A NIGHT WITH THE GHOSTS.
The succeeding day to this was fine again, a charming day for the middle
of November; and when the college school rushed down the steps at four
o'clock, the upper boys were tempted to commence one of their noisy
games. Nearly the only two who declined were the senior boy and Arkell.
The senior of the school, whoever he might be for the time being,
rarely, if ever, played, and the present one, Jocelyn, was also too
idle. Both went quietly on to the master's, walking arm-in-arm. The
school closed at four in the dead of winter. Henry came out again
immediately, his music in his hand, and was running past the boys.
"I say, Arkell, we are going to cast lots for the stag. Where are you
bolting to?"
"I can't join this evening--I'm off to practise. To-morrow is my lesson
day, and I have not touched the organ this week."
"Cram! What's the good? It'll be night directly, and that mouldy old
organ loft as dark as pitch."
"Oh, I shall see for ever so long to come--the sun has not set yet,"
returned Henry, without stopping. "Thank you, Lewis," he added, as a
sharp stone struck his trencher. "That was from you, I saw. I shall not
pay you back in kind."
There was a sting in the retort, from the very manner of giving it, so
pointedly gentleman-like, for Henry Arkell had stopped a moment, and
raised his trencher, as he might have done to the dean. Lewis saw that
the boys were laughing at him, and he suddenly set upon seven juniors,
and made the whole lot cry.
Active and swift, Henry soon gained the precincts of the church, St.
James the Less. He pushed open the outer door of the clerk's house, and
took the key of the church from its niche in the passage, close to the
kitchen door. This he also opened, and looked in. It was a square room,
the floor of red brick, and a bed, with a curtain drawn before it, was
on one side against the wall. The old man, Hunt, sat smoking in the
chimney corner.
"I am going in to play, Hunt. I have the key."
"Very well, sir."
"How's the missis?" he stopped to ask.
"She be bad in all her bones, sir, she be. I telled her to lie down for
half an hour: it's that nasty ague she have got upon her again. This be
a damp spot to live in, so many low trees about," he continued, with a
shrug of his shoulders.
Henry could not remember when the "missis" was not "bad in all her
bones;" her ague seemed to be chronic. He proceeded on his way, passed
the iron gates, walked up the churchyard, and unlocked the church door.
Once in, he took the key from the outer lock, and placing it upon the
bench inside, pushed the door to, but did not shut it. The taking out
the key in this manner was by Mr. Wilberforce's orders: if they left it
in the lock outside, some mischievous person might come and remove it,
he had told the boys. Then he ascended to the organ-loft and commenced
his practising. No blower was required, as certain pedals, touched with
the feet, acted instead, something after the manner of a modern
harmonium. His heart was in his task, in spite of the heavy care at it,
for he loved music; and when it grew too dusk to see, he continued
playing from memory.
The shades of evening were gathering outside, as well as in; and under
cover of them a boy might have been seen stealing through the
churchyard. It was Henry's rival, Lewis, whose mind had just been
hatching a nice little revengeful plot. To say that Lewis had been half
mad since the preceding day, would not be saying too much: he could have
borne anything better than taunts from Miss Beauclerc; and for those
taunts he would be revenged, the fates permitting, upon Henry Arkell. He
did not quite see how, yet; but, as a little prologue, he intended to
lock him in the church for the night, the idea of _that_ having flashed
into his mind after Henry had thanked him for throwing the stone.
Lewis gently pulled open the church door, looked for the key, saw it,
and snatched it, locked the church door upon the unconscious boy, who
was playing, and stole back again, key in hand. Beyond the gates of the
churchyard he stopped to laugh, as though he had accomplished a great
feat.
"Won't his crowing be cooled by morning! He'll be seeing ghosts all
night, and calling out blue murder; but nobody can hear him, and there
he must stop with them. What a jolly sell!"
He hid the key in his jacket pocket until he reached old Hunt's house.
Lewis knew it was kept there, but did not know there was a niche or a
nail for it in the passage. He did not care to be seen, and therefore
must get the key in, in the best way he could.
The clerk and his ailing wife were sitting by their fire now, taking
tea. A china saucer, containing some milk, had just been put down on the
brick floor for the cat, a snarling, enormous yellow animal, but a
particularly cherished one by both master and mistress. The cat had got
her nose in it, and the old woman was lovingly regarding her, when the
door opened about an inch, and the church key came flying in, propelled
on to the cat's head and the saucer. The cat started away with a howl,
the saucer flew in pieces, and the milk was scattered. In the midst of
this the door closed again, and footsteps were heard scampering off.
"Mercy on us!" shrieked the old dame, startled out of her seven senses.
"What be that?"
The clerk, recovering his consternation, rose and regarded the damage;
the broken saucer, the wasted milk, and the scared cat--the genial
animal standing with her back up in the farthest corner.
"That's the way they do it, is it?" he wrathfully cried, as he stooped
to pick up the key, a difficult process, from his rheumatic loins. "My
gentleman can't bring in the key and hang it up decently, but must shy
it in, and do this mischief! I wonder the master lets 'em have the run
of the organ! I wouldn't."
"It were that Robbins, I know," said the dame, shaking still.
"It were just the t'other, then--Arkell. Poor pussy! poor tit, tit,
tit!"
"Arkell! Why he be always so quiet and perlite!"
"It's a perlite thing to fling the key in upon us after this fashion,
ain't it?" growled the clerk.
"Come along then, titsey! Don't put its back up! Come to its missis!"
But the outraged cat wholly refused to be soothed. It snarled, and spit,
and snarled again; making a spring finally into a pantry, and thence
away through an open casement window.
The tea hour at the head master's was half-past five; and the boys sat
down to it this evening as usual. They were accustomed to take that meal
alone, and the absence of one or other of the boys at it had become, in
consequence, rather general; therefore, Arkell's not appearing went
really without notice. Lewis appeared to be in a flow of delight, and
devoured Arkell's share of bread-and-butter as well as his own. There
were in all, at this time, about ten boarders residing at the master's,
some of them being his private pupils. The two Lewises were there still;
but Mrs. Lewis had given notice of their removal at Christmas, as she
intended to receive them into the house she had taken possession of--the
late Marmaduke Carr's.
Now it happened, by good or by ill luck, as the reader may decide, that
the master and Mrs. Wilberforce were abroad that evening. In his absence
the senior boy had full authority, and the rest dared not disobey him.
This might not have been well with some seniors; but Jocelyn was one in
whom confidence could be placed. At supper--eight o'clock--Arkell was
still absent, and Jocelyn now observed it. One of the others remarked
that he was most likely at the deanery. This was Vaughan; a rather
stupid boy, who had been nicknamed in consequence Bright Vaughan.
At nine o'clock, the man-servant brought in the book for prayers, read
by the senior boy when the master himself was not there. Absence from
prayers was never excused, unless under the especial permission of Mr.
Wilberforce; and he would have severely punished any boy guilty of it.
Another thing that he exacted was, that prayers should be read precisely
to the hour. So Jocelyn read them, and the servant carried away the
book.
"I say, though, where can Arkell be?" wondered the boys. "He's never out
like this, unless he has leave."
"Perhaps he means to make a night of it?" suggested Lewis junior,
opportunely enough, if he had but known it.
"Hold your tongue, Lewis junior," said Jocelyn. "He may have got leave
from the master for the evening, and we not know it."
"I don't think he has, though," dissented young Wilberforce.
"We won't split upon him," eagerly spoke up Lewis--not the junior. "He
has been a horrid sneak, especially in getting himself in with the
dean's daughter; but it won't do to begin splitting one upon another."
"I should like to hear any of you attempting it," authoritatively spoke
the senior boy. "I'd split you."
"We don't mean to. Don't be so sharp, Jocelyn."
"There's not the least doubt that he is at the deanery," decided
Jocelyn. "I heard something said the other day about the master's having
given him general leave to stop there, when asked, without coming home
to say it."
"Who told you that, Jocelyn?" questioned Lewis, his ears turning red.
"I heard it, and that's enough. The master can depend upon Arkell, you
know."
"Oh, can he though!" cried Lewis, ironically. "I'd lay a crown he's not
at the deanery."
"Up to bed, boys," commanded Jocelyn.
The Lewises, senior and junior, and Henry Arkell slept in one room; the
rest of the boys were divided into two others. The rooms in the quaint
old house were not large. All had separate beds. Arkell's was in the
corner behind the door. Marmaduke Lewis, the younger, was in bed
immediately, schoolboy fashion, the process occupying about
half-a-minute; but the elder did not seem inclined to be so quick
to-night. He dawdled about the room, brushed his hair, held his mouth
open to admire his teeth in the glass, tried how many different faces he
could make, stuck pins in the candle, and, in short, seemed in anything
but a bed humour. In the midst of this delay, he heard the voice of Mr.
Wilberforce, speaking to one of the servants, as he ascended the stairs.
What Lewis did, in his consternation, he hardly knew. The first thing
was to turn the candle upside down in the candlestick, and jam it well
in; the next was to fling some of his brother's clothes on to his own
chair; and the third to bolt into bed with his own clothes on, and draw
the counterpane over his head. Mr. Wilberforce opened the door.
"Are you in bed, boys?"
Lewis put part of his face out.
"Yes, sir. Good night, sir."
"Good night," repeated Mr. Wilberforce, and closed the door upon the
room.
Lewis breathed a blessing upon all propitious stars, that he had not
looked behind the door at the vacant bed. Then his going to let out
Arkell was impossible, now Mr. Wilberforce was in: which had been the
indecisive project agitating his brain.
And now we must return to Henry Arkell. The church of St. James the Less
struck a quarter past five when Henry took his fingers from the keys of
the organ. "Only a quarter past five," he soliloquized; "how the
evenings draw in! Last week was moonlight, and I did not notice it so
much. I don't see how I shall get my practising here these winter
months, unless I snatch an hour between morning and afternoon school."
He felt for his music, for it was too dark to see, rolled it up, and
then felt his way down the narrow and nearly perpendicular staircase,
dark even in daylight. When he reached the bench at the entrance, he
placed his hand on the spot where he had put the key. He could not feel
it: he only supposed he had missed the spot by an inch or two, and
groped about with his hands. He turned to the door to pull it open, and
let in the light.
The door was closed, was fast; and Henry Arkell felt his face grow hot
as the truth burst upon him, that he was fastened up in the church. He
concluded that the old clerk had done it in mistake. "I must ring the
bell," thought he, "and let them know somebody's in the church."
But he was doomed to fresh disappointment, for, on groping his way to
the belfry, he found it fastened: cords, bells, and all were locked up.
Sometimes this door was locked, sometimes it was left open, just as the
clerk remembered, or not, to fasten it.
"I can't stop here all night!" exclaimed he, his face growing more and
more heated. "What in the world am I to do?"
What indeed? What would you have done, reader? Set on and shouted? But
there was nobody to hear: the church was solitary, and its walls were
thick. Thump at the door? But if you had nothing but your hands to thump
with, little hope that any result would be obtained.
It was a novel and a disagreeable situation for the boy to be placed
in--locked alone in the gloomy old church; gloomy in more than one sense
of the word, and smelling of the dead. The small, confined windows were
high up in the walls, and entirely inaccessible, and there was no other
outlet. The vestry was only lighted by two panes of thick glass inserted
into its roof; and, in short, the case was hopeless.
And the boy grew so. He shouted, and called, and thumped, just as you or
I might have done, without any regard to its manifest inutility. He was
a brave-spirited boy, owning a clear conscience; and he was a singularly
religious boy, far more so than it is usual for those of his age to be,
possessing an ever-present trust in God's good care and protection.
Still, disagreeable thoughts would intrude: his lonely situation stood
out in exaggerated force, and recollections of a certain ghostly tale,
connected with that church, rose up before him. It was a tale which had
gone the round of Westerbury the previous year, and the ghostly-inclined
put firm faith in it. The old clerk was an obstinate believer in it, for
he had seen it with his own eyes; the sexton had seen it with his, and
two gravediggers had seen it with theirs. A citizen had died, and been
buried in the middle aisle, not many yards from where Henry Arkell now
stood. After his burial, suspicion arose that he had not come fairly to
his end, and the coroner had issued his mandate for the disinterment of
the body, and the sexton and two gravediggers proceeded to their task.
They chose night to do it in, "not to be bothered with starers at 'em,"
they said; and the clerk chose to bear them company. At three o'clock in
the morning the whole four rushed out of the church panic-stricken, made
their way to the nearest street, and rose it with their frantic cries.
Windows were thrown up in alarm, and nightcaps stretched out--what on
earth was the matter? The buried man's ghost had appeared to them in a
sea of blue flame, was the trembling tale they told, and which went
forth to Westerbury. The blue flame was accounted for; the ghost, never.
They had a basin full of gin with them, and, in lighting a pipe, they
had managed to set light to the gin, which immediately ascended in a
ghastly stream. The men, it was found, had a little gin on board
themselves, as well as in the basin; and to that, no doubt, in
conjunction with the blue flames, the ghost owed its origin.
Now a ghost in broad daylight, with all the bustle and reality of
mid-day life about us, and a ghost fastened up with oneself in a church
at night-time, bear two widely different aspects. Henry Arkell had
heartily laughed at the story, had made merry over the consternation of
the half-drunken men, but he did not altogether enjoy being so near the
ghostly spot now; for though reason tried to be heard, imagination had
got fast hold of the reins. He lifted his eyes, with a desperate effort,
and looked round the church: he began to calculate which was the very
spot, in the gloom of the middle aisle: he grasped the door of a pew
near where he stood, and bent his face down upon it in an agony of
terror.
"And I must be here until morning," his conviction whispered. "O God!
keep this terror from me! Send thine Holy Spirit to come near and
strengthen me! Oh, yes, yes," he resumed, after a pause; "I shall be
all right if I do but trust in God. He is everywhere; He is with me now.
I will go up to the organ again."
He groped his way up, sat down, and began to play as well as he could in
the perfect darkness. He played some of the cathedral chants, and sang
to them; it was a curious sound, echoing there in the dark and lonely
night; and it was a positive fact that, in so doing, his superstitious
alarm passed, from his mind.
But oh, how long the hours were! how long the quarters, as the slow
clock gave them out! He still kept on playing, dreading to leave off
lest the terror should come back again. When it struck nine, he could
have thought it four in the morning, judging by the dreary time that
seemed to have elapsed. "The boys will be going up to bed directly," he
said, thinking of the master's; "oh, why don't they send out to look for
me? But they'd never think of looking here!"
He kept on playing. About ten o'clock he knelt down to say his prayers,
as if preparing to retire for the night, and then ensconced himself as
comfortably as he could on the seat of the singers, which was well
cushioned. "If I could but go to sleep, and sleep till daylight,"
thought he, "there would be no chance of that foolish terror coming back
again. Foolish indeed! How very absurd I am!"
He fell into a train of thought; not happy thought: schoolboys have
trouble as well as grown people: and Henry Arkell had plenty just then,
as you know. The superstitious feeling did not come back, and at length
he sank into sleep.
He did not know what roused him: something did. The first thing he heard
distinctly was a scuffling noise, followed by a "hush-sh-sh!" breathed
from a human voice. He felt a cramped sensation all over, but that arose
from his inconvenient couch, and he could not for the life of him
remember where he was.
He stretched out his hand, and it came in contact with the front of the
gallery; it was close to him, for the singers' seat was very narrow: he
raised himself to look over, still not remembering what had passed. He
seemed to be in a church, for one of two male figures, walking up the
aisle, carried a lighted taper, which threw its glimmering upon the
pews, though the man shaded it with his hand. Whether Henry Arkell had
been dreaming of robbers, certain it is, he judged these men to be such:
they turned off to the vestry, which was on the side of the church,
nearly at the top; and he rubbed his eyes, and full recollection
returned to him.
"What has put robbers in my head?" he debated. "They are not robbers:
they must be come to look for me. But they stole up as if they were
robbers!" he added after a pause. "And why did they not call out to me?"
An impulse took him down from the gallery and up the church; he moved as
silently as the men had done. The vestry door was open, and he stood
outside on the matting and peeped in, secure of not being seen in the
darkness. To his surprise, he recognised faces he knew--gentlemen's
faces, not robbers'. One of them was George Prattleton; and the other
was the stranger he had seen with him the previous night. What were they
doing in the vestry at that hour?
"Now make haste about it, Rolls," George Prattleton was saying, as Henry
gazed in. "I don't half like the work, and if I had not been more hard
up than any poor devil ever was yet, you would never have got me on to
it. There's the register."
George Prattleton had unlocked a safe and taken a book from it, which he
put on the table. "Mind, Rolls, you are not to copy anything; that was
the agreement."
"I don't want to copy anything: I gave you my word, didn't I?" was the
reply of Mr. Rolls, who had seized upon the book. "I only want to see
whether a certain entry is here, or whether it is not, and I give you
20_l._ for getting me the sight: and a deuced easy way it is of earning
20_l._, Prattleton."
Rolls had drawn a chair to the table, and was poring over the register,
as he spoke, turning the leaves one by one. Prattleton stood by, and
held the candle, not very steadily.
"I can't see, if you whiffle it like that, Prat," cried Mr. Rolls,
taking the candlestick from his hand and setting it on the table.
"How long shall you be?"
"Why, I have hardly begun. Don't be impatient. Sit down on that other
chair and take a nap, if you are tired."
Prattleton continued to stand at the table, but his impatience was
evidently great. His back was to Henry Arkell, but the boy had full view
of the countenance and movements of the other: his interest, in what was
passing, was not less than his astonishment.
"You say you know the date, so where's the use of being so dilatory?"
cried Mr. Prattleton. "You turn over the leaves as slow as if you were
going to execution. Ah, you have it now, I think."
"No, I have not." And Rolls turned another leaf over as he spoke, and
went on studying; but he stealthily placed his thumb to mark the page he
left. Prattleton yawned, whistled, and yawned again, and finally turned
away and began to look in the safe; anything to cover his impatience.
Upon which, Henry Arkell distinctly saw Rolls turn back to the page
where his thumb was, examine it intently, and then silently blow out the
light.
"Halloa!" roared Prattleton, finding himself in darkness.
"What a beast of a candle!" indignantly uttered Mr. Rolls. "It's gone
out!"
"What put it out?"
"How can I tell? The damp, I suppose: everything smells mouldy. Give us
the matches, Prat."
"I have not got the matches. You took them."
"Did I? Then I'm blest if I have not left them on the bench at the door.
Go for them, Prat, will you: if I lose my place in the book I shall have
to begin all over again, and that will keep us longer than you'd like."
Mr. Prattleton--with a few expletives not often heard in churches--felt
his way through the vestry door. Henry had not time to retreat, so he
drew himself closely up against the wall, and Prattleton passed him.
But, to Henry Arkell's surprise, a light almost immediately reappeared
inside the vestry. He naturally looked in again.
Rolls had relighted the candle, and was inserting what looked like a
thin board, behind one of the leaves of the register: he then drew a
sharp penknife down it, close to the binding, and out came the leaf,
leaving no trace. He folded the leaf, put it in his pocket with the
board and the knife, and then blew out the light again. All was
accomplished with speed, but with perfect coolness. "Nothing risk,
nothing win," cried he, audibly: "I thought I could do him."
Prattleton soon came up the church with the box of matches, igniting
some as he walked, by way of lighting his steps. Henry drew away against
the wall, and crouched down beneath a dark mahogany pew.
"There go the three-quarters past one, Rolls; we have been in here
five-and-twenty minutes. Don't let the light go out again."
"I shall soon have done. I am getting near the place where the entry
ought to be--if it is in at all; but I told you there was a doubt. So
much the better for us if it's not."
Prattleton sat down and drummed on the table. Rolls came to the end of
the register.
"It's not in, Prattleton. Hurrah! It will be thousands of pounds in our
pocket. When the other side brought forth the lame tale that there was
such a thing, we thought it was a bag of moonshine. Here's your
register. Put it up."
Henry stole silently towards the church door, hoping to get out: he
dared not show himself to those two swindlers. He was fortunate: though
the door was locked, the key was in, and he passed out, leaving it
open. What he was to do with himself till morning, he knew not: he might
sit down on the gravestones; but he had had enough of graves; he
supposed he must pace the town.
The gentlemen set things straight in the vestry, and also came, in due
course, to the door. They had left it locked, and now it was open! Each
looked at the other in amazement.
"What possessed you to do that?" demanded Rolls, in a fiercer tone than
was consistent with politeness.
"I do it! that's good," retorted Prattleton. "It was you locked it, or
pretended to."
"I did lock it. You must have opened it when you came down for the
matches."
"I wish we may be dropped upon if I did! I should be an idiot to open
the door and give nightbirds a chance of scenting what we were up to."
"Psha!" impatiently uttered Rolls, "a locked door could not open of
itself. But there's no harm done; so blow out the light, and let's get
off."
Thus disputing--for in truth the open door had struck something like
terror on the heart of both--George Prattleton and his friend quitted
the church, leaving all secure. Mr. George had to carry the key home
with him; he could not fling it into the clerk's house, as Lewis had
done, for the house was fastened up; most houses are at two in the
morning. He had successfully executed a little _ruse_ to get the key,
unsuspected by the clerk: watching his opportunity, he had arrived at
the clerk's house when that official had gone out for his supper-beer,
ostensibly to put a question in regard to the time that a funeral was to
take place on the morrow; and while talking to the old dame, he managed
to abstract the key, hanging one that outwardly resembled it in its
place. The Reverend Mr. Prattleton often took the duty at St. James the
Less for the head master; and George was tolerably familiar with its
ways and places.
They went along with stealthy steps, their eyes peering fitfully into
dark corners, lest any should be abroad and see them. Once in the more
frequented streets it did not so much matter; they might be going home
from some late entertainment, as Mr. George and his latch-key were not
infrequently in the habit of doing. Rolls was in a glow of delight; and
even an odd fear of detection now and then could not check it.
"I was as sure there was no entry there as sure can be. Our side was
sure of it also; only it was well to look and see. I'm more glad than if
anybody had put a hundred pounds in my hand."
"Who _is_ your side?" asked George Prattleton. "You have not told me
anything, you know, Rolls."
"Well, it would not be very interesting to you. It's an old dispute
about a tithe cause; the name's Whiffam."
Not a very lucid explanation; but George Prattleton was tired and cross,
and not really overcurious. At the corner of a street he and Rolls
parted, and Mr. George went home and let himself in with his latch-key,
deeming nobody the wiser for the night's exploit.