“My little Susy is going to be married to young Bob Ashley,” Mr. Lorton said by-and-by. “He asked her last Tuesday was a week; but they’ve been courting in a kind of way this last twelvemonth. I couldn’t well say no, for Bob’s father and I have been friends for many a year, and the young man’s a decent chap enough. He’s going to rent that little dairy farm of Sir Marmaduke Halliday’s on the other side of Hillborough Road. Old Ashley has promised to stock it for him, and he hopes to do well. It isn’t much of a match for my girl, you know, John; but the young people have made up their minds, so it’s no use setting my face against it.”
They had been sitting at the tea-table nearly half an hour, when the sunny window was suddenly darkened by the apparition of Mr. Stephen Price looking in upon them in an easy familiar manner, with his folded arms upon the sill.
“Good evening, uncle Lorton,” he said. “Good evening, Susy. How do, Granger? I didn’t know there was going to be a tea-party, or I shouldn’t have come.”
“It isn’t a tea-party,” answered Susan; “it is only John Granger, who has come to bid us goodbye, and we are very, very sorry he is going away.”
“Oh, we are, are we?” said the lawyer’s clerk with a sneer; “what would Bob Ashley say to that, I wonder?”
“Come in, Steph, and don’t be a fool,” growled the old man.
Mr. Price came in, and took his seat at the tea-table. He was flashily dressed, wore his hair long and had a good deal of whisker, which he was perpetually caressing with a hand of doubtful cleanliness, whereon the inky evidence of his day’s work was unpleasantly obvious.
He did not care much for such womanish refreshment as tea, which he denounced in a sweeping manner as “cat-lap,” but he took a cup from his cousin nevertheless, and joined freely in the conversation while he drank it.
He asked John Granger a good many questions about his plans—whether he meant to buy land, and when, and where, and a great deal more in the same way—to all of which John replied as shortly as was consistent with the coldest civility.
“You take all your capital with you, of course!” asked Stephen Price.
“No; I take none of my capital with me.”
“Why, hang it all, man, you must take some money!”
“I take the money I received for my furniture and stock.”
“Ah, to be sure; you came to the office yesterday afternoon to receive it? Over six hundred pounds, wasn’t it? I drew up the agreement between you and the new man; so I ought to know.”
“It was over six hundred pounds.”
“And you take that with you? Quite enough to start with, of course. And the rest of your money is as safe as houses in old Lawler’s bank. No fear of any smash there. I wish I was going with you, Granger. I’m heartily sick of Hillborough. I shall cut old Vollair’s office before very long, come what may. I can’t stand it much longer. I’ve got a friend on the look-out for a berth for me up in London, and directly I hear of anything I shall turn my back upon this dismal old hole.”
“You’ll have to pay your debts before you do that, I should think, Steph,” his uncle remarked, bluntly.
Stephen Price shrugged his shoulders, and pushed his teacup away with a listless air. He got up presently and lounged out of the house, after a brief good evening to all. He made no attempt to take leave of John Granger, and seemed in his careless way to have forgotten that he was parting with him for the last time. No one tried to detain him. They seemed to breathe more freely when he was gone.
John and Susan wandered out into the garden after tea, while the farmer smoked his pipe by the open window. The sun was low by this time, and the western sky flooded with rosy light. The garden was all abloom with roses and honeysuckle. John Granger fancied he should never look upon such flowers or such a garden again.
They walked up and down the narrow path once or twice almost in silence, and then Susan began to tell him how much she regretted his departure.
“I don’t know how it is, John,” she said, “but I feel tonight as if I would give all the world to keep you here. I cannot tell you how sorry I am you are going. Oh, John, I wish with all my heart I could have been what you asked me to be. I wish I could have put aside all thoughts of Robert.”
“Could you have done that, Susan?” he cried, with sudden energy.
His fate trembled upon a breath in that moment. A word from Susan, and he would have stayed; a word from her, and he would never have taken the path across the common and through the wood to Hillborough on that fair summer evening. He was her valued friend of many years; dearer to her than she had known until that moment. It seemed to her all at once that she had thrown away the gold, and had chosen—not dross, but something less precious than that unalloyed gold.
It was too late now for any change.
“I have promised Robert to be his wife,” she said; “but oh, John, I wish you were not going away.”
“My dear love, I could not trust myself to stay here; I love you too much for that. But I will come back when I am a sober elderly man, and ask for a corner beside your hearth.”
“Promise me that. And you will write to me from America, won’t you, John? I shall be so anxious, and father too, to know that you are safe and well.”
“Yes, my dear, I will write.”
“What is the name of the steamer you are to go in?”
“The Washington, bound for New York.”
“I shall not forget that—the Washington.”
John Granger looked at his watch. The sun had gone down, and there was a long line of crimson yonder in the west above the edge of the brown furze-grown common. Beyond it, the wood dipped down, and the tops of the trees made a black line against that red light. Above, the sky was of one pale tender green, with stars faintly shining here and there.
“What a lovely night!” said Susan.
John Granger sighed as he looked at that peaceful landscape.
“I did not know how much I loved this place and all belonging to it,” he said. “Good night, Susy; Good night, and goodbye.”
“Won’t you kiss me the last time, John?” she said, shyly.
She scarcely knew what she had asked. He took her in his arms, strained her to his breast, and pressed one passionate, despairing kiss upon her brow. It was the first and last in his life.
“Time’s up, Susy,” he said, gently releasing her.
He went to the window, shook hands with the farmer, and took leave of him in that quiet, undemonstrative way which means a good deal with a man of John Granger’s mould. A minute more, and he was gone.
Susan stood at the garden gate, watching the tall dark figure crossing the common. Twice he turned and waved his hand to her—the last time upon the edge of the common, before he took the path down to the wood. After this night the still twilight hour seldom came without bringing the thought of him to Susan Lorton.
It seemed to grow dark all at once when he was gone, and the house had a dreary look to Susan when she went indoors. What was it that made her shiver as she crossed the threshold? Something—some nameless, shapeless fancy shook her with a sudden fear. Her father had strolled out to the garden through the wide open back door. The house seemed quite empty, and the faint sound of the summer wind sighing in the parlour chimney was like the lamentation of a human creature in pain.
Chapter III
The summer passed, and in the late autumn came Susan’s wedding day. She was very fond of her good-looking generous-hearted young suitor, and yet even on the eve of her marriage her heart had turned a little regretfully towards absent John Granger. She was not a coquette, to glory in the mischief her beauty had done. It seemed to her a terrible thing that a good man should have been driven from his home for love of her.
She had thought of him a great deal since that summer night upon which
he had looked back at her on the verge of Hawley Wood—all the more because no letter had come from him yet, and she was beginning to be a little anxious about his safety. She thought of him still more, by and by, as the winter months passed without bringing the promised letter. Her husband made light of her fears, telling her that John Granger would find plenty to do in a new country, without wasting his time in scribbling letters to old friends. But this did not convince Susan.
“He promised to write, Robert,” she said; “and John Granger is not the man to break his promise.”
Susan was very happy in her new home, and Robert Ashley declared he had the handiest, brightest, and most industrious wife in all Woodlandshire, to say nothing of her being the prettiest. She had been used to keeping her father’s house since her early girlhood, and her matronly duties came very easy to her. The snug little farmhouse, with its neat furniture and fresh dimity draperies, was the prettiest thing possible in the way of rustic interiors; the Dutch-tiled dairy was like a temple dedicated to some pastoral divinity, and Susan took a natural womanly pride in this bright home. She had come from as good a house; but then this was quite her own, and young Robert Ashley was a more romantic figure in the foreground of the picture than her good humdrum old father.
Stephen Price did not stay at Hillborough long enough to see his cousin’s wedding. He left Mr. Vollair’s employment about three weeks after John Granger’s departure, and left without giving his employer any notice of his intention.
He went away from Hillborough as deeply in debt as it was practicable for a young man in his position to be, and the tradesmen to whom he owed money were loud in their complaints about him.
He was known to have gone to London, and there were some attempts made to discover his whereabouts. But in that mighty metropolis it was no easy thing to find an obscure lawyer’s clerk, and nothing resulted from the endeavours of his angry creditors, except the mortification of defeat, which made them still more angry. No one, except those to whom he owed money, cared what had become of him. He had been considered pleasant company in a tavern parlour, and his manners and dress had been copied by some aspiring clerks and apprentices in Hillborough; but he had never been known to do anyone a kindness, and his disappearance left no empty place in any heart.
The new year came, and still there was no letter from John Granger. But early in January Robert Ashley came home from Hillborough market one afternoon, and told his wife she needn’t worry herself about her old friend any longer.
“John Granger’s safe enough, my lass,” he said. “I was talking to Simmons, the cashier at Lawler’s bank, this morning, and he told me that Granger wrote to them for a thousand pounds last November from New York, and he has written five hundred more since. He is buying land somewhere—I forget the name of the place—and he’s well and hearty, Simmons tells me.”
Susan clapped her hands joyfully.
“Oh, Robert, how glad I am!” she cried. “It isn’t kind of John to have forgotten his promise; but I don’t care about that as long as he’s safe.”
“I don’t know why you should ever take it into your head that there was anything amiss with him,” said Robert Ashley, who did not regard John Granger’s exile from a sentimental point of view.
“Well, I’m afraid I’m rather fanciful, Bob; but I could never explain to you what a strange feeling came over me the night John Granger went away from Hillborough. It was after I had said goodbye to him, and had gone back into the house, where all was dark and quiet. I sat in the parlour thinking of him, and it seemed as if a voice was saying in my ear that neither I, nor anyone that cared for him, would ever see John Granger again. There wasn’t any such voice, of course, you know, Robert, but it seemed like that in my mind; and whenever I’ve thought of poor John Granger since that time, it has seemed to me like thinking of the dead. Often and often I’ve said to myself, ‘Why, Susan, you foolish thing, you ought to know that he’s safe enough in America. Ill news travels fast; and if there’d be anything wrong, we should have heard of it somehow.’ But, reason with myself as I would, I have never been able to feel comfortable about him; and thank God for your good news, Robert, and thank you for bringing it to me.”
She raised herself on tiptoe to kiss her husband, who looked down at her in a fond, protecting way from the height of his own wisdom.
“Why, Susy, what a timid, nervous little puss you are!” he said. “I should have been getting jealous of John Granger by this time if I’d known you thought so much of him.”
The winter days lengthened, and melted into early spring. It was bright March weather, and Susan had an hour of daylight after tea for her needlework, while Robert attended to his evening duties out of doors. They had fires still, though the days were very mild; and Susan used to sit at the open window, with a jug of primroses on the wide wooden ledge before her, executing some dainty little repairs upon her husband’s shirts.
One evening Robert Ashley was out later than usual, and when it had grown too dark for her to work any longer, Susan sat with her hands lying idle in her lap thinking—thinking of her wedded life, and the years that had gone before it—years that she could never recall without the image of John Granger, who had been in a manner mixed up with all her girlish days. It had been very unkind of him not to write. It seemed as if his love for her could not have been very much after all, or he would have been pleased to comply with her request. She could not quite forgive him for his neglect, glad as she was to know that he was safe.
The room was rather a large one; an old-fashioned room, with a low ceiling crossed by heavy beams; half parlour, half kitchen, with a wide open fireplace at one end, on which the logs had burnt to a dullish red just now, only brightening up with a faint flash of light now and then. The old chintz-covered armchair, in which Robert Ashley was wont to smoke his evening pipe, stood by the hearth ready for him.
Susan had been sitting with her face towards the open window, looking absently out at the garden, where daffodils and early primroses glimmered through the dusk. It was only the striking of the eight day clock in the corner that roused her from her reverie. She stooped to pick up her work, which had fallen to the ground. She was standing folding this in a leisurely way, when she looked towards the fireplace, and gave a little start at seeing that her husband’s armchair was no longer empty.
“Why, Robert,” she cried, “how quietly you must have come into the place! I never heard you.”
There was no answer, and her voice sounded strange to her in the empty room.
“Robert!” she repeated, a little louder; but the figure in the chair neither answered nor stirred.
Then a sudden fright seized her, and she knew that it was not her husband. The room was almost dark; it was quite impossible that she could see the face of that dark figure seated in the armchair, with the shoulders bent a little over the fire. Yet she knew, as well as ever she had known anything in her life, that it was not Robert Ashley.
She went slowly towards the fireplace, and stood within a few paces of that strange figure. A little flash of light shot up from the smouldering logs, and shone for an instant on the face.
It was John Granger!
Susan Ashley tried to speak to him; but the words would not come. And yet it was hardly so appalling a thing to see him there that she need have felt what she did. England is not so far from America that a man may not cross the sea and drop in upon his friends unexpectedly.
The logs fell together with a crashing noise, and broke into a ruddy flame, lighting up the whole room. The chair was empty.
Susan uttered a loud cry, and almost at the same time Robert Ashley came in at the door.
“Why, Susy!” he exclaimed, “What’s amiss lass?”
She ran to him, and took shelter in his arms, sobbing hysterically, and then, calming herself with an effort, told him how she had seen John Granger’s
ghost.
Robert laughed her to scorn.
“Why, my pet, what fancies will you be having next? Granger is safe enough over in Yankee land. It was some shadow that took the shape of your old friend, to your fancy. It’s easy enough to fancy such a thing when your mind’s full of anyone.”
“There’s no use in saying that, Robert,” Susan answered, resolutely. “It was no fancy. John Granger is dead, and I have seen his ghost.”
“He wasn’t dead on the 10th of last December, anyhow. They had a letter from him at Lawler’s bank, dated that day. Simmons told me so.”
Susan shook her head mournfully.
“I’ve a feeling that he never got to America alive, Robert,” she said. “I can’t explain how it is, but I’ve a feeling that it was so.”
“Dead men don’t write letters, Susy, or send for their money out of the bank.”
“Someone else might write the letters.”
“Nonsense, lass! They know John Granger’s handwriting and signature well enough at the bank, depend upon it. It would be no easy matter to deceive them. But I’ll look in upon Simmons tomorrow. He and I are uncommonly friendly, you know, and there’s nothing he wouldn’t do to oblige me, in a reasonable way. I’ll ask him if there have been any more letters from Granger, and get him to give me the address.”
Susan did not say much more about that awful figure in the armchair. It was no use trying to convince her husband that the thing which she had seen was anything more than a creation of her own brain. She was very quiet all the rest of the evening, though she tried her uttermost to appear as if nothing had happened.
Robert Ashley saw Mr. Simmons the cashier next day, and came back to his wife elated by the result of his inquiries. John Granger had written for another five hundred pounds by the very last post from America, and reported himself well and thriving. He was still in New York, and Mr. Simmons had given Robert Ashley his address in that city.
The Sixth Ghost Story Megapack Page 25
