Chapter 19

"Why, in honour of the wedding, to be sure. 'Must show one's best at such times, if only for one's own satisfaction." Then, as he climbed into view and helped Sophia over the hedge, she recognised them, and, dropping her pan with a clatter, called on the saints to bless them and keep them always. The bridal pair clambered down to the towpath, and from the towpath to her cabin, where she fed them (for they were hungry by this time) with bread and honey from a marvellous cupboard painted all over with tulips: in short, they enjoyed themselves immensely.

"Only," said Ferdinand, "I wish they hadn't covered up the sea, for I wanted a good look at it."

"The sea?" said the barge-woman, all of a shiver. Then she explained that her two sons had been drowned in it. "Though, to be sure," said she, "they died for your Majesty's honour, and, if God should give them back to me, would do so again."

"For me?" exclaimed Sophia, opening her eyes very wide.

"Ay, to be sure, my dear. So it's no wonder--eh?--that I should love you."

By the time they said good-bye to her and hurried back through the orchard, a dew was gathering on the grass and a young moon had poised herself above the apple-boughs. The birds here were silent; but high on the stone terrace, when they reached it, a solitary one began to sing. From the bright windows facing the terrace came the clatter of plates and glasses, with loud outbursts of laughter. But this bird had chosen his station beneath a dark window at the corner, and sang there unseen. It was the nightingale.

They could not understand what he sang. "It is my window," whispered Sophia, and began to weep in the darkness, without knowing why; for she was not miserable in the least, but, on the contrary, very, very happy. They listened, hand in hand, by a fountain on the terrace. Through the windows they could see the Papal legate chatting at table with the King, Sophia's father, and the Chancellor hobnobbing with the Cardinal Archbishop. Only the Queen of Ysselmonde sat at the table with her wrists on the arms of her throne and her eyes looking out into the darkness, as though she caught some whisper of the bird's song. But the children knew that he sang for them, not for her; for he told of all the adventures of the day, and he told not as I am telling them, but so beautifully that the heart ached to hear. Yet his song was of two words only. "Young--young--young! Love love--love!"--the same words over and over.

A courtier came staggering out from the banqueting-hall, and the bird flew away. The children standing by the fountain watched him as he found the water and dipped his face in it, with a groan. He was exceedingly drunk; but as he lifted his head he caught sight of them in the moonlight and excused himself.

"In your Highnesses' honour," he assured them: "'been doing my best."

"Poor man!" said Sophia. "But how loyal!"

ENGLAND!

At Madeira seven of us were added to the first-class passengers of the _Cambuscan_, homeward bound from Cape Town; and even so the company made a poor muster in the saloon, which required a hundred and seventy feet of hurricane-deck for covering. Those were days--long before the South African War, before the Jameson Raid even--when every ship carried out a load of miners for the Transvaal, and returned comparatively empty, though as a rule with plenty of obviously rich men and be-diamonded ladies.

But every tide has its backwash; and it so happened that the _Cambuscan_ held as many second and third-class passengers as she could stow. They were--their general air proclaimed it--the failures of South African immigration; men and women who had gone out too early and given up the struggle just when the propitious moment arrived. Seediness marked the second-class; the third-class came from all parts, from the Cape to Pietermaritzburg, but they might have conspired to assemble on the _Cambuscan_ as a protest against high hopes and dreams of a promised land. The protest, let me add, was an entirely passive one. They stood aloof, watching the flashy gaieties of the hurricane-deck from their own sad penumbra--a dejected, wistful, whispering throng. "They simply don't occur," one of the be-diamonded ladies remarked to me, and went on to praise the U-- Line for arranging it so. With nightfall--or a trifle later--they vanished; and at most, when the time came for my last pipe before turning in, two or three figures would be left pacing there forward, pacing and turning and pacing again. I wondered who these figures were, and what their thoughts. They and the sleepers hived beneath them belonged to another world--a world driven with ours through wave and darkness, urged by the same propellers, controlled by the same helmsman, separated only by thin partitions which the touch of a rock would tear down like paper; yet, while the partitions stood, separated as no city separates its rich and poor. Only on Sundays did these two worlds consent to meet. They had, it appeared, a common God, and joined for a few minutes once a week in worshipping Him.

The be-diamonded lady, however, was not quite accurate. Once, and once only--it was the second day out from Madeira--the third-class passengers did "occur," to the extent of organising athletic sports, and even (with the captain's leave) of levying prize-money from the saloon-deck. Some four or five of us, when their delegate approached, were lounging beneath the great awning and listening, or pretending to listen, to the discourse of our only millionaire, Mr. Olstein. As usual, he recited his wrongs; and, as usual, the mere recital caused him to perspire. The hairs on the back of his expostulatory hand bristled with indignation, the diamonds on his fingers flashed with it. We had known him but two days and were passing weary of him, but allowed him to talk. He apostrophised the British Flag--his final Court of Appeal, he termed it--while we stared out over the waters.

"We love it," he insisted. "We never see it without a lump in our throats. But we ask ourselves, How long is this affection to count for nothing? What are we to get in return?"

No one answered, perhaps because no one knew. My thoughts had flown forward to a small riverside church in England, and a memorial window to one whose body had been found after Isandlwhana with the same flag wrapped around it beneath the tunic. This was _his_ reward.

"Hey? What's this?" Mr. Olstein took the subscription list, fitted his gold-rimmed glasses and eyed the delegate over the paper. "Athletic sports? Not much in your line, I should say."

"No, sir;" and while the delegate bent his eyes a bright spot showed on either cheek. He was a weedy, hollow-chested man, about six feet in height, with tell-tale pits at the back of the neck, and a ragged beard evidently grown on the voyage. "I'm only a collector, with the captain's permission."

"I see." Mr. Olstein pulled out a sovereign. "I don't put this on _you_, mind; I can tell a consumptive with half an eye. See here"--he appealed to us--"this is just what we suffer from. You fellows with lung trouble flock to a tepid hole like Madeira, while the Cape would cure you in half the time: why, the voyage itself only begins to be decent after you get south! But you won't see it; and the people who _do_ see it are just the sort who don't pay us when they come, and damage us when they go back,--hard cases, sent out to pick up a living as well as their health, who get stranded and hurry home half-cured."

A young Briton in the deck-chair next to mine rose and walked off abruptly, while I fumbled for a coin, ashamed to meet the collector's eye.

"Hullo!" Mr. Olstein grinned at me. "Our friend's in a hurry to dodge the subscription list."

But the young Briton turned and intercepted the collector as he moved towards the next group.

"It's _your_ sovereign," said I, "that seems to be overlooked."

Mr. Olstein saw it at his elbow and re-pocketed it. "Well, if he hasn't the sense to pick it up, I've some more than to whistle him back. But that'll show you the sort of fool we send out to compete with Germans and suchlike. It's enough to make a man ashamed of his country."

This happened on a Saturday morning, and in the afternoon we attended the sports--a depressing ceremony. The performers went through their contests, so to speak, with bated breath and a self-consciousness which, try as we might, poisoned our applause and made it insufferably patronising. Their backers would pluck up heart and encourage them loudly with Whitechapel catch-words, and anon would hush their voices in uneasy shame. Our collector, brave by fits in his dignity as steward, would catch the eye of a saloon-deck passenger and shrink behind the enormous rosette which some wag had pinned upon him.

Next day I made an opportunity to speak with him, after service. It needed no pressing to extract his story, and he told it with entire simplicity. He was a Cockney, and by trade had been a baker in Bermondsey. "A wearing trade," he said. "The most of us die before forty. You'd be surprised." But he had started with a sound constitution, and somehow persuaded himself, in spite of warnings, that he was immune. At thirty-two he had married. "A deal later than most," he explained--and had scarcely been married three months before lung trouble declared itself. "I had a few pounds put by, having married so late; and it seemed a duty to Emily to give myself every chance: so we packed up almost at once and started for South Africa. It was a wrench to her, but the voyage out did us both all the good in the world, she being in a delicate state of health, and the room in Bermondsey not fit for a woman in that condition." The baby was born in Cape Town, five months after their landing. "But they've no employment for bakers out there," he assured me. "We found trade very low altogether, and what I picked up wasn't any healthier than in London. Emily disliked the place, too; though she'd have stayed gladly if it had been doing me any good. And so back we're going. There's one thing: I'm safe of work. My old employer in Bermondsey has promised that all right. And the child, you see, sir, won't suffer. There's no consumption, that I know of, in either of our families; and Emily, you may be sure, will see he's not brought up to be a baker."

He announced it in the most matter-of-fact way. He was going back to England to die--to die speedily--and he knew it. "I should like you to see our baby, sir," he added. "He weighs extraordinary, for his age. My wife comes from the North of England--a very big-boned family; and he's British, every ounce of him, though he _was_ born in South Africa."

But the wife took a chill on entering the Bay, and remained below with the child; nor was it until the day we sighted England that I saw the whole family together.

We were to pick up the Eddystone; and as this was calculated to happen at sunset, or a little after, the usual sweepstake on the saloon-deck aroused a little more than the usual excitement. For the first glimpse, whether of lighthouse or light, would give the prize to the nearest guesser. If we anticipated sunset, the clearness of the weather would decide between two pretty close shots: if we ran it fine, the lamp (which carries for seventeen miles and more) might upset those who staked on daylight even at that distance from the mark. Our guesses had been tabulated, and the paper pinned up in the smoking-room.

They allowed a margin of some twenty-five knots on the twenty-four hours' run--ranging, as nearly as I can recollect, from three hundred and thirty-five to three hundred and sixty; and the date being the last week of March, and sunset falling close on half-past six, a whole nebula of guesses surrounded that hour, one or two divided only by a few seconds.

A strong head-wind met us in the Channel, and the backers of daylight had almost given up hope; but it dropped in the late afternoon, and by the log we were evidently in for a close finish. Mr. Olstein had set his watch by the ship's chronometer, and consulted it from minute to minute. He stood by me, binocular in hand, and grew paler with excitement as sunset drew on and the minutes scored off the guesses one by one from the list. His guess was among the last, but not actually the last by half a dozen.

We had reached a point when five minutes disposed of no less than nine guesses. The weather was dull: no one could tell precisely if the sun had sunk or not. We were certainly within twenty miles of the rock, and by the Nautical Almanack, unless our chronometer erred, the light ought to flash out within sixty seconds. If within forty the man sang out from the crow's-nest, Mr. Olstein would lose; after forty he had a whole minute and a half for a clear win.

The forty seconds passed. Mr. Olstein drew a long breath of relief. "But why the devil don't they light up?" he demanded after a moment. "I call you to witness what the time is by our chronometer. I'll have it tested as soon as I step ashore, and if it's wrong I'll complain to the Company; if it's not, I'll send the Trinity House a letter'll lay those lighthouse fellows by the heels! Punctuality, sir, in the case of shipping--life or death--"

The cry of the man in the crow's-nest mingled with ours as a spark touched the north-eastern horizon almost ahead of us--trembled and died--shone out, as it seemed, more steadily--and again was quenched.

Mr. Olstein slapped his thigh. He had won something like ten pounds and was a joyous millionaire. "That makes twice in four voyages," he proclaimed.

I congratulated him and strode forward. A group of third-class passengers had gathered by the starboard bow. They, too, had heard the cry. To all appearance they might have been an ordinary Whitechapel crowd, and even now they scarcely lifted their voices; but they whispered and pointed.

"The Eddystone!"

I singled out my friend the baker. Before I could reach him he had broken from the group. I hailed him. Without seeming to hear, he disappeared down the fore-companion. But by and by he emerged again, and with a baby in his arms. Evidently he had torn it from its cot. His wife followed, weak and protesting.

The child, too, raised a wail of querulous protest; but he hugged it to him, and running to the ship's side held it aloft.

"England, baby!"

It turned its head, seeking the pillow or its mother; and would not look, but broke into fresh and louder wailing.

"England!"

He hugged it afresh. God knows of what feeling sprang the tears that fell on its face and baptized it. But he hushed his voice, and, lifting the child again, coaxed it to look--coaxed it with tears streaming now, and with a thrill that would not be denied--

"England, baby--England!"

JOHN AND THE GHOSTS.

In the kingdom of Illyria there lived, not long ago, a poor wood-cutter with three sons, who in time went forth to seek their fortunes. At the end of three years they returned by agreement, to compare their progress in the world. The eldest had become a lawyer, and the second a merchant, and each of these had won riches and friends; but John, the youngest, who had enlisted in the army, could only show a cork leg and a medal.

"You have made a bad business of it," said his brothers. "Your medal is worthless except to a collector of such things, and your leg a positive disadvantage. Fortunately we have influence, and since you are our brother we must see what we can do for you."

Now the King of Illyria lived at that time in his capital, in a brick palace at the end of the great park. He kept this park open to all, and allowed no one to build in it. But the richest citizens, who were so fond of their ruler that they could not live out of his sight, had their houses just beyond the park, in the rear of the Palace, on a piece of ground which they called Palace Gardens. The name was a little misleading, for the true gardens lay in front of the Palace, where children of all classes played among the trees and flower-beds and artificial ponds, and the King sat and watched them, because he took delight in children, and because the sight of them cheered his only daughter, who had fallen into a deep melancholy. But the rich citizens clung to it, for it gave a pleasant neighbourly air to their roadway, and showed what friendliness there was between the monarch of Illyria and his people.

At either end you entered the roadway (if you were allowed) by an iron gate, and each gate had a sentry-box beside it, and a tall beadle, and a notice-board to save him the trouble of explanation. The notice ran--

PRIVATE.--_The Beadle has orders to refuse admittance to all Waggons, Tradesmen's Carts, Hackney Coaches, Donkeys, Beggars, Disorderly Characters, or Persons carrying Burdens_.

A sedentary life had told so severely upon one of the two beadles that he could no longer enter his box with dignity or read his newspaper there with any comfort. He resigned, and John obtained the post by his brothers' interest, in spite of his cork leg.

He had now a bright green suit with scarlet pipings, a gold-laced hat, a fashionable address, and very little to do. But the army had taught him to be active, and for lack of anything better he fell into deep thinking. This came near to bringing him into trouble. One evening he looked out of his sentry-box and saw a mild and somewhat sad-featured old gentleman approaching the gate.

"No admittance," said John.

"Tut, tut!" said the old gentleman. "I'm the King."

John looked at the face on his medal, and sure enough there was a resemblance. "But, all the same, your Majesty carries a burden,"--here he pointed to the notice-board,--"and the folks along this road are mighty particular."

The King smiled and then sighed heavily.

"It's about the Princess, my daughter," said he; "she has not smiled for a whole year."

"I'll warrant I'd make her," said John.

"I'll warrant you could not," said the King. "She will never smile again until she is married."

"Then," answered John, "speaking in a humble way, as becomes me, why the dickens alive don't you marry her up and get done with it?"

The King shook his head.

"There's a condition attached," said he. "Maybe you have heard of the famous haunted house in Puns'nby Square?"

"I've always gone by the spelling, and pronounced it Ponsonby," said John.

"Well, the condition is that every suitor for my daughter's hand must spend a night alone in that house; and if he survives and is ready to persevere with his wooing, he must return a year later with his bride and spend the night of his marriage there."

"And very handy," said John, "for there's a wedding-cake shop at the corner."

The King sighed again.

"Unhappily, none survive. One hundred and fifty-five have undertaken the adventure, and not a man of them but has either lost his wits or run for it."

"Well," said John, "I've been afraid of a great many men--"

"That's a poor confession for a soldier," put in the King.

"--when they all happened to come at me together. But I've never yet met the ghost that could frighten me; and if your Majesty will give me the latch-key I'll try my luck this very night."

It could not be done in this free-and-easy way; but at eight o'clock, after John had visited the Palace and taken an oath in the Princess's presence (which was his first sight of her), he was driven down to the house beside the Lord Chamberlain, who admitted him to the black front hall, and, slamming the door upon him, scuttled out of the porch as quickly as possible and into his brougham.

John struck a match, and as he did so heard the carriage roll away. The walls were bare, and the floor and great staircase ahead of him carpetless. As the match flickered out he caught a glimpse of a pair of feet moving up the stairs; that was all--only feet.

"I'll catch up with the calves on the landing, maybe," said he; and, striking another match, he followed them up.

The feet turned aside on the landing and led him into a room on the right. He paused on the threshold, drew a candle from his pocket, lit it, and stared about him. The room was of great size, bare and dusty, with crimson hangings, gilt panels, and one huge gilt chandelier, from which and from the ceiling and cornice long cobwebs trailed down like creeping plants. Beneath the chandelier a dark smear ran along the boards. The feet crossed it towards the fireplace; and as they did so, John saw them stained with blood. They reached the fire-place and vanished.

Scarcely had this happened, before the end of the room opposite the window began to glow with an unearthly light. John, whose poverty had taught him to be economical, promptly blew out his candle. A moment later two men entered, bearing a coffin between them. They rested it upon the floor and, seating themselves upon it, began to cast dice. "Your soul!" "My soul!" they kept saying in hollow tones, according as they won or lost. At length one of them--a tall man in a powdered wig, with a face extraordinarily pale--flung a hand to his brow, rose and staggered from the room. The other sat waiting and twirling his black moustache, with an evil smile. John, who by this time had found a seat in a far corner, thought him the most poisonous-looking villain he had ever seen; but as the minutes passed and nothing happened, he turned his back to the light and pulled out a penny-dreadful. His literary taste was shocking, and when it came to romance he liked the incidents to follow one another with great rapidity.

He was interrupted by a blood-curdling groan, and the first ruffian broke into the room, dragging by its grey locks the body of an old man. A young girl followed, weeping and protesting, with dishevelled hair, and behind her entered a priest with a brazier full of glowing charcoal. The girl cast herself forward on the old man's body, but the two scoundrels dragged her from it by force. "The money!" demanded the dark one; and she drew from her bosom a small key and cast it at his feet. "My promise!" demanded the other, and seized her by the wrist as the priest stepped forward. "Quick! over this coffin--man and wife!" She wrenched her hand away and thrust him backward. The priest retreated to the brazier and drew out a red-hot iron.

John thought it about time to interfere.

"I beg your pardon," said he, stepping forward; "but I suppose you really _are_ ghosts?"

"We are unhallowed souls," answered the dark man impressively, "who return to blight the living with the spectacle of our awful crimes."

"Meaning me?" asked John.

"Ay, sir; and to destroy you to-night if you contract not, upon your soul, to return with your bride and meet us here a twelvemonth hence."

"H'm!" said John to himself, "they are three to one; and, after all, it's what I came for. I suppose," he added aloud, "some form of document is usual in these cases?"

The dark man drew out pen and parchment.

"Hold forth your hand," he commanded; and as John held it out, thinking he meant to shake it over the bargain, the fellow drove the pen into his wrist until the blood spurted. "Now sign!"

"Sign!" said the other villain.

"Sign!" said the lady.

"Oh, very well, miss. If you're in the swindle too, my mind is easier," said John, and signed his name with a flourish. "But a bargain is a bargain, and what security have I for your part in it?"

"Our signature!" said the priest terribly, at the same moment pressing his branding-iron into John's ankle. A smell of burnt cork arose as John stooped and clapped his hand over the scorched stocking. When he looked up again his visitors had vanished; and a moment later the strange light, too, died away.

But the coffin remained for evidence that he had not been dreaming. John lit a candle and examined it.