The Best Ghost Stories Ever Told

by Stephen Brennan

  “Don’t go,” she answered, with a pleading intensity which would have sent my Gladstone onto the platform and me after it. But she wasn’t speaking to me. John Gharrington was made differently; he rarely changed his opinions, never his resolutions.

  He only stroked the little ungloved hands that lay on the carriage door.

  “I must, May. The old boy’s been awfully good to me, and now he’s dying I must go and see him, but I shall come home in time for—” the rest of the parting was lost in a whisper and in the rattling lurch of the starting train.

  “You’re sure to come?” she spoke as the train moved.

  “Nothing shall keep me,” he answered; and we steamed out. After he had seen the last of the little figure on the platform he leaned back in his corner and kept silence for a minute.

  When he spoke it was to explain to me that his godfather, whose heir he was, lay dying at Peasmarsh Place, some fifty miles away, and had sent for John, and John had felt bound to go.

  “I shall be surely back tomorrow,” he said, “or, if not, the day after, in heaps of time. Thank Heaven, one hasn’t to get up in the middle of the night to get married nowadays!”

  “And suppose Mr. Branbridge dies?”

  “Alive or dead I mean to be married on Thursday!” John answered, lighting a cigar and unfolding The Times.

  At Peasmarsh station we said “good-bye,” and he got out, and I saw him ride off; I went on to London, where I stayed the night.

  When I got home the next afternoon, a very wet one, by the way, my sister greeted me with:

  “Where’s Mr. Charrington?”

  “Goodness knows,” I answered testily. Every man, since Cain, has resented that kind of question.

  “I thought you might have heard from him,” she went on, “as you’re to give him away tomorrow.”

  “Isn’t he back?” I asked, for I had confidently expected to find him at home.

  “No, Geoffrey,”—my sister Fanny always had a way of jumping to conclusions, especially such conclusions as were least favourable to her fellow-creatures—“he has not returned, and, what is more, you may depend upon it he won’t. You mark my words, there’ll be no wedding tomorrow.”

  My sister Fanny has a power of annoying me which no other human being possesses.

  “You mark my words,” I retorted with asperity, “you had better give up making such a thundering idiot of yourself. There’ll be more wedding tomorrow than ever you’ll take the first part in.” A prophecy which, by the way, came true.

  But though I could snarl confidently to my sister, I did not feel so comfortable when late that night, I, standing on the doorstep of John’s house, heard that he had not returned. I went home gloomily through the rain. Next morning brought a brilliant blue sky, gold sun, and all such softness of air and beauty of cloud as go to make up a perfect day. I woke with a vague feeling of having gone to bed anxious, and of being rather averse to facing that anxiety in the light of full wakefulness.

  But with my shaving-water came a note from John which relieved my mind and sent me up to the Forster’s with a light heart.

  May was in the garden. I saw her blue gown through the hollyhocks as the lodge gates swung to behind me. So I did not go up to the house, but turned aside down the turfed path.

  “He’s written to you too,” she said, without preliminary greeting, when I reached her side.

  “Yes, I’m to meet him at the station at three, and come straight on to the church.”

  Her face looked pale, but there was a brightness in her eyes, and a tender quiver about the mouth that spoke of renewed happiness.

  “Mr. Branbridge begged him so to stay another night that he had not the heart to refuse,” she went on. “He is so kind, but I wish he hadn’t stayed.”

  I was at the station at half-past two. I felt rather annoyed with John. It seemed a sort of slight to the beautiful girl who loved him, that he should come as it were out of breath, and with the dust of travel upon him, to take her hand, which some of us would have given the best years of our lives to take.

  But when the three o’clock train glided in, and glided out again having brought no passengers to our little station, I was more than annoyed. There was no other train for thirty-five minutes; I calculated that, with much hurry, we might just get to the church in time for the ceremony; but, oh, what a fool to miss that first train! What other man could have done it?

  That thirty-five minutes seemed a year, as I wandered round the station reading the advertisements and the timetables, and the company’s bye-laws, and getting more and more angry with John Charrington. This confidence in his own power of getting everything he wanted the minute he wanted it was leading him too far. I hate waiting. Everyone does, but I believe I hate it more than anyone else. The three thirty-five was late, of course.

  I ground my pipe between my teeth and stamped with impatience as I watched the signals. Click. The signal went down. Five minutes later I flung myself into the carriage that I had brought for John.

  “Drive to the church!” I said, as someone shut the door. “Mr. Charrington hasn’t come by this train.”

  Anxiety now replaced anger. What had become of the man? Could he have been taken suddenly ill? I had never known him have a day’s illness in his life. And even so he might have telegraphed. Some awful accident must have happened to him. The thought that he had played her false never—no, not for a moment—entered my head. Yes, something terrible had happened to him, and on me lay the task of telling his bride. I almost wished the carriage would upset and break my head so that someone else might tell her, not I, who—but that’s nothing to do with this story.

  It was five minutes to four as we drew up at the churchyard gate. A double row of eager onlookers lined the path from lychgate to porch. I sprang from the carriage and passed up between them. Our gardener had a good front place near the door. I stopped.

  “Are they waiting still, Byles?” I asked, simply to gain time, for of course I knew they were by the waiting crowd’s attentive attitude.

  “Waiting, sir? No, no, sir; why, it must be over by now.”

  “Over! Then Mr. Gharrington’s come?”

  “To the minute, sir; must have missed you somehow, and I say, sir,” lowering his voice, “I never see Mr. John the least bit so afore, but my opinion is he’s been drinking pretty free. His clothes was all dusty and his face like a sheet. I tell you I didn’t like the looks of him at all, and the folks inside are saying all sorts of things. You’ll see, something’s gone very wrong with Mr. John, and he’s tried liquor. He looked like a ghost, and in he went with his eyes straight before him, with never a look or a word for none of us: him that was always such a gentleman!”

  I had never heard Byles make so long a speech. The crowd in the churchyard were talking in whispers and getting ready rice and slippers to throw at the bride and bridegroom. The ringers were ready with their hands on the ropes to ring out the merry peal as the bride and bridegroom should come out.

  A murmur from the church announced them; out they came. Byles was right. John Gharrington did not look himself. There was dust on his coat, his hair was disarranged.

  He seemed to have been in some row, for there was a black mark above his eyebrow. He was deathly pale. But his pallor was not greater than that of the bride, who might have been carved in ivory—dress, veil, orange blossoms, face and all.

  As they passed out the ringers stooped—there were six of them—and then, on the ears expecting the gay wedding peal, came the slow tolling of the passing bell.

  A thrill of horror at so foolish a jest from the ringers passed through us all. But the ringers themselves dropped the ropes and fled like rabbits out into the sunlight. The bride shuddered, and grey shadows came about her mouth, but the bridegroom led her on down the path where the people stood with the handfuls of rice; but the handfuls were never thrown, and the wedding-bells never rang. In vain the ringers were urged to remedy their mistake: they protested with many whisper
ed expletives that they would see themselves further first.

  In a hush like the hush in the chamber of death the bridal pair passed into their carriage and its door slammed behind them.

  Then the tongues were loosed. A babel of anger, wonder, conjecture from the guests and the spectators.

  “If I’d seen his condition, sir,” said old Forster to me as we drove off, “I would have stretched him on the floor of the church, sir, by Heaven I would, before I’d have let him marry my daughter!”

  Then he put his head out of the window.

  “Drive like hell,” he cried to the coachman; “don’t spare the horses.”

  He was obeyed. We passed the bride’s carriage. I forbore to look at it, and old Forster turned his head away and swore. We reached home before it.

  We stood in the hall doorway, in the blazing afternoon sun, and in about half a minute we heard wheels crunching the gravel. When the carriage stopped in front of the steps old Forster and I ran down.

  “Great Heaven, the carriage is empty! And yet—”

  I had the door open in a minute, and this is what I saw—

  No sign of John Charrington; and of May, his wife, only a huddled heap of white satin lying half on the floor of the carriage and half on the seat.

  “I drove straight here, sir,” said the coachman, as the bride’s father lifted her out; “and I’ll swear no-one got out of the carriage.”

  We carried her into the house in her bridal dress and drew back her veil. I saw her face. Shall I ever forget it? White, white and drawn with agony and horror, bearing such a look of terror as I have never seen since except in dreams. And her hair, her radiant blonde hair, I tell you it was white like snow.

  As we stood, her father and I, half mad with the horror and mystery of it, a boy came up the avenue—a telegraph boy. They brought the orange envelope to me. I tore it open.

  Mr. Charrington was thrown from the dogcart on his way to the station at halfpast one. Killed on the spot!

  And he was married to May Forster in our parish church at half-past three, in presence of half the parish.

  “I shall be married, dead or alive!”

  What had passed in that carriage on the homeward drive? No one knows—no one will ever know. Oh, May! Oh, my dear!

  Before a week was over they laid her beside her husband in our little churchyard on the thyme-covered hill—the churchyard where they had kept their love-trysts.

  Thus was accomplished John Charrington’s wedding.

  THE OLD NURSE’S STORY

  ELIZABETH GASKELL

  You know, my dears, that your mother was an orphan, and an only child; and I dare say you have heard that your grandfather was a clergyman up in Westmoreland, where I come from. I was just a girl in the village school, when, one day, your grandmother came in to ask the mistress if there was any scholar there who would do for a nurse-maid; and mighty proud I was, I can tell ye, when the mistress called me up, and spoke to my being a good girl at my needle, and a steady honest girl, and one whose parents were very respectable, though they might be poor. I thought I should like nothing better than to serve the pretty young lady, who was blushing as deep as I was, as she spoke of the coming baby, and what I should have to do with it. However, I see you don?t care so much for this part of my story, as for what you think is to come, so I?ll tell you at once. I was engaged and settled at the parsonage before Miss Rosamond (that was the baby, who is now your mother) was born. To be sure, I had little enough to do with her when she came, for she was never out of her mother’s arms, and slept by her all night long; and proud enough was I sometimes when missis trusted her to me. There never was such a baby before or since, though you’ve all of you been fine enough in your turns; but for sweet, winning ways, you’ve none of you come up to your mother. She took after her mother, who was a real lady born; a Miss Furnivall, a granddaughter of Lord Furriivall’s, in Northumberland. I believe she had neither brother nor sister, and had been brought up in my lord’s family till she had married your grandfather, who was just a curate, son to a shopkeeper in Carlisle—but a clever, fine gentleman as ever was—and one who was a right-down hard worker in his parish, which was very wide, and scattered all abroad over the Westmoreland Fells. When your mother, little Miss Rosamond, was about four or five years old, both her parents died in a fortnight one after the other. Ah! That was a sad time. My pretty young mistress and me was looking for another baby, when my master came home from one of his long rides, wet, and tired, and took the fever he died of; and then she never held up her head again, but just lived to see her dead baby, and have it laid on her breast before she sighed away her life. My mistress had asked me, on her death-bed, never to leave Miss Rosamond; but if she had never spoken a word, I would have gone with the little child to the end of the world.

  The next thing, and before we had well stilled our sobs, the executors and guardians came to settle the affairs. They were my poor young mistress’s own cousin, Lord Furnivall, and Mr. Esthwaite, my master’s brother, a shopkeeper in Manchester; not so well-to-do then as he was afterwards, and with a large family rising about him. Well! I don’t know if it were their settling, or because of a letter my mistress wrote on her death-bed to her cousin, my lord; but somehow it was settled that Miss Rosamond and me were to go to Furnivall Manor House, in Northumberland, and my lord spoke as if it had been her mother’s wish that she should live with his family, and as if he had no objections, for that one or two more or less could make no difference in so grand a household. So though that was not the way in which I should have wished the coming of my bright and pretty pet to have been looked at—who was like a sunbeam in any family, be it never so grand I was well pleased that all the folks in the Dale should stare and admire, when they heard I was going to be the young lady’s maid at my Lord Furnivall’s at Furnivall Manor.

  But I made a mistake in thinking we were to go and live where my lord did. It turned out that the family had left Furnivall Manor House fifty years or more. I could not hear that my poor young mistress had ever been there, though she had been brought up in the family; and I was sorry for that, for I should have liked Miss Rosamond’s youth to have passed where her mother’s had been.

  My lord’s gentleman, from whom I asked so many questions as I durst, said that the Manor House was at the foot of the Cumberland Fells, and a very grand place; that an old Miss Furnivall, a great-aunt of my lord’s, lived there, with only a few servants; but that it was a very healthy place, and my lord had thought that it would suit Miss Rosamond very well for a few years, and that her being there might perhaps amuse his old aunt.

  I was bidden by my lord to have Miss Rosamond’s things ready by a certain day. He was a stern proud man, as they say all the Lords Furnivall were; and he never spoke a word more than was necessary. Folk did say he had loved my young mistress; but that, because she knew that his father would object, she would never listen to him, and married Mr. Esthwaite; but I don’t know. He never married, at any rate. But he never took much notice of Miss Rosamond; which I thought he might have done if he had cared for her dead mother. He sent his gentleman with us to the Manor House, telling him to join him at Newcastle that same evening; so there was no great length of time for him to make us known to all the strangers before he, too, shook us off; and we were left, two lonely young things (I was not eighteen), in the great old Manor House. It seems like yesterday that we drove there. We had left our own dear parsonage very early, and we had both cried as if our hearts would break, though we were travelling in my lord’s carriage, which I thought so much of once. And now it was long past noon on a September day, and we stopped to change horses for the last time at a little smoky town, all full of colliers and miners. Miss Rosamond had fallen asleep, but Mr. Henry told me to waken her, that she might see the park and the Manor House as we drove up. I thought it rather a pity; but I did what he bade me, for fear he should complain of me to my lord. We had left all signs of a town, or even a village, and were then inside the gates o
f a large wild park—not like the parks here in the north, but with rocks, and the noise of running water, and gnarled thorn-trees, and old oaks, all white and peeled with age.

  The road went up abdut two miles, and then we saw a great and stately house, with many trees close around it, so close that in some places their branches dragged against the walls when the wind blew; and some hung broken down; for no one seemed to take much charge of the place; to lop the wood, or to keep the moss-covered carriageway in order. Only in front of the house all was clear. The great oval drive was without a weed; and neither tree nor creeper was allowed to grow over the long, many-windowed front; at both sides of which a wing projected, which were each the ends of other side fronts; for the house, although it was so desolate, was even grander than I expected. Behind it rose the Fells, which seemed unenclosed and bare enough; and on the left hand of the house, as you stood facing it, was a little, old-fashioned flower-garden, as I found out afterwards. A door opened out upon it from the west front; it had been scooped out of the thick dark wood for some old Lady Furnivall; but the branches of the great forest trees had grown and overshadowed it again, and there were very few flowers that would live there at that time.

  When we drove up to the great front entrance, and went into the hall, I thought we should be lost—it was so large, and vast, and grand. There was a chandelier all of bronze, hung down from the middle of the ceiling; and I had never seen one before, and looked at it all in amaze. Then, at one end of the hall, was a great fireplace, as large as the sides of the houses in my country, with massy andirons and dogs to hold the wood; and by it were heavy old-fashioned sofas. At the opposite end of the hall, to the left as you went in on the western side, was an organ built into the wall, and so large that it filled up the best part of that end.

  Beyond it, on the same side, was a door; and opposite, on each side of the fireplace, were also doors leading to the east front; but those I never went through as long as I stayed in the house; so I can’t tell you what lay beyond.