The Ghost Ship - Richard Middleton
The room behind him was getting dark, but outside the sky seemed to
be growing lighter, and mother still stooped from bed to bed, moving
placidly, like a cow. Sometimes she put the watering-pot down on the
gravel path, and bent to uproot a microscopic weed or to pull the
head off a dead flower. Sometimes she went to the well to get some
more water, and then Jack was sorry that he had been shut indoors,
for he liked letting the pail down with a run and hearing it bump
against the brick sides. Once he tapped upon the window for
permission to come out, but mother shook her head vigorously without
turning round; and yet his stockings were hardly wet at all.
Suddenly mother straightened herself, and Jack looked up and saw his
father leaning over the gate. He seemed to be making grimaces, and
Jack made haste to laugh aloud in the empty room, because he knew
that he was good at seeing his father's jokes. Indeed it was a funny
thing that father should come home early from work and make faces at
mother from the road. Mother, too, was willing to join in the fun,
for she knelt down among the wet flowers, and as her head drooped
lower and lower it looked, for one ecstatic moment, as though she
were going to turn head over heels. But she lay quite still on the
ground, and father came half-way through the gate, and then turned
and ran off down the hill towards the station. Jack stood in the
window, clapping his hands and laughing; it was a strange game, but
not much harder to understand than most of the amusements of the
grown-up people.
And then as nothing happened, as mother did not move and father did
not come back, Jack grew frightened. The garden was queer and the
room was full of darkness, so he beat on the window to change the
game. Then, since mother did not shake her head, he ran out into the
garden, smiling carefully in case he was being silly. First he went
to the gate, but father was quite small far down the road, so he
turned back and pulled the sleeve of his mother's dress, to wake her.
After a dreadful while mother got up off the ground with her skirt
all covered with wet earth. Jack tried to brush it off with his hands
and made a mess of it, but she did not seem to notice, looking across
the garden with such a desolate face, that when he saw it he burst
into tears. For once mother let him cry himself out without seeking
to comfort him; when he sniffed dolefully, his nostrils were full of
the scent of crushed marigolds. He could not help watching her hands
through his tears; it seemed as though they were playing together at
cat's-cradle; they were not still for a moment. But it was her face
that at once frightened and interested him. One minute it looked
smooth and white as if she was very cross, and the next minute it was
gathered up in little folds as if she was going to sneeze. Deep down
in him something chuckled, and he jumped for fear that the cross part
of her had heard it. At intervals during the evening, while mother
was getting him his supper, this chuckle returned to him, between
unnoticed fits of crying. Once she stood holding a plate in the
middle of the room for quite five minutes, and he found it hard to
control his mirth. If father had been there they would have had good
fun together, teasing mother, but by himself he was not sure of his
ground. And father did not come back, and mother did not seem to hear
his questions.
He had some tomatoes and rice-pudding for his supper, and as mother
left him to help himself to brown sugar he enjoyed it very much,
carefully leaving the skin of the rice-pudding to the last, because
that was the part he liked best. After supper he sat nodding at the
open window, looking out over the plum-trees to the sky beyond, where
the black clouds were putting out the stars one by one. The garden
smelt stuffy, but it was nice to be allowed to sit up when you felt
really sleepy. On the whole he felt that it had been a pleasant,
exciting sort of day, though once or twice mother had frightened him
by looking so strange. There had been other mysterious days in his
life, however; perhaps he was going to have another little dead
sister. Presently he discovered that it was delightful to shut your
eyes and nod your head and pretend that you were going to sleep; it
was like being in a swing that went up and up and never came down
again. It was like being in a rowing-boat on the river after a
steamer had gone by. It was like lying in a cradle under a lamplit
ceiling, a cradle that rocked gently to and fro while mother sang
far-away songs.
He was still a baby when he woke up, and he slipped off his chair
and staggered blindly across the room to his mother, with his
knuckles in his eyes like a little, little boy. He climbed into her
lap and settled himself down with a grunt of contentment. There was
a mutter of thunder in his ears, and he felt great warm drops of
rain falling on his face. And into his dreams he carried the dim
consciousness that the thunderstorm had begun.
II
The next morning at breakfast-time father had not come back, and
mother said a lot of things that made Jack feel very uncomfortable.
She herself had taught him that any one who said bad things about
his father was wicked, but now it seemed that she was trying to tell
him something about father that was not nice. She spoke so slowly
that he hardly understood a word she said, though he gathered that
father had stolen something, and would be put in prison if he was
caught. With a guilty pang he remembered his own dealings with his
money-box, and he determined to throw away the rest of the sweets
when, nobody was looking. Then mother made the astounding statement
that he was not to go to school that day, but his sudden joy was
checked a little when she said he was not to go out at all, except
into the back garden. It seemed to Jack that he must be ill, but
when he made this suggestion to mother, she gave up her explanations
with a sigh. Afterwards she kept on saying aloud, "I must think, I
must think!" She said it so often that Jack started keeping count on
his fingers.
The day went slowly enough, for the garden was wet after the
thunderstorm, and mother would not play any games. Just before
tea-time two gentlemen called and talked to mother in the
parlour, and after a while they sent for Jack to answer some
questions about father, though mother was there all the time.
They seemed nice gentlemen, but mother did not ask them to stop
to tea, as Jack expected. He thought that perhaps she was sorry
that she had not done so, for she was very sad all tea-time, and
let him spread his own bread and jam. When tea was over things
were very dull, and at last Jack started crying because there
was nothing else to do. Presently he heard a little noise and
found that mother was crying as well. This seemed to him so
extraordinary that he stopped crying to watch her; the tears ran
down her cheeks very quickly, and she kept on wiping them away
with her handkerchief, but if she held her handkerchief to her
eyes perhaps they would not be able to come out at all. It
occurred to him that possibly she was sorry she had said, wicked
things about father, and to comfort her, for it made him feel
fidgety to see her cry, he whispered to her that he would not
tell. But she stared at him hopelessly through her red eyelids,
and he felt that he had not said the right thing. She called him
her poor boy, and yet it appeared that he was not ill. It was
all very mysterious and uncomfortable, and it would be a good
thing when father came back and everything went on as before,
even though he had to go back to school.
Later on the woman from the mill came in to sit with mother. She
brought Jack some sweets, but instead of playing with him she burst
into tears. She made more noise when she cried than mother; in fact
he was afraid that in a minute he would have to laugh at her
snortings, so he went into the parlour and sat there in the dark,
eating his sweets, and knitting his brow over the complexities of
life. He could see five stars, and there was a light behind the red
curtain of the front bedroom at Arber's farm. It was about twelve
times as large as a star, and a much prettier colour. By nearly
closing his eyes he could see everything double, so that there were
ten stars and two red lights; he was trying to make everything come
treble when the gate clicked and he saw his father's shadow. He was
delighted with this happy end to a tiresome day, and as he ran
through the passage he called out to mother to say that father was
back. Mother did not answer, but he heard a bit of noise in the
kitchen as he opened the front door.
He said "Good evening" in the grown-up voice that father encouraged,
but father slipped in and shut the door without saying a word. Every
night when he came back from the post-office he brought Jack the
gummed edgings off the sheets of stamps, and Jack held out his hand
for them as a matter of course. Automatically father felt in his
overcoat pocket and pulled out a great handful. "Take care of them,
they're the last you'll get," he said; but when Jack asked why, his
father looked at him with the same hopeless expression that he had
found in his mother's eyes a short while before. Jack felt a little
cross that every one should be so stupid.
When they went into the kitchen everybody looked very strange, and
Jack sat down in the corner and listened for an explanation. As a
rule the conversation of the grown-up people did not amuse him, but
tonight he felt that something had happened, and that if he kept
quiet he might find out what it was. He had noticed before that when
the grown-ups talked they always said the same things over and over
again, and now they were worse than usual. Father said, "It's no
good, I've got to go through it;" the mill-woman said, "Whatever made
you do it, George?" And mother said, "Nothing will ever happen to me
again!" They all went on saying these things till Jack grew tired of
listening, and started plaiting his stamp-paper into a mat. If you
did it very neatly it was almost as good as an ordinary sheet of
paper by the time you had finished. By and by, while he was still at
work, the mill-woman brought him his supper on a plate, and raising
his head he saw that father and mother were sitting close together,
looking at each other, and saying nothing at all. He was very
disappointed that although father had come home they had not had any
jokes all the evening, and as they were all so dull he did not very
much mind being sent to bed when he had finished his supper. When he
said good-night to father, he noticed that his boots were very muddy,
as if he had walked a long way like a common postman. He made a joke
about this, but they all looked at him as if he had said something
wrong, so he hurried out of the room, glad to get away from these
people whose looks had no reasonable significance, and whose words
had no discoverable meaning. It had been a bad day, and he hoped
mother would let him go back to school the next morning.
And yet though he took off his clothes and got into bed, the day was
not quite over. He had only dozed for a few minutes when he was
roused by a noise down below, and slipping out on to the staircase he
heard the mill-woman saying good-night in the passage. When she had
gone and the door had banged behind her, he listened still, and heard
his mother crying and his father talking on and on in a strange,
hoarse voice. Somehow these incomprehensible sounds made him feel
lonely, and he would have liked to have gone downstairs and sat on
his mother's lap and blinked drowsily in his father's face, as he had
done often enough before. But he was always shy in the presence of
strangers, and he felt that he did not know this woman who wept and
this man who did not laugh. His father was his play-friend, the
sharer of all his fun; his mother was a quiet woman who sat and
sewed, and sometimes told them not to be silly, which was the best
joke of all. It was not right for people to alter. But the thought of
his bedroom made him desolate, and at last he plucked up his courage,
and crept downstairs on bare feet. Father and mother had gone back
into the kitchen, and he peeped through the crack of the door to see
what they were doing. Mother was still crying, always crying, but he
had to change his position before he could see father. Then he turned
on his heels and ran upstairs trembling with fear and disgust. For
father, the man of all the jokes, the man of whom burglars were
afraid and compared with whom all other little boys' fathers were as
dirt, was crying like a little girl.
He jumped into bed and pulled the bedclothes over his face to shut
out the ugliness of the world.
III
When Jack woke up the next morning he found that the room was full of
sunshine, and that father was standing at the end of the bed. The
moment Jack opened his eyes, he began telling him something in a
serious voice, which was alone sufficient to prevent Jack from
understanding what he said. Besides, he used a lot of long words, and
Jack thought that it was silly to use long words before breakfast,
when nobody could be expected to remember what they meant. Father's
body neatly fitted the square of the window, and the sunbeams shone
in all round it and made it look splendid; and if Jack had not
already forgotten the unfortunate impression of the night before,
this would have enabled him to overcome it. Every now and then father
stopped to ask him if he understood, and he said he did, hoping to
find out what it was all about later on. It seemed, however, that
father was not going to the post-office any more, and this caused
Jack to picture a series of delightfully amusing days. When father
had finished talking he appeared to expect Jack to say something, but
Jack contented himself with trying to look interested, for he knew
that it was always very stupid of little boys not to understand
things they didn't understand. In reality he felt as if he had been
listening while his father argued aloud with himself, talking up and
down like an earthquake map.
At breakfast they were still subdued, but afterwards, as the morning
wore on, father became livelier and helped Jack to build a hut in
the back garden. They built it of bean-sticks against the wall at the
end, and father broke up a packing-case to get planks for the roof.
Only mother still had a sad face, and it made Jack angry with her,
that she should be such a spoil-fun. After dinner, while Jack was
playing in the hut, Mr. Simmons, of the police-station, and another
gentleman called to take father for a walk, and Jack went down to the
front to see them off. Jack knew Mr. Simmons very well; he had been
to tea with his little boy, but though he thought him a fine sort of
man he could not help feeling proud of his father when he saw them
side by side. Mr. Simmons looked as if he were ashamed of himself,
while father walked along with square shoulders and a high head as if
he had just done something splendid. The other gentleman looked like
nothing at all beside father.
When they were out of sight Jack went into the house and found mother
crying in the kitchen. As he felt more tolerant in his after-dinner
mood, he tried to cheer her up by telling her how fine father had
looked beside the other two men. Mother raised her face, all swollen
and spoilt with weeping, and gazed at her son in astonishment. "They
are taking him to prison," she wailed, "and God knows what will
become of us."
For a moment Jack felt alarmed. Then a thought came to him and he
smiled, like a little boy who has just found a new and delightful
game. "Never mind, mother," he said, "we'll help him to escape."
But mother would not stop crying.
Shepherd's Boy
The path climbed up and up and threatened to carry me over the
highest point of the downs till it faltered before a sudden
outcrop of chalk and swerved round the hill on the level. I was
grateful for the respite, for I had been walking all day and my
knapsack was growing heavy. Above me in the blue pastures of the
skies the cloud-sheep were grazing, with the sun on their snowy
backs, and all about me the grey sheep of earth were cropping
the wild pansies that grew wherever the chalk had won a covering
of soil.
Presently I came upon the shepherd standing erect by the path, a
tall, spare man with a face that the sun and the wind had robbed of
all expression. The dog at his feet looked more intelligent than he.
"You've come up from the valley," he said as I passed; "perhaps
you'll have seen my boy?"
"I'm sorry, I haven't," I said, pausing.
"Sorrow breaks no bones," he muttered, and strode away with his dog
at his heels. It seemed to me that the dog was apologetic for his
master's rudeness.
I walked on to the little hill-girt village, where I had made up my
mind to pass the night. The man at the village shop said he would put
me up, so I took off my knapsack and sat down on a sackful of cattle
cake while the bacon was cooking.
"If you came over the hill, you'll have met shepherd," said the man,
"and he'll have asked you for his boy."
"Yes, but I hadn't seen him."
The shopman nodded. "There are clever folk who say you can see him,
and clever folk who say you can't. The simple ones like you and me,
we say nothing, but we don't see him. Shepherd hasn't got no boy."
"What! is it a joke?"
"Well, of course it may be," said the shop-man guardedly, "though I
can't say I've heard many people laughing at it yet. You see,
shepherd's boy he broke his neck. . . .
"That was in the days before they built the fence above the big
chalk-pit that you passed on your left coming down. A dangerous
place it used to be for the sheep, so shepherd's boy he used to lie
along there to stop them dropping into it, while shepherd's dog he
stopped them from going too far. And shepherd he used to come down
here and have his glass, for he took it then like you or me. He's
blue ribbon now.
"It was one night when the mists were out on the hills, and maybe
shepherd had had a glass too much, or maybe he got a bit lost in the
smoke. But when he went up there to bring them home, he starts
driving them into the pit as straight as could be. Shepherd's boy he
hollered out and ran to stop them, but four-and-twenty of them went
over, and the lad he went with them. You mayn't believe me, but five
of them weren't so much as scratched, though it's a sixty feet drop.
Likely they fell soft on top of the others. But shepherd's boy he was
done.
"Shepherd he's a bit spotty now, and most times he thinks the boy's
still with him. And there are clever folk who'll tell you that
they've seen the boy helping shepherd's dog with the sheep. That
would be a ghost now, I shouldn't wonder. I've never seen it, but
then I'm simple, as you might say.
"But I've had two boys myself, and it seems to me that a boy like
that, who didn't eat and didn't get into mischief, and did his work,
would be the handiest kind of boy to have about the place."
The Passing of Edward
I found Dorothy sitting sedately on the beach, with a mass of black
seaweed twined in her hands and her bare feet sparkling white in the
sun. Even in the first glow of recognition I realised that she was
paler than she had been the summer before, and yet I cannot blame
myself for the tactlessness of my question.
"Where's Edward?" I said; and I looked about the sands for a sailor
suit and a little pair of prancing legs.
While I looked Dorothy's eyes watched mine inquiringly, as if she
wondered what I might see.
"Edward's dead," she said simply. "He died last year, after you
left."
For a moment I could only gaze at the child in silence, and ask
myself what reason there was in the thing that had hurt her so. Now
that I knew that Edward played with her no more, I could see that
there was a shadow upon her face too dark for her years, and that she
had lost, to some extent, that exquisite carelessness of poise which
makes children so young. Her voice was so calm that I might have
thought her forgetful had I not seen an instant of patent pain in her
wide eyes.
"I'm sorry," I said at length "very, very, sorry indeed. I had
brought down my car to take you for a drive, as I promised."
"Oh! Edward _would_ have liked that," she answered thoughtfully; "he
was so fond of motors." She swung round suddenly and looked at the
sands behind her with staring eyes.
"I thought I heard--" she broke off in confusion.
I, too, had believed for an instant that I had heard something
that was not the wind or the distant children or the smooth sea
hissing along the beach. During that golden summer which linked
me with the dead, Edward had been wont, in moments of elation,
to puff up and down the sands, in artistic representation of a
nobby, noisy motor-car. But the dead may play no more, and there
was nothing there but the sands and the hot sky and Dorothy.
"You had better let me take you for a run, Dorothy," I said. "The man
will drive, and we can talk as we go along."
She nodded gravely, and began pulling on her sandy stockings.
"It did not hurt him," she said inconsequently.
The restraint in her voice pained me like a blow.
"Oh, don't, dear, don't!" I cried, "There is nothing to do but
forget."
"I have forgotten, quite," she answered, pulling at her shoe-laces
with calm fingers. "It was ten months ago."
We walked up to the front, where the car was waiting, and Dorothy
settled herself among the cushions with a little sigh of contentment,
the human quality of which brought me a certain relief. If only she
would laugh or cry! I sat down by her side, but the man waited by the
open door.
"What is it?" I asked.
"I'm sorry, sir," he answered, looking about him in confusion, "I
thought I saw a young gentleman with you."
He shut the door with a bang, and in a minute we were running through
the town. I knew that Dorothy was watching my face with her wounded
eyes; but I did not look at her until the green fields leapt up on
either side of the white road.
"It is only for a little while that we may not see him," I said; "all
this is nothing."
"I have forgotten," she repeated. "I think this is a very nice
motor."
I had not previously complained of the motor, but I was wishing then
that it would cease its poignant imitation of a little dead boy, a
boy who would play no more. By the touch of Dorothy's sleeve against
mine I knew that she could hear it too. And the miles flew by, green
and brown and golden, while I wondered what use I might be in the
world, who could not help a child to forget, Possibly there was
another way, I thought.
"Tell me how it happened," I said.
Dorothy looked at me with inscrutable eyes, and spoke in a voice
without emotion.
"He caught a cold, and was very ill in bed. I went in to see him,
and he was all white and faded. I said to him, `How are you Edward?'
and he said, `I shall get up early in the morning to catch beetles.'
I didn't see him any more."
"Poor little chap!" I murmured.
"I went to the funeral," she continued monotonously, "It was very
rainy, and I threw a little bunch of flowers down into the hole.
There was a whole lot of flowers there; but I think Edward liked
apples better than flowers."
"Did you cry?" I said cruelly.
She paused. "I don't know. I suppose so. It was a long time ago; I
think I have forgotten."
Even while she spoke I heard Edward puffing along the sands: Edward
who had been so fond of apples.
"I cannot stand this any longer," I said aloud. "Let's get out and
walk in the woods for a change."
She agreed, with a depth of comprehension that terrified me; and the
motor pulled up with a jerk at a spot where hardly a post served to
mark where the woods commenced and the wayside grass stopped. We took
one of the dim paths which the rabbits had made and forced our way
through the undergrowth into the peaceful twilight of the trees.
"You haven't got very sunburnt this year," I said as we walked.
"I don't know why. I've been out on the beach all the days.
Sometimes I've played, too."
I did not ask her what games she had played, or who had been her
play-friend. Yet even there in the quiet woods I knew that Edward was
holding her back from me. It is true that, in his boy's way, he had
been fond of me; but I should not have dared to take her out without
him in the days when his live lips had filled the beach with song,
and his small brown body had danced among the surf. Now it seemed
that I had been disloyal to him.
And presently we came to a clearing where the leaves of forgotten
years lay brown and rotten beneath our feet, and the air was full of
the dryness of death.
"Let's be going back. What do you think, Dorothy?" I said.
"I think," she said slowly,--"I think that this would be a very good
place to catch beetles."
A wood is full of secret noises, and that is why, I suppose, we
heard a pair of small quick feet come with a dance of triumph
through the rustling bracken. For a minute we listened deeply, and
then Dorothy broke from my side with a piercing call on her lips.