by Ellen Wood
“Me!” returned Ferrar, in surprise. “Me push him over!”
“As far as we can learn yet, no one was with him there but you.”
“I’d have saved him from it, sir, if I had been there, instead of harming him. When he sent me away he was all right, and not sitting anigh the edge. If it was me that had done it, sir, he’d not have asked for me to go up to him in his room — and shook hands — and said I should see him in heaven.”
Mark Ferrar broke down at the remembrance, and sobbed like a child. I don’t think one single person present thought it was he, especially the coroner and jury. But the question was — which of the other boys could it have been?
Several of them were called before the coroner. One and all declared they had done no harm to the deceased — had not been near him to do it — would not have done it if they had been — did not know he had been sitting in the place talked of — did not (most of them) know where the spot was now. In short, they denied it utterly.
Mr. Jones stepped forward then. He told the coroner and jury that he had done his best to come to the bottom of the affair, but could not find out anything. He did not believe one of his boys had been in it; they were mischievous enough, as he well knew, and sometimes deceitful enough; but they all seemed to be, and he honestly believed were, innocent of this.
The room was cleared while the jury deliberated. Their verdict was to the effect that Kingsley Sanker had died from falling over a portion of one of the Malvern hills; but whether the fall was caused by accident, or not, there was not sufficient evidence to show.
It was late when it was over. Growing dusk. In turning out of the inn passage to the street, I remember the great buzz around, and the people pushing one’s elbows; and I can’t remember much more. If one Frog was there, it seemed to me that there were hundreds.
I stayed at Captain Sanker’s again that night. We all went up to bed after supper and prayers — which the captain read. He said he could not divest himself of the idea that it was a pure accident — for who would be likely to harm a helpless lad? — and that what Dance heard must have been some passing dispute connected with other people.
“Come along, Johnny: this one candle’ll do for us both,” cried Dan, taking up a bed candlestick and waiting for me to follow him.
I kept close to him as we went by the room — the room, you know — for Dan was worse than any of them for passing it. He and King had been much together. King followed him in age; they had always slept together and gone to school together; the rest were older or younger — and naturally Dan felt it most.
“I shan’t be a minute, Johnny, and then you can take the candle,” said he, when we got to the top. “Come in.”
Before I had well turned round, after getting in, I declare Dan had rushed all his things off in a heap and leaped into bed. Poor King used not to be so quick, and Dan always made him put the light out.
“Good-night, Dan.”
“Good-night, Johnny. I hope I shall get to sleep.”
He put his head under the bedclothes as I went away with the candle. I was not long getting into bed either. The stars were bright in the sky.
Before there was time to get to sleep, Dan came bursting in, shivering as on the past night, and asking to be let get into the bed. I did not mind his being in the bed — liked it rather, for company — but I did think it a great stupid pity that he should be giving way to these superstitious fears as though he were a girl.
“Look here, Dan: I should be above it. One of the smallest of those Frogs couldn’t show out more silly than this.”
“He’s in my bed again, Johnny. Lying down. I can’t sleep there another night.”
“You know that he is below in his coffin — with the room-door locked.”
“I don’t care — he’s there in the bed. You had no sooner gone with the light than King crept in and lay down beside me. He used to have a way of putting his left arm over me outside the clothes, and he put it so to-night.”
“Dan!”
“I tell you he did. Nobody would believe it, but he did. I felt it like a weight. It was heavy, just as dead arms are. Johnny, if this goes on, I shall die. Have you heard what mamma says?”
“No. What?”
“She says she saw King last night. She couldn’t sleep; and by-and-by, happening to look out of bed, she saw him standing there. He was looking very solemn, and did not speak. She turned to awake papa, in spite of the way he goes on ridiculing such things, but when she looked next King had gone. I wish he was buried, Johnny; I shouldn’t think he could come back into the house then. Should you?”
“He’s not in it now — in that sense. It’s all imagination.”
“Is it! I should like you to have been in my bed, instead of me; you’d have seen whether it was imagination or not. Do you suppose his heavy arm across me was fancy?”
“Well, he does not come in here. Let us go to sleep. Good-night, Dan.”
Dan lay still for a good bit, and I was nearly asleep when he awoke me sobbing. His face was turned the other way.
“I wish you’d kill me, Johnny.”
“Kill you!”
“I don’t care to live any longer without King. It is so lonely. There’s nobody now. Fred’s getting to be almost a man, and Toby’s a little duffer. King was best. I’ve many a time snubbed him and boxed him, and I always put upon him; and — and now he’s gone. I wish I had fallen down instead of him.”
“You’ll get over it, Dan.”
“Perhaps. But it’s such a thing to get over. And the time goes so slowly. I wish it was this time next year!”
“Do you know what some of the doctors say?”
“What do they say?” returned Dan, putting the tip of his nose out of bed.
“Dr. Teal told Captain Sanker of it; I was by and heard him. They think that poor King would not have lived above another year, or so: that there was no chance of his living to grow up. So you might have lost him soon in any case, Dan.”
“But he’d have been here till then; he wouldn’t have died through falling down Malvern Hill. Oh, and to think that I was rough with him often! — and didn’t try to help him when he wanted it! and laughed at his poetry! Johnny, I wish you’d kill me! I wish it had been me to fall over instead of him!”
There was not one of them that felt it as keenly as Dan did: but the chances were that he would forget King the soonest. Dan was of that impetuous warm nature that’s all fire at first; and all forgetfulness when the fire goes out.
I went home the next day to Crabb Cot. Mr. Coney came into Worcester to attend the corn-market, and offered to drive me back in his gig. So I took my leave of the Sankers, and my last look at poor King in his coffin. He was to be buried on Monday in St. Peter’s churchyard.
The next news we had from Worcester was that Mark Ferrar had gone to sea. His people had wanted him to take up some trade at home; but Mark said he was not going to stay there to be told every day of his life that he killed King Sanker. For some of the Frogs had taken up the notion that it must have been he — why else, they asked, did the coroner and the rest of ’em want to see his green handkercher shook out? So his father, who was just as much hurt at the aspersions as Mark, allowed him to have his way and go to sea; in spite of Sally crying her eyes out, and foretelling that he would come home drowned. Mark was sent to London to some friend, who undertook to make the necessary arrangements; he was bound apprentice to the sea, and shipped off in a trading vessel sailing for Spain.
It was Michaelmas when we next went in to Worcester (save for a day at the festival), driving in from Dyke Manor: the Squire, Mrs. Todhetley, and I. You have heard the expedition mentioned before, for it was the one when we hired the dairymaid, Grizzel, at St. John’s mop. That business over, we went down to Captain Sanker’s and found them at home.
They were all getting pretty well over the death now, except Dan. Dan’s grief and nervousness were as bad as ever. Worse, even. Captain and Mrs. Sanker enlarged upon it.
“Dan grieves after his brother dreadfully: they were always companions, you see,” said the captain. “He has foolish fancies also: thinks he sees King continually. We have had to put him to sleep with Fred downstairs, for nothing would persuade him that King, poor fellow, did not come and get into his old place in bed. The night the poor lad was buried, Dan startled the whole house up; he flew down the stairs crying and shrieking, and saying that King was there. We don’t know what to do: he seems to get worse, rather than better. Did you notice how thin he has become? You saw him as you came in.”
“Like a bag of bones,” said the Squire.
“Ay. Some days he is so nervous and ill he can’t go to school. I never knew such a thing, for my part. I was for trying flogging, but his mother wouldn’t have it.”
“But — do you mean to tell us, Sanker, that he fancies he sees King’s ghost?” cried the Squire, in great amazement.
“Well, I suppose so,” answered the captain. “He fancies he sees him: and poor King, as far as this world’s concerned, can be nothing but a ghost now. The other evening, when Dan had been commanded to the head-master’s house for something connected with the studies and detained till after dark, he came rushing in with a white face and his hair all wet, saying he had met King under the elm-trees, as he was running back through the green towards Edgar Tower. How can you deal with such a case?”
“I should say flogging would be as good as anything,” said the Squire, decidedly.
“So I thought at first. He’s too ill for it now. There’s nothing, hardly, left of him to flog.”
“Captain Sanker, there is only one thing for you to do,” put in Mrs. Todhetley. “And that is, consult a clever medical man.”
“Why, my dear lady, we have taken him to pretty nearly all the medical men in Worcester,” cried the captain. “He goes regularly to Dr. Hastings.”
“And what do the doctors say?”
“They think that the catastrophe of King’s unhappy death has seized upon the lad’s mind, and brought on a sort of hypochondriacal affection. One of them said it was what the French would call a maladie des nerfs. Dan seems so full of self-reproach, too.”
“What for?”
“Well, for not having made more of King when he was living. And also, I think, for having suffered himself to fall asleep that afternoon on the bench outside the Well: he says had he kept awake he might have been with King, and so saved him. But, as I tell Dan, there’s nothing to reproach himself with in that: he could not foresee that King would meet with the accident. The doctors say now that he must have change of air, and be got away altogether. They recommend the sea.”
“The sea! Do you mean sea-air?”
“No; the sea itself; a voyage: and Dan’s wild to go. A less complete change than that, they think, will be of little avail, for his illness borders almost — almost upon lunacy. I’m sure, what with one thing and another, we seem to be in for a peck of misfortunes,” added the captain, rumpling his hair helplessly.
“And shall you let him go to sea?”
“Well, I don’t know. I stood out against it at first. Never meant to send a son of mine to sea; that has always been my resolution. Look at what I had to starve upon for ever so many years — a lieutenant’s half-pay — and to keep my wife and bring up my children upon it! You can’t imagine it, Squire; it’s cruel. Dan’s too old for the navy, however; and, if he does go, it must be into the merchant service. I don’t like that, either; we regular sailors never do like it, we hold ourselves above it; but there’s a better chance of getting on in it and of making money.”
“I’m sure I am very sorry for it altogether,” said Mrs. Todhetley. “A sailor cannot have any comfort.”
“I expect he’ll have to go,” said the captain, ruefully: “he must get these ideas out of his head. It’s such a thing, you see, for him to be always fancying he sees King.”
“It is a dreadful thing.”
“My wife had a brother once who was always seeing odd colours wherever he looked: colours and shadows and things. But that was not as bad as this. His doctor called it nerves: and I conclude Dan takes after him.”
“My dear, I think Dan takes after your side, not mine,” calmly put in Mrs Sanker, who had her light hair flowing and something black in it that looked like a feather. “He is so very passionate, you know: and I could not go into a passion if I tried.”
“I suppose he takes after us both,” returned Captain Sanker. “I know he never got his superstitious fancies from me, or from any one belonging to me. We may be of a passionate nature, we Sankers, but we don’t see ghosts.”
In a week or two’s time after that, Dan was off to sea. A large shipping firm, trading from London to India, took him as midshipman. The ship was called the Bangalore; a fine vessel of about fourteen hundred tons, bound for some port out there. When Captain Sanker came back from shipping him off, he was full of spirits, and said Dan was cured already. No sooner was Dan amidst the bustle of London, than his fears and fancies left him.
It was some time in the course of the next spring — getting on for summer, I think — that Captain Sanker gave up his house in Worcester, and went abroad, somewhere into Germany. Partly from motives of economy, for they had no idea of saving, and somehow spent more than their income; partly to see if change would get up Mrs. Sanker’s health, which was failing. After that, we heard nothing more of them: and a year or two went on.
“Please, sir, here’s a young man asking to see you.”
“A young man asking to see me,” cried the Squire — we were just finishing dinner. “Who is it, Thomas?”
“I don’t know, sir,” replied old Thomas. “Some smart young fellow dressed as a sailor. I’ve showed him into your room, sir.”
“Go and see who it is, Johnny.”
It was summer-time, and we were at home at Dyke Manor. I went on to the little square room. You have been in it too. Opposite the Squire’s old bureau and underneath the map of Warwickshire on the wall, sat the sailor. He had good blue clothes on and a turned-down white collar, and held a straw hat in his hand. Where had I seen the face? A very red-brown honest face, with a mouth as wide as Molly’s rolling-pin. Wider, now that it was smiling.
He stood up, and turned his straw hat about a little nervously. “You’ve forgotten me, Master Johnny. Mark Ferrar, please, sir.”
Mark Ferrar it was, looking shorter and broader; and I put out my hand to him. I take my likes and dislikes, as you have already heard, and can’t help taking them; and Ferrar was one whom I had always liked.
“Please, sir, I’ve made bold to come over here,” he went on. “Captain Sanker’s left Worcester, they tell me, and I can’t hear where he is to be found: and the Teals, they have left. I’ve brought news to him from his son, Mr. Dan: and father said I had better come over here and tell it, and maybe Squire Todhetley might get it sent to the captain.”
“Have you seen anything of Mr. Dan, then?”
“I’ve been with him nearly all the time, Master Johnny. We served on the same ship: he as middy and I as working apprentice. Not but what the middies are apprenticed just as sure as we are. They don’t do our rough work, the cleaning and that, and they mess apart; but that’s pretty nigh all the difference.”
“And how are you getting on, Mark?”
“First-rate, sir. The captain and officers are satisfied with me, and when I’ve served my four years I shall go up to pass for second mate. I try to improve myself a bit in general learning at odd moments too, sir, seeing I didn’t have much. It may be of use to me if I ever get up a bit in life. Mr. Dan — —”
“But look here, Ferrar,” I interrupted, the recollection striking me. “How came you and Mr. Dan to sail together? You were on a small home-coasting barque: he went in an Indiaman.”
“I was in the barque first of all, Master Johnny, and took a voyage to Spain and back. But our owners, hearing a good report of me, that I was likely to make a smart and steady sailor, put me on the
ir big ship, the Bangalore. In a day or two Mr. Dan Sanker came on board.”
“And how is he getting on? Does he — —”
“If you please, Master Johnny, I’d like to tell what I’ve got to tell about him to the Squire,” he interrupted. “It is for that, sir, I have come all the way over here.”
So I called the Squire in. The following was the condensed substance of Ferrar’s narrative. What with his way of telling it, and what with the Squire’s interruptions, it was rather long.
“Mr. Dan joined the Bangalore the day we sailed, sir. When he saw me as one of the sailors he started back as if I shocked him. But in a week or two, when he had got round from his sea-sickness, he grew friendly, and sometimes talked a bit. I used to bring up Master King’s death, and say how sorry I was for it — for you see, sir, I couldn’t bear that he should think it true that I had had a hand in it. But he seemed to hate the subject; he’d walk away if I began it, and at last he said he couldn’t stand the talking about King; so I let it be. Our voyage was a long one, for the ship went about from port to port. Mr. Dan — —”
“What sort of a sailor did he make?” interrupted the Squire.
“Well, sir, he was a good smart sailor at his work, but he got to be looked upon as rather a queer kind of young man. He couldn’t bear to keep his night watches — it was too lonely, he said; and several times he fell into trouble for calling up the hands when there was nothing to call them up for. At Hong Kong he had a fever, and they shaved his head; but he got well again. One evening, after we had left Hong Kong and were on our way to San Francisco, I was on deck — almost dark it was — when Mr. Dan comes down the rigging all in a heap, just as if a wild-cat was after him. ‘There’s King up there,’ he says to me: and Mr. Conroy, do what he would, couldn’t get him up again. After that he went about the ship peeping and peering, always fancying King was hiding somewhere and going to pounce out upon him. The captain said his fever was coming back: Mr. Dan said it was not fever, it was King. I told him one day what I thought — that Master King had been flung down; that it was not an accident — I felt as sure of it as though I had seen it done; and what I said seemed to put him up, sir. Who did I fancy had done it, or would do it? he asked me all in anger: and I said I did not know who, but if ever I got back to Worcester I’d leave not a stone unturned to find out. Well, sir, he got worse: worse in his fancies, and worse as to sickness. He was seeing King always at night, and he had dysentery and ague, and grew so weak that he could hardly stand. One of the cabin-boys took sick and died on board. The night he lay below, dead, Mr. Dan burst into the saloon saying it was King who was below, and that he’d never be got out of the ship again. Mr. Conroy — he was the chief mate, sir — humoured him, telling him not to fear, that if it was King he would be buried deep in the sea on the morrow: but Mr. Dan said he’d not stop in the sea, any more than he had stopped in his grave in St. Peter’s churchyard at home; he’d be back in the ship again.”
