By Mary Elizabeth Blundell
“WELL, I don’t believe in no such nonsense. Folks do get a-talkin’ and a-carryin’ tales fro’ one to the other, but I never met anybody yet as see a ghost, and I don’t believe nobody ever did!”
“You are wrong for once then,” cried Martha; and she pulled away her arm, the elbow of which had till then been linked in Sam Bundy’s—for the two were “walking” in orthodox fashion—and turned round to face him, an angry flush mounting in her cheeks.
Martha Dale was a very pretty girl, and never more so than in her working dress, which, being of pink cotton, intensified the glow on her cheeks and threw into yet stronger relief the darkness of eyes and hair. A little fitful evening breeze was now playing with the dusky tendrils about her brow, setting one tiny curl dancing, indeed, after a fashion which Sam would have found tantalising at any other time; but now he was too much in earnest.
“It do seem sich a pity for a sensible maid same as you to be took in by sich rubbish.”
“Thank ’ee,” rejoined Martha. “I s’pose my own grandma is a liar then, for ’twas she as told me the tale, and she did say as she saw it wi’ her own eyes.”
“What, a ghost?”
“No, it couldn’t ha’ been a ghost for ’twas the sperret of a man as was alive. ’Twas the custom, she says, for all the young folks to wait outside church-porch at midnight on Midsummer Eve, and if they was to get married during the year they’d see the sperrets of them they was to get married with go into the church and come out again. And they’d see the sperret, or the shape, or whatever ye mid call it, of them as was to die during the year too—only that kind didn’t never come out o’ the church again; they did jist walk in wi’ grave sorrowful faces, and did seem to bide there. But my grandma she telled me often how plain she saw granfer a-comin’ out of church—there, he did pass so close to her she could very nigh ha’ touched him, only she was afeared. And sure enough he axed her two months arter to the very day.”
Sam walked along in silence, chewing a blade of grass which he had plucked from beneath the hedge; his broad chip hat was set somewhat at the back of his head, and his open sunburnt face, thus fully exposed to view, wore an expression of incredulity and dissatisfaction.
“Ye don’t believe me, I see,” said Martha quickly.
“Oh, I don’t say that. I b’lieve ye think you are speakin’ the truth—’tis as true as you heared it—’tisn’t as if you was tryin’ to make me believe as you’d seen the thing yourself.”
“Well, then,” said Martha, with a flash in her black eyes, “I’ll be tellin’ you that, come next Midsummer Eve. I’ll go myself, and stand in church-porch, and maybe I’ll see Bob Ellery a-comin’ out.”
“Bob Ellery!” ejaculated Sam, stopping short again, and throwing away his blade of grass. “Is it him ye’re thinkin’ of lookin’ for?”
“Why not?” said Martha, slightly raising her voice; “as well him as another.”
“Well,” said Sam, striking the nailed heel of his heavy boot into the ground, “he’s just the one to be up to sich foolishness—the biggest sammy between this and Dorchester.”
“I wouldn’t be makin’ free wi’ your own name,” retorted the girl sarcastically. “I know one sammy as ain’t so far off. But ye needn’t be turnin’ up your nose at Bob Ellery, Mr. Sam Bundy—him and me’s very thick, and I don’t like to hear my friends abused.”
“Now look ye here, Martha,” said Sam, controlling his rising anger. “This here be real foolish talk between you and I, as has been a-walkin’ ever since Christmas. If you was to look for anybody a-comin’ out o’ church, it should be me!”
“Oh, but you are much too grand to think o’ lettin’ your sperret do any sich thing. Bob bain’t so stuck up—he don’t set up for being no wiser than the rest of us. But as for you—if we was to spill the salt between us I don’t suppose you’d ever think o’ throwin’ a pinch over your shoulder.”
“I don’t suppose I should,” he replied, bluntly.
“You was brought up wi’ such notions!” she continued. “Your mother didn’t ever set ye on a donkey’s back wi’ your face to the tail, did she?”
“I can’t call to mind as she did,” returned he, staring.
“Then, ’tain’t her fault, nor yours neither, if ye didn’t die o’ the whooping cough,” cried Martha triumphantly. “’Twas the first thing as ever my mother did do wi’ the lot of us, except my little brother Walter, and he was the only one as ever took that complaint, and never looked up after—just withered away, one mid say, and died.”
“Because he didn’t sit with his face to the ass’s tail,” said Sam, relaxing into a broad grin.
“Ye did ought to be ashamed o’ yourself, Sam, to go a-sneerin’ like that—there be a cross on the donkey’s back.”
Sam thrust his hands deep into the pockets of his corduroys, and paced beside her without speaking for a moment or two; then he turned to her with a good-humoured laugh:—
“Believe what you like, my maid, only don’t ask me to say I do do it!”
“I’m not axin’ you nothin’ at all, I’m sure,” returned Martha indifferently, though again the tell-tale colour swept over cheek and brow. She stooped presently, and plucked an ox-eye daisy from beneath the hedge.
“This year; next year; some time; never! This year—next year—some time—never—This year—next year—some time—never! This year!—I wonder if ’tis to be wi’ Bob Ellery. Come, I’ll try his fortune.”
She possessed herself of another daisy, and was about to resume her performance when Sam, laying his hand on hers, firmly imprisoned both the busy fingers and the blossom.
“Martha,” he said, “there be some things a man can stand, and there be some things he can’t. Now I can’t stand hearing you carry on this ’ere kind o’ nonsense about Bob Ellery. It’s got to be one way or t’other—him or me. If it’s me jist gi’e me your word as ye’ll drop this ’ere talk o’ tryin’ your fortun’ wi’ him. If it’s him in earnest—I’ll bid you good evenin’.”
Martha was proud as well as pretty, and resented the peremptory tone; she jerked away her hands, and tossed her head.
“P’r’aps I won’t wait for you to say it, Mr. Bundy—p’r’aps I can say ‘Good evenin’’ jist so plain as ye can yourself. Good evenin’, Mr. Samuel Bundy. I wish ye a pleasant walk home, and hope ye may soon find a sweetheart clever enough to suit ye. Ye’d best ax schoolmissus—she bain’t much more nor fifty-four, and I reckon she’s not one to go a-waitin’ in church-porch to look for sperrets—I’ll tell ye later on who I see on Midsummer Eve; but—I—think—I—know.”
She had been dropping little ironical curtsies to him throughout this speech, and now walked away, plucking the leaves from her crushed daisy, and singing “I—think—I—know” until she had turned the corner of the lane.
Sam stood looking after her until she was out of sight, and then, drawing a deep breath, began to move slowly homewards.
“So that is the end!” he said to himself. “And I thought she was terrible fond of me. These maids—there bain’t no knowin’ where to have ’em!”
* * * * *
On the following Sunday the once tender lovers walked apart, and Sam invented no more pretexts for passing Martha’s home of a weekday evening as he had been wont to do, just for a glimpse of her in the doorway or at the window, or, as had not infrequently happened, standing accidentally by the gate. On these occasions he had been used to invite her to walk with him “just so far as the top of the lane;” it was, indeed, during the course of one of these little strolls that the quarrel had taken place. But now, though oddly enough just about that time of evening Martha was to be seen pretty often looking out of the window, or leaning against the doorpost, or even gazing absently up and down the lane from the garden gate, Sam Bundy passed that way no more.
When Sunday came again Bob Ellery chanced to overtake Martha as she was returning home from church, a fact which Sam Bundy, who had passed the girl a moment before with an immovable face, carefully noted; and when Bob, with an agreeable smile, inquired if Martha was likely to be walking out that afternoon, he was answered with such flattering civility that he took courage to propose to be her companion.
But Martha’s family noticed that she came in from the expedition in a very bad humour. Bob was a thick-headed young man, and he had not much to say for himself; and he had brought his pipe with him and puffed the smoke in Martha’s face and laughed at her for minding it; and, moreover, he had wanted to kiss her on parting, which she had thought very presumptuous on so short an acquaintance—Sam had walked with her for at least three Sundays before he had made any such attempt—altogether she was ruffled.
“I reckon ye did like Sam best,” remarked her sister, as Martha tossed her hat on to the bed.
The other started and answered angrily: “I may have liked him to begin wi’, but I fair hate him now.”
“Well, Bob Ellery bain’t so bad,” returned the sister soothingly. “His nose do seem to turn up a good bit, and he’ve got an awful big head, but I’ve seen many as was worse looking.”
“There’s other chaps besides Sam and Bob,” retorted Martha.
“Who?” enquired the other eagerly, thinking her sister had made a new conquest.
“Oh, I don’t know—there’s lots of ’em about. Do ye mind Granny’s silly old tale about goin’ to the church-porch on Midsummer Eve?”
“Of course I do. Are ye thinkin’ o’ tryin’ it?”
Martha nodded.
“I’d like to find out summat for certain,” she said.
“Lard, I should be frightened to death to try it. Ugh! Fancy standin’ there among the graves all alone in the dark a-waitin’ for a sperret! Maybe ye mightn’t like him when he did come.”
“That’s just what I be a-thinkin’,” said Martha, with a sigh. “But I’d like to find out—it ’ud be a kind o’ satisfaction to know for sure, and not to keep on wonderin’ if it’s to be this one or that one.”
“Well, I wouldn’t do it if I was you,” said the sister.
But Martha was obdurate.
Shortly after the clock struck eleven on the fateful night she crept softly out of the house, and sped noiselessly through the village, and up the lane until she came to the church.
It was a warm, still night, with a large, sultry moon swimming overhead, and outlining with silver the grey walls of the sacred building and the many tombstones which studded the green enclosure round it.
Martha stood still, catching her breath, then tremulously unlatched the gate and went up the flagged path. She paused midway, raising her hand to her head:—
“Did Grandma say ‘In church-porch’ or ‘Nigh to church-porch’? I can’t mind which. The porch do seem to be awful dark—and ’twould be oncommon close inside. There do seem to be scarce room for the sperrets to get past if you was to stand there, without they went through you.”
She shivered: the porch did certainly look uninviting, swathed as it was in awful shadow, and festooned with ivy, tendrils of which stirred every now and then, uncannily as it seemed, for there was no breeze, and the motion was probably caused by some of the many birds that had made homes for themselves in its green fastnesses.
“I reckon it will do just as well if I stop here under tree,” said Martha decisively. “I can see everything what goes in or out, and ’twouldn’t be so far to run if—” she glanced apprehensively at the porch again, measured the distance between it and the gate, and finally, moving swiftly towards the latter, propped it carefully open with a large stone.
“The road do run all downhill too,” she said to herself, feeling somewhat reassured as she glanced down the lane; she possessed a light pair of heels—even if a spirit were to pursue her she fancied she could distance it.
Under the big cypress tree she now took up her stand, drawing her dark skirts closely about her, and only peering out occasionally behind the trunk. The moments passed very slowly, as it seemed to her; now and then the squeak of a bat broke the stillness, at other times a rustle in the long grass betokened the passage of some nocturnal wanderer—a stoat possibly, or a rat. On these occasions Martha would hitch up her skirts a little and look fearfully round—she was almost as much afraid of rats as of ghosts. Once she thought she heard a kind of stealthy movement in the grass just behind her, and almost uttered a shriek of terror as the possibility occurred to her that it might be a snake. After looking over her shoulder in the endeavour to ascertain the cause of this mysterious sound she turned round again suddenly.
Lo! advancing with swift and noiseless tread up the flagged path was a figure, the outlines of which were strangely familiar to her. As it approached nearer to her place of ambush the moonlight distinctly revealed a countenance which seemed to be that of Samuel Bundy. Seemed to be I say, for it wore an expression strangely unlike that which Martha had been accustomed to see on the blunt and honest face of her former lover: an expression of stern gravity; the eyes were fixed, the mouth resolutely set, the face, moreover, was deadly pale in the moonlight, and what alarmed Martha more than anything else was the fact that the figure moved onward without making a sound. Into the church-porch it passed, and was there engulfed by the darkness.
Martha’s heart was thumping like a sledgehammer; it was Sam sure enough—or rather Sam’s wraith, for surely no living thing could look or move in that ghostly fashion.
“So it’s to be him after all!” gasped Martha, with an odd little choked spasm of laughter. “Dear, to be sure! I wonder if he d’ know as his sperret have a-come here to-night. He must be dreamin’ o’ me—I reckon he’ll have to believe now when I d’ tell him. . . . Well, I’d liefer ’twas him nor Bob, anyhow. He’ll own he be wrong arter this, an’ then all ’ull be pleasant again between us.”
She leaned her head against the spice-scented cypress bark, and smiled to herself, though she still trembled, partly with awe, partly with pleasurable anticipation. When the church clock chimed midnight, then might she confidently expect the wraith of her future husband to come gliding forth from the church into which it had so silently passed, and might gaze with certainty on the likeness of the man decreed to be the partner of her lot. It was a solemn thought, but a joyful one; any contact with the supernatural must be awe-inspiring, but Martha was a bold girl, and eminently practical, and she passed the moments which must intervene before the reappearance of the vision in choosing the colour of her wedding gown.
Clang! boomed out the clock in the church tower presently, and as the reverberating strokes fell upon the air, Martha, philosophical though she was, was conscious of a recurrence of the choking sensation of a little while before. The last vibrating echo died away, and she craned forward her head, fearful and yet eager. All was silent as the graves in the midst of which she stood; she strained her eyes towards the porch, but no white impalpable shape came forth from its blackness.
All at once Martha’s heart ceased its violent beating, and appeared to stand still: a new and awful thought had come to her. Had not her grandmother told her the dread fate which awaited the originals of those whose semblance passed into the church without again reappearing? Her own words to Sam recurred to her: “Them as is to die within the year do seem to go into the church and don’t never come out again.” Could it be possible that the apparition which had filled her with so much satisfaction a few moments before was the portent of poor Sam’s early death?
Unnerved by this terrible idea she rent the stillness with a series of muffled shrieks and sobs:—
“Oh, Sam, Sam! Oh, dear Sam! Oh, Sam, come out, come out! Whatever shall I do? Sam, come out!”
Her tears were flowing so fast that she was obliged to have recourse to her apron, and, enveloped in its folds and overcome by increasing grief, failed to hear the series of heavy thuds which denoted the rapid approach of the figure which had suddenly emerged from the church-porch.
Could any spirit be endowed with such a pair of sturdy arms as those which were now thrown about her, or be capable of bestowing such resounding and fervent salutes as those which were presently rained on brow and cheeks? Martha uttered one blood-curdling yell, and then stood still.
“Why, my pretty,” cried Sam’s voice, which sounded very real and comfortable, “what be all this shindy? Have anybody been a-frightenin’ of ye? Have that rascal Bob been up to any games?”
Still clutching her in a tight embrace, he looked fiercely round.
“Bob!” ejaculated Martha. “Bob! Why what should he—” She broke off suddenly, adding with a wail of recurrent anguish: “Oh, Sam—oh, Sam, ye don’t know what I’ve a-seen this night! There, my heart be fair broke. I can never tell ’ee, but if ye knowed!”
“Nonsense, my maid,” cried Sam with a reassuring squeeze. “Ye haven’t seen nothing at all. I’ve been a-sittin’ in church-porch all the time an’ nothin’ have come nigh the place.”
“What!” gasped Martha, “’twas yourself—your own self as comed here—I—did think ’twas your sperret. Why whatever made ye walk so queer?”
With a chuckle Sam uplifted a large broad foot protected only by a stocking.
“I thought, ye see,” he explained, “as that there silly Bob ’ud very like be up to some tricks—makin’ believe to appear to ye, or some such thing—so, thinks I to myself, I’ll just bide handy in porch and if he do try it on I’ll pounce out on him.”
“Oh,” said Martha, “why I don’t suppose he knows naught about nothing of the kind.”
“Ye didn’t tell him your grandma’s tale, then?” said Sam, with a note of incredulous delight in his voice.
“N—no,” said Martha—“I didn’t reckon ’twould interes’ him, d’ye see. ’Twas different wi’ you.”
And then Sam laughed long and loud.
“Martha,” he said at last, “I take back all as I said agen this here old custom—I can see as there be sense in it. Ah, a deal o’ sense in it. My sperret, d’ye see, was very anxious to come to ’ee, Martha—that anxious that it did take the rest o’ me along wi’ it. I shouldn’t wonder if the rest of the tale was to come true too—about gettin’ married soon arter, ye know.”
“P’r’aps I’ll have summat to say about that,” tittered Martha coyly.
“Ye can’t say nothin’ but the one thing,” returned Sam triumphantly. “’Twouldn’t be lucky!”
