Chapter XIV: Robert Hunter's Ghost

It was a gusty night; the wind violently high even for the seaside; and Miss Thornycroft sat over the fire in her own sitting-room, listening to it as it whirled round the house and went booming away over the waste of waters.

Anna Chester was with her. Anna had shunned the Red Court of late; but she could not always refuse Miss Thornycroft's invitations without attracting notice; and she had heard that Isaac was to be away from home that day.

They had spent the hours unhappily. Heavy at heart, pale in countenance, subdued in spirit, it seemed to each that nothing in the world could bring pleasure again. Anna was altered just as much as Miss Thornycroft; worn, thin, haggard-eyed. Captain Copp's wife, seeing the change in Anna, and knowing nothing of the real cause, set it down to one that must inevitably bring discovery of the marriage in its train, and was fretting herself into fiddle-strings. Dinner was over; tea was taken; the evening went on. Quite unexpectedly Mr. Thornycroft and his eldest son arrived; Anna saw also, to her dismay, that Isaac was in; but none of them approached the sitting-room. Hyde, coming in later to replenish the fire, said the justice was not very well, and had retired to rest; Mr. Richard and Mr. Isaac had gone out. And the two girls sat on together, almost hearing the beating of each other's hearts.

"I wonder if the ghost is abroad this windy night!" exclaimed Anna, as a wild gust dashed against the windows and shook the frames.

"Don't joke about that, Anna," said Miss Thornycroft, sharply.

Anna looked round in surprise: nothing had been further from her thoughts than to joke; and indeed she did not know why she said it. "Of course the report is a very foolish one," she resumed "I cannot think how any people can profess to believe it."

"Isaac saw it last night," said Mary Anne, quietly.

"Nonsense!" cried Anna.

"Ah! so I have answered when others said they saw it. But Isaac is cool and practical; entirely without superstition; the very last man I know, save perhaps Richard, to be led away by fear or fancy. He was passing the churchyard when he saw--if not Robert Hunter, some one dressed up to personate him; but the features were Robert Hunter's features, Isaac says; they were for a moment as distinct as ever he had seen them in life."

"Did he tell you this?"

"Yes."

"Could he have been deceived by his imagination?"

"I think not. When a cool, collected man, like my brother Isaac, dispassionately asserts such a thing, in addition to the terrified assertions of others, I at least believe that there must be some dreadful mystery abroad, supernatural or otherwise."

"A mystery?"

"Yes, a mystery. Putting aside all questions of the figure, how is it that the _coat_ can appear in the churchyard, when it remains all the while in safe custody at the Mermaid?"

Anna sat down, overwhelmed with the confusion of ideas that presented themselves. The chief one that struggled upwards was--how should she ever have courage to pass the churchyard that night?

"Mary Anne! why did he not speak to it?"

"Because some people came up at the time, and prevented it. When he looked again the figure was gone."

Precisely so. All this, just as Mary Anne described it, had happened to Isaac Thornycroft on the previous night. Robert Hunter, the hat drawn low on his pale face, the unmistakeable coat buttoned round him, had stood there in the churchyard, looking just as he had looked in life. To say that Isaac was not staggered would be wrong--he was--but he recovered himself almost instantly, and was about to call out to the figure, when Mr. Kyne came past with young Connaught, and stopped him. Isaac and his family had to guard against certain discoveries yet; and in the presence of the superintendent of the coastguard, whose suspicions were already too rife, he did not choose to proceed to investigation.

Silence supervened. The young ladies sat on over the fire, each occupied with her sad and secret thoughts. The time-piece struck half-past eight.

"What can have become of Sarah?" exclaimed Anna. "Mrs. Copp was not well, and my Aunt Amy said she should send for me early."

Scarcely had the words left her lips, when that respectable personage entered head foremost. Giving the door a bang, she sank into an arm-chair. Anna stood up in wonder; Miss Thornycroft looked round.

"You may well stare, young ladies, but I can't stand upon no forms nor ceremonies just now. I don't know whether my senses is here or yonder, and I made bold to come in at the hall door, as being the nearest, and make straight for here. There's the ghost at this blessed moment in the churchyard."

Anna, with a faint cry, drew near to Miss Thornycroft, and touched her for company. The latter spoke.

"Your fancy must have deceived you, Sarah."

"If anything has deceived me, it's my eyes," returned Sarah, really too much put out to stand on any sort of ceremony whether in speech or action--"which is what they never did yet, Miss Thornycroft. When it struck eight my mistress told me to go for Miss Chester. I thought I'd finish my ironing first, which took me another quarter of an hour; and then I put my blanket and things away to come. Just as I was opening the house door I heard the master's voice singing out for me, and went into the parlour. 'Is it coals, sir?' I asked. 'No, it's not coals,' says he; and I saw by his mouth he was after some nonsense. 'It's to tell you to take care of the ghost.' 'Oh, bran the ghost,' says I; 'I should give it a knock if it come anigh me.' And so I should, young ladies."

"Go on, go on," cried Mary Anne Thornycroft.

"I come right on to the churchyard, and what we had been saying made me turn my eyes to it as I passed. Young ladies," she continued, drawing the chair closer, and dropping her voice to a low, mysterious key, "if you'll believe me, there stood Robert Hunter. He was close by that big tombstone of old Marley's, not three yards from his own grave!"

Mary Anne Thornycroft seemed unwilling to admit belief in this, in spite of what she had herself been relating to Miss Chester. "Rely upon it, Sarah, your fears deceived you."

"Miss, I hadn't got any fears; at any rate, not before I saw him. There he was: his features as plain as ever they'd need be, and that uncommon coat on, which I'm sure was never made for anybody but a Guy Fawkes."

"Were you frightened then?"

"I was not frightened, so to say, but I won't deny that I felt a creepishness in my skin; and I'd have given half-a-crown out of my pocket to see any human creature come up to bear me company. I might have spoke to it if it had give me time: I don't know: but the moment it saw me it glided amid the gravestones, making for the back of the church. I made off too as fast as my legs would carry me, and come straight in here. I knew my tongue must let it out, and I thought it better for you to hear it than them timorous servants in the kitchen."

"Quite right," murmured Miss Thornycroft.

"I never did believe in ghosts," resumed Sarah; "never thought to do it, and I'm not going to begin now. But after to-night, I won't mock at the poor wretches that have been frightened by Robert Hunter's."

What now was to be done? Anna Chester would not attempt to go home and pass the churchyard with no protector but Sarah. Hyde was not to be found; and there seemed nothing for it but to wait until Richard or Isaac came in.

But neither came. Between nine and ten Captain Copp made his appearance in hot anger, shaking his stick and stamping his wooden leg at Sarah.

Had the vile hussey taken up her gossiping quarters at the Red Court Farm for the night? Did she think--

"I could not get Miss Chester away," interposed Sarah, drowning the words. "The ghost is in the churchyard. I saw it as I came past."

The sailor-captain was struck dumb. One of _his_ women-kind avow belief in a ghost? He had seen a mermaid himself; which creatures were known to exist; but ghosts were fabulous things, fit for nothing but the fancies of marines. Any sailor in his fo'castle that had confessed to seeing ghosts, would have got a taste of the yardarm. "Get your things on this minute," concluded the captain, angrily, to Anna. "I'll teach you to be afraid of rubbishing ghosts! And that vile bumboat woman! coming here with such a tale!"

"It's my opinion ghosts _is_ rubbish, and nothing better; for I don't see the good of 'em; but this was Robert Hunter's for all that," spoke the undaunted "bumboat-woman." "I saw his face and his eyes as plain as ever I see my own in the glass, and that precious white coat of his with the ugly fur upon it. Master, you can't say that I gave as much as half an ear to this talk before to-night."

"You credulous sea-serpent!" was the captain's retort. "And that same coat lying yet in the tallet at the Mermaid with the blood upon it, just as it was taken off the body! Ugh! fie upon you!"

"If there's apparitions of bodies, there may be apparitions of coats," reasoned Sarah, between whom and her choleric but good-hearted master there was always a fight for the last word. "If it hadn't been for knowing his face, I should say some ill-conditioned jester had borrowed the coat from the Mermaid and put it on."

Away pegged the captain in his rage, scarcely allowing himself to say good-night to Miss Thornycroft; and away went Sarah and Miss Chester after him, as close as circumstances permitted.

As they neared the churchyard Anna ventured to lay hold of the captain's arm, and bent her head upon it, in spite of his mocking assurances that a parson's daughter ought to be on visiting terms with a churchyard ghost; trusting to him to guide her steps. The captain was deliberating, as he avowed afterwards, whether to guide her into the opposite ditch, believing that a ducking would be the best panacea for all ghostly fears; when Sarah, who was a step in the rear, leaped forward and clung violently to his blue coat-tails.

"There!" she cried in a shrill whisper, before the astonished gentleman could free his tails or give vent to proper indignation, "there it is again, behind old Marley's tomb! Now then, master, is that the coat, or is it not?"

The captain was surprised into turning his eyes to the churchyard; Anna also, as if impelled by some irresistible fascination. It was too true. Within a few yards of them, in the dim moonlight--for the cloudy moon gave but a feeble light--appeared the well-known form of the ill-fated Robert Hunter, the very man whose dead body Captain Copp had helped to lay in the grave, so far as having assisted as a mourner at his funeral.

The captain was taken considerably aback; had never been half so much so before an unexpected iceberg; his wooden leg dropped submissively down and his mouth flew open. He had the keen eye of a seaman, and he saw beyond doubt that the spirit before him was indeed that of Robert Hunter. Report ran in the village afterwards that the gallant captain would have made off, but could not rid himself from the grasp of his companions.

"Hallo! you sir!" he called out presently, remembering that in that vile Sarah's presence his reputation for courage was at stake, but there was considerable deference, not to say timidity, in his tone, "what is it you want, appearing there like a figure-head?"

The ghost, however, did not wait to answer; it had already disappeared, vanishing into air, or behind the tombstones. Captain Copp lost not a moment, but tore away faster than he had ever done since the acquisition of his wooden leg, Anna sobbing convulsively on his arm, and Sarah hanging on to his coat-tails. A minute afterwards they were joined by Isaac Thornycroft, coming at a sharp pace from the direction of the village.

"Take these screeching sea-gulls home for me," cried the sailor to Isaac. "I'll go down to the Mermaid, and with my own eyes see if the coat is there. Some land-lubber's playing a trick, and has borrowed Hunter's face and stole the coat to act it in."

"Spare yourself the trouble," rejoined Isaac. "I have come straight now from the Mermaid, and the coat is there. We have been looking at it but this instant. It is under the hay in the room over the stable, doubled up and stiff, having dried in the folds."

"I should like to keelhaul that ghost," cried the discomfited captain. "I'd rather have seen ten mermaids."

Isaac Thornycroft, with an imperative gesture, took Anna on his own arm, leaving the captain to peg on alone, with Sarah still in close proximity to the coattails. He did not say what he had been doing all the evening, or why he should have come up at that particular juncture.

Upon the return of Richard to the Red Court an hour or two earlier, Isaac drew him at once out of the house to impart to him this curious fact of Hunter's ghost--as Coastdown phrased it--making its appearance nightly in the churchyard. Truth to say, the affair was altogether puzzling Isaac, bringing him trouble also. He had seen it himself the previous evening. Who was it? what did it want? whence did it come? That it wore Hunter's face and form was indisputable. What then was it? His ghost?--a kind of marvel which Isaac had never yet believed in,--or a man got up to personate him? Of course what Isaac feared was, that it might lead to discovery of various matters connected with the past.

He imparted all this to Richard. Richard scorned the information at first, ridiculed the affair, would not believe in the fear. Isaac proposed that they should go together to the churchyard, conceal themselves behind a convenient tombstone, watch for the appearance, and pounce upon it. Richard mockingly refused; if he went at all to the place he'd go by himself and deal with the "ghost" at leisure. At present he had business with Tomlett.

They went together to Tomlett's cottage, and sat there talking. The baker's boy came up on an errand; and as Mrs. Tomlett answered the door they heard him tell her that "the ghost was then--then--in the churchyard, his face and his coat awful white."

"The coat has been stolen from the Mermaid," spoke Richard in his decisive tones.

"That fact was easy to be ascertained," Isaac answered. And, rising at once from his seat, he went to the Mermaid there and then. Calling Pettipher, they went up the ladder to the tallet, and Isaac convinced himself that there the coat lay, untouched, and in fact unusable. From thence he went his way to the churchyard, intending to see what he could do with the ghost himself, and thus overtook Captain Copp and his party.

Nothing of this did he say to Anna. Leaving the ghost for the time being, he went on to Captain Copp's. She held his arm, not daring to let it go; her mind in a state of extreme distress. Trembling from head to foot went she; a sob breaking from her now and again.

"What can it be looking for?" burst from her in her grief and perplexity. "For you?"

For the thought, the fear that had been beating its terrible refrain in her brain was, that Robert Hunter's spirit, unable to rest, had come to denounce his destroyer. Such tales had over and over again been told in the world's history: why should not this be but another to add to them?

"Anna!" answered Isaac in a tone of surprise and remonstrance, "you cannot seriously believe that it is Hunter's spirit. Why talk nonsense?"

Which reply she looked upon as an evasive one. "Can you solve the mystery then?" she asked. "That thing in the churchyard wears as surely Hunter's face and form as you wear yours or I mine. It is not himself: he is dead and buried; what then is it?"

"Not his ghost," spoke Isaac. Whether he, the cool-headed, practical, worldly man, who believed hitherto in ghosts just as much as he did in fairies, felt perfectly sure himself upon the point now, at least he deemed it right to insist upon it to his wife.

No more was said. But for Captain Copp's turning back to converse with Isaac (having in a degree recovered his equanimity) he might have striven to get an explanation with his wife there and then.

"Come in, come in, and take a sup of brandy," cried the hospitable captain when they arrived at his house. "That beast of a ghost!"

"Oh, Sarah, what can have kept you!" exclaimed the captain's wife, in as complaining a tone as so gentle a woman could use. "I have had everything to do myself; the gruel to make for Mrs. Copp, the hot water to take upstairs; the--"

"It is not my fault, ma'am," interrupted the subdued Sarah, as she rubbed her shoes on the mat. "Miss Chester was afraid to come home with me alone. There's Robert Hunter in the churchyard."

Amy Copp glanced at her husband, expecting an explosion of wrath at the words. To her surprise, the captain heard them in patient silence, his face as meek as any lamb's.

"Bring some hot water, Sarah, and get out the brandy," said he.

Mixing a stiff glass for himself, Isaac declining to take any, he passed another in silence to Sarah. Anna had escaped upstairs: her usual custom when Isaac was there.

"Much obliged, sir, but I don't care for brandy," was Sarah's answer. "My courage is coming back to me, master."

Amy looked from one to the other, not knowing what to make of either. "Have you really seen anything?" she asked.

"Seen Hunter, coat and all," gravely replied the captain. "Shiver my wooden leg, if we've not! I say, mother," he called out, stumping to the foot of the stairs. "Mother!"

"What is it, Sam?" called back Mrs. Copp, who was beginning to undress, and had not yet taken her remedies for the cold.

"Mother, you know that mermaid in the Atlantic--the last voyage you went with us? You wouldn't believe that I saw it; you've only laughed at me ever since: well, I've seen the ghost to-night; so don't you disbelieve me any more."

Captain Copp returned to the parlour, and in a minute his mother walked in after him. She wore black stockings, fur slippers, a petticoat that came down to the calves of her legs; a woollen shawl, and an enormous night-cap. Isaac Thornycroft smothered an inclination to laugh, but Mrs. Copp stood with calm equanimity, regardless of the defects of her costume.

"What's that about the ghost, Sam?"

"I saw it to-night, mother. It stood near its own grave in the churchyard. And I hope you won't go on at me about that mermaid, after this. It had got long bright green hair, as I've always said, and was combing it out."

"The ghost had?"

"No, the mermaid. The ghost was Hunter's. It looked just as he'd used to look."

Mrs. Copp stood rubbing her nose, and thinking the captain's conversion a very sudden one.

"Is this a joke, Sam?"

"A joke! Why, mother, I tell ye I saw it. Ask Sarah. I called out to know what it wanted, and why it came; but it wouldn't answer me."

"Well, it's strange," observed Mrs. Copp. "Sam's a simpleton about mermaids, but I'd have backed him as to ghosts. But now: you may have observed perhaps, all of you, that I've not said a syllable to ridicule this ghost of poor dead Mr. Hunter, and I'll tell you why. Last June, in Liverpool, a friend of mine was sitting up with her father, who was ill, when her sister's spirit appeared to her. It was between twelve and one at night--twenty minutes to one, in fact, for there was a clock in the room, and she had looked at it only a minute before; the candle--"

"Oh, mother, don't; pray don't!" implored poor Amy Copp, going into a cold perspiration, for she held a firm belief in things supernatural. "This one ghost is enough for us without any more. I shall never like to go up to bed alone again."

"The candle gave as good as no light, for the snuff was a yard long a'most, with a cauliflower on the top," continued Mrs. Copp, who persisted in telling her tale, supremely indifferent to her daughter-in-law's fears and her own robes. "Emma Jenkins, that was her name, heard a rustle in the room; it seemed to come in at the door, which was put open for air, flutter across, and stir the bed-curtains. (Don't you be foolish, Amy!) Naturally, Emma Jenkins looked up, and there she saw her sister, who had died a year before. The figure seemed to give just a sigh and vanish. Now," said Mrs. Copp, applying the moral, "if that was a ghost, this may be."

"You always said, you know, mother, that you didn't believe in ghosts."

"Neither did I, Sam But Emma Jenkins is not one to be taken in by fancy; as stands to reason, considering that she has gone thirteen voyages with her husband, short and long. Sea-going people are not liable to see ghosts where there's no ghosts to see; they have got their wits about them, and keep their eyes open. What are you smiling at, Mr. Thornycroft? Mrs. Jenkins had taken a glass of brandy-and-water, perhaps? Well, I don't know; sitting up with the sick is cold work, especially when they are too far gone to have anything done for 'em. But she always liked rum best."

The story over, Captain Copp plunged into a full account of the night's adventures, enlarging on the questions he asked with the view of bringing the ghost to book, and what he would have done had it only stayed. Sarah gave her version of the sight, both in going and coming. Mrs. Copp, forgetting her cold, plunged into another story of a man who died at sea the first time she sailed with her husband, and the belief of the sailors that he haunted the ship all the while it lay in Calcutta harbour; all to the shivering horror of poor Amy Copp; and Isaac Thornycroft, waking up from his reverie by fits and starts, sat on until midnight, like a man in a miserable dream.