“But I must go to bed,” she answered; “though I can play cribbage, if only you stay another night.”
For she saw the glint in the farmer’s eye; and so Sergeant Basket slept bolt upright that night in an arm-chair by the parlour fender. Next day the dragooners searched the town again, and were billeted all about among the cottages. But the sergeant returned to Constantine, and before going to bed—this time in the spare room—played a game of cribbage with Madam Noy, the farmer smoking sulkily in his arm-chair.
“Two for his heels!” said the rosy woman suddenly, halfway through the game. “Sergeant, you’re cheatin’ yoursel’ an’ forgettin’ to mark. Gi’e me the board; I’ll mark for both.”
She put out her hand upon the board, and Sergeant Basket’s closed upon it. ’Tis true he had forgot to mark; and feeling the hot pulse in her wrist, and beholding the hunger in her eyes, ’tis to be supposed he’d have forgot his own soul.
He rode away next day with his troop: but my uncle Philip not being caught yet, and the Government set on making an example of him, we hadn’t seen the last of these dragoons. ’Twas a time of fear down in the town. At dead of night or at noonday they came on us—six times in all: and for two months the crew of the Unity couldn’t call their souls their own, but lived from day to day in secret closets and wandered the country by night, hiding in hedges and straw-houses. All that time the revenue men watched the Hauen, night and day, like dogs before a rat-hole.
But one November morning ’twas whispered abroad that Uncle Philip had made his way to Falmouth, and slipped across to Guernsey. Time passed on, and the dragooners were seen no more, nor the handsome devil-may-care face of Sergeant Basket. Up at Constantine, where he had always contrived to billet himself, ’tis to be thought pretty Madam Noy pined to see him again, kicking his spurs in the porch and smiling out of his gay brown eyes; for her face fell away from its plump condition, and the hunger in her eyes grew and grew. But a more remarkable fact was that her old husband—who wouldn’t have yearned after the dragoon, ye’d have thought—began to dwindle and fall away too. By the New Year he was a dying man, and carried his doom on his face. And on New Year’s Day he straddled his mare for the last time, and rode over to Looe, to Doctor Gale’s.
“Goody-losh!” cried the doctor, taken aback by his appearance—“What’s come to ye, Noy?”
“Death!” says Noy. “Doctor, I hain’t come for advice, for before this day week I’ll be a clay-cold corpse. I come to ax a favour. When they summon ye, before lookin’ at my body—that’ll be past help—go you to the little left-top corner drawer o’ my wife’s bureau, an’ there ye’ll find a packet. You’re my executor,” says he, “and I leaves ye to deal wi’ that packet as ye thinks fit.”
With that, the farmer rode away home-along, and the very day week he went dead.
The doctor, when called over, minded what the old chap had said, and sending Madam Noy on some pretence to the kitchen, went over and unlocked the little drawer with a duplicate key, that the farmer had unhitched from his watch-chain and given him. There was no parcel of letters, as he looked to find, but only a small packet crumpled away in the corner. He pulled it out and gave a look, and a sniff, and another look: then shut the drawer, locked it, strode straight down-stairs to his horse and galloped away.
In three hours’ time, pretty Madam Noy was in the constables’ hands upon the charge of murdering her husband by poison.
They tried her, next Spring Assize, at Bodmin, before the Lord Chief Justice. There wasn’t evidence enough to put Sergeant Basket in the dock alongside of her—though ’twas freely guessed he knew more than anyone (saving the prisoner herself) about the arsenic that was found in the little drawer and inside the old man’s body. He was subpoena’d from Plymouth, and cross-examined by a great hulking King’s Counsel for three-quarters of an hour. But they got nothing out of him. All through the examination the prisoner looked at him and nodded her white face, every now and then, at his answers, as much as to say, “That’s right—that’s right: they shan’t harm thee, my dear.” And the love-light shone in her eyes for all the court to see. But the sergeant never let his look meet it. When he stepped down at last she gave a sob of joy, and fainted bang-off.
They roused her up, after this, to hear the verdict of Guilty and her doom spoken by the judge. “Pris’ner at the bar,” said the Clerk of Arraigns, “have ye anything to say why this court should not pass sentence o’ death?”
She held tight of the rail before her, and spoke out loud and clear—
“My Lord and gentlemen all, I be a guilty woman; an’ I be ready to die at once for my sin. But if ye kill me now, ye kill the child in my body—an’ he is innocent.”
Well, ’twas found she spoke truth; and the hanging was put off till after the time of her delivery. She was led back to prison, and there, about the end of June, her child was born, and died before he was six hours old. But the mother recovered, and quietly abode the time of her hanging.
I can mind her execution very well; for father and mother had determined it would be an excellent thing for my rickets to take me into Bodmin that day, and get a touch of the dead woman’s hand, which in those times was considered an unfailing remedy. So we borrowed the parson’s manure-cart, and cleaned it thoroughly, and drove in together.
The place of the hangings, then, was a little door in the prison-wall, looking over the bank where the railway now goes, and a dismal piece of water called Jail-pool, where the townsfolk drowned most of the dogs and cats they’d no further use for. All the bank under the gallows was that thick with people you could almost walk upon their heads; and my ribs were squeezed by the crowd so that I couldn’t breathe freely for a month after. Back across the pool, the fields along the side of the valley were lined with booths and sweet-stalls and standings—a perfect Whitsun-fair; and a din going up that cracked your ears.
But there was the stillness of death when the woman came forth, with the sheriff and the chaplain reading in his book, and the unnamed man behind—all from the little door. She wore a strait black gown, and a white kerchief about her neck—a lovely woman, young and white and tearless.
She ran her eye over the crowd and stepped forward a pace, as if to speak; but lifted a finger and beckoned instead: and out of the people a man fought his way to the foot of the scaffold. ’Twas the dashing sergeant, that was here upon sick-leave. Sick he was, I believe. His face above his shining regimentals was grey as a slate; for he had committed perjury to save his skin, and on the face of the perjured no sun will ever shine.
“Have you got it?” the doomed woman said, many hearing the words.
He tried to reach, but the scaffold was too high, so he tossed up what was in his hand, and the woman caught it—a little screw of tissue-paper.
“I must see that, please!” said the sheriff, laying a hand upon her arm.
“’Tis but a weddin’-ring, sir”—and she slipped it over her finger. Then she kissed it once, under the beam, and, lookin’ into the dragoon’s eyes, spoke very slow—
“Husband, our child shall go wi’ you; an’ when I want you he shall fetch you.”
—and with that turned to the sheriff, saying:
“I be ready, sir.”
The sheriff wouldn’t give father and mother leave for me to touch the dead woman’s hand; so they drove back that evening grumbling a good bit. ’Tis a sixteen-mile drive, and the ostler in at Bodmin had swindled the poor old horse out of his feed, I believe; for he crawled like a slug. But they were so taken up with discussing the day’s doings, and what a mort of people had been present, and how the sheriff might have used milder language in refusing my father, that they forgot to use the whip. The moon was up before we got halfway home, and a star to be seen here and there; and still we never mended our pace.
’Twas in the middle of the lane leading down to Hendra Bott
om, where for more than a mile two carts can’t pass each other, that my father pricks up his ears and looks back.
“Hullo!” says he; “there’s somebody gallopin’ behind us.”
Far back in the night we heard the noise of a horse’s hoofs, pounding furiously on the road and drawing nearer and nearer.
“Save us!” cries father; “whoever ’tis, he’s comin’ down th’ lane!” And in a minute’s time the clatter was close on us and someone shouting behind.
“Hurry that crawlin’ worm o’ yourn—or draw aside in God’s name, an’ let me by!” the rider yelled.
“What’s up?” asked my father, quartering as well as he could. “Why! Hullo! Farmer Hugo, be that you?”
“There’s a mad devil o’ a man behind, ridin’ down all he comes across. A’s blazin’ drunk, I reckon—but ’tisn’ that—’tis the horrible voice that goes wi’ en-Hark! Lord protect us, he’s turn’d into the lane!”
Sure enough, the clatter of a second horse was coming down upon us, out of the night—and with it the most ghastly sounds that ever creamed a man’s flesh. Farmer Hugo pushed past us and sent a shower of mud in our faces as his horse leapt off again, and ’way-to-go down the hill. My father stood up and lashed our old grey with the reins, and down we went too, bumpity-bump for our lives, the poor beast being taken suddenly like one possessed. For the screaming behind was like nothing on earth but the wailing and sobbing of a little child—only tenfold louder. ’Twas just as you’d fancy a baby might wail if his little limbs was being twisted to death.
At the hill’s foot, as you know, a stream crosses the lane—that widens out there a bit, and narrows again as it goes up t’other side of the valley. Knowing we must be overtaken further on—for the screams and clatter seemed at our very backs by this—father jumped out here into the stream and backed the cart well to one side; and not a second too soon.
The next moment, like a wind, this thing went by us in the moonlight—a man upon a black horse that splashed the stream all over us as he dashed through it and up the hill. ’Twas the scarlet dragoon with his ashen face; and behind him, holding to his cross-belt, rode a little shape that tugged and wailed and raved. As I stand here, sir, ’twas the shape of a naked babe!
Well, I won’t go on to tell how my father dropped upon his knees in the water, or how my mother fainted off. The thing was gone, and from that moment for eight years nothing was seen or heard of Sergeant Basket. The fright killed my mother. Before next spring she fell into a decline, and early next fall the old man—for he was an old man now—had to delve her grave. After this he went feebly about his work, but held on, being wishful for me to step into his shoon, which I began to do as soon as I was fourteen, having outgrown the rickets by that time.
But one cool evening in September month, father was up digging in the yard alone: for ’twas a small child’s grave, and in the loosest soil, and I was off on a day’s work, thatching Farmer Tresidder’s stacks. He was digging away slowly when he heard a rattle at the lych-gate, and looking over the edge of the grave, saw in the dusk a man hitching his horse there by the bridle.
’Twas a coal-black horse, and the man wore a scarlet coat all powdered with pilm; and as he opened the gate and came over the graves, father saw that ’twas the dashing dragoon. His face was still a slaty-grey, and clammy with sweat; and when he spoke, his voice was all of a whisper, with a shiver therein.
“Bedman,” says he, “go to the hedge and look down the road, and tell me what you see.”
My father went, with his knees shaking, and came back again.
“I see a woman,” says he, “not fifty yards down the road. She is dressed in black, an’ has a veil over her face; an’ she’s comin’ this way.”
“Bedman,” answers the dragoon, “go to the gate an’ look back along the Plymouth road, an’ tell me what you see.”
“I see,” says my father, coming back with his teeth chattering, “I see, twenty yards back, a naked child comin’. He looks to be callin’, but he makes no sound.”
“Because his voice is wearied out,” says the dragoon. And with that he faced about, and walked to the gate slowly.
“Bedman, come wi’ me an’ see the rest,” he says, over his shoulder.
He opened the gate, unhitched the bridle and swung himself heavily up in the saddle.
Now from the gate the bank goes down pretty steep into the road, and at the foot of the bank my father saw two figures waiting. ’Twas the woman and the child, hand in hand; and their eyes burned up like coals: and the woman’s veil was lifted, and her throat bare.
As the horse went down the bank towards these two, they reached out and took each a stirrup and climbed upon his back, the child before the dragoon and the woman behind. The man’s face was set like a stone. Not a word did either speak, and in this fashion they rode down the hill towards Ruan sands. All that my father could mind, beyond, was that the woman’s hands were passed round the man’s neck, where the rope had passed round her own.
No more could he tell, being a stricken man from that hour. But Aunt Polgrain, the house-keeper up to Constantine, saw them, an hour later, go along the road below the town-place; and Jacobs, the smith, saw them pass his forge towards Bodmin about midnight. So the tale’s true enough. But since that night no man has set eyes on horse or riders.
THE PICTURE ON THE WALL, by Katharine Tynan
Originally published in The English Illustrated Magazine, 1895.
“Upon my word, Millicent”—with an impatient laugh—“there are times I could swear your heart wasn’t in it; times when, for all your childlike transparency, I could almost believe there was another man some where to whom you had given all that ought to be mine.”
“Oh, hush, hush,” answered a soft voice; “don’t say such things, my darling; they are treason against our love.”
“Poor little woman,” said the man repentantly. “I oughtn’t to have said that, for I know it is not true. But you are cold-blooded, little girl—deucedly cold-blooded. Here have I been talking about out honey moon—our honeymoon that you seem so determined to postpone—and cheating myself by talking of it into a half-belief that it had arrived, and yet, when I look in those milky eyes of yours to see if I have put a spark of fire into them, I find only a wandering look of alarm. Is it any wonder you baffle and distress me?”
The girl lifted up the eyes he had called milky. The unusual epithet was the right one in her case. The wide, innocent-looking eyes were of a curious pale blue, nearer the colour of spilt milk than anything else one could think of. There was a slightly scared expression about them, and the sensitive lines of the mouth, the fineness of the silky hair, the frequent movements of the slender hands, all spoke of a highly-strung, nervous organization.
“I am afraid,” she said, “with me love means fear. You are so strong and confident. While I, since I have known and loved you, I have realized with anguish the thousand and one chances that may snatch us away from each other for ever.”
“The more reason for hastening our marriage. If I had your shadowy fears, Millicent—as I have not, for you are healthy, my white rose, despite your too active imagination—I should scarcely breathe till we belonged to each other. After that the deluge.”
The girl trembled violently within his arms, murmuring his name half inaudibly.
“‘Geoffrey, Geoffrey,’” he repeated after her. “But what have I said to frighten you, my sweetheart? Nothing can separate us. It is only your timidity that delays our heaven. Why, Millicent, why? Do you know sometimes I could crush you to bend your will to mine? What a will, little girl, though you look so soft and yielding!”
“I will yield everything once we are married, Geoffrey.”
“Yes, darling,” said the man, suddenly mollified; “but when is that to be?”
“Let us forget about it, Geoffrey
, for a little while. Let us be lovers. Marriage so often means the end of love, or, at l east, the end of romance.”
“It shall not with us, you foolish child. I promise you that, if that is all you fear.”
She gave a little tired sigh as of one who gives in out of weariness.
“Poor Geoffrey,” she said, stroking his cheek. “It is hard that you should be worried with my inexplicable whims. Wait a little longer patiently. When you come to Dormer Court next month, I promise you that then I will fix the date—if you still desire it.”
The man laughed.
“If I still desire it, sweetheart! Well, thanks for so much grace. I have had visions of your perpetual unwillingness that should land us somewhere into old age unmarried.”
The girl crept close to him and they were silent—the silence of lovers that means so much satisfaction. After a time, they stood up and sauntered easily down the garden path. It was September, and the late roses were out in bloom, and now and again a bird trilled sweetly, a little song very different from the full rapture of early summer.
“The latest of late warblers sings as one, that trolls at random when the feast is over,” quoted Millicent Gray.
The homely red house came into sight, with its verandah, and the many garden paths diverging from it into winding walk and shrubbery. There was a lady in the verandah, comfortably seated in a rocking-chair, her eyes bent on the novel in her hand, and a pretty tea equipage drawn within reach of her. She looked up as the Lovers approached.
“Dear people,” she said gaily, “I am glad you have thought at last of me and the tea. I have had some difficulty in restraining Jones’s impatience. Though, indeed, if I had taken my tea a quarter of an hour ago, and given you the tannin, I don’t suppose you would be a whit the wiser.”
The Fifth Ghost Story Megapack 25 Classic Haunts Page 31
