Flora Lyndsay Volume Ii Part 9

"Not hurt I? Sure it broke the leg of d.i.c.k Simmons, when it skeared the hosses, and overturned the coach last Monday night. I'd rather keep myself in a whole skin. But when you seed it, Bob, worn't you mortal feared?"

"Not I."

"An' did you speak to 'un?"

"Ay to be sure. Do you think I'd run away from my own dad? 'Old boy,'

says I, 'is that you? How are you getting on below?' He shakes his head, and glowers at me, an' his one eye looked like a burning coal.

"'You'll know one day,' says he.

"'That's pleasant news,' says I. 'You'll be sure to give me a warm welcome at any rate. There's nothing like having a friend at head quarters.' When he saw that I was not afraid of him, he gave a loud screech, and vanished, leaving behind him a most infernal stench of brimstone, which I smelt all the way from the cross-road as far as the bridge. He had got his answer; and I saw no more of him for that night."

Josh thrust his chair back to the wall, and drawing a long breath, gazed upon the reprobate with a strange mixture of awe and terror in his bewildered countenance. "Why, man, 'an my feather had said sic like words to me, I should have gone stark staring mad with fear and sheame."

"The shame should be all on his side then," quoth the incorrigible Bob.

"I did not make him the bad man he was, though he made me. He was always an ugly fellow, and the scorching he has got down there (and he pointed significantly to the ground) has not improved his looks. But mother would know him in a minute."

"I never want to see your father again, Robert," said Martha, doggedly; "so you need not address any such impertinent remarks to me. I had enough of his company here. I don't know why he should leave his grave to haunt me after his death."

"For the love he bore you while on earth," said the dutiful son, glancing round the group with a knowing look. "Dad is sure of a kind reception from you, mother."

"The day he was buried," said Martha, "was the only happy one I had known for twenty years, and you know it well. One of his last acts was to make me a cripple for life."

"How did he come by his death, Mother Mason?" asked a young sailor, Tom Weston by name.

"He was killed in a row with the smugglers," said Bob. "He had helped them to land some brandy, and they wanted to cheat him out of his pay.

Father had lots of pluck. He had lost an eye once before in such a frolic. He attacked the whole band single-handed, and got knocked on the head in the scuffle. The smugglers ran away, and left mother to bury the dead."

"He only got what he deserved," muttered Martha. "It is a pity he did not get it twenty years before. But he is gone to his place, and I am determined to keep mine. A ghost has no legal claim to the property of the living, and he shall never get possession of this house, living or dead, again."

"But suppose, Martha, he should take it into his head to haunt it, and make it too hot to hold you," said Tom Weston, "what would you do then?"

"I think I know a secret or two that would lay the ghost," returned Martha; and hobbling across the kitchen on her crutch, she lifted down an old horse-pistol that was suspended to one of the low cross-beams, and wiping the dust from it with her ap.r.o.n, she carefully examined the lock. "This should speak my welcome to all such unwelcome intruders. It has released more than one troublesome spirit from its clay tenement, and I have no doubt that it would be found equally efficacious in quieting others--that is, if they have the audacity to try their strength against me;" and she glanced disdainfully at her son from beneath her bushy lowering brows. "This brown dog is old, but he can still _bark_ and _bite_!"

"How vicious mother looks!" said Bob, with a loud laugh. "It would require a ghost with some pluck to face her."

"What time did the spectre appear last night?" said Tom Weston, who saw that mischief was brewing, and was anxious to turn the subject into another channel. "I should like amazingly to see it."

"That's all bos.h.!.+" said Bob. "You would soon cut and run. But if you are in earnest, come with me to the cross-road, and I promise to introduce you to the old gentleman. The clock has just struck eleven, he will be taking his rounds by the time we get there."

The young man drew back. "Not in your company, Mason. It would be enough to raise the Devil."

"Well, please yourself. I knew you would not have pluck enough. I shall go, however. I want to have a few minutes' conversation with the ghost before he appears in public. Perhaps he will show me where to find a hidden treasure. Good-by, mother; shall I give your compliments to the old gentleman? Love, I know, is out of the question. You had none to spare for him when he was alive."

"Away with you, for a blasphemous reprobate that you are!" cried the angry old woman, shaking her crutch at him.

"Mammy's own darling son!" cried the disgusting wretch, as with a loud oath he sprang through the open door and vanished into the dark night.

The men looked significantly at each other, and a little tailor rose cautiously and shut the door.

"Why do you do that?" said Tom Weston.

"To keep out bad company."

"It is stifling hot!" cried Tom, kicking it open with his foot. "I shall die without a whiff of fresh air."

"But the ghost?" and the little tailor shook his head mysteriously.

"Does not belong to any of us," rejoined Tom. "My relations are all sound sleepers, good honest people, who are sure to rest in their graves. There is a storm brewing," he continued, walking to the open door; "that thunder-cloud will burst over our heads in a few minutes, and Master Bob will get a good drenching."

"It's awesome to hear him talk, as he do, of his feather's spirit,"

said honest Josh. "It makes my flesh creep upon my bones."

"Provided there's any truth in his statements," said a carpenter, who had been smoking his pipe by the table, and silently listening to the conversation,--"which I much doubt. For my own part I would be more afraid of meeting Robert Mason alone in that dark lane, than any visitant from another world. I don't believe in ghosts. I never saw one, and never met with any person on whose word you could attach much credit, that could satisfactorily prove to you that he had. When you pushed him hard, it always came out that he was not the person who had seen it; but some one else who had related the tale to him, and he had every reason to believe it true. The farther you searched into the matter, the more indistinct and improbable the story became."

"Ay, Bill Corbett; but you heard Bob declare that he has both seen and spoken to it, and the lad must know his own father."

"I don't take for gospel what I hear Bob say; I don't believe one word of the story. No, not if he were to swear to the truth of it upon the Bible," said the carpenter, waxing warm. Before Tom Weston could reply, a loud peal of thunder burst suddenly over their heads, and the room was so vividly lighted up by the electric flash which preceded it, that Mary, who was intently listening to the conversation, rose from her seat with a loud scream.

"By the living Jingo! What's that?" cried the labourer, starting to his feet, while the pipe he was smoking fell from his nerveless grasp and was s.h.i.+vered to atoms on the hearth.

"Pshaw!" said Tom Weston, recovering from the sudden tremor which had seized him, "'tis only the poor dummy. I thought the gal had been deaf as well as dumb."

"Why, man, the dead in their graves might have heard that!" said the terror-stricken Josh.

He had scarcely ceased speaking, when Sophy Grimshawe sprang into the room--her eyes fixed and staring, and her usually rosy cheeks livid with fear. "The thunder," she gasped, "the dreadful thunder!" and would have fallen to the ground, had not Tom Weston caught her in his arms. The unexpected sight of such a beautiful apparition, seemed to restore the young man's presence of mind. He placed her in a chair, while the little tailor bustled up to get a gla.s.s of cold water, with which he copiously bathed her face and hands. In a few minutes her limbs ceased to tremble, and opening her eyes, she glanced timidly round her. The first object that encountered her gaze, was the scornful, fiendlike face of Mrs.

Mason, scowling upon her.

"So," she said sneeringly, "you make the thunder a pretext for showing your painted doll's-face to the fellows here. Your mother would do well to keep you at home."

"Mother was asleep, and she is not afraid of thunder like me. When that dreadful flash of lightning came, I dared not stay alone in the house."

"Are you a bit safer, think you, here?" sneered the witch-like woman.

"It was monstrous kind of you to leave your poor old mother exposed to danger, while you run away from it like a coward! A bad excuse, however, I've heard, is better than none. In your case I think it worse."

"I did not think of that," said Sophy, with unaffected simplicity, rising to go. "Mother never cares for it, but it makes me tremble from head to foot, and almost drives me beside myself. I can't tell why, but it has always been so with me ever since I was a little child."

As she finished speaking, another long protracted peal of thunder rolled through the heavens and shook the house, and Sophy sank down gasping in her chair. The handsome young sailor was at her side with a gla.s.s of ale.

"Never mind that cross old woman, my dear, she scolds and rules us all.

Take a sup of this,--it will bring the roses back to your cheeks. Why, you are as pale as the ghost we were talking of when you came in."

"Oh, I'm such a coward!" sobbed Sophy. "Ah, there it comes again--the lightning will blind me!"--and she shrieked and threw her ap.r.o.n over her head, as another terrific peal burst solemnly above them. "I would rather see twenty ghosts than hear the like of that again. Did not you feel the earth shake?"

"Now for the rain!" cried the little tailor, as a few heavy drops first splashed upon the door-sill, then there was the rush and roar of a hurricane, and the water burst from the skies in torrents, streaming over the door-sill and beating through the c.h.i.n.ks in the ill-glazed windows.

"Shut the door, man! can't you?" vociferated Tom Weston to the tailor.

"The rain pours in like a flood, and it will give the young lady cold."