When Ghost Meets Ghost Part 9

The sergeant, Ibbetson, was drowned, and the facts narrated are taken literally, or inferred, from what came out at the inquest. The theory that recommended itself to account for his conduct was that he had recognised a culprit whom he had known formerly, for whose apprehension a reward had been offered, and had, without hesitation, formed a plan of separating him from his companion--or companions, for who could say they were alone?--and securing him in the boat, when no escape would have been possible, as they could have made straight for the floating station at Westminster. It was a daring idea, and might have succeeded but for that mooring-cable.

The body of the sergeant showed marks of the severity of the struggle in which he had been engaged. The two upper front teeth were loosened, probably by the blow he received at the outset, and there were finger-nail dents on the throat as from the grasp of a strangling hand.

That his opponent should have disengaged himself from his clutch was matter of extreme surprise to all who had experienced submersion, and knew its meaning. Even to those who have never been under water against their will, the phrase "the grip of a drowning man" has a terribly convincing sound. That this opponent rose to the surface alive, and escaped, was barely entertained as a surmise, only to be dismissed as incredible; and this improbability became even greater when his companion was captured alone, a month later, in the commission of a burglary at Castelnau, which--so it was supposed--the two had been discussing just before the police-boat appeared. The two rowers were rescued, one, a powerful swimmer, having kept the other afloat till the arrival of help. At the inquest neither of these men seemed as much concerned at Ibbetson's death as might have been expected, and both condemned afterwards that officer's treacherous grip of the hand extended to help him. Whatever he knew to his proposed prisoner's disadvantage, there are niceties of honour in these matters--little chivalries all should observe.

The only evidence towards establishing the ident.i.ty of the man who had disappeared was that of the stroke-oar, Simeon Rowe, the rescuer of his companion. This man's version of Ibbetson's exclamation was "Thorney Davenant!--I know you, my man!" At the time of the inquest, no identification was made with any name whose owner was being sought by the Police, so no one caught the clue it furnished. There may have been slowness or laxity of investigation, but a sufficient excuse may lie in the fact that Ibbetson certainly spoke the name wrong, or that his hearer caught it wrong. The name was not Davenant, but Daverill. He was the son of old Mrs. Prichard, of Sapps Court, called after his father, and inheriting all his worst qualities. If Sergeant Ibbetson spoke truly when he said "I know you!" to him, he was certainly ent.i.tled to a suspension of opinion by those who condemned his ruse for this man's capture.

Still, a code of honour is always respectable, and these two policemen may have supposed that their mate knew no worse of this convict than that he had redistributed some property--was what the first holder of that property would have called a thief. One prefers to think that Ibbetson knew of some less equivocal wickedness.

Perhaps this man, supposed to be drowned, would not have reappeared in this story had it not been for one of the witnesses at the inquest, the boy who overheard the conversation between him and his mate, before the arrival of the police-boat.

"This boy," said the Coroner's clerk, who seemed to have an impression that this was a State Prosecution, and that he represented the Crown, "can give evidence as to a conversation between the"--he wanted to say "the accused"; it would have sounded so well, but he stopped himself in time--"between the man whose body has not been found, and"--here he would have liked to say "an accomplice"--"and another person who has eluded the ... that is to say, whom the police have, so far, failed to identify ..."

"That's all right," said the Coroner. "That'll do. Boy's got something he can tell us. What's your name, my man?"

"Wot use are you a-going to make of it?" said the boy. He did not appear to be over twelve years old, but his a.s.surance could not have been greater had he been twelve score. A reporter put a dot on his paper, which meant "Laughter, in which the Coroner joined, in a parenthesis."

An old woman who had accompanied the boy, as tutelary genius, held up a warning finger at him. "Now, you Micky," said she, "you speak civil to the gentleman and answer his questions accordin'." She then said to the Coroner, as one qualified to explain the position:--"It's only his manners, sir, and the boy has not a rebellious spirit being my grandnephew." She utilised a lax structure of speech to introduce her relationship to the witness. She was evidently proud of being related to one, having probably met with few opportunities of distinction hitherto.

The witness, under the pressure at once of family influence and const.i.tuted authority, appeared to give up the point. "'Ave it your own way!" said he. "Michael Ragstroar."

"How am I to spell it?" said the clerk, without taking his pen out of the ink, as though it would dry in the air.

"This ain't school!" said our young friend from Sapps Court, whom you probably remember. Michael had absconded from his home, and sought that of his great-aunt; the only person, said contemporary opinion, that had a hounce of influence with him. It was not clear why such a confirmed reprobate should quail before the moral force of a small old woman in a mysteriously clean print-dress, and tortoise-sh.e.l.l spectacles she would gladly have kept on while charing, only they always come off in the pail. But he did, and when reproached by her for his needlessly defiant att.i.tude, took up a more conciliatory tone. "Carn't recollect, or p'r'aps I'd tell yer," said he.

"Never mind the spelling!" said the Coroner, who had to preside at another inquest at Kew very shortly. "Let's get the young man's evidence." But Michael objected to giving evidence. Whereupon the Coroner, perceiving his mistake, said: "Well, then, suppose we let it alone for to-day. You may go home, Micky, and find out how your name's spelt, against next time it's wanted. Where's the other boy that heard what the men were saying? Call him."

"There warn't any other boy within half a mile," exclaimed Michael indignantly. "I should have seen him. Think I've got no eyes? There warn't another blooming bloke in sight."

"Didn't the other boy see several other men in the back-garden of the ale-house?" said the Coroner. And the Inspector of Police had the effrontery to reply: "Oh yes, three or four!" And then both of them looked at Michael, and waited.

Michael's indignation pa.s.sed all bounds, and betrayed him into the use of language of which his great-aunt would have deemed him incapable. She was that shocked, she never! The expressions were not Michael's own vocabulary at all, but corruptions that had crept into his phraseology from a.s.sociations with other boys, chance acquaintances, who had evolved them among themselves, nourishing them from the corruption of their own hearts. As soon as Michael--deceived by the mendacious dialogue of the Coroner and the Inspector, and under the impression that the particulars he was giving, whether true or false, were not evidence--had told with some colouring about the two men in the garden and what they said, the old lady made a powerful effort to detain the Coroner to give him particulars of Michael's parentage and education, and to exculpate herself from any possible charge of neglecting her grandnephew, to whom she was a second parent. In fact, had her niece Ann never married Daniel Rackstraw, she and her--Ann, that is--would have done much better by Michael and his sisters. Which left a false impression on her hearers'

minds, that Michael was an illegitimate son; whereas really she was only dealing with his existence as rooted in the nature of things, and certain to have come about without the intrusion of a male parent in the family.

As for the details of his testimony, surrendered unconsciously as mere facts, not evidence, there was little in them that has not been already told. The conversation of the two men, as given in the text, was taken from Michael's version, and he was the only hearer. But he only saw their backs, except that when the struggle came off he caught sight of the ex-convict's face for a moment. He would know him again if he saw him any day of the week. Some days, he seemed to imply, were worse for his powers of identification than others. It was unimportant, as both the survivors of the accident had noted the man's face carefully enough, considering that he was to them at first nothing beyond a chance bystander. He wasn't a bad-looking man; that was clear. But he was possibly not in very good drawing, as they agreed that he had a peculiarity--his two halves didn't square. This no doubt referred to the same thing Michael described by calling him "a sideways beggar."

The Coroner's Jury had some trouble to agree upon a verdict. "Death by Misadventure" seemed wrong somehow. How could drowning with the finger-nails of an adversary in his throat be accounted misadventure? No doubt Abel died by misadventure, in a sense. But no other verdict seemed possible, except Manslaughter by the person whom Ibbetson supposed this man to be when he laid hands on him. And how if he was mistaken?

"Manslaughter against some person unknown" sounded well. Only if the person was unknown, why Manslaughter? If Brown is ever so much justified in dragging Smith under water by the honest belief that he is Jones, is Smith guilty of anything but self-defence when he does his best to get out of Brown's clutches? Moreover, the annals of life-saving from drowning show that the only chance of success for the rescuer often depends on whether the drowning man can be made insensible or overpowered. Otherwise, death for both. If this unknown man was _not_ the object of Police interest he was supposed to have been taken for, he might only have been doing his best to save the lives of both. In that case, had the inquest been on both, the verdict must have been one that would ascribe Justifiable Homicide to him and Manslaughter to Ibbetson.

For surely if the police-sergeant had been the survivor, and the other man's body had been found to be that of some inoffensive citizen, Ibbetson would have been tried for manslaughter. In the end a verdict was agreed upon of Death by Drowning, which everybody knew as soon as it was certain that Life was extinct.

Somewhat later Ibbetson was supposed to have taken him for a returned convict, whose name was variously given, but who had been advertised for as Thornton, one of his aliases; and in consequence of this discovery the vigilance of the Police for the apprehension of the missing man, under this name, was increased and the reward doubled. And this, in spite of a universal inference that he was dead, and that his body was flavouring whitebait below bridge. This did not interfere with a belief on the part of the crew of the patrolling boat--known to Michael--owing to a popular chant of boys of his own age--as "two blackbeetles and one water-rat," that his corpse would float up one day near the place of his disappearance. But their eyes looked for it in vain; and though the companion with whom he was discussing the burglary to be executed at Barn Elms was caught _in flagrante delicto_ and sent to Portland Island, nothing was heard of him or known of his whereabouts.

Michael ended his stay with his great-aunt shortly afterwards, returning home with a budget of legends founded on his waterside experience. As he had a reputation for audacious falsehood without foundation, it is no matter of surprise that the whole story of the water-rat's death and the inquest were looked upon as exaggerations too outrageous for belief even by the most credulous. Probably his version of the incidents, owing to its rich substratum of the marvellous yet true, was much more accurate than was usual with him when the marvellous depended on his ingenuity to provide it. It was, however, roundly discredited in his own circle, and nothing in it could have evoked recognition in Sapps Court even if the name of the convict had reached the ears that knew it. For it was not only wrongly reported but was still further distorted by Michael for purposes of astonishment.

CHAPTER X

OF THE EARLDOM OF ANCESTER, AND ITS EARL'S COUNTESS'S OPINION OF HIM. HOW HER SECOND DAUGHTER CAME OUT IN THE GARDEN. HOW SHE SAW A TRESPa.s.sER, WITH SUCH A NICE DOG! HE MUSTN'T BE SHOT, _COUTE QUE COUTE_! A LITTLE STONE BRIDGE. A SLIT IN A DOG'S COLLAR. OLD MICHAEL'S OBSTINACY. HOW GWENDOLEN RAN AWAY TO DRESS, AND WAS UNSOCIABLE AT DINNER. THE VOICE OF A DOG IN TROUBLE. ACHILLES, AND HIS RECOGNITION. HOW THEY FOLLOWED ACHILLES, AT HIS OWN REQUEST, AND WHAT HE SHOWED THE WAY TO. BUT THE MAN WAS NOT DEAD

If a stranger from America or Australia could have been shown at a glance all that went to make up the Earldom of Ancester, he would have been deeply impressed. All the leagues of parkland, woodland, moorland, farmland that were its inheritance would have impressed him, not because of their area--because Americans and Australians are accustomed to mere crude area in their own departments of the planet--but because of the amazing amount of old-world History transacted within its limits; the way the antecedent Earls meddled in it; their magnificent record of treachery and bloodshed and murder; wholesale in battle, retail in less showy, but perhaps even more interesting, private a.s.sa.s.sination; fascinating cruelties and horrors unspeakable! They might have been impressed also, though, of course, in a less degree, by the Earldom's very creditable show of forbears who, at the risk of being uninteresting, behaved with common decency, and did their duty in the station to which G.o.d or Debrett had called them; not drawing the sword to decide a dispute until they had tried one or two of the less popular expedients, and slighting their obligations to the Melodrama of the future. Which rightly looks for its supplies of copy to persons of high birth and low principles.

The present Earl took after his less mediaeval ancestry; and though he received the sanction of his wife, and of persons who knew about things, it was always conceded to him with a certain tone of allowance made for a simple and pastoral nature. In the vulgarest tongue it might have been said that he would never cut a dash. In his wife's it was said that really the Earl was one of the most admirable of men, only never intended by Providence for the Lord-Lieutenancy of a County. He was scarcely to blame, therefore, for his shortcomings in that position. It could not rank as one to which G.o.d had called him, without imputing instability, or an oversight, to his summoner. As a summons from Debrett, there is no doubt he was not so attentive to it as he ought to have been.

His own opinion about the intentions of Providence was that they had been frustrated--by Debrett chiefly. If they had fructified he would have been the Librarian of the Bodleian. Providence also had in view for him a marvellous collection of violins, unlimited Chinese porcelain, and some very choice samples of Italian majolica. But he would have been left to the undisturbed enjoyment of his treasures. He could have pa.s.sed a peaceful life gloating over Pynsons and Caxtons, and Wynkyn de Wordes, and Grolier binding, and Stradivarius, and Guarnerius, and Ming, and Maestro Giorgio of Gubbio. But Debrett got wind of the intentions of Providence, and clapped a coronet upon the head of their intended _beneficiaire_ without so much as with your leave or by your leave, and there he was--an Earl! He had all that mere possessions could bestow, but always with a sense that Debrett, round the corner, was keeping an eye on him. He had to a.s.suage that gentleman--or principle, or lexicon, or a.n.a.lysis, whatever he is!--and he did it, though rather grudgingly, to please his Countess, and from a general sense that when a duty is a bore, it ought to be complied with. His Countess was the handsome lady with the rings whom Dave Wardle had taken for a drive in her own carriage.

This sidelight on the Earl is as much illumination as the story wants, for the moment. The sidelight on the terrace of Ancester Towers, at the end of a day in July following the winter of Dave's accident, was no more than the Towers thought their due after standing out all day against a grey sky, in a drift of warm, small rain that made oilskins and mackintoshes an inevitable Purgatory inside; and beds of lakes, when horizontal, outside. It was a rainbow-making gleam at the end of thirty-six depressing hours, bursting through a cloud-rift in the South with the exclamation--the Poet might have imagined--"Make the most of me while you can; I shan't last."

To make the most of it was the clear duty of the owner of a golden head of hair like that of Lady Gwendolen, the Earl's second daughter. So she brought the head out into the rainbow dazzle, with the hair on it, almost before the rain stopped; and, indeed, braved a shower of jewels the rosebush at the terrace window drenched her with, coming out. What did it matter?--when it was so hot in spite of the rain. Besides, India muslin dries so quick. It isn't like woollen stuff.

If you could look back half a century and see Gwendolen on the terrace then, you would not be grateful to any contemporary malicious enough to murmur in your ear:--"Old Lady Blank, the octogenarian, who died last week, was this girl then. So reflect upon what the conventions are quite in earnest--for once--in calling your latter end." You would probably dodge the subject, replying--for instance--"How funny! Why, it must have taken twelve yards to make a skirt like that!" For these were the days of crinolines; of hair in cabbage-nets, packed round rubber-inflations; of what may be called proto-croquet, with hoops so large that no one ever failed to get through, except you and me; the days when _Ah che la morte_ was the last new tune, and Landseer and Mulready the last words in Art. They were the days when there had been but one Great Exhibition--think of it!--and the British Fleet could still get under canvas. We, being an old fogy, would so much like to go back to those days--to think of daguerreotypes as a stupendous triumph of Science, balloons as indigenous to Cremorne, and table-turning as a nine-days'

wonder; in a word, to feel our biceps with satisfaction in an epoch when wheels went slow, folk played tunes, and n.o.body had appendicitis. But we can't!

However, it is those very days into which the story looks back and sees this girl with the golden hair, who has been waiting in that rainbow-glory fifty years ago for it to go on and say what it may of what followed. She comes out on the terrace through the high middle-window that opens on it, and now she stands in the blinding gleam, shading her eyes with her hand. It is late in July, and one may listen for a blackbird's note in vain. That song in the ash that drips a diamond-shower on the soaked lawn, whenever the wind breathes, may still be a thrush; his last song, perhaps, about his second family, before he retires for the season. The year we thought would last us out so well, for all we wished to do in it, will fail us at our need, and we shall find that the summer we thought was Spring's success will be Autumn, much too soon, as usual. Over half a century of years have pa.s.sed since then, and each has played off its trick upon us. Each Spring has said to us:--"Now is your time for life. Live!" and each Summer has jilted us and left us to be consoled by Autumn, a Job's comforter who only says:--"Make the best of me while you can, for close upon my heels is Winter."

You can still see the terrace much as this young woman, Lady Gwendolen Rivers--that was her name--saw it on that July evening, provided always that you choose one with such another rainbow. There is not much garden between it and the Park, which goes on for miles, and begins at the sunk fence over yonder. They are long miles too, and no stint; and it is an hour's walk from the great gate to the house, unless you run; so says the host of the Rivers Arms, which is ten minutes from the gate. You can lose yourself in this park, and there are red-deer as well as fallow-deer; and what is more, wild cattle who are dangerous, and who have lived on as a race from the days of Welsh Home Rule, and know nothing about London or English History. Even so in the Transvaal it is said that some English scouts came upon a peaceful valley with a settlement of Dutch farmers therein, who had to be told about the War to check their embarra.s.sing hospitality. The parallel fails, however, for the wild white cattle of Ancester Park paw the earth up and charge, when they see strangers. The railway had to go round another way to keep their little sc.r.a.p of ancient forest intact; for the family at the Castle has always taken the part of the bulls against all comers. Little does Urus know how superficial, how skin-deep, his loneliness has become--that he is really under tutelage unawares, and even surrept.i.tiously helped to supplies of forage in seasons of dearth! Will his race linger on and outlive the race of Man when that biped has sh.e.l.led and torpedoed and dynamited himself out of existence? And will they then fill the newest New Forest that will have covered the smokeless land, with the descendants of the herds that Caesar's troops found in the Hercynian wilds? They are a fascinating subject for a wandering pen, but the one that writes this must not be led away from Lady Gwendolen on the terrace that looks across this cramped inheritance of beech and bracken. If she could always look like what the level sun makes her now, in the heart of a rainbow, few things the world can show would outbid her right to a record, or make the penning of it harder.

For just at this moment she looks simply beautiful beyond belief. It is not all the doing of the sunrays, for she is a fine sample of nineteen, of a type which has kindled enthusiasm since the comparatively recent incursion of William the Norman, and will continue to do so till finally dynamited out of existence, _ut supra_.

She is looking out under her hand--to make sight possible against the blaze--at a man who is plodding across the nearest opening in the woodland. How drenched he must be! What can possess him, to choose a day like this to go afoot through an undergrowth of bracken a day's raindrift has left water-charged? She knows well what a deluge meets him at every step, and watches him, pressing through it as one who has felt the worst pure water can do, and is reckless. She watches him into a clear glade, with a sense of relief on his behalf. She does not feel officially called upon to resent a stranger with a dog--in a territory sacred to game!--for the half-overgrown track he seems to have followed is a world of fallow-deer and pheasants. She is the daughter of the house, and trespa.s.sers are the concern of Stephen Solmes the head gamekeeper.

The trespa.s.ser seems at a loss which way to go, and wavers this way and that. His dog stands at his feet looking up at him, wagging a slow tail; deferentially offering no suggestion, but ready with advice if called upon. The young lady's thought is:--"Why can't he let that sweet dog settle it for him? _He_ would find the way." Because she is sure of the sweetness of that collie, even at this distance. Ultimately the trespa.s.ser leaves the matter to the dog, who appears gratified and starts straight for where she stands. Dogs always do, says she to herself. But there is the haw-haw fence between them.

The dog stops. Not because of the obstacle--what does he care for obstacles?--but because of the courtesies of life. The man that made this sunk fence did it to intercept any stray collie in the parkland from scouring across into the terraced garden, even to inaugurate communications between a strange young lady and the n.o.blest of G.o.d's creatures, his owner. That is the dog's view. So he stands where the fence has stopped him, a beseeching explanatory look in his pathetic eyes; and a silky tail, that is nearly dry already, marking time slowly.

A movement of permission would bring him across into the garden; but then--is he not too wet? Young Lady Gwendolen says "No, dear!"

regretfully, and shakes her head as though he would understand the negative. Perhaps he does, for he trots back to his master, who, however--it must be admitted--has whistled for him.

The pedestrian turns to go, but sees the lady well, though not very near her yet. She knows he sees her, as he raises his hat. She has an impression of his personality from the action; which, it may be, guides her conduct in what follows.

He seems to have made up his mind to avoid the house, taking a visible path which skirts it, and possibly to strike away from it into the wider parkland, over yonder where the great oaks are. He is soon lost in a hazel coppice.

Then she thinks. That dog will be shot if Solmes catches sight of it.

She knows old Stephen. Oh, for but one word with the dog's master! It might just make the whole difference.

She does not think long; in fact, there is no time to lose. The man and the dog must pa.s.s over Arthur's Bridge if they follow the path. She can intercept them there by taking a short cut through the Trings; a name with a forgotten origin, which hugs the spot unaccountably. "I wonder what a tring was, and when" says Gwendolen to herself, between those unsolved riddles and the bridge.

The bridge is a little stone bridge, just wide enough for a chaise to go through gently. Gwendolen has soaked her shoes to reach it. Still, she _must_ save that dog from the Ranger's gun at any cost. A fig for the wet! She has to dress for dinner--indeed, her maid is waiting for her now--and dry stockings will be a negligible factor in that great total.

There comes the pedestrian round by Swayne's Oak--another name whose origin no man knows.

The dog catches sight of her, and is off like a shot, his master trying vainly to whistle him back. The young lady is quite at ease--_she_ is not afraid of dogs! She even laughs at this one's demonstrative salute, which leaves a paw-mark on either shoulder. For dogs do not scruple to kiss those they love, without making compliments.

His master is apologetic, coming up with a quickened pace. At a rebuke from him the collie becomes apologetic too; would be glad to explain, but is handicapped by language. He is, however, all repentance, and falls back behind his master, leaving matters in his hands. At the least--though the way of doing it may have been crude--he has brought about an introduction, of a sort.

There is no intrusive wish on the man's part to take undue advantage of it. His speech, "Achilles means well; it is only his cordiality," seems to express the speaker's feeling that somehow he is certain to be understood. His addendum--"I am really as sorry as I can be, all the same"--may be credited to ceremonial courtesy, flavoured with contrition. His wind-up has a sort of laugh behind it:--"Particularly because I have no business in this part of the Park at all. I can only remedy that by my absence."

"You will promise me one thing, if you please...."