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Old Fires and Profitable Ghosts written by A. T. Quiller Couch

A >> A. T. Quiller Couch >> Old Fires and Profitable Ghosts




"'In a small cottage at the end of the village, just outside the gate of
the kitchen-garden.'

"'Married?'

"'No: a large family lives next door and he pays the eldest girl to do
some odd jobs of housework.'

"'Then to-morrow,' said I, 'I'll pay him a call.'

"'Seen your man?' asked Dick next evening, as we walked up towards the
house, where again we were due for dinner.

"'I have just come from him: and what's more I have a proposition to
make to Miss Felicia, if you and she can spare me an hour this evening.'

"The upshot of our talk was that, a week later, as I drove home from the
station after my long railway journey, John Emmet sat by my side.
He had taken service with me as gardener, and for nine years he served
me well. You'll hardly believe it"--here the Vicar's gaze travelled
over the unkempt flower-beds--"but under John Emmet's hand this garden
of mine was a picture. The fellow would have half a day's work done
before the rest of the parish was out of bed. I never knew a human
creature who needed less sleep--that's not the way to put it, though--
the man _couldn't_ sleep: he had lost the power (so he said) ever since
the night the _Nerbuddha_ struck.

"So it was that every afternoon found the day's work ended in my garden,
and John Emmet, in my sixteen-foot boat, exploring the currents and
soundings about Menawhidden. And almost every day I went with him.
He had become a learner--for the third time in his life; and the
quickest learner (in spite of his years) I have ever known, for his mind
was bent on that single purpose. I should tell you that the Trinity
House had discovered Menawhidden at last and placed the bell-buoy there
--which is and always has been entirely useless: also that the Lifeboat
Institution had listened to some suggestions of mine and were
re-organising the service down at the Porth. And it was now my hope
that John Emmet might become coxswain of the boat as soon as he had
local knowledge to back up the seamanship and aptitude for command in
which I knew him to excel every man in the Porth. There were
jealousies, of course: but he wrangled with no man, and in the end I had
my way pretty easily. Within four years of his coming John Emmet knew
more of Menawhidden than any man in the parish; possibly more than all
the parish put together. And to-day the parish is proud of him and his
record.

"But they do not know--and you are to be one of the four persons in the
world who know--that _John Emmet was no other than John Murchison, the
captain who lost the 'Nerbuddha'!_ He had come ashore in the darkness
some five minutes before I had surprised him on the beach: had come
ashore clinging to the keg which I saw floating just beyond the
breakers. Then and there, stunned and confounded by the consequences of
his carelessness, he had played the coward for the first and last time
in his life. He had run away--and Heaven knows if in his shoes I should
not have done the same. For two nights and a day a hideous fascination
tied him to the spot. It was his face Dick had seen at the window.
The man had been hiding all day in the trench by the north wall of the
churchyard; as Dick ran out with a lantern he slipped behind a
gravestone, and when Dick gave up the search, he broke cover and fled
inland. He changed his name: let this be his excuse, he had neither
wife nor child. The man knew something of gardening: he had a couple of
pounds and some odd shillings in his pocket--enough to take him to one
of the big midland towns--Wolverhampton, I think--where he found work as
a jobbing gardener. But something of the fascination which had held him
lurking about Lansulyan, drove him to Cressingham, which--he learned
from the newspaper accounts of the wreck--was Colonel Stanhope's country
seat. Or perhaps he had some vague idea that Heaven would grant him a
chance to make amends. You understand now how the little Felicia became
his idol.

"At Lansulyan he had but two desires. The first was to live until he
had saved as many lives as his carelessness had lost in the _Nerbuddha_.
For it was nothing worse, but mere forgetfulness to change the course:
one of those dreadful lapses of memory which baffle all Board of Trade
inquiry. You may light, and buoy, and beacon every danger along the
coast, and still you leave that small kink in the skipper's brain which
will cast away a ship for all your care. The second of his desires you
have helped me to fulfil. He wished in death to be John Murchison
again, and lie where his ship lies: lie with his grand error atoned for.
John Emmet needs no gravestone: for John Emmet lived but to earn John
Murchison's right to a half-forgotten tablet describing him as a brave
man. And I believe that Heaven, which does not count by tally, has
granted his wish."


[1] Pilchard store.



ELISHA

A rough track--something between a footpath and a water course--led down
the mountain-side through groves of evergreen oak, and reached the Plain
of Jezreel at the point where the road from Samaria and the south
divided into two--its main stem still climbing due north towards
Nazareth, while the branch bent back eastward and by south across the
flat, arable country to join the Carmel road at Megiddo.

An old man came painfully down the mountain-track. He wore a white
burnoos, and a brown garment of camel's hair, with a leathern belt that
girt it high about his bare legs. He carried a staff, and tapped the
ground carefully before planting his feet. It was the time of barley
harvest, and a scorching afternoon. On the burnt plain below, the road
to Megiddo shone and quivered in the heat. But he could not see it.
Cataract veiled his eyes and blurred the whole landscape for them.

The track now wound about a foot-hill that broke away in a sharp slope
on his right and plunged to a stony ravine. Once or twice he paused on
its edge and peered downward, as if seeking for a landmark. He was
leaning forward to peer again, but suddenly straightened his body and
listened.

Far down in the valley a solitary dog howled. But the old man's ear had
caught another sound, that came from the track, not far in front.

_Cling--cling--clink! Cling--clink!_

It was the sound of hammering; of stone on metal.

_Cling--cling--clink!_

He stepped forward briskly, rounded an angle of rock, and found himself
face to face with a man--as well as he could see, a tall man--standing
upright by a heap of stones on the left edge of the path.

"May it be well with you, my son: and with every man who repairs a path
for the traveller. But tell me if the way be unsafe hereabouts? For my
eyes are very dim, and it is now many years since last I came over the
hills to Shunem."

The man did not reply.

"--So many years that for nigh upon an hour I have been saying, 'Surely
here should Shunem come in sight--or here--its white walls among the
oaks below--the house of Miriam of Shunem'. But I forget the curtain on
my eyes, and the oaks will have grown tall."

Still there came no answer. Slightly nettled, the old man went on--

"My son, it is said 'To return a word before hearing the matter is
folly.' But also, 'Every man shall kiss the lips of him who answereth
fit words.' And further, 'To the aged every stranger shall be a staff,
nor shall he twice inquire his way.' Though I may not scan thy face,
thou scannest mine; and I, who now am blind, have been a seer in
Israel."

As he ceased, another figure--a woman's--stepped out, as it seemed to
him, from behind the man; stepped forward and touched him on the arm.

"Hail, then, Elisha, son of Shaphat!"

"Thou knowest? . . ."

"Who better than Miriam of Shunem? Put near thy face and look."

"My eyes are very dim."

"And the oaks are higher than Shunem. My face has changed: my voice
also."

"For the moment it was strange to me. As I came along I was reckoning
thy years at three-score."

"Mayst add five."

"We may not complain. And thy son, how fares he?"

"That is he, behind us. He is a good son, and leaves his elders to
speak first. If we sit awhile and talk he will wait for us."

"And thy house and the farm-steading?"

The woman threw a glance down towards the valley, and answered quickly--

"My master, shall we not sit awhile? The track here looks towards the
plain. Sit, and through my eyes thou shalt see again distant Carmel and
the fields between that used so to delight thee. Ah! not there!"

The old man had made as if to seat himself on one of the larger stones
on the edge of the heap. But she prevented him quickly; was gone for a
moment; and returned, rolling a moss-covered boulder to the right-hand
of the path. The prophet sat himself down on this, and she on the
ground at his feet.

"Just here, from my window below, I saw thee coming down the mountain
with Gehazi, thy servant, on that day when it was promised to me that I
should bear a son."

He nodded.

"For as often as we passed by," he said, "we found food and a little
room prepared upon the wall. 'Thou hast been careful for us,' said I,
'with all this care. What is to be done for thee? Shall I speak to the
King for thee, or to the captain of the host?' Thine answer was,
'I dwell in Shunem, among my own people.'"

"There is no greener spot in Israel."

"'But,' said my servant Gehazi, 'Every spot is greener where a child
plays.' Therefore this child was promised thee."

She said, "But once a year the plain is yellow and not green; yellow
away to the foot of Carmel; and that is in this season of the barley
harvest. It was on such a day as this that my son fell in the field
among the reapers, and his father brought him in and set him on my
knees. On such a day as this I left him dead, and saddled the ass and
rode between the same yellow fields to Megiddo, and thence towards
Carmel, seeking thee. See the white road winding, and the long blue
chine yonder, by the sea. By and by, when the sun sinks over it, the
blue chine and the oaks beneath will turn to one dark colour; and that
will be the hour that I met thee on the slope, and lighted off the ass
and caught thee by the feet. As yet it is all parched fields and sky of
brass and a white road running endless--endless."

"But what are these black shadows that pass between me and the sun?"

"They are crows, my master."

"What should they do here in these numbers?"

The woman rose and flung a stone at the birds. Seating herself again,
she said--

"Below, the reapers narrow the circle of the corn; and there are conies
within the circle. The kites and crows know it."

"But that day of which thou hast spoken--it ended in gladness.
The Lord restored thy son to thee."

"Thou rather, man of God."

"My daughter, His mercy was very great upon thee. Speak no blasphemy,
thou of all women."

"The Lord had denied me a son; but thou persuadedst Him, and He gave me
one. Again, the Lord had taken my child in the harvest-field, but on
thy wrestling gave him back. And again the Lord meditated to take my
child by famine, but at thy warning I arose and conveyed him into the
land of the Philistines, nor returned to Shunem till seven years' end.
My master, thou art a prophet in Israel, but I am thinking--"

She broke off, rose, and flung another stone at the birds.

"My daughter, think not slightly of God's wisdom."

"Nay, man of God, I am thinking that God was wiser than thou or I."

The old prophet rose from his stone. His dull eyes tried to read her
face. She touched his hand.

"Come, and see."

The figure of the man still stood, three paces behind them, upright
against the hillside, as when Elisha had first turned the corner and
come upon him. But now, led by Miriam, the prophet drew quite close and
peered. Dimly, and then less dimly, he discerned first that the head
had fallen forward on the breast, and that the hair upon the scalp was
caked in dry blood; next, that the figure did not stand of its own will
at all, but was held upright to a stout post by an iron ring about the
neck and a rope about the waist. He put out a finger and touched the
face. It was cold.

"Thy son?"

"They stoned him with these stones. His wife stood by."

"The Syrians?"

"The Syrians. They went northward before noon, taking her. The plain
is otherwise burnt than on the day when I sought across it for his sake
to Carmel."

"Well did King David entreat the hand of the Lord rather than the hand
of man. I had not heard of thy son's marrying."

"Five years ago he went down with a gift to Philistia, to them that
sheltered us in the famine. He brought back this woman."

"She betrayed him?"

"He heard her speak with a Syrian, and fled up the hill. From the
little window in the wall--see, it smokes yet--she called and pointed
after him. And they ran and overtook him. With this iron they fastened
him, and with these stones they stoned him. Man of God, I am thinking
that God was wiser than thou or I."

The old man stood musing, and touched the heap of stones gently, stone
after stone, with the end of his staff.

"He was wiser."

_Cling--cling--clink!_

Miriam had taken up a stone, and with it was hammering feebly,
impotently, upon the rivets in the iron band.

As the sun dropped below Carmel the prophet cast down his staff and
stretched out two groping hands to help her.



"ONCE ABOARD THE LUGGER"


Early last Fall there died in Troy an old man and his wife. The woman
went first, and the husband took a chill at her grave's edge, when he
stood bareheaded in a lashing shower. The loose earth crumbled under
his feet, trickled over, and dropped on her coffin-lid. Through two
long nights he lay on his bed without sleeping and listened to this
sound. At first it ran in his ears perpetually, but afterwards he heard
it at intervals only, in the pauses of acute suffering. On the seventh
day he died, of pleuro-pneumonia; and on the tenth (a Sunday) they
buried him. For just fifty years the dead man had been minister of the
Independent chapel on the hill, and had laid down his pastorate two
years before, on his golden wedding-day. Consequently there was a
funeral sermon, and the young man, his successor, chose II. Samuel,
i. 23, for his text--"Lovely and pleasant in their lives, and in their
death they were not divided." Himself a newly-married man, he waxed
dithyrambic on the sustained affection and accord of the departed
couple. "Truly," he wound up, "such marriages as theirs were made in
Heaven." And could they have heard, the two bodies in the cemetery had
not denied it; but the woman, after the fashion of women, would have
qualified the young minister's assertion in her secret heart.


When, at the close of the year 1839, the Rev. Samuel Bax visited Troy
for the first time, to preach his trial sermon at Salem Chapel, he
arrived by Boutigo's van, late on a Saturday night, and departed again
for Plymouth at seven o'clock on Monday morning. He had just turned
twenty-one, and looked younger, and the zeal of his calling was strong
upon him. Moreover he was shaken with nervous anxiety for the success
of his sermon; so that it is no marvel if he carried away but blurred
and misty impressions of the little port and the congregation that sat
beneath him that morning, ostensibly reverent, but actually on the
pounce for heresy or any sign of weakness. Their impressions, at any
rate, were sharp enough. They counted his thumps upon the desk, noted
his one reference to "the original Greek," saw and remembered the flush
on his young face and the glow in his eyes as he hammered the doctrine
of the redemption out of original sin. The deacons fixed the subject of
these trial sermons, and had chosen original sin on the ground that a
good beginning was half the battle. The maids in the congregation knew
beforehand that he was unmarried, and came out of chapel knowing also
that his eyes were brown, that his hair had a reddish tinge in certain
lights; that one of his cuffs was frayed slightly, but his black coat
had scarcely been worn a dozen times; with other trifles. They loitered
by the chapel door until he came out in company with Deacon Snowden, who
was conveying him off to dinner. The deacon on week days was
harbour-master of the port, and on Sundays afforded himself roasted duck
for dinner. Lizzie Snowden walked at her father's right hand. She was
a slightly bloodless blonde, tall, with a pretty complexion, and hair
upon which it was rumoured she could sit if she were so minded.
The girls watched the young preacher and his entertainers as they moved
down the hill, the deacon talking and his daughter turning her head
aside as if it were merely in the half of the world on her right hand
that she took the least interest.

"That's to show 'en the big plait," commented one of the group behind.
"He can't turn his head t'wards her, but it stares 'en in the face."

"An' her features look best from the left side, as everybody knows."

"I reckon, if he's chosen minister, that Lizzie'll have 'en," said a
tall, lanky girl. She was apprenticed to a dressmaker and engaged to a
young tin-smith. Having laid aside ambition on her own account, she
flung in this remark as an apple of discord.

"Jenifer Hosken has a chance. He's fair-skinned hissel', an' Lizzie's
too near his own colour. Black's mate is white, as they say."

"There's Sue Tregraine. She'll have more money than either, when her
father dies."

"What, marry one o' Ruan!" the speaker tittered despitefully.

"Why not?"

The only answer was a shrug. Ruan is a small town that faces Troy
across the diminutive harbour, or perhaps I should say that Troy looks
down upon it at this slight distance. When a Trojan speaks of it he
says, "Across the water," with as much implied contempt as though he
meant Botany Bay. There is no cogent reason for this, except that the
poorer class at Ruan earns its livelihood by fishing. In the eyes of
its neighbours the shadow of this lonely calling is cast upwards upon
its wealthier inhabitants. Troy depends on commerce, and in the days of
which I write employed these wealthier men of Ruan to build ships for
it. Further it did not condescend. Intermarriage between the towns was
almost unheard of, and even now it is rare. Yet they are connected by a
penny ferry.

"Her father's a shipbuilder," urged Sue Tregraine's supporter.

"He might so well keep crab pots, for all the chance she'll have."

Now there was a Ruan girl standing just outside this group, and she
heard what was said. Her name was Nance Trewartha and her father was a
fisherman, who did in fact keep crab-pots. Moreover, she was his only
child, and helped him at his trade. She could handle a boat as well as
a man, she knew every sea mark up and down the coast for thirty miles,
she could cut up bait, and her hands were horny with handling ropes from
her childhood. But on Sundays she wore gloves, and came across the
ferry to chapel, and was as wise as any of her sex. She had known
before coming out of her pew that the young minister had a well shaped
back to his head and a gold ring on his little finger with somebody's
hair in the collet, under a crystal. She was dark, straight, and lissom
of figure, with ripe lips and eyes as black as sloes, and she hoped that
the hair in the minister's ring was his mother's. She was well aware of
her social inferiority; but--the truth may be told--she chose to forget
it that morning, and to wonder what this young man would be like as a
husband. She had looked up into his face during sermon time, devouring
his boyish features, noticing his refined accent, marking every gesture.
Certainly he was comely and desirable. As he walked down the hill by
Deacon Snowden's side, she was perfectly conscious of the longing in her
heart, but prepared to put a stop to it, and go home to dinner as soon
as he had turned the corner and passed out of sight. Then came that
unhappy remark about the crab-pots. She bit her lip for a moment,
turned, and walked slowly off towards the ferry, full of thought.


Three weeks after, the Rev. Samuel Bax received his call.

He arrived, to assume his duties, in the waning light of a soft January
day. Boutigo's van set him down, with a carpet-bag, band-box, and chest
of books, at the door of the lodgings which Deacon Snowden had taken for
him. The house stood in the North Street, as it is called. It was a
small, yellow-washed building, containing just half-a-dozen rooms, and
of these the two set apart for the minister looked straight upon the
harbour. Under his sitting-room window was a little garden, and at the
end of the garden a low wall with a stretch of water beyond it, and a
barque that lay at anchor but a stone's throw away, as it seemed, its
masts stretching high against the misty hillside. A green-painted door
was let into the garden wall--a door with two flaps, the upper of which
stood open; and through this opening he caught another glimpse of grey
water.

The landlady, who showed him into this room, and at once began to
explain that the furniture was better than it looked, was hardly
prepared for the rapture with which he stared out of the window.
His boyhood had been spent in a sooty Lancashire town, and to him the
green garden, the quay-door, the barque, and the stilly water, seemed to
fall little short of Paradise.

"I reckoned you'd like it," she said. "An' to be sure, 'tis a blessing
you do."

He turned his stare upon her for a moment. She was a benign-looking
woman of about fifty, in a short-skirted grey gown and widow's cap.

"Why do you say that?"

"Because, leavin' out the kitchen, there's but four rooms, two for you
an' two for me; two facin' the harbour, an' two facin' the street. Now,
if you'd took a dislike to this look-out, I must ha' put you over the
street, an' moved in here myself. I _do_ like the street, too. There's
so much more goin' on."

"I think this arrangement will be better in every way," said the young
minister.

"I'm glad of it. Iss, there's no denyin' that I'm main glad.
From upstairs you can see right down the harbour, which is prettier
again. Would'ee like to see it now? O' course you would--an' it'll be
so much handier for me answerin' the door, too. There's a back door at
the end o' the passage. You've only to slip a bolt an' you'm out in the
garden--out to your boat, if you choose to keep one. But the garden's a
tidy little spot to walk up an' down in an' make up your sermons, wi'
nobody to overlook you but the folk next door; an' they'm church-goers."


After supper that evening, the young minister unpacked his books and was
about to arrange them, but drifted to the window instead. He paused for
a minute or two with his face close to the pane, and then flung up the
sash. A faint north wind breathed down the harbour, scarcely ruffling
the water. Around and above him the frosty sky flashed with innumerable
stars, and over the barque's masts, behind the long chine of the eastern
hill, a soft radiance heralded the rising moon. It was a young moon,
and, while he waited, her thin horn pushed up through the furze brake on
the hill's summit and she mounted into the free heaven. With upturned
eye the young minister followed her course for twenty minutes, not
consciously observant; for he was thinking over his ambitions, and at
his time of life these are apt to soar with the moon. Though possessed
with zeal for good work in this small seaside town, he intended that
Troy should be but a stepping-stone in his journey. He meant to go far.
And while he meditated his future, forgetting the chill in the night
air, it was being decided for him by a stronger will than his own.
More than this, that will had already passed into action. His destiny
was actually launched on the full spring tide that sucked the crevices
of the grey wall at the garden's end.

A slight sound drew the minister's gaze down from the moon to the
quay-door. Its upper flap still stood open, allowing a square of
moonlight to pierce the straight black shadow of the garden wall.

In this square of moonlight were now framed the head and shoulders of a
human being. The young man felt a slight chill run down his spine.
He leant forward out of the window and challenged the apparition, bating
his tone as all people bate it at that hour.

"Who are you?" he demanded.

There was no reply for a moment, though he felt sure his voice must have
carried to the quay-door. The figure paused for a second or two, then
unbarred the lower flap of the door and advanced across the wall's
shadow to the centre of the bright grass-plat under the window. It was
the figure of a young woman. Her head was bare and her sleeves turned
up to the elbows. She wore no cloak or wrap to cover her from the night
air, and her short-skirted, coarse frock was open at the neck. As she
turned up her face to the window, the minister could see by the moon's
rays that it was well-favoured.

"Be you the new preacher?" she asked, resting a hand on her hip and
speaking softly up to him.

"I am the new Independent minister."