Thoroughly tired out, and with a guardian angel on the mat at his
bedside, in the shape of a long brown body which sought fresh ease in
an occasional sprawl, and flopped a responsive tail each time he
dropped a friendly pat on to its head in the dark--Graeme looked
confidently for a sound night's rest.
He fell asleep indeed at once, but woke with a start sometime in the
night, with the impression of a sound in his ears. Had he really heard
something? Or was it only the tail-end of a dream? Wood-lined houses
talk in the night. Was it only the pitch pine whispering of the old
free days in the scented woods? He could not be sure, so he lay still
and listened.
And as he waited, it came again--a low, wailing cry, long-drawn and
somewhat curdling to the blood.
Outside or inside? He could not be sure.
Cats? Cats can do wonders in the way of uncanny noises, but somehow
this did not sound like cats. There was something human, or inhuman,
in it, and his door suddenly shook as though something tried to get
in.
He bethought him to feel for Punch. But his hand fell on space, and as
he struck a match to see the time and what had become of his
companion, the church bell tolled one dismal stroke, and he saw Punch
standing like a bronze statue at the door, with his nose down at the
crack, his tail on the droop, and every hair apparently on the
bristle.
At the glow of the match the drooping tail gave one slow swing, but he
did not look round.
Graeme struck another match, and lit his candle, and jumped into his
shoes.
"What is it, old fellow?" And Punch scraped furiously at the door
again, and so explained that part of the matter.
There came a sudden scuffling fall against the door. Punch rasped at
it with his front feet in strenuous silence. If he had been able to
give voice it would have been a relief to both of them. His mute
anxiety added to the weirdness of the proceedings, and Graeme
experienced a novel creeping about the nape of the neck.
Ghosts or no ghosts, however, it had to be looked into. He picked up a
heavy boot, turned the key, and flung open the door. Punch went down
the stairs in two long bounds, and a rush of cold air put out the
candle. He laid it down and followed cautiously, ready to launch the
boot at the first sign of uncanniness.
The rush of night air came through a small pantry opening off the
hall. The window in it was wide open, and there was no sign of Punch.
He and the ghost had evidently gone through that way. Graeme and the
boot followed.
It was a dark night between moons. The velvet-black vault was
brilliant with stars, but the earth was full of shadows. The fleshy
leaves of the eucalyptus trees showed pale against the darkness. The
night wind set them rustling eerily. From somewhere beyond them, past
the dark hedge, there came a sound of subdued strife. Graeme clutched
his boot and sped towards it, drenched with dew from every disturbed
branch.
The sounds led him into the potato patch in the lower garden, and in
the dimness he became aware that Punch was standing on something that
struggled to get up and was held down by the great brown paws and
body.
No ghost, evidently. Graeme dropped his boot and stooped and laid hold
of the struggler, and knew in a moment, in spite of his own
disturbance of mind, that this ghost at all events had materialised
into the bodily form of Master Johnnie Vautrin, and he wondered how
many more might have done the same if they had been followed up as
closely.
He lifted the squirming small boy who had not spoken a word.
"So this is what Sark ghosts are made of, is it, Master Johnnie?" he
asked, giving him a shake. "You little scamp! For once you shall have
what you jolly well deserve," and he carried him, kicking and
wriggling, back to the house, shoved him through the window, and held
him with one hand while he got through himself. Punch followed with
an easy bound, and they all went upstairs. Graeme found his candle,
and lit it and looked at his prisoner.
Johnnie was covered with mould from the potato patch, but his black
eyes gleamed through it as brightly as ever, and, as far as Graeme
could distinguish through its masking, his face showed no sign of
confusion.
"Do you know what we do with naughty little ghosts in England,
Johnnie?"
Johnnie's eyes glittered like a snake's.
"We spank 'em, Johnnie. I'm going to spank you--hard."
Then Johnnie spoke.
"I'll put tha evil eye on you."
"Two if you like, my son,--or twenty if you've got 'em handy. Evil
eyes rather tickle me. We'll see which makes most impression--my hand
or your eye," and he laid the black-magic man across his knee, and
gave him such a genuine motherly quilting as he had never experienced
in his life before. Hot blows he was accustomed to, but this cool,
relentless, tingling flagellation, all on the one spot, and continued
till every particle of blood in his body seemed to leap to meet each
stroke, was new to him, and it made a great and lasting impression.
He did not cry, but tried to bite and scratch the operator, and Punch
stood looking on with a grave smile on his face and a slowly swinging
tail expressive of the greatest satisfaction.
Discipline over, Graeme handed him out through the pantry window, bade
him to go home to bed, and fastened the window behind him. The night
passed without further disturbance, and Graeme awoke as the dawn
glimmered golden on his wide-open window.
In ten minutes he was racing bareheaded past Colinette and La Forge
towards Les Lâches, a towel round his neck and Punch bounding silently
by his side. They had stolen out the back way through the top of the
post-office fields, and had left Scamp still prisoner in the
woodhouse, lest the hysterical joy of his release should disturb the
ladies.
And presently they were racing back home, all aglow with the tingling
kisses of the waves, and rough of hair with the salt and the wind.
The sun was up but not yet stripped for the long day's race to the
west. The eastern skies still gleamed through a faery haze with the
soft iridescence of a young ormer shell, the tender pinks and greens
and golds of the new day's birth-chamber mellowing upwards into the
glorious blue of a day of days.
'The year's at the spring,
The day's at the morn;
Morning's at seven;
The hillside's dew-pearled:
The lark's on the wing;
The snail's on the thorn;
God's in his heaven--
All's right with the world!'
The lilt of the joyous words had often been with him as he sped
through the sleeping fields to his morning plunge.
This day of days, as though his soul forecasted what was coming, they
sang in his heart and on his lips. His cure was surely near
completion. The salt was regaining its savour. Life was worth living
again.
And it was then, when he had come through the valley and was ready to
climb again, that the glory came to him.
As the two friends sprang lightly over the turf wall into the garden
of the Red House, they saw a sight which one of them will not forget
as long as he lives.
In the gap of the tall hedge, where the path led down to the
cottage,--ringed in its darkness like a lovely picture in a sombre
frame, with a pale eucalyptus rising stately on either side; and
behind it all, and gleaming softly through and round it all, the
tender glories of the new day,--stood a girl in a dove-coloured dress,
bareheaded, holding the dew-pearled branches apart with her two hands,
and gazing at him with wide eyes, and parted lips, and startled face.
And the girl was Margaret Brandt.