Mr Corbett's Ghost (6 page)

It was now half after eleven and the parlour was filled with travellers and their servants, briefly united in the fellowship of the hour. The New Year drew nigh and, as the wine flowed down, good resolutions flowed out, tempered with a rosy whiff of claret.

‘Merciful heaven, Mister Corbett! Draw in your shoulder! Oh God! I can see that gentleman's face as plain as day through you!'

The phantom exposed its ugly teeth in a semblance of Mister Corbett's unpleasant smile . . . and drew back against the wall with a pitiful air of shame.

‘Thank you, Mister Corbett. That was uncommon obliging of you!'

A dozen times already, he'd had occasion to thank Mister Corbett with such urgent gratitude. Not that the phantom had put itself in the way of discovery, but there were a terrible number of tapers and candles going about the parlour like fireflies, to light extinguished pipes, read letters, admire trifles of lace, even to search for a dropped half-penny.

And each time, Benjamin's heart chilled as he glimpsed the flame through the phantom's substance. It seemed not possible that such an eerie thing had passed unnoticed. Yet neighbours in the room—good, respectable folk—continued to smile at him and murdered Mister Corbett and raise their tankards politely whenever their eyes turned that way. He believed he'd collected enough ‘Happy New Years' to see him out at a hundred; and each one provoked more anguish than the last.

With all manner of twistings and turnings and leanings forward, he struggled to cast Mister Corbett into the shadows. An evil moment came when a pair of tankards were passed along the line, one for him and one for the pallid gentleman by his side—'with the compliments of the House'.

Frantic was his reaching to keep a hold on the second tankard: yet with deep caution lest he poke his arm, hand, tankard and all clean through Mister Corbett. And all the while, that murdered man sat silent by his side, with never a look nor a sound that was not obligingly lifelike; never a reproach on his murderer save in the deathly chill that came from his person and chilled Benjamin's shoulder, arm, and thigh.

But what was he doing now, that cold, cold ghost? In fear and anger, Benjamin suddenly became aware of the phantom's singular behaviour.

First a hand, then a foot, then a hand again it was slyly holding up before the fire. It was charmed by its own transparency! On its face was that self-same look that Benjamin had known so well in life—a deep, absorbed and searching look . . .

‘Good God, Mister Corbett! What are you at? You will betray us!'

Guiltily the ghost snatched back its hand and shrank once more into the shade. Piteous were its eyes as it peered at Benjamin, and its thin lips moved unhappily: ‘I'll not betray . . . only, give me warmth . . . forgive—'

Gloomily, Benjamin nodded. Unthinking and even childish as the ghost's action had been, he was, after all, lately only human.

Strangeness must still have interested him; company still pleased him; a fire still warmed him. And though he still had Mister Corbett's ugly smile, and Mister Corbett's spying stoop, and Mister Corbett's mean and furtive air, there was a sharp sadness in it all.

‘You are a poor soul,' whispered Benjamin impulsively, but the ghost shuddered as if in profound dismay.

‘I'll not betray . . . not I!'

‘That's uncommon obliging of you, Mister Corbett, sir . . . and I believe you with all my heart.'

Suddenly there was a cry of ‘Make way! Make way!' and two servants attended by the landlord and his lady came grandly in with a silver bowl of punch. The room was filled with the hot sweet odours of brandy, spice, and the Lord knew what else besides. The Spaniards' punch was a deep secret, and, though many a man had been told it, the cunning spirit fuddled him too much to remember its recipe and carry it home on New Year's Day in the morning.

At once there was a general shifting towards the table in the middle of the parlour—and consequently some space was left before the fire.

The fire. Benjamin saw the phantom stare at it with longing. What with the cheerfulness of the parlour following so hard on his late adventure, and the general obligingness of the ghost, he was moved more deeply than he'd bargained for. He discovered he was not so inhuman as to hate Mister Corbett beyond the grave.

‘I'll go stand before the fire, Mister Corbett,' he whispered, ‘and then you may stand behind me and warm yourself. No one will see while they're at the punch bowl. Come, sir, move as I move . . . exactly . . . but for mercy's sake, be careful!'

With extraordinary caution, Benjamin stood up and
stepped sideways before the fire. He might have been a single figure, though a trifle rheumaticky, for his movements appeared peculiarly stiff and slow.

At last, distinctly—most distinctly—Benjamin heard the phantom sigh and sensed that it rubbed its hands together in Mister Corbett's old oily fashion.

‘Are you warm now, Mister Corbett?'

‘The fire burns bright,' came the faint reply, and Benjamin smiled benevolently.

In the middle of the room punch was being ladled out in a capacious silver spoon, ‘with the compliments of the House'. Much was the noise and entertainment there, and no one spared a glance towards the fire.

‘At last, Mister Corbett—a real piece of luck!'

‘I make it five minutes more!' suddenly declared a gentleman, consulting his watch.

‘Eight,' corrected the landlord. ‘It's eight minutes in this house, sir.'

Then someone else—most probably the landlord's lady herself, a respectable, kindly woman—discovered it to be three minutes only to the New Year.

Directly, there was an amiable commotion. Why? Nothing alarming, nothing dreadful—or even disquieting. So why did Benjamin Partridge turn white and glare horribly about him?

‘Hands, gents! Hands must be joined!' shouted the landlord, and stretched out his portly arms like a well-fed signpost.

‘Come, sirs!' cried his lady above the hubbub, and took one of her husband's hands, ‘A circle, now! All join hands for the New Year! You, sir—and you—and you over there! No one must be left out! They say it's bad luck—'

Remorselessly the happy, laughing chain grew as more and more hands were joined. Nearer and nearer the fire it came.

Hands twisting, clutching, grasping, madly dancing,
seemed everywhere. Frantically Benjamin stared to his right. A hand as gnarled as a gibbet reached out to complete its chain. He turned to the left. A hand with veins like a hangman's rope reached likewise.

‘Got you, young man!' shouted a voice in his ear. His right hand was seized!

‘The last link! The last link!' came the cry—for Benjamin had been jerked aside to make way for the last link. Who was it? Why, that pale fellow behind.

‘Last link! Last—'

Before the flaming fire, the last link stood pitilessly revealed. A weak link indeed!

Stoop-shouldered, grinning dingily like the Death's Head it was, stood the apothecary's ghost. And the fire was seen burning—right through him!

Hands felt hands tremble and sweat, then grip hard as iron . . . then withdraw from each other. Faces grew pale. In the midst of goodwill, in the midst of hope and merriment, what had stalked in?

All began to draw away, shaking with horror at the sight of the phantom: all save the boy who had brought it in. Wretchedly and shamefully, he stood beside murdered Mister Corbett.

‘Not I! Not I!' whispered the ghost.

‘Murderer!' cried someone harshly and pointed to Benjamin Partridge.

‘It was him who brought the ghost! Murderer!'

The cry was taken up in every corner of the room. Even the cheerful, spotty potboy by the punch bowl screamed, ‘Murderer!' with his face screwed up in anger, fear, and disgust.

‘Be gone before the New Year strikes! Get out and take your damnation with you!'

‘Outcast! Wicked, hateful outcast! How dared you come among us?'

‘Break the glass he drank from!'

‘Scour the seat he sat on!'

‘Let out the air he breathed!'

‘Open the window! Open the door! For he's—'

In the misery of his shame, Benjamin Partridge put his hands to his ears and rushed for the open door. Close on his heels followed the apothecary's ghost, whose chill and despairing aspect repelled all pursuit.

‘Not I! Not I!' it moaned. ‘
I
did not betray!'

THE CLOUDS WERE
gone and the moon and the stars inherited the black sky. Despairingly the boy and the phantom passed along the whited high road: two figures with but a single shadow.

Where were they going? What home would take them in? Which family would not turn pale with dread and disgust?

The boy walked rapidly; the ghost shuffled desolately in his wake. The distance between them never exceeded a yard, hasten as the boy might. Was it possible he was trying to out-distance the ghost? Maybe . . . but his soul was too darkened by the loss of all his hopes to know distinctly where he was going, or why.

He paused. An iron sound filled the air. The bells of St Michael-on-the-Hill were tolling the hour. Midnight. In the distance other bells likewise beat and swung and chimed. The very night seemed a house of bells; and faintly, in between the chimes, came a sound of laughter, cheering, and delight. Secure in their parlours, warm and gleaming families rejoiced.

‘A happy New Year to you, Mister Corbett,' wept Benjamin, thinking of where those words might have been spoken: in whose company—and by whose fire.

‘I did not betray you!' moaned the ghost—to whom all years were, henceforth, alike, and none of them happy. ‘Not I.'

‘I betrayed
you
—'

‘Willingly? Was it
willingly
done?'

Once more those hated words—but, oh, the painful difference! Such a world of pleading and piteous eagerness
was there in ‘
willingly
', that Benjamin could not but nod and reassure the unhappy ghost.

‘You were so cold—'

‘Hell is cold . . .'

‘You were in the Spaniards', sir—on my honour you were!'

But the ghost whispered softly, ‘No tavern, tomb, inn or rest for the murdered man. Only a place in his murderer's cold mansion of hate.'

Benjamin shook his head.

‘I don't hate you any more, Mister Corbett. I've had my fill of revenge.'

‘So where must we go, you and I? Everywhere, I must go with you.'

The boy looked about him at the wild and lonely Heath. Darker still grew his spirit. The prospect before him was dismal in the extreme.

‘The woods . . . the fields . . . the dark corners . . . forsaken places . . . the bottom of the sea, maybe, Mister Corbett.'

‘If we must. But before that—could I not bid farewell? Could I not see my home once more? Could I not glimpse my children and my wife? A last look to bear away a bright image in the long dark wanderings to come?'

‘But ain't you afraid they'll shriek and go distracted at the sight of you, Mister Corbett? For you're a grim object, sir—'

Though he tried to answer evenly and sensibly, his voice shook and broke with a new dismay.

‘They'll not see me,' whispered the ghost. ‘I'll peer through the parlour window. I'll not be seen. One last glimpse, I implore . . . so brief and to last for . . . so very long.'

‘Through the window, then . . . the one at the back?'

Eagerly, the phantom nodded.

‘And—and briefly?'

‘Briefly!'

‘You'll not betray?'

‘Not I! Not I!'

It must have been half past midnight when they came to Gospel Oak, for all the houses but one were in darkness. The New Year had been born and safely cried out on the bells. No need to stay up longer. No harm would come to it now.

Benjamin Partridge and the ghost of his master moved cold and silent among the shadows where once they'd walked in the light. They crept towards the one house still awake.

The apothecary's shop stood halfway down the street, upon the right hand side. Candles shone from its windows, front and back. Mrs Corbett and her two children were awaiting the apothecary's return.

‘They will be in the parlour,' murmured the apothecary's ghost, ‘where I left them before . . . before—'

‘Before what?' asked Benjamin dully.

‘Before I left to bring you back,' whispered the ghost—and it was as if the words were torn from his thin substance with pain.

‘To bring me back, Mister Corbett?'

‘I was sorry to have sent you . . . on such a night. You spoke of pity. I was ashamed. I ran . . . and ran . . . and—'

The phantom's voice trailed away like a piece of drapery, caught in a carriage door, vanishing with a flutter in the speeding night.

It was now that Benjamin Partridge's soul began to groan and crack under the burden of the ghost. Fear, shame, and remorse are great weights to endure when there's no remedy.

‘Alice!' whispered the ghost sadly. They were by the parlour window, concealed among such shadows as the leafless garden afforded.

Mrs Corbett—a plump, truly plain woman—sat by the fire, looking up from time to time as faint sounds made her think her husband was coming back.

‘My love . . . my darling Alice,' sighed the phantom, for this dumpling of a lady was the ghost's dear darling. She was his love, his joy, the fire of his youth and the warmth of his middle life.

Her face was still smooth, though faint shadows crossed it, forerunners of that grief that would soon tear and crumple it when she should know of her husband's end. Unbearable grief—yet grief that would have to be borne.

Burning tears filled Benjamin Partridge's eyes and flowed, scalding, down his cheeks. What had he done? What had he done?