Not many days after Frampton had imparted to us his sensational story, we
were told to expect a visit from the family lawyer. Ronald and I always
hailed his visits with delight. He was one of those cheery individuals
whom boys can chum with. In age he must have been nearly seventy-five,
but hale and hearty still: entering into our amusements, never minding
our noise, and tipping us when he left with a liberality that appalled
our uncle. Ronald and I would have put him down for fifty. But boys do
not recognise the gradations of age. To them a man seems definitely old
at fifty, and live as long as he may after that, years will add nothing
to the mystery of his age, if only he keeps young in heart and interests.
At sixty, seventy, or even eighty, he will in their eyes be fifty still.
As a matter of course Ronald and I were told to put in an appearance on
the day of his arrival. The unvarying order of the programme was that,
after he had had a few words with our uncle, we two should form his
escort in a progress round the park and outlying farms.
“So your uncle still cherishes the old Crofton coach,” he said, as we
passed the outhouse tenanted by the family ghost. “I wonder he cares to
keep it,”—almost Ronald’s own words to Frampton, the coachman—from which
it was clear he had never heard of our uncle’s visitant, nor did we
venture to enlighten him.
“Do you know anything about it, Sir?” asked Ronald, in the eager tone of
one who had by no means lost hope of solving the mystery.
“My boy, I’ve _ridden in it_.”
Ronald’s face was a study. “Ridden in it? actually _ridden_ in that
coach? And did you, Sir, _did_ you see the devil?” he continued
anxiously. “Frampton says he always drives it.”
“Not exactly, Ronald. And, by the way, my lad, I wouldn’t, if I were
you, introduce his name quite so familiarly into your conversation.
Frampton must be cautioned, Fred, as to what he tells the boy.”
“Well, he didn’t exactly say that, Sir,” continued Ronald, willing to
justify his friend. “He called him old Nick.”
“That’s a trifle better. Anyhow, I didn’t see him, though I can’t say
honestly that my ride was a pleasant one. I’d been staying here with old
Crofton, just before he sold the place to your uncle, and I had business
too to transact with Thorpe of Thorpe Hill. As luck would have it, all
the carriages here were in use but this one. It wasn’t in the state it
is now, but it was out of date and uncomfortable even then. However, it
took me there all right. It was on the way back that I had my adventure.
“I had barely composed myself to sleep with the consciousness of having
dined too well—Thorpe never stinted his guests—when I was roused by an
uneasy feeling that I was not the sole occupant of the carriage. The
interior was lit up by a weird, fantastic light that came and went, rose
and fell, like the glow that throbs over a brick-kiln or a blast furnace.
After all, it may have been only the reflection of my own cigar which I
had instinctively kept alight during my short nap. From out the
border-land which separates sleep from waking, I saw two figures on the
opposite seat. For a time I studied them with hardly more interest than
I should the figures in a pantomime, till it was forced upon me by their
wild gesticulation that this was no pantomime enacting for my benefit,
but a veritable tragedy of life and death. The one figure shrank
cowering in a corner of the carriage; the other stood over it with
uplifted hand. But no voice or sound proceeded from them. Only on the
hand of one, the figure that crouched and trembled, I recognised the
famous Thorpe emerald—as the family lawyer I knew it well—while the other
that stormed and threatened might have passed for old Crofton himself, in
so far as youth of twenty can anticipate the form and lineaments of
seventy-five.
“The details had hardly had time to shape themselves within my brain,
when the light died out. I heard—or fancied I heard—a short, sharp gasp,
an inarticulate cry for mercy, and the carriage drew up before the gate
of Broadwater.”
That night after dinner we were subjected to a close cross-examination by
our uncle.
“The boys have told me your surprising story, Mr. Roberts. May I ask how
it is I never heard it from you before?”
“Why, to tell you the truth, Mr. Heyward, you wouldn’t have heard it now
if my little friend Ronald hadn’t rushed me into telling it by his burst
of eagerness. You might have said I’d been dining too well—as indeed I
had—and that isn’t exactly the thing to recommend a family lawyer. So
you’ve got my reputation at your mercy, young gentlemen. For, of course,
it _was_ the dinner—a nightmare of some kind, no doubt. Though I’m bound
to say I never had a nightmare, either before or afterwards, that was
half so vivid and real. It was quite the worst quarter of an hour I ever
passed in my life.”
“Perhaps not so much of a nightmare as you suppose,” rejoined the uncle,
and then proceeded to narrate his own experiences. I remember thinking
how much better Frampton told the story than he did, in spite of his
rather unorthodox language.
“Phew! that alters the whole question. Corroborative evidence with a
vengeance—evidence that one might almost take into court. For even if
_you_ had been dining not wisely, your sister hadn’t, I know. Anyhow, we
three staid gentlefolk could create a pretty sensation with our three
independent testimonies. To think that a belief in ghosts should be
forced upon me at my age! Why I shall be dragged next into believing the
village legend.”
“What is it? I never even heard of it.”
“That Ronald’s old carriage is somehow mixed up with the quarrel between
Thorpe and Broadwater—that it stands in the way of their family union.
So you see, young gentlemen, where you’ve got to look for a wife as soon
as the carriage is gone. But it doesn’t look like it yet. Old Thorpe’s
dead, and the house shut up, and the only survivor of the family is on
the point, they tell me, of marrying her cousin. Above all, you guard
the old carriage, Heyward, as if it were a priceless heirloom. But
perhaps you are right; it isn’t your business to get rid of it.”