this time the young woman’s state was such that a grey mist seemed to float before her eyes, on account of which, and the veil she wore, she could scarcely discern anything: it was as though she had nearly died, but was held up by a sort of galvanism.
“Now!” said a voice close at hand, and she was just conscious that the word had been addressed to her.
By a last strenuous effort she advanced, at the same time hearing persons approaching behind her. She bared her poor curst arm; and Davies, uncovering the face of the corpse, took Gertrude’s hand, and held it so that her arm lay across the dead man’s neck, upon a line the colour of an unripe blackberry, which surrounded it.
Gertrude shrieked: “the turn o’ the blood,” predicted by the conjuror, had taken place. But at that moment a second shriek rent the air of the enclosure: it was not Gertrude’s, and its effect upon her was to make her start round.
Immediately behind her stood Rhoda Brook, her face drawn, and her eyes red with weeping. Behind Rhoda stood Gertrude’s own husband; his countenance lined, his eyes dim, but without a tear.
“Damn you! what are you doing here?” he said hoarsely.
“Hussy—to come between us and our child now!” cried Rhoda. “This is the meaning of what Satan showed me in the vision! You are like her at last!” And clutching the bare arm of the younger woman, she pulled her unresistingly back against the wall. Immediately Brook had loosened her hold the fragile young Gertrude slid down against the feet of her husband. When he lifted her up she was unconscious.
The mere sight of the twain had been enough to suggest to her that the dead young man was Rhoda’s son. At that time the relatives of an executed convict had the privilege of claiming the body for burial, if they chose to do so; and it was for this purpose that Lodge was awaiting the inquest with Rhoda. He had been summoned by her as soon as the young man was taken in the crime, and at different times since; and he had attended in court during the trial. This was the “holiday” he had been indulging in of late. The two wretched parents had wished to avoid exposure; and hence had come themselves for the body, a wagon and sheet for its conveyance and covering being in waiting outside.
Gertrude’s case was so serious that it was deemed advisable to call to her the surgeon who was at hand. She was taken out of the jail into the town; but she never reached home alive. Her delicate vitality, sapped perhaps by the paralysed arm, collapsed under the double shock that followed the severe strain, physical and mental, to which she had subjected herself during the previous twenty-four hours. Her blood had been “turned” indeed—too far. Her death took place in the town three days after.
Her husband was never seen in Casterbridge again; once only in the old market-place at Anglebury, which he had so much frequented, and very seldom in public anywhere Burdened at first with moodiness and remorse, he eventually changed for the better, and appeared as a chastened and thoughtful man. Soon after attending the funeral of his poor wife he took steps towards giving up the farms in Holmstoke and the adjoining parish, and, having sold every head of his stock, he went away to Port-Bredy, at the other end of the county, living there in solitary lodgings till his death two years later of a painless decline. It was then found that he had bequeathed the whole of his not inconsiderable property to a reformatory for boys, subject to the payment of a small annuity to Rhoda Brook, if she could be found to claim it.
For some time she could not be found; but eventually she reappeared in her old parish—absolutely refusing, however, to have anything to do with the provision made for her. Her monotonous milking at the dairy was resumed, and followed for many long years, till her form became bent, and her once abundant dark hair white and worn away at the forehead—perhaps by long pressure against the cows. Here, sometimes, those who knew her experiences would stand and observe her, and wonder what sombre thoughts were beating inside that impassive, wrinkled brow, to the rhythm of the alternating milk-streams.
No one ever thought that May Forster would marry John Charrington; but he thought differently, and things which John Charrington intended had a queer way of coming to pass. He asked her to marry him before he went up to Oxford. She laughed and refused him. He asked her again next time he came home. Again she laughed, tossed her dainty blonde head and again refused. A third time he asked her; she said it was becoming a confirmed bad habit, and laughed at him more than ever.
John was not the only man who wanted to marry her: she was the belle of our village coterie, and we were all in love with her more or less; it was a sort of fashion, like masher collars or Inverness capes. Therefore we were as much annoyed as surprised when John Charrington walked into our little local Club—we held it in a loft over the saddler’s, I remember—and invited us all to his wedding.
“Your wedding?”
“You don’t mean it?”
“Who’s the happy pair? When’s it to be?”
John Charrington filled his pipe and lighted it before he replied. Then he said:
“I’m sorry to deprive you fellows of your only joke—but Miss Forster and I are to be married in September.”
“You don’t mean it?”
“He’s got the mitten again, and it’s turned his head.”
“No,” I said, rising, “I see it’s true. Lend me a pistol, someone—or a first-class fare to the other end of Nowhere. Charrington has bewitched the only pretty girl in our twenty-mile radius. Was it mesmerism, or a love-potion, Jack?”
“Neither, sir, but a gift you’ll never have—perseverance—and the best luck a man ever had in this world.”
There was something in his voice that silenced me, and all chaff of the other fellows failed to draw him further.
The queer thing about it was that when we congratulated Miss Forster, she blushed and smiled and dimpled, for all the world as though she were in love with him, and had been in love with him all the time. Upon my word, I think she had. Women are strange creatures.
We were all asked to the wedding. In Brixham everyone who was anybody knew everybody else who was anyone. My sisters were, I truly believe, more interested in the trousseau than the bride herself, and I was to be best man. The coming marriage was much canvassed at afternoon tea-tables, and at our little Club over the saddler’s, and the question was always asked, “Does she care for him?”
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 lichened 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 western 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, 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 are on the South-Eastern, and as I stood grumbling with my watch in my hand, whom should I see but John Charrington and May Forster. 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 which would have sent my Gladstone onto the platform and me after it. But she wasn’t speaking to me. John Charrington was made differently: he rarely changed his opinions, never his resolutions.
He only stroked the little ungloved hands that lay on the carriage door.
“I must, May. The old boy’s been awfully good to me, and now he’s dying I must go and see him, but I shall come home in time for—” 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 Peasmarsh Place, some fifty miles away, and 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 Peasmarsh 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’re to give him away tomorrow.”
“Isn’t he back?” I asked, for I had confidently expected to find him at home.
“No, Geoffrey,” my sister Fanny 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 the first part in.” A prophecy which, by the way, came true.
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 to facing that anxiety in the
light of full wakefulness.
But with my shaving-water came a note from John which relieved my mind and sent me up to the Forsters with a light heart.
May was in the garden. I saw her blue gown through 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 tender quiver 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 could 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 does, but I believe I hate it more than anyone else. The three thirty-five was late, of course.
The Ghost Story Megapack Page 35