by Ashby, R. C.
“You may well ask,” I said. “He says we’ll be put in prison for this, the both of us. It’s against the law, Winifred.”
She laughed at that. “Much a Northumberland lad ever cared for the law,” said she. And I suppose she’s right. We were always a lawless lot, especially them of us that have lived so near the Border.
She took me up the stairs. There was a high old clock singing tick-tock, as loud as the smith strikes the anvil. We came to the Colonel’s room and he was waiting, dressed.
“Good day, sir,” I said, very respectful for the Barr family; “I’ve come to take you a little trip, circumstances excusing the early hour.”
“Winifred says I’m to go with you,” he said. “A good girl. I always mind what she says.”
“That’s right, sir,” I said. “So do we all at home.”
It seemed to me we were making a terrible noise, the three of us in that sleeping house. Fit to wake men deafer than I knew were sleeping there. Winifred was scared, for she kept glancing, glancing; and so slowly we went down the stairs it was like as if something was clogging our feet.
“Quick! Quick!” she kept whispering under her breath, for she couldn’t help it; it was the Colonel who went so slow. It was bitter for him, I doubt, leaving his home in the dark of the night because a fiend was driving him out.
“Mr. Mertoun’s room’s the nearest,” said Winifred. “If he should hear us and come! He sleeps badly at night, I know.”
“What for?” I said.
“He’s heard things!” she whispered, very low, so the Colonel shouldn’t hear. At that, it wasn’t so much as a whisper, for only her lips moved without any sound, but I read her meaning. “He asked the housemaid was there a ghost,” she said later, as she slipped back to help me close the side-door. Then she slipped the key in her pocket, and we both breathed easily in the free, salty air, tasting the sea.
“Then he knows something already?” I said.
“Oh yes,” she said, “and he’s asked me to go for a walk, Ham! I’ll have to be careful, but I think he’s going to be our deliverance and the saviour of this house.”
“You’ll be able to go a walk,” I said, “now the Colonel’s safe away.”
“Yes,” she said, and the light of the open sky catching her eyes I saw them shine. “I had to put him off before. I was afraid of saying too much.”
“But he knows there’s Something in the house?” I said.
“Oh yes; he knows that.”
“Does he know about how Mr. Ian was killed?” I said.
She shook her head, and we had to hurry back to the Colonel. We took our time over the walk to the sea. There was nothing to hinder us. The wind was fresh and the clouds rode high. Then we went down the cliff path to the bay, and there was Dad waiting and grumbling, with the boat drawn up on the shingle. But he greeted the Colonel and said it was a proud day for him to be carrying a Barr in his boat.
While the Colonel put on his jersey and oilskins, Winifred and I talked. There were tears glimmering in her eyes. I shook my fist at the land where the house stood. “Curse him!” I said. “Curse the evil fiend that’s prowling there; him that’s come from the vasty deep with black heart and murderous hand, the bad spirit of an honoured race. If I’d only been there the night Mr. Ian . . .”
“No, Ham,” said Winifred. “Neither your strong hands nor my woman’s wits are enough to contend with the powers of darkness. It’ll take knowledge that we don’t possess. But Mr. Mertoun . . .”
“Ah,” I said. “He’ll know what to do, Winifred.”
“I’ll test him first,” she said; “test him hard and strong. And if he comes through I’ll tell him all. But I must test him and try him. I’m waiting my time. It’ll come.”
She helped us to push off the boat, and doing so she grazed her arm against the gunwale so that the blood sprang dark on the whiteness from wrist to elbow. She wrapped her cloak round the bruise, and the last I saw of her as we pulled away she was standing upright under the cliffs, not even waving, just watching us out of sight. A brave woman, I say.
Well, we came to the Strickan at last and moored at the iron ladder. Joe and his mates were ready and waiting at the look-out. It didn’t take ten minutes all told to change duty.
“Who’s your new mate?” said Joe, looking at the Colonel.
“Name of Bates,” I said. “From Burnfirth.”
“What’s happened to Tammas Bell?”
“Ill,” I said. “Bronchitis bad.”
The three of them dropped down into the boat with their chests and Joe’s cat, and they rowed away on the flood into the dark. The three of us were left on the Strickan, and I went up to the lantern-chamber to take over the Light.
February 2.
The days go by and there’s nothing to write. The Colonel is in good health, and Dad’s old cat has given us three pretty kitlings. We’ve had little but foggy weather and the seas have run high. This morning the fog lifted and we saw a fine Norwegian steamer go by, too close for safety; but she hailed us and changed her course and came to no harm. The horn was sounding, but fog plays havoc with your sense of direction, as I well know. I was wrecked myself in a trawler off the Bell Rock when I was a lad of fifteen. The sea-fog was heavy that night and the horizon seemed full of clanging bells.
February 4.
I was dreaming last night. A boat came out of the fog and tied up at the foot of the ladder. Then I saw a man climbing up and I hailed him, but he didn’t answer. When he came in sight I saw that he was dressed like the picture I once saw of a Roman soldier. I shouted, and he seemed to fall back into the sea. This makes me think of Winifred and wonder what is happening there. I should like to talk about these things to the Colonel, but Winifred said I must never do that. She thinks his memory is wiped clean of that horror, and what would happen if it were brought back to him? So I said nothing about my dream, not even to Dad, but I find my eyes turning to the ladder now and I strain my ears for a dipping oar. Am I a fool?
March 19.
This is the first time I woke to see the sunlight glittering on the green waves, and the white foam sparkling as it leaps around the rock. A bonny sight, but we daren’t count on spring so early. The wind is bitter cold, and the gulls are screaming as they fly. Dad says the cod-fleet went by at dawn. Two nights ago there must have been a wreck up the coast, for the sea has been full of drifting spars. Some we lugged in for fuel. At least, we have plenty of tobacco. I have to go up now. There is so little to write. The Colonel is very well. Only four weeks and three days more.
April 23. At Adam’s Cranny.
Last night I gave Winifred my diary to read and she said it was a poor thing. It was all scraps, she said, and if she’d have had a diary she’d have written something every day, no matter whether anything happened or not, if it was only thoughts. Then she gave it back to me and said I’d better tear out the pages and burn them, but I didn’t. I’ve got some more to write about now.
I’m stopping at Adam’s Cranny to give my uncle a hand in the fields, and Winifred’s stopping here too to keep house for my aunt who’s bedridden. The Colonel’s at Thorlwick with Dad, but nobody knows that. We pulled away from the Strickan about ten o’clock on the morning of the 21st, and made harbour on a fine afternoon, and as I was restless and wanted to stretch my legs I said I’d pack a kit-bag and walk over to see Winifred, a matter of thirty miles or so. I set out at dawn the next day. It was good to see the familiar country again, bleak and bare as it was; for the spring comes late, and though the sky was blue and merry the wind was as fierce as a tiger’s claws and combed the earth coldly through. There was not a green blade to see.
Up on the moor I sat down to rest, and presently I spied two men coming over the hill, not men of our country I saw at a glance. They carried rod, line,
and creel, and wore yellow mackintoshes and little tweed hats with a neb at each end. When they saw me they said good morning.
“Good morning,” I said, sitting still.
“You’re a sailor?” said the older one, quite pleasant, stopping as though he wanted to talk.
“Not at the moment, sir,” I said, very cool. “Yesterday I was a lighthouse keeper and to-morrow I’ll be a farm-hand.”
“A lighthouse-keeper!” You’d think he’d never heard of such an employment, the way he said it. “Not by any chance the keeper of the lighthouse we can see from here?”
I peeked up and looked east, and there sure enough across the shoulder of the moor and across the grey billows of the North Sea I saw the Strickan, like a wee silver pencil winking in the sun. But I didn’t say anything; I was thinking, and I thought to myself that this might be some nosey official who’d got hold of the idea that there’d been a man on the Strickan who’d no right to be there. So I made up my mind I’d be stupid. When you’re a countryman they always expect you to be half-daft, so it’s easy to mislead them.
“Is that the lighthouse you’re from?” he said at last.
“It might be,” said I. “There’s nothing to tell one from another.”
“But isn’t that the one they call the Strickan Light?” he said.
“Is that what they call it?” I said. “The townsfolk have some rare funny names for places, I know.”
“What’s your name?” he said, offering me his cigarette-case. I took a cigarette, and scraped a match on my boot-sole and said, “They call me Ham.”
I thought he looked disappointed, and next minute he turned to the other man and said, “I thought for the minute it might have been ——” Then he looked back at me, and asked did I live in these parts.
“Well, I do and I don’t,” I told him.
“But you know the district?” he went on.
“Oh, ay,” I said, sounding as if I didn’t know much.
“Then can you tell us,” he said, “where we’ll find a bit of fishing farther afield? We’re tired of the Spannet.”
“Oh, you are?” I said. “Well, I was tired of the Spannet myself before I was twelve. I could tell you a place or two where you’d get what I call sport.” And then I wondered if I’d said too much. It’s difficult to keep on being daft.
“Where’s that?” they both asked.
So I told them a place or two, and they seemed pleased. “We’ll go out that way tomorrow, Mertoun,” said the older man to the other; and at that I pricked up my ears and kept my eyes down, which is an easy thing to do and not noticeable.
“Well, good morning,” they said.
“Good day,” said I, and went on sitting by the side of the road until they were out of sight.
Then I went on to the village, and slipped into the parlour of the Red Buck. This was what I’d come all the way for. I waited, and it was as quiet as you please in there, with the window a wee bit open and the sunbeams slipping through, and some pink hyacinths just breaking into bloom on the sill. She must have heard me, for presently she came running in and said, “Who on earth’s that?” As if she didn’t know.
I said: “It’s me, Lily.” And she said: “Oh, is it you, Ham?”
She was looking very pretty in a blue dress like the colour of her eyes.
She said: “Father’ll be in soon. He’s just stepped over to Doctor Mackie’s to get something for his cough.”
“I didn’t come to see your father, Lily,” I said, because I thought I’d better put that right before we went any further. “So Doctor Mackie’s about again, is he?”
“Oh yes,” she said. “Why, of course, he had his accident before you went away, didn’t he, Ham? I’d quite forgotten. It seems a long time since you went away, and such a lot of things have happened.”
“It seemed a long time to me too, shut up there on the Strickan,” I said. “I thought about you often and often, Lily. Did you ever think about me?”
“Perhaps I did,” she said. “But if you’ve just come back you won’t have heard about the goings-on we’ve had here?”
“I haven’t heard anything,” I said.
“Haven’t you seen your sister—her that was nurse to Colonel Barr at the big house?”
“Not a glimpse,” I said. “I had a letter to say she was at Adam’s Cranny. I’m going there to-night.”
“Oh, you are out of things!” she said, laughing up at me. “Why, I suppose you won’t even have heard that Colonel Barr’s disappeared!”
“What!” I said, all amazed. “How do you mean—disappeared?”
“Nobody knows,” she said, dropping her voice. “It was the Roman ghost took him.”
“No!” I said. “Not him again?
She nodded. “He’s been about. He’s been seen on the cliffs by a man that was staying at the big house, a man from London. On the cliffs, mind you, same as where Mr. Ian Barr was killed. There’s nobody in the village’ll go along that road now after dark; and I haven’t told you the worst thing yet.”
“What’s that?”
“He’s killed another man—James Blaik, the shepherd, that married the gipsy girl.”
That was news to me. My brain went spinning, and I jumped up in my excitement.
“What, Lily!” I said. “The Roman soldier! James Blaik! I can’t believe it. When did it happen?”
“Oh, it was something like nine or ten weeks ago,” she said. “It made a lot of talk hereabouts. Some say it was James’s own fault. He’d been using that nasty ruin up on the hill for a sheepfold at nights, and everybody knows it’s not a canny place at all. They all said something would be happening to him, but when it came it came sudden. Two of the men found him on the moor in the early morning, dead, with a knife in his back. It was the Roman soldier’s knife. And this man from London had seen the Roman soldier the night before, striding across the moors with a face like thunder and shaking a spear ten yards long. If the man from London hadn’t fallen on his face he’d have been a dead man too.”
“You don’t say!” I said, staring at her. “But what happened then?”
“You may well ask,” she said, leaning against the window beside me, and not stopping me when I put my arm around her waist. “It wasn’t two days after when the ghost came again, and this time he spirited Colonel Barr away—clean out of his bedroom, before the eyes of them all, and he hasn’t been seen or heard of from that day.”
It took me a few minutes to clear up this tangle; I mean, to sort out the part about the spiriting away of the Colonel, of which I knew everything, from the part about the killing of James Blaik, of which I knew nothing. I felt guilty and queer, and I wished I’d been to see my sister first, so I’d have known a bit about these things.
“But haven’t they searched for the Colonel?” I said.
“Oh, they’ve searched,” said Lily meaningly. “And the very ones that searched were afraid to look too close. Mr. Barr came down here one night and said that all the men must turn out——”
“Mr. Barr?” I said.
“Yes. Mr. Charlie Barr, the young one. He’s left all alone at the house now, and he’s locked and bolted himself in. They say he won’t stir out until he knows what’s happened to his uncle. Terror-struck, I’d say. I expect he’ll be the next to go.”
“To go?” I said, rather stupid, for I could think of nothing but my part in “spiriting” away the Colonel.
“Why, yes,” she said, opening her eyes. “The Roman’ll get him for sure. They’re laying odds in the bar it’ll be before Whitsun.”
I laid my hand suddenly across her mouth, and she laughed and bit me like a kitten.
“But what about this man from London?” I said. “Where is he now?” For I
suspected that I’d just met him on the moor.
“He went away,” Lily said, “and about a week ago he came with another man, a friend of his, to do some fishing. They’re staying with Palmers at the Halfway Farm.”
“He’s not come, do you think,” I said, “to get another look at the Roman ghost? After all, he’s the only man that ever saw that monster and came back alive.”
Lily shivered. “Worse for him,” she said, “if he has. There’s the mad doctor too—you remember him—he’s crazy about the ghost. Goes out to look for it at nights on a bicycle. I’ve heard him sounding his bell as he went past here in the dark of a howling night, and I’ve dipped my head under the bedclothes so I shouldn’t see anything. He’s got a girl staying with him, the mad doctor has, a girl from London. There was some talk a few weeks ago about him and her going away from here for good, but they say now that he says he won’t go until he’s found the ghost and buried him and burned his ashes. But my granddad says the Roman was here before the mad doctor, and he’ll be here when the mad doctor’s dust and ashes himself. He says they may come and they may go, but this’ll always be a haunted spot, and no denying it.”
I wished now that I hadn’t started her talking about these things, and I tried to get her away from it by asking her whether there was any cottage empty in the village, for Lord Twelvetrees’ agent had promised me the next; and she said, yes, there was James Blaik’s cottage.
“Molly Blaik,” she said, “has gone away and taken the bairns with her. They do say she’s gone back to the gipsies.”
So I said nothing more, except that it was time I was going if I was to walk to Adam’s Cranny.
It was past midday when I came to the farm, a bonny house on a steep hillside, white-painted, so you can see it glimmering many a mile away like a laughing face with blinking eyes where the sun catches the window-panes. All around there’s nothing but the moorland for the sheep, criss-crossed with their little tracks, and yellow in summer with the wild pansies. I’ve stood up there on the “top,” as we call it, and seen clear away to Thunder Crag, which is thirty-five miles to the westward as the crow flies but more than a hundred if you were to walk it, up hill and down dale.
