The Best Ghost Stories Ever Told

by Stephen Brennan

  ‘You are a lawyer, ain’t you?’ she asked.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Have you had any experience in your profession?’

  ‘Ten years’ experience.’

  ‘Do you think—’ She stopped abruptly; her hard face softened; her eyes dropped to the ground. ‘Never mind,’ she said, confusedly. ‘I’m upset by all this misery, though I may not look like it. Don’t notice me.’

  She turned away. I waited, in the firm persuasion that the unspoken question in her mind would sooner or later force its way to utterance by her lips. I was right. She came back to me unwillingly, like a woman acting under some influence which the utmost exertion of her will was powerless to resist.

  ‘Do you believe John Jago is still a living man?’

  She put the question vehemently, desperately, as if the words rushed out of her mouth in spite of her.

  ‘I do not believe it,’ I answered.

  ‘Remember what John Jago has suffered at the hands of my brothers,’ she persisted. ‘Is it not in your experience that he should take a sudden resolution to leave the farm?’

  I replied, as plainly as before—

  ‘It is not in my experience.’

  She stood looking at me for a moment with a face of blank despair; then bowed her grey head in silence, and left me. As she crossed the room to the door, I saw her look upward; and I heard her say to herself softly, between her teeth, ‘Vengeance is mine, I will repay, saith the Lord.’

  It was the requiem of John Jago, pronounced by the woman who loved him.

  When I next saw her, her mask was on once more. Miss Meadowcroft was herself again. Miss Meadowcroft could sit by, impenetrably calm, while the lawyers discussed the terrible position of her brothers, with the scaffold in view as one of the possibilities of the ‘case’.

  Left by myself, I began to feel uneasy about Naomi. I went upstairs, and, knocking softly at her door, made my enquiries from outside. The clear young voice answered me sadly, ‘I am trying to bear it: I won’t distress you when we meet again.’ I descended the stairs, feeling my first suspicion of the true nature of my interest in the American girl. Why had her answer brought the tears into my eyes? I went out walking, alone, to think undisturbedly. Why did the tones of her voice dwell on my ear all the way? Why did my hand still feel the last cold, faint pressure of her fingers when I led her out of court?

  I took a sudden resolution to go back to England.

  When I returned to the farm, it was evening. The lamp was not yet lit in the hall. Pausing to accustom my eyes to the obscurity in-doors, I heard the voice of the lawyer whom we had employed for the defence, speaking to some one very earnestly.

  ‘I’m not to blame,’ said the voice. ‘She snatched the paper out of my hand before I was aware of her.’

  ‘Do you want it back?’ asked the voice of Miss Meadowcroft.

  ‘No: it’s only a copy. If keeping it will help to quiet her, let her keep it by all means. Good evening.’

  Saying those last words, the lawyer approached me on his way out of the house. I stopped him without ceremony: I felt an ungovernable curiosity to know more.

  ‘Who snatched the paper out of your hand?’ I asked, bluntly.

  The lawyer started. I had taken him by surprise. The instinct of professional reticence made him pause before he answered me.

  In the brief interval of silence, Miss Meadowcroft replied to my question from the other end of the hall.

  ‘Naomi Colebrook snatched the paper out of his hand.’

  ‘What paper?’

  A door opened softly behind me. Naomi herself appeared on the threshold; Naomi herself answered my question.

  ‘I will tell you,’ she whispered. ‘Come in here.’

  One candle only was burning in the room. I looked at her by the dim light. My resolution to return to England instantly became one of the lost ideas of my life.

  ‘Good God!’ I exclaimed, ‘what has happened now?’

  She gave me the paper which she had taken from the lawyer’s hand.

  The ‘copy’ to which he had referred, was a copy of the written confession of Silas Meadowcroft on his return to prison. He accused his brother Ambrose of the murder of John Jago. He declared on his oath that he had seen his brother Ambrose commit the crime.

  In the popular phrase, I could ‘hardly believe my own eyes.’ I read the last sentences of the confession for the second time: … I heard their voices at the lime-kiln. They were having words about Cousin Naomi. I ran to the place to part them. I was not in time. I saw Ambrose strike the deceased a terrible blow on the head with his (Ambrose’s) heavy stick. The deceased dropped without a cry. I put my hand on his heart. He was dead. I was horribly frightened. Ambrose threatened to kill me next if I said a word to any living soul. He took up the body and cast it into the quick-lime, and threw the stick in after it. We went on together to the wood. We sat down on a felled tree outside the wood. Ambrose made up the story that we were to tell if what he had done was found out. He made me repeat it after him like a lesson. We were still at it when Cousin Naomi and Mr Lefrank came up to us. They know the rest. This, on my oath, is a true confession. I make it of my own free will, repenting me sincerely that I did not make it before.

  (Signed) SILAS MEADOWCROFT

  I laid down the paper, and looked at Naomi once more. She spoke to me with a strange composure. Immovable determination was in her eye; immovable determination was in her voice.

  ‘Silas has lied away his brother’s life to save himself,’ she said. ‘I see cowardly falsehood and cowardly cruelty in every line on that paper. Ambrose is innocent, and the time has come to prove it.’

  ‘You forget,’ I said, ‘that we have just failed to prove it.’

  She took no notice of my objection.

  ‘John Jago is alive, in hiding from us,’ she went on. ‘Help me, friend Lefrank, to advertise for him in the newspapers.’

  I drew back from her in speechless distress. I own I believed that the new misery which had fallen on her had affected her brain.

  ‘You don’t believe it?’ she said. ‘Shut the door.’

  I obeyed her. She seated herself, and pointed to a chair near her.

  ‘Sit down,’ she proceeded. ‘I am going to do a wrong thing, but there is no help for it. I am going to break a sacred promise. You remember that moonlight night when I met him on the garden-walk?’

  ‘John Jago?’

  ‘Yes. Now listen. I am going to tell you what passed between John Jago and me.’

  IX THE ADVERTISEMENT

  I waited in silence for the disclosure that was now to come. Naomi began by asking me a question.

  ‘You remember when we went to see Ambrose in prison?’ she said.

  ‘Perfectly.’

  ‘Ambrose told us of something which his villain of a brother said of John Jago and me. Do you remember what it was?’

  I remembered perfectly. Silas had said, ‘John Jago is too sweet On Naomi not to come back.’

  ‘That’s so,’ Naomi remarked, when I had repeated the words. ‘I couldn’t help starting when I heard what Silas had said; and I thought you noticed me.’

  ‘I did notice you.’

  ‘Did you wonder what it meant?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I’ll tell you. It meant this: What Silas Meadowcroft said to his brother of John Jago, was what I myself was thinking of John Jago at that very moment. It startled me to find my own thought in a man’s mind, spoken for me by a man. I am the person, sir, who has driven John Jago away from Morwick Farm; and I am the person who can and will bring him back again.’

  There was something in her manner, more than in her words, which let the light in suddenly on my mind.

  ‘You have told me the secret,’ I said. ‘John Jago is in love with you.’

  ‘Mad about me!’ she rejoined, dropping her voice to a whisper. ‘Stark, staring mad!—that’s the only word for him. After we had taken a few turns on the gravel-walk, he sud
denly broke out like a man beside himself. He fell down on his knees; he kissed my gown, he kissed my feet; he sobbed and cried for love of me. I’m not badly off for courage, sir, considering I’m a woman. No man, that I can call to mind, ever really scared me before. But, I own, John Jago frightened me: oh, my! he did frighten me! My heart was in my mouth, and my knees shook under me. I begged and prayed of him to get up and go away. No; there he knelt, and held by the skirt of my gown. The words poured out from him like—well, like nothing I can think of but water from a pump. His happiness and his life, and his hopes in earth and heaven, and Lord only knows what besides, all depended, he said, on a word from me. I plucked up spirit enough at that to remind him that I was promised to Ambrose. “I think you ought to be ashamed of yourself,” I said, “to own that you are wicked enough to love me when you know I am promised to another man!” When I spoke to him, he took a new turn: he began abusing Ambrose. That straightened me up. I snatched my gown out of his hand, and I gave him my whole mind. “I hate you!” I said. “Even if I wasn’t promised to Ambrose, I wouldn’t marry you; no! not if there wasn’t another man left in the world to ask me. I hate you, Mr Jago! I hate you!” He saw I was in earnest at last. He got up from my feet, and he settled down quiet again, all on a sudden. “You have said enough” (that was how he answered me). “You have broken my life. I have no hopes and no prospects now. I had a pride in the farm, miss, and a pride in my work; I bore with your brutish cousins’ hatred of me; I was faithful to Mr Meadowcroft’s interests; all for your sake, Naomi Colebrook—all for your sake! I have done with it now; I have done with my life at the farm. You will never be troubled with me again. I am going away, as the dumb creatures go when they are sick, to hide myself in a corner, and die. Do me one last favour. Don’t make me the laughing-stock of the whole neighbourhood.

  I can’t bear that: it maddens me, only to think of it. Give me your promise never to tell any living soul what I have said to you to-night—your sacred promise to the man whose life you have broken!” I did as he bade me: I gave him my sacred promise with the tears in my eyes. Yes; that is so. After telling him I hated him (and I did hate him), I cried over his misery; I did. Mercy, what fools women are! What is the horrid perversity, sir, which makes us always ready to pity the men? He held out his hand to me; and he said, “Good bye for ever!’ and I pitied him. I said, “I’ll shake hands with you if you will give me your promise in exchange for mine. I beg of you not to leave the farm. What will my uncle do if you go away? Stay here, and be friends with me; and forget and forgive, Mr John.” He gave me his promise (he can refuse me nothing); and he gave it again when I saw him again the next morning. Yes, I’ll do him justice, though I do hate him! I believe he honestly meant to keep his word as long as my eye was on him. It was only when he was left to himself that the Devil tempted him to break his promise, and leave the farm. I was brought up to believe in the Devil, Mr Lefrank; and I find it explains many things. It explains John Jago. Only let me find out where he has gone, and I’ll engage he shall come back and clear Ambrose of the suspicion which his vile brother has cast on him. Here is the pen all ready for you. Advertise for him, friend Lefrank; and do it right away, for my sake!’

  I let her run on, without attempting to dispute her conclusions, until she could say no more. When she put the pen into my hand, I began the composition of the advertisement, as obediently as if I, too, believed that John Jago was a living man.

  In the case of anyone else, I should have openly acknowledged that my own convictions remained unshaken. If no quarrel had taken place at the lime-kiln, I should have been quite ready, as I viewed the case, to believe that John Jago’s disappearance was referable to the terrible disappointment which Naomi had inflicted on him. The same morbid dread of ridicule which had led him to assert that he cared nothing for Naomi, when he and Silas had quarrelled under my bedroom-window, might also have impelled him to withdraw himself secretly and suddenly from the scene of his discomfiture. But to ask me to believe, after what had happened at the lime-kiln, that he was still living, was to ask me to take Ambrose Meadowcroft’s statement for granted as a true statement of facts.

  I had refused to do this from the first; and I still persisted in taking that course. If I had been called upon to decide the balance of probability between the narrative related by Ambrose in his defence and the narrative related by Silas in his confession. I must have owned, no matter how unwillingly, that the confession was, to my mind, the least incredible story of the two.

  Could I say this to Naomi? I would have written fifty advertisements enquiring for John Jago rather than say it; and you would have done the same, if you had been as fond of her as I was.

  I drew out the advertisement, for insertion in ‘The Morwick Mercury,’ in these terms:

  MURDER.—Printers of newspapers throughout the United States are desired to publish that Ambrose Meadowcroft and Silas Meadowcroft, of Morwick Farm, Morwick County, are committed for trial on the charge of murdering John Jago, now missing from the farm and from the neighbourhood. Any person who can give information of the existence of said Jago may save the lives of two wrongly accused men by making immediate communication. Jago is about five feet four inches high. He is spare and wiry; his complexion is extremely pale; his eyes are dark, and very bright and restless. The lower part of his face is concealed by a thick black beard and mustache. The whole appearance of the man is wild and flighty.

  I added the date and address. That evening a servant was sent on horseback to Narrabee to procure the insertion of the advertisement in the next issue of the newspaper.

  When we parted that night, Naomi looked almost like her brighter and happier self. Now that the advertisement was on its way to the printing-office, she was more than sanguine: she was certain of the result.

  ‘You don’t know how you have comforted me,’ she said, in her frank, warmhearted way, when we parted for the night. ‘All the newspapers will copy it, and we shall hear of John Jago before the week is out.’ She turned to go, and came back again to me. ‘I will never forgive Silas for writing that confession!’ she whispered in my ear. ‘If he ever lives under the same roof with Ambrose again, I—well, I believe I wouldn’t marry Ambrose if he did. There!’

  She left me. Through the wakeful hours of the night my mind dwelt on her last words. That she should contemplate, under any circumstances, even the bare possibility of not marrying Ambrose, was, I am ashamed to say, a direct encouragement to certain hopes which I had already begun to form in secret. The next day’s mail brought me a letter on business. My clerk wrote to enquire if there was any chance of my returning to England in time to appear in court at the opening of next law term. I answered, without hesitation, ‘It is still impossible for me to fix the date of my return.’ Naomi was in the room while I was writing.

  How would she have answered, I wonder, if I had told her the truth, and said, ‘You are responsible for this letter?’

  X THE SHERIFF AND THE GOVERNOR

  The question of time was now a serious question at Morwick Farm. In six weeks, the court for the trial of criminal cases was to be opened at Narrabee.

  During this interval, no new event of any importance occurred.

  Many idle letters reached us relating to the advertisement for John Jago; but no positive information was received. Not the slightest trace of the lost man turned up; not the shadow of a doubt was cast on the assertion of the prosecution, that his body had been destroyed in the kiln. Silas Meadowcroft held firmly to the horrible confession that he had made. His brother Ambrose, with equal resolution, asserted his innocence, and reiterated the statement which he had already advanced. At regular periods I accompanied Naomi to visit him in the prison. As the day appointed for the opening of the court approached, he seemed to falter a little in his resolution; his manner became restless; and he grew irritably suspicious about the merest trifles. This change did not necessarily imply the consciousness of guilt: it might merely have indicated natural nervous agi
tation as the time for the trial drew near. Naomi noticed the alteration in her lover. It greatly increased her anxiety, though it never shook her confidence in Ambrose.

  Except at meal-times, I was left, during the period of which I am now writing, almost constantly alone with the charming American girl. Miss Meadowcroft searched the newspapers for tidings of the living John Jago in the privacy of her own room. Mr Meadowcroft would see nobody but his daughter and his doctor, and occasionally one or two old friends. I have since had reason to believe that Naomi, in these days of our intimate association, discovered the true nature of the feeling with which she had inspired me. But she kept her secret. Her manner towards me steadily remained the manner of a sister: she never over-stepped by a hair’s breadth the safe limits of the character she had assumed.

  The sittings of the court began. After hearing the evidence, and examining the confession of Silas Meadowcroft, the grand jury found a true bill against both the prisoners. The day appointed for the trial was the first day in the new week.

  I had carefully prepared Naomi’s mind for the decision of the grand jury. She bore the new blow bravely.

  ‘If you are not tired of it,’ she said, ‘come with me to the prison to-morrow. Ambrose will need a little comfort by that time.’ She paused, and looked at the day’s letters lying on the table. ‘Still not a word about John Jago,’ she said. ‘And all the papers have copied the advertisement. I felt so sure we should hear of him long before this!’

  ‘Do you still feel sure that he is living?’ I ventured to ask.

  ‘I am as certain of it as ever,’ she replied firmly. ‘He is somewhere in hiding: perhaps he is in disguise. Suppose we know no more of him than we know now, when the trial begins? Suppose the jury—’ She stopped, shuddering. Death— shameful death on the scaffold—might be the terrible result of the consultation of the jury. ‘We have waited for news to come to us long enough,’ Naomi resumed. ‘We must find the tracks of John Jago for ourselves. There is a week yet before the trial begins. Who will help me to make enquiries? Will you be the man, friend Lefrank?’