Part 17

From then onward unseen hands seemed to guide them; first to their lodgings, thence to the office of the Vicar-General, where they bought a licence—Mamie had stayed in London, and had a residential qualification, it appeared—and next day to the church where they were married. They came out into the street again, and no one knew their secret. They shared the memory of a sacrament taken in the wilderness, where the droning curate and paid witnesses were of small account beside the flame that had fused them into man and wife.... The golden sunlight of that exquisite hour when, hand-in-hand, they faced London was as though made for them; the old heart of the giant city could still rejoice, it seemed, and was ready to crown true lovers, and fold them in mantles of shimmering tissue and cloth of gold. They wandered through leafy squares, and a man stopped them and asked them the way to Bell Yard. Neither of them knew. Had he inquired the road to Paradise they could have told.... They grew hungry at last. Their wedding breakfast was eaten in a restaurant off Hatton Garden. The regular customers of the place, Jews for the most part, and dealers in the staple article of that quarter, smiled the racial smile of genial incredulity as these two entered and found room. But neither Jim nor Mamie had a doubt; for in their eyes that met across the narrow table shone a light more precious and more enduring than that emitted by all the diamonds, rubies, and emeralds of Hatton Garden.... The night found them in Rye, a southern place that Mamie had chosen—she had so often longed to see it.

III

The boy and girl shared everything in those two weeks—pain and bliss, the joy of early morning, the wistfulness of twilight and the first white star. Their money was in one purse; they spent it together, choosing things to eat and drink, or little gifts that would remind them when their hour was come. Over their young heads hung the shadow; they had the courage to outface it; to-morrow was yet distant, and when it dawned they would praise God for what had been, and could never be removed.... They knew all there was to know; and a strange pride thrilled them, a tenderness that neither had foreseen. Love was even greater than their dreams of it and their foreknowledge. The sea’s strength and the land’s strength had tested soul and body, had blessed these two with infinite renewals, an unassailable virginity.

From Rye and Winchelsea they had wandered to Hythe along that coastline, avoiding Dungeness, and pausing at Lydd, New Romney, and Dymchurch with its sands. Each morning they had bathed, and often at sunset; these old places fascinated them, and especially Mamie, who came from Lansing, in the State of Michigan.

“What a lot you know!” he said one day, amazed at her book learning.

“I’m going to be a school teacher,” she laughed back, “and besides, I like it. No, it’s not the history—the dates and things—that fascinates me; but I seem to have been here before,” she explained, adding: “Lots of us Americans feel that way about it—as though—as though——”

“You’d come from here?” he helped her.

“That’s right—as though we’d come from here. And perhaps we have,” she added gaily, finishing with “Our name’s Berridge, so we must have done.”

“I never look upon you as a foreigner,” said he; “at least, I haven’t since——” and he hesitated.

“Since?” she inquired.

“Since I first wanted to kiss you.”

“Do it again!”

Jimmy was quite prepared to take up the challenge, but she had fled. He caught her behind the plump Martello Tower where she was hiding, and did it again. After that they returned to firmer ground, sitting on the beach and looking out over the Channel.

“You must leave that old bank,” began Mamie; “it’s served its purpose.”

“It brought us together.”

“Yes, that’s just it. And now it’s brought us together——”

“We can drop it?” He had seen her point.

“I don’t want you to go on working for them,” she pursued; “I want you to work for us—for me.”

Jimmy nodded. “I’ve thought of that as well,” he answered.

“They give you a wretched salary, and when you’re an old Gazook and nobody wants you, they say, ‘Perhaps it’s time he got married,’ and put you in charge of a little office like that at Seacombe.”

“That’s it,” said Jimmy.

“Banking’s no good in this old country unless you’re somebody’s son, or rich on your own account. But I know what,” she added, brightening.

Jimmy sat up.

“You must get into some regular article like woollens or cottons or manufactured things—a good salesman’s always got a chance.”

“D’you know, I’ve thought of that as well?” cried young Baker. “My brother Tom travels with wholesale groceries, and he’s doing well.”

“If you haven’t got money, you’ve got to make business, and then the firm’s _bound_ to pay you—it can’t help itself. My old uncle was always saying that.”

And so it was resolved that, when Mamie went back to America, Jim should quit the bank and get hold of a “regular article.” Only that way could they two come together again, unless they wished to wait till he had become the “old Gazook” of Mamie’s prophecy.

IV

The day of parting came. He stood on the quay at Liverpool and watched the great boat out of sight. A mist filled his eyes; but when, at last, he turned on his heel and faced reality once more, a courage rose within him, and he resolved to conquer or to perish. He would conquer—conquer—conquer. All the way to London the train seemed to be repeating that burden, seemed to be branding it, stamping it in deep-bitten letters on his heart of hearts. And with that repetition mingled an ineffaceable memory of her and her fine courage. They had kissed good-bye that morning in the room of their hotel, and again in the tiny cabin where there was scarce room to swing a cat. “Believe in me,” he had whispered, her slim body close pressed to his own; and once more “Believe in me, believe in me!”... “If I didn’t believe in you,” she had answered, “I would just drop overboard, and no more said.”... “And if there’s anything else, when you get over there, you’ll tell me?” She had understood him.... “I’ll tell, of course I’ll tell;” and then: “It’s no fun being a woman, is it, Jim?” she had added, with a little laugh.... Now in the train he fed on those last moments, and he would conquer or perish. “Conquer—conquer—conquer,” echoed the on-rushing train.

He was in Seacombe that night, and had given notice next morning. “Got another job?” asked the manager; and “Yes, in London,” answered young Baker. The other seemed to envy him his chance of escape. A month from then, armed with a first-class character and seven pounds in gold, Jimmy set out for the metropolis. He had told his father as much as he dared tell that unromantic old man. He hadn’t been home for his holiday this year, he said, because he wanted to get away somewhere quiet and think about his future. Now he had come to a decision. Unless one had capital or influence, banking was no good; for a poor man it was best to learn about some staple article like woollens or cotton or coal, and stick to that. His father said: “We’ll see,” and the rest of that week-end passed much as usual.... “D’you know, I think you’re right?” said the old man on the Monday morning; “I never thought much of that banking, but your mother says it’s a genteel trade, almost like parsoning or being a lawyer.”

Jim Baker went up to London, and these West-Country folk being a sturdy stock, no one at home, or even at Seacombe, had any doubt but that he would find a living. Mamie, meanwhile, had removed to Buffalo, New York, and had there begun her school teaching. Letters came and went; at first by every post, then not quite so often, and at last it was agreed that, when there was nothing of any consequence to say, a post-card would be enough. “I don’t want you to be _worried_ by all this,” wrote Mamie; “you’ve got your work to do, and I guess I’ve got mine.” Sometimes to the romantic youth she seemed the least bit hard-hearted. He mustn’t let the thought of her hinder him, she insisted; yet often she wrote two letters to his one.

Baker’s business hours were spent in looking for the staple article. He tried several before he dropped on to his feet; cocoa to begin with, then clocks and watches, and, finally, leather. He resolved to stick to leather—firstly, because everybody used it; and, secondly, because he felt instinctively that the man who had engaged him was of the sort who would give a fellow a chance. This gentleman, a middle-aged Scotsman, Campbell by name, had a warehouse in Bermondsey, and to him young Baker went as invoice clerk. Now he wrote leather to Mamie, who answered for a while on cards. A suspicion flashed across him during this fancied period of neglect; but she had said no word about _that_—and she had promised. The suspicion died down with her first long letter. She had removed to Cleveland, where she had taken a new position. That explained it all, and Mamie was forgiven.

The next year he spoke French and German after a fashion of his own, and could attend to foreign customers. In the autumn he was promoted to the warehouse and allowed to sell. One day he went out and came back with a contract running into four figures; and then, instead of an increase of salary, he stipulated for a small commission. His employer made no opposition; indeed, Mr. Campbell rather preferred this new arrangement. Baker was beginning to put by money. And from across the ocean came an answering whoop, shouts and ecstasies of triumph, as, step by step, these two drew nearer to the Promised Land. Her letters had now become a spur, a call—never a goad, never a lash; but there they were, egging him on, a challenge and yet a support, a martial music playing him into battle. In the night he blessed her; often he lay awake, groping for the memory of that sweet slim body.... So passed the years till he had made a home for her.

The long-awaited day had dawned at last. His commissions had reached the sum they had agreed; with his savings he had taken a modest house and furnished it. She had only to walk inside. He told his chief, now become his friend; he took him into his confidence and unfolded their whole story.

“So that’s what put the devil inside you!” cried Campbell, and slapped him on the back. “Go you off to Liverpool,” he added, “and don’t come back till you’re wanted. Make it a week, Baker; for you’re not indispensable, though you think you are. And tell the dear girl I sent you, and that I want to shake hands with her—she’s given me the best salesman in all Bermondsey, d’ye hear that?”

Jimmy heard it and laughed; and there was a pride in his laughter as well as a deep joy. Few men had a wife like his, he knew—scarce one in all he had run across these six hot years. Arrived home that night, he found the last letter she had posted from the other side.

“Husband and lover,” she wrote, “hold on to something tight. I have a dear surprise for you. I am bringing your boy to his father. I never told you before, because I wanted you to be free, because I wanted you to go ahead and not bother about me and about us. He was born in the spring, when I only sent post-cards. That was why I only sent post-cards, and that was why I removed to Cleveland afterwards. I had my marriage paper to show, so it didn’t matter much, and I let out and worked for the two of us; and now he’s close on six years old. He’s just like you, Jim: the same sturdy limbs, the same clear forehead, and good blue eyes. With him I have been able to bear all this separation. He knows you and loves you, and to-day he is mad with joy, because, at last, we are going to live with father. Forgive me for hiding this from you; but I didn’t want to be a drag upon you. I wanted you to have a clear road and go the shortest way. When you meet us at Liverpool, you’ll tell me whether I did right.”

“My God,” cried Jimmy Baker, “my God, I’ve got a son as well! And it was like her, too—like her to say nothing and stand aside for me!”

V

In Liverpool Baker met them, and the boy was just as she had described him, with his father’s eyes and forehead, and strength of chest and limb. That subtle something which makes blood know its own blood, flesh its own flesh, united these two on the landing-stage. Mamie stood aside holding in her tears, as father and son hugged one another for the first time. He had kissed her before the child, and she was glad of that. His quick embrace, his look of pride, had been a reassurance, a reward, that wiped out in one stroke the pain of those long years, their doubts, their fears, suspenses, and privations. From a slip of a girl she had grown into splendid womanhood; and he, the lad that she remembered, was standing there—a man.

They left the boy with grandparents and aunts, a whole cloud of new relations; and then alone they stole off to Seacombe and Dunster, and the shadow of Dunkery Beacon.

It was May. Earth, sea, and sky were tender with their own tenderness; in the youth of all things green, new fledged, or bursting into flower, they found echo and symbol of their own renewal. Lovers they had been here, when he had served in “that old bank”; and lovers they were once more, now that steadfastness and self-mastery had brought them a far deeper passion.

“Would you go through it all over again?” he asked her, knowing her answer ere he spoke.

“Over and over again, if it had to be—but God is merciful to lovers,” she replied. “I have learnt that thinking—thinking how it all happened.”

“I too,” he said. Few things there were that these two had not thought together, though time and ocean rolled between.

London claimed them, and work and their new home. Mr. Campbell invited himself to supper on the evening of their arrival.

“The living image of you, Baker,” he said, when Jimmy, junior, was introduced, “the living image!” And then, “I want you to stay on with us in Bermondsey; you can have a share—call it ‘Campbell & Baker,’ shall we, Mamie?” For the old ruffian had insisted on addressing Mamie by her Christian name.

The offer was accepted, and in parting, “Only one man in a thousand could have done what you have done,” said Mr. Campbell; “and only one woman in a hundred thousand, Mamie. You’ve done the impossible; you’re geniuses,” he ended, laughing at them; and, as an afterthought, “If my boy ever gets married on the quiet and plays the fool, I’ll break his blethering neck for him!”

The Ghost _that_ Failed

_By_ Desmond Coke

_Loyal North Lancashire Regiment_

The Blue Lady wailed disconsolately in the panelled room.

In her mortal life, four hundred years before, she had always been somewhat behind the times; and now she was in arrears by the space of a whole Silly Season. She was grappling with the stale problem, “Do we Believe?”

The Blue Lady concluded, emphatically, that we did not believe; and hence her wailing. She had seen the age of scepticism coming. For more than three hundred glad years men had crossed themselves and shuddered when she went moaning through the sombre rooms of Yewcroft Hall. Secure in her reputation, she had been content once only in the evening to interrupt the revelry, and then, conscious that all eyes had been upon her stately progress, to seek contentedly her spectral couch. But with the growth of science had risen also disbelief. Once stage-coaches were discarded, and people came to Yewcroft by a steam-drawn train, she felt that any other marvel must lose caste. She did not fail to observe that, as she passed along the rooms, there were those who, though they trembled, would not turn, and made pretence of not observing her. Then came the hideous day on which the Hall harboured a deputation from a Society of Research, who loaded themselves with cameras, dull books, and revolvers, before spending a night in the Panelled Room. The Blue Lady, as became a self-respecting ghost, slept elsewhere, and would not show herself to these ill-mannered creatures; so that next day the Press declared the famous Yewcroft ghost to be a myth. This was terrible; but far worse was to come.

The family who had held Yewcroft since feudal times, the Blue Lady’s own family, showed with old age a preference for sleep, and inasmuch as an ungrateful populace refused to pay them for this function, reduced means led to the abandonment of Yewcroft. It was taken by Lord Silthirsk, who had made tinned meat and a million by methods equally ambiguous. He turned the moss-hung chapel into a garage, and fitted electric light throughout the Hall.

The Blue Lady, struck in every vulnerable part, resolved to drive the Silthirsks out. For the first three days of their residence she missed no chance of floating in on Lady Silthirsk at moments likely to embarrass her. Her Ladyship showed no symptoms of annoyance or of fear, though sometimes, if not alone, she would look up and say, “Oh, here’s that blue one again,” in tones which the blue one took to be of terror cleverly concealed. On the fourth day the Silthirsks had a niece to stay, and the Blue Lady embraced this as a chance to learn what real impression she had made. Waiting till dessert was on the table, so that her Ladyship might not think it necessary to hide her fear before the servants, she swept into the dining-room and passed close beside the niece.

Elfrida shuddered. “What was that?” she cried.

“What’s what?” asked her aunt; while her uncle said “Banana,” and fell to his dessert again.

“No—something cold: it made me shudder, just as if something had gone by.”

The Blue Lady, ambushed behind a vast tooled-leather screen, gloated over her success.

“Oh, _that_!” said Lady Silthirsk: “that’s one of the fixtures—a spook. We rather like her—it’s so picturesque and old-world, ain’t it? Some people can see her—_I_ always can. She’s blue—quite an inoffensive mauvy blue. Oh, I distinctly like her. She’s a novelty, ye know: and she’ll be _so_ cooling in the summer!”

But even she started at the ghastly groan which issued from behind the leather screen.

For some weeks the Blue Lady did not deign to show herself, until Lady Silthirsk began to find fault. The landlord, she implied, had swindled her. It became clear to the spectre that all hopes of driving out these upstarts by terror had been idle dreams.

And now, on Christmas Eve, the night dedicate of old to her compatriots, she had given herself up to despair. She did not even care to walk. She wailed disconsolately in the Panelled Room.

It was thus that the Gaunt Baron found her. The Gaunt Baron did not belong to Yewcroft, but was attached to a neighbouring house, now empty. With nobody to terrify at home, he found visits to the Blue Lady a not unpleasing variant of the monotony. Except that she was several centuries his junior, he felt for her an emotion which went to a dangerous degree beyond respect. He was pained to find her wailing.

“What, wailing!” he cried, coming on her through the oaken panels, “and nobody to hear you?”

The Blue Lady raised a tortured face towards him. “Who would not wail? And who should hear me? Fools! They _can_ not hear me. Many of them do not even see me. Bah! They have no sense, except the sense of taste: with truffles before them, they see nothing else.”

“To-night is Christmas Eve.”

The Gaunt Baron made the suggestion in a mild, kindly way, but the Blue Lady turned upon him almost angrily, as though he had been the culprit.

“Yes! To-night is Christmas Eve. And what are they doing? Where is the Yule-log? Where is the wassail? Where the dim light of glowing embers? They’ll sit in the glare of this new light—a big party—and play what they call Bridge; and if they feel a mystic chill, will draw the curtains or turn the hot-air pipes full on.... What do these fools know about Romance? The word is dead. I saw some of their novels while the house was shut. Love? Gallantry? Nowhere in the volume. A knock-kneed weakling making love to his friend’s wife, or two infants puling of passion like mere vulgar serfs.... Love, for these people, ends with Marriage, to begin again after Divorce.”

“You are bitter.” The Gaunt Baron held his head beneath his arm—a fact which gave to all his utterances something of the tone of a ventriloquist.

“Bitter! So would you be bitter! It’s all very well for you, with the Manor empty;—but me, with these vulgarians!... Baron, these mortals are beating us: we’re pretty well played out. ‘Played out!’ Look at our very speech: they’ve ruined that. Do I speak like a woman of the day of Good Queen Bess? Do you speak like a baron of—of King—like an ancient baron?”

“You do not,—and it was Stephen,” said the Baron quietly.

“Mark me, Baron, we are near the end. Either Lady Silthirsk or myself leaves Yewcroft. There is no room here for a self-respecting spectre. They use the headsman’s block for mounting on their horses. If I cannot drive them out, I go,—and where? Well, if I cannot leave the earth—oh, why was I ever murdered?—then I must sleep beneath the hedges, till I find an empty house. Baron, that time is near. I have tried everything, and nothing seems to frighten them. Lady Silthirsk serves liqueurs in the old Banquet Hall at midnight, and as I don’t appear,—as though I should!—she says the theatre, is closed for alterations and repairs. Oh, it is unbearable, unbearable!”

“Dear lady,” answered the Gaunt Baron, “do not despair. I managed to say, some minutes ago, that it was Christmas Eve. Let me explain. It is now close upon the hour of midnight—the time and day on which we ghosts are thought by men to have our greatest power. Even those who don’t believe in us are a little influenced by the tradition. As twelve strikes every one is half expectant. That is your moment. Burst upon them, wailing and raving. They are sure to see. Some of the guests will insist on leaving Yewcroft, and the Silthirsks will not like a house where parties are impossible. Quick! There is the gurgle that preludes the hall-clock’s striking. In three minutes midnight will be here. Hasten, sweet dame, hasten! I will be at hand to watch you.”

* * * * *

Downstairs, during this dialogue, Lady Silthirsk had been talking to her niece. “Elfrida, dear, in a few minutes they’ll all be here for the midnight _séance_; and I have something that I want to tell you first.”

“Why, what is it, auntie?” asked Elfrida: “you look terribly serious.”

“I am serious, darling girl. Let me be frank. I think it is time that you were married—not only, understand, because of your poor parents, but also for your own happiness. And when I see a man who can make you both rich and happy, well——”

“But who?” interrupted Elfrida.

“_Who?_ My dear girl, are you blind! Why, Bobby!”

“Lord Bancourt?”

“Yes, ‘Lord Bancourt’! Don’t look as though I had shot you! Why, you silly dear thing, you must know Bobby is madly in love with you. All this week he has followed you about like an obedient dog, and all the week you’ve ignored him as though he were a naughty mongrel!”

“Why, I’m sure I’ve treated him just like anybody else. I never——”

“My dear Elfrida, you will be the death of me! Do you think he wants no more of you? Are you living in the Middle Ages, or is this the Twentieth century? Do you expect him to come and steal you away by night and force? Nowadays the girl must do her part. Bobby is a splendid fellow, an old friend of mine, rich, young, passably good-looking——”

“I think he’s handsome, decidedly,” Elfrida said, without a thought, and then blushed scarlet.

Her aunt laughed. “And _I_ think you’re in love with him,” she said. “I know he only wants a little encouragement—not quite so much ice to the square inch, my dear! Won’t you try, for my sake?”