Pall Mall/The Ghosts

by George A. Birmingham

THE GHOSTS.

BY GEORGE A. BIRMINGHAM.

“MR. COLE,” said the parlourmaid, announcing the curate at the drawing-room door.

Nellie L'Estrange rose from the chair in which she had been nestling before the fire, laid down her book, and greeted the Rev. John Cole with a smile of welcome. She did not, under ordinary circumstances, care for entertaining the curate, whom she regarded as a bore; but the day had been persistently wet, and for many hours she had not interchanged a word with any one. Besides, there was always a certain amount of pleasure to be got out of teasing Mr. Cole. He was curiously defenceless when Nellie poked fun at him.

“My mother,” she said, “is upstairs. She has a very bad headache to-day; but I shall be so pleased if you will stay and have tea with me.”

Mr. Cole expressed great sorrow for Mrs. L'Estrange. Then he sat down and began to talk heavily about the sensational event which a week before had broken the calm of the village. A tramp of most disreputable appearance had been found dead one morning in the churchyard. He had, apparently, sought shelter for the night behind a tombstone. A coroner's jury sat upon his body and brought in a very proper verdict. Then Mr. Cole buried him almost in the exact spot on which he died. The subject, once exciting enough, bored Nellie. She had heard all she wanted to hear about the dead tramp.

“So nice of him,” she said flippantly, “to choose such a convenient place to die. I daresay now, if there had happened to be an open grave he'd have lain down in it, and then you'd have had nothing to do but cover him up. He couldn't, of course, do that for himself.”

Mr. Cole sought for a rebuke suitable for Nellie's flippancy. Before he found one the parlourmaid entered with the tea-tray. Mr. Cole disliked the parlourmaid, whose name was Esther, because he suspected her of being nearly as flippant as Nellie herself. He did not speak again until the girl had left the room. Then he handed Nellie the buttered toast, fishing it up out of the fender with some trouble, and began a new discourse.

“The amount of superstition,” he said, “which still lingers in these remote villages is surprising and depressing. I understand that no one will go near the churchyard at night since the tramp died there. The bucolic mind remains impervious to the efforts of educationists. It is——”

He spoke very pompously, so Nellie interrupted him at once.

“Is there really a ghost?” she said. “How jolly! Do you know, I've never seen a ghost, have you?”

“The subject,” said Mr. Cole, “is not one I care to joke about.”

“Surely you don't really believe there is a ghost in the churchyard?”

“I regard the stories the village people tell as pure fabrications,” said Mr. Cole; “but I am far from venturing to assert dogmatically ——”

“But what do the village people say?”

Mr. Cole, somewhat unwillingly, repeated a story of a tall white figure, seen night after night flitting among the tombstones. It was a ghost of the most orthodox description, and the road near the churchyard, which was nearly a mile from the village, had got a very bad name. Nellie ridiculed each point of the story, and it appeared to Mr. Cole that she was also ridiculing him. He disliked being laughed at, and asserted his dignity by saying several very ponderous things about psychical phenomena. Nellie seemed to find them irresistibly comic.

Esther, the parlourmaid, entered with a fresh plate of buttered toast. Her face was perfectly demure, but Mr. Cole formed the opinion that she, too, was inclined to laugh at him. He became painfully self-conscious, and talked more pompously than ever.

“Mr. Cole,” said Nellie suddenly, “will you take me to see the ghost?”

“I don't think I can very well do that,” said Mr. Cole. “The fact is——”

“The fact is that you're a little nervous. Is that what you were going to say?”

He intended to say something quite different. The ghost, according to the witness of the villagers, was not timed to appear until twelve o'clock at night. Mr. Cole, as a clergyman, had a character to lose. He did not like the idea of parading the roads at midnight alone with Miss L'Estrange. He hesitated. It was not easy to put his feelings into words without being insulting. Nellie was, apparently, quite reckless about her character.

“You are afraid,” she said. “I can see it by your face.”

“I'm not the least afraid,” he said, “and if you really wish——”

“There's nothing I should like more,” said Nellie. “I told you I had never seen a ghost, and we all ought to see one at least before we die. I may never get such a chance again. Besides, it can't do me any harm if you are with me, can it? You'd exorcise it.”

She looked at him as she spoke in such a very agreeable way that Mr. Cole was mollified. He made up his mind to outrage propriety. “Very well,” he said, “I'll call for you at half-past eleven. I hope the rain will have stopped by that time.”

“Do you think,” she said, “that the ghost will mind the rain? From what we're told about—you know the place I mean, Mr. Cole—I should have thought a ghost of that sort would rather like a little cold water.”

This was too much for Mr. Cole. He refused, always, to make jokes on sacred subjects. He rose and said good-bye to Nellie.

“Don't forget now,” she said. “I shall expect you at half-past eleven sharp. You mustn't either ring or knock. I shall be looking out for you, and there's no use disturbing mother—she has such a dreadful headache, poor dear.”

Mr. Cole walked back to his lodgings through the rain, and wished very much that he saw some way of curing Miss L'Estrange of flippantly irreverent talk. He wanted to do this, not for his own satisfaction, but for her good. He felt that he would like to be in a position to laugh at her as she laughed at him—always, of course, for her good. The recollection of the way she had looked at him sideways out of the corners of her eyes made him all the more anxious to assert his dignity. Just as he reached his lodgings, a great, a really brilliant idea, struck him.

Mr. Cole had a young nephew—a schoolboy of fifteen years of age—an engaging youth of great physical energy. Owing to an outbreak of measles in his own proper home this boy was spending a dull and tedious Christmas holiday with his clerical uncle.

“Georgie,” said Mr. Cole, “you've heard all this talk about the ghost in the churchyard, I suppose?”

“Rotten piffle,” said Georgie, who had a fine command of language.

“Quite so. You don't believe in ghosts, of course?”

“Rather not. Not such a beastly mug.”

“Would you have any objection to dressing up as a ghost, and appearing in the churchyard to-night? There's some one I rather want to play a trick on.”

“I'm on,” said Georgie “You trot out your juggins at the right mo., and I'll make every particular hair of his head stand on end like bristles on the frightful crocodile.”

Driven to desperation by the wet afternoon, Georgie had been dipping into the works of the poet Shakespeare. “The Old Cow”—it was thus that Georgie spoke of his form master—had suggested one of the plays as good holiday reading.

“What's more,” he added, “I'll jump on his back and scrag him until he shrieks like a what-do-you-call-it drake dragged out of the earth.”

Mr. Cole was not as familiar with Shakespeare as he might have been. He failed to recognise the mandrake.

“You needn't do that,” he said. “The fact is that the person I want to frighten is a girl.”

“Oh,” said Georgie doubtfully. His hesitation was not the result of any chivalrous impulse. He merely dreaded complications. “Will she faint?”

“No. I shall be there to protect her.”

This opened up new and attractive possibilities to Mr. Cole. He began to think of himself as the hero of a drama; Nellie taking the part of the damsel in distress. Georgie put his thoughts into words for him.

“Regular good old Perseus you'll be, Uncle John, slaughtering Andromeda with a curly sword like the picture in the classical dictionary.”

An old surplice, a garment with sleeves of supernatural shape, was found for Georgie. He agreed to remain concealed behind a tombstone until the church clock struck twelve. Then he would slip on the surplice, emerge, and wave his arms, standing on any convenient eminence. He spent the evening practising a ghostly way of walking. He achieved, as a result, a very fair caricature of Miss Maud Allen's dancing. At eleven o'clock his spirits became a little less buoyant. He suggested that his uncle should accompany him to the churchyard, hide behind another tombstone, and rescue the damsel from there. Mr. Cole explained that this was quite impossible, and Georgie, who was a brave boy at heart, went off with the surplice in a paper parcel. His last words to his uncle were those of strong assurance.

“I know jolly well,” he said, “that there's no such bally thing as a ghost. Nobody but rotten little kids believes in them.”

At half-past eleven Nellie slipped out of the door and joined the Rev. John Cole on the lawn. There was still a light in Mrs, L'Estrange's bedroom window, so they did not greet one another. The village street was empty and Mr. Cole congratulated himself that the expedition was not attracting public attention. They reached the end of the road which led to the church in safety. Mr. Cole noticed then that Nellie was less talkative than usual.

“Of course,” she said at last, “you don't really believe there are such things as ghosts?”

“I'm not at all sure about that,” he said. “Very queer things happen sometimes.”

He was anxious to work Nellie up to a condition of mind suitable to the surprise which awaited her. He thought he detected evidence of a slight nervous excitement in the tone of her voice.

“There are some quite unaccountable things,” he went on, “which are attested by trustworthy witnesses. It is always possible that we may be mistaken in our sceptical attitude towards these psychic phenomena.”

Mr. Cole spoke quite sincerely. The road was extremely dark. The wind made a curious and disagreeable noise among the branches of the trees. There was certainly a churchyard ahead of them in which a tramp of unknown antecedents had quite recently been buried. The belief of the villagers was strikingly strong and definite. Mr. Cole, though he did not for a moment think he would see anything worse than Georgie in a surplice, felt thrilled. He recalled a word which seemed to describe this ghost hunt of his. It was eerie. Nelly giggled. It seemed to Mr. Cole that her giggle was another symptom of extreme nervousness.

They reached the churchyard, and Mr. Cole, peering at the face of his watch, said that they had still five minutes to wait. He suggested that they should sit down at the gate with their faces towards the graves. Nelly caught him suddenly by the arm.

“What's that?” she said, pointing towards the church through the gloom.

Mr. Cole started. He did not like being clutched unexpectedly; and there was something white glimmering faintly. He stared at it.

“That's nothing,” he said. “At least, it's only the white marble cross over old Hoskyn's grave. I know it well. You're not frightened, are you?”

“No,” said Nellie. “Of course not. But it did look—just for a moment——”

The church clock struck. Mr. Cole waited in tense excitement. At the fifth stroke Georgie glided from behind old Mr. Hoskyn's monument and began to wave his arms. At the tenth stroke, another white figure, in a much more voluminous white robe, stepped out from the shelter of another tombstone.

“Good heavens!” said Mr. Cole.

Then Georgie yelled. This was no part of the programme as originally arranged; and the yell sounded like a genuine expression of fear. The other ghost shrieked wildly. Then both ghosts made a rush for the gate of the churchyard. Nellie gave a sharp cry of terror and then fled swiftly down the road. Mr. Cole stood his ground for an instant. He had a feeling that it was his duty to succour Georgie. Another glance at the unexpected ghost decided him against taking unnecessary risks. He overtook Nellie at the end of the first hundred yards,

“Help me!” she said. “Oh, help me, it's after us!”

It was. Indeed both of them were. Mr. Cole was not obliged to look round to make sure of the fact. The shrieks of both ghosts rang out frightfully. They had evidently passed the gate, and were in hot pursuit down the road. Mr. Cole grasped Nellie's wrist and dragged her at a break-neck pace down the hill. The ghosts, as well as he could judge by the sound of their footsteps, were gaining rapidly. He glanced behind him. Georgie, hampered by the unaccustomed folds of the surplice, was not running his best. He had secured a lead of not more than ten yards from the second ghost. Mr. Cole trod on a corner of Nellie's skirt, staggered, and then stumbled. Nellie, checked suddenly in her career, stumbled too, clutched at Mr. Cole with her disengaged hand, and dragged him down in her own fall. The next catastrophe was inevitable. Georgie, uttering a wild whoop, tripped over his uncle's legs and also fell. Mr. Cole was dimly conscious of a mass of whirling white draperies, and then the other ghost flung itself upon Miss L'Estrange.

“Miss Nellie! Miss Nellie!” it said. “Don't let it catch me! It's after me! It's after me! It'll get me! Save me, Miss Nellie!”

Mr. Cole, after a struggle, sat up. It is greatly to his credit that his reasoning faculties were unimpaired by all he had been through. He reflected on the nature of ghosts, and remembered the fact that none of them are able to speak until they are spoken to. This ghost had certainly not been addressed by any one. It occurred to him also that no real ghost was likely to be frightened by a schoolboy in a surplice. But the creature which grovelled on the ground beside him was unquestionably in a state of abject terror. It struck him finally that the voice in which it made its appeal was very like the voice of Mrs. L'Estrange's parlourmaid.

“Esther,” said Nellie, “get up off my legs. You're hurting me.”

Mr. Cole noticed that Georgie was giggling convulsively. He spoke to him sternly. “Get up, Georgie. Stop laughing at once and take off that ridiculous surplice.”

Esther, recovering her self-control, stood up and plucked pins hurriedly out of the sheet in which she was draped. Mr. Cole dragged the surplice off Georgie. Nellie stared at the boy for a minute. Then she turned to Mr. Cole.

“How dare you?” she said. “I might have died of fright.”

“I don't see——” said Mr. Cole.

“It was a most ungentlemanly trick to play,” said Nellie.

“I don't see that there's much to choose between us. We both seem to have hit on the very same idea.”

“Esther,” said Nellie, “come home, and don't go into hysterics in the middle of the road. Mr. Cole, I'll never speak to you again!”

This was very unjust, but there are excuses to be made. A good evening dress was permanently ruined, and some account of the mud on it would have to be given to Mrs. L'Estrange.

“Miss L'Estrange,” said Mr. Cole, “wait one moment. There's something I want to say to you.”

“Well,” said Nellie, looking over her shoulder.

“Don't you think it will be best for us all—I mean, wouldn't it be wiser for us to agree to say nothing about this unfortunate business to anybody?”

“I'm glad to see,” said Nellie, “that you're a little ashamed of yourself.”

“I'm not. I was merely thinking how awkward it would——

“Then you ought to be. And I'll never speak to you again until you are.”

Mr. Cole watched her disappear.

“Girls are rotters,” said “aren't they, Uncle John?”

Mr. Cole made no answer.

“Last term,” said Georgie, as they walked back to the village together, “the Old Cow made us learn a footy poem by a man called Scott. I thought it beastly muck at the time. It was about girls, and it said that they were 'uncommon shy and hard to please.' I see now that the old Johnnie who wrote it, whoever he was, jolly well knew what he was talking about. Anybody would have thought she'd have enjoyed the spoof; but she evidently didn't.”