IN WHICH THE GHOST FLITS TO GOOD PURPOSE
It was dark as he reached the old stile hard by the little footbridge,
and, perceiving a shrouded form thereby, halted suddenly; but as he
peered, uncertain, a soft voice spoke:
“John!” He drew back hastily; the figure moved towards him. “Sir John
Dering?” Off came Sir John’s hat in a moment, and he bowed profoundly.
“Gad’s my life!” he exclaimed. “Do I indeed behold your ladyship? Bide
you still i’ the country, madam? A fair good-night to you!” And he turned
away, only to find her beside him.
“Why—why will you hazard your life thus wantonly?” she questioned. “Nay,
sir, do not prevaricate; I know ’tis your custom to walk thus solitary of
a night.”
“Your ladyship’s interest flatters me!” he murmured.
“Surely, sir,” said she, in the same calm and gentle tones, “life is not
to be thus lightly jeopardised.”
“Tush, madam,” he laughed, “you grow hysterical again, ’twould seem,
and ’tis a weakness of your charming sex that I have ever found extreme
embarrassing, not to say wearisome. I suggest a pill ... a bolus and
sleep, madam. Aye, sleep is the thing ... you shall find your megrims
gone i’ the morning. So sleep you soundly, madam, and farewell!” Having
said which, he bowed and departed, leaving her to watch him through
slow-gathering tears. And suddenly, finding herself thus deserted, she
bowed her stately head upon the old stile, wetting its ancient timbers
with her tears and weeping so unfeignedly that she actually sniffed,
though to be sure there was none to hear.
Meanwhile Sir John, striding his solitary way, looked up at the stars and
smiled happily.
“She cares!” quoth he within himself. “By all the saints in heaven, she
cares!” And, halting suddenly, he glanced back, minded to return. “Either
she loves me, or here was marvellous good play-acting ... which, now?”
Here he went on again, though very slowly, and coming to a gate, leaned
there to debate the point.
My lady, reaching the cottage, paused awhile, also with gaze uplifted,
but saw the starry firmament blurred by smarting tears.
“Alas,” sighed she, “he never loved me or he would have known! He is but
the heartless Sir John Dering after all!”
“The question being,” said Sir John within himself, his gaze yet uplifted
to the firmament, “is she truly——”
The stars seemed to shoot wildly from their courses, the earth to sway
giddily beneath his feet, then to plunge horribly down and down into a
roaring blackness.
He awoke to a sense of pain, jolting and strangulation; slowly he became
aware that he lay bound hand and foot across the withers of a horse, and
with his mouth crammed almost to suffocation with a thing he took to be a
neckerchief.
And after some while he was conscious of two voices wrangling
together—voices these that sounded vaguely familiar; and the first was
hoarse and sullen, the second sharp and querulous.
THE FIRST VOICE: An’ whoy not, I sez?
THE SECOND VOICE: Because I won’t have it.
THE FIRST VOICE: An’ ’oo be you t’ say no? I be good a man
as you, aye an’ better! Ain’t I follered an’ follered ’im,
waitin’ my chance? Wasn’t it me as got ’im at last? Well then,
I sez we ought to finish an’ mak’ sure.
THE SECOND VOICE: And I say no!
THE FIRST VOICE: My lord bid us mak’ sure, didn’t ’e?
THE SECOND VOICE: He’ll be sure enough once aboard ship.
THE FIRST VOICE: An’ I tell ye ’e be better dead.
THE SECOND VOICE: And I say, I’ll ha’ no more bloodshed.
All about him was the tramp of feet muffled upon grass; and sometimes
it seemed they laboured uphill and sometimes down, but always these two
voices disputed, now waxing so loud and clear that he seemed on the point
of recognising them, now blurred and indistinct, sinking to a murmur, a
whisper, until they were not, and it seemed he was asleep and plagued by
nightmare. It was after one of these many lapses that he was conscious
the painful jolting had ceased, felt himself dragged roughly from the
horse’s back, and had a dim vision of many legs that hemmed him in as he
lay upon the grass.
“Ain’t dead, is ’e?” inquired a hearty voice, faintly interested.
“Dead—no, dang ’im!” answered the Sullen Voice, and a foot spurned him
savagely. “Dead—not ’im! Though ’e ought to be, aye an’ would be, if I
’ad my way.”
“Easy, mate, easy!” admonished the Hearty Voice.
“Hold y’r tongue, you do!” cried the Querulous Voice. “Hold your tongue
for a bloody-minded rogue or——”
“Avast, shipmates!” quoth the Hearty Voice. “Throat-slittin’ be a
ticklish business.”
“Yah—dead men doan’t talk!”
“Mebbe not, mate, but live-un’s do! An’ then there be ghosts, shipmate,
ghosts, d’ye see.”
“When can ye take him aboard?” demanded the Querulous Voice.
“Why, the tide wun’t sarve for ’arf an hour yet. Plenty time to finish
my pipe.... An’ talkin’ o’ ghosts, there was my mate Jerry Banks as was
knifed aboard the _Belle Fortun’_ ... pore Jerry’s ghost used to come an’
sit o’ nights perched aloft on our main-yard an’ mew like a cat! Aye, mew
’e would, an’ carry on that mournful ’twas ’orrible, mates——”
“Hold your tongue!” cried the Querulous Voice.
“Aye, we doan’t want none o’ your ghosts, do us, lads?” quoth the Sullen
Voice; whereupon was a mutter of hearty assent.
“Why, very well,” answered he of the hearty voice, spitting, “only if
you’d a-heered the ghost o’ pore Jerry ... used to mew like any cat, it
did, only more dismal-like.... I never ’eered nothing in all my days so
shiversome and——” The Hearty Voice ended in a hiss of breath suddenly
in-drawn and thereafter was utter silence, a strange, unnatural stillness
wherein it seemed that none moved or breathed; and then rose a hoarse,
stammering whisper:
“Lord ... O Lord a’ mercy! What’s yon?”
Turning heavy head, Sir John saw about him a huddle of crouching men
who all peered in the one direction, heard an incoherent, passionate
muttering that changed to a groan, a gasping cry, and a man rose to his
knees with rigid arms out-thrust, staggered to his feet and leapt down
the grassy steep; hereupon the others awoke to sudden action; ensued a
desperate scrambling, a wild babblement, a thudding of desperate feet,
and Sir John lay staring on the empty dark alone save for the horse that
cropped the grass near by. And then he too saw a vague and awful shape
outlined in pale fire that flitted unheard upon the gloom and vanished,
only to reappear as suddenly, gliding back up the slope to where he lay.
And watching the thing approach, Sir John felt his flesh creep and he
shivered with a growing dread that mocked at sanity and reason until he
strove desperately against his bonds, but, finding this vain, lay still
again, watching. On it came, looming more gigantic and frightful with
every yard, nearer still, until he could distinguish the monstrous head
surmounted by widespreading, fiery horns, nearer, until from this awful
shape a whispering voice reached him.
“Be that Sir John Dering? Be ye there, sir?” Then the dreadful thing
swayed, stooped upon itself, thudded to earth, and in its place was a
tall, broad-shouldered man who, running forward, knelt and began to cut
and loose off Sir John’s galling bonds. “Gagged ye too, ’ave they!” quoth
the voice, and next moment Sir John, relieved of the gag, reached out
fumbling hand and spoke:
“Mr. Potter—O George Potter, though you come like a demon o’ darkness, a
very devil, yet no angel could be more welcome!”
“Why, sir, Potter frit’ they rogues praper, I rackon. They cut off
amazin’ quick, an’ they ain’t like to come back—an’ yet they may. So up
wi’ ye, sir, an’ quick’s the word!” Sir John arose but, clapping hand to
head, reeled weakly. “Be your ’ead ’urted bad, sir?”
“Nothing to mention, thanks to my hat and wig.”
“Can ye ride, sir?”
“Easier than walk.”
“Well, up it is, then!” And, half lifting Sir John to the saddle, Mr.
Potter laid a shapeless bundle across the withers and they set off
together.
“How came you so fortunately to my relief, George?”
“Well, sir, I happed to be a-waitin’ for Mus’ Sturton an’ ... t’other
’un, meanin’ to frutten Sturton away an’ get t’other ’un alone if so
might be, when ’long comes ’alf a dozen chaps wi’ this ’ere ’orse an’ you
acrost it, though I didn’t know ’twas you then, sir. But suddent-like,
t’other ’un says, ‘Why not finish ’im and ha’ done?’ ’e says. ‘Because I
wun’t ’ave it!’ says Sturton, very determinated.”
“’T’other ’un’ being the man Jonas Skag, I think?” inquired Sir John.
“Why, sir, I wun’t deny it. Well, sir, they stops purty nigh wheer I
wur a-hidin’ to arg’ the matter, an’ I soon found ’twas you they was
a-quarrellin’ over. An’ presently on they goes an’ me creepin’ arter ’em
bidin’ a chance to do what I might.”
“By means of your horns and bullock’s hide, George?”
“Aye, this ’ere!” answered Mr. Potter, laying his hand upon the shapeless
bundle. “A good friend it’s been to pore Potter, sir. Ghosts be useful
things hereabouts.”
“So I have observed!” smiled Sir John. “And, indeed, you were a terribly
convincing ghost.”
“Naun so bad, sir,” admitted Mr. Potter modestly. “I done my best off an’
on. Though I don’t like hauntin’ in the open—gimme a wall! Ye see, some
folks be apt to shoot ... there be four or five bullet-’oles in this ’ere
ghost arlready!”
Talking thus, they at last reached the highroad, and Sir John saw the
lights of Alfriston twinkling before them. Here the discreet Mr. Potter
stopped and, lifting finger to eyebrow, bade Sir John good-night.
“You’ll be arl right now, I rackon, sir,” said he.
But Sir John reached down to grasp his hand.
“You know who I am, I think?” he questioned.
“Aye, Sir John, you be Dering o’ Dering.”
“And a magistrate besides, George Potter, a justice o’ the Peace and
Quorum.”
“And I be Potter the smuggler, sir.”
“And a man, George! And ’tis as such that I shall always know you,
so—give me your hand, friend George!”
So, in the gloom, hand met and grasped hand.
“Lord, sir,” quoth Mr. Potter, “I dunno as I bean’t a bit ... glad-loike,
you callin’ Potter your friend an’ arl——”
“Why then, George, pray tell me why do you seek Jonas Skag so earnestly?”
“Well, from what I be hearin’ ... an’ likewise addin’ two an’ two, I
rackon Jonas knows more’n a bit about that theer false signallin’ ... an’
if so be I find ’e do ... why then, sir—why then——”
“Well?”
“No matter, sir—mum for that. But I rackon ’e wun’t nowise betray no lads
to theer deaths never no more!”
“What do you mean, George?”
“Nothin’ ’t arl, sir.... Only, talkin’ o’ ghosts, rackon I made a
pretty tidy ’un, but the fire were old Pen’s idee, though she calls it
phross-phross.” So saying, Mr. Potter shouldered his bundle and trundled
off in the gloom of the hedge, leaving Sir John to ride thoughtfully into
Alfriston.