Border Ghost Stories Part 23

'There's maybe something ye've left out of your calculation,' he said suggestively, 'something that some might put as high as the estate itself.'

'What d' ye mean?' inquired the other, turning about so as fully to see the other's face.

'Well, as 'twixt friends and neighbours I'll speak out fairly,'

responded the man at the green table, 'and as I'm your guest you'll understand I'm perfectly straight in my proposition. The long and short o't then is that I'm settled in this new place of mine next yours; that it is time for me to "range myself," and that if you'll give me your daughter's hand--give me leave, that is, to propose for her hand in marriage, and she does me the honour of accepting--well then, I'll settle your manor, or what's left of it, on her and her heirs for ever.

Make a dower-house of it, in fact. And more than this, I'll burn all your I.O.U.'s in addition. You'll be a free man once again.'

His host started violently, gave a sudden haughty and contemptuous look at the speaker, made as if he would speak, then turned swiftly back to the fire again.

He had a fierce desire to kick this vile newcomer--this Mosenthal, 'the foreigner,' or 'ootner'--the son of a rich Jewish Manchester tradesman--out of the house, but the fellow was his guest, and he checked himself. Above all, he dreaded public bankruptcy; he, the last male descendant of the proud race of Heronsbeck.

'Think it over,' said the other quietly. 'I think 'tis a fair offer--free to take or free to drop.'

Still his host made no reply. The other after a little pause proceeded with his tempting proposals. He had reached out his hand for the dice-box on the table; he took it up and rattled the dice in the box as if to throw on to the table.

'Come,' he cried vivaciously. 'Have a throw! Let luck decide. I'll back your throw against mine. A hundred pounds to a penny.'

He rattled the dice noisily, and cast them on the table, still holding the box tight over the ivory cubes.

The tempter prevailed; he had re-aroused the gambling fever in his host, who now advanced to the table and looked irresolutely on the upturned box.

'Done!' he cried suddenly. The other's fist lifted up; the cubes nestled close together showing dots two and one.

'Luck's turned,' said his guest philosophically, as he laid down the notes.

The other flung the dice swiftly on to the green board; the cubes rolled apart, then as they settled they showed six and five.

A spark of momentary fire flickered in the gambler's eye; he picked up the notes; then the frown came back to his brow; he s.h.i.+vered, looked at the clock, then, 'It's d.a.m.ned late,' he said, 'and if you don't want any more to drink we'd better go to bed.'

So saying Heronsbeck of Heronsbeck lit a candle for his guest, showed him to his chamber, then went gloomily to his own.

There was no sleep, however, for him that night, for he dreaded the morning and the astounded look of his darling Lily--his only child--when he had to tell her of Mosenthal's proposal.

'Of course she won't do it--she couldn't. There'll be no harm done, for she'd as soon accept a Hottentot as a rich Jew.' So her father reflected aloud.

But she wouldn't like it. He hated to think of her expression when he conveyed Mosenthal's offer to her.

The Jew's notes positively burned in his fingers as he had laid them down on his dressing-table; the fellow's offer was extraordinarily tempting. Ah, welladay! This was the end, then, of Heronsbeck Hall, which he prized above every earthly possession after his daughter. His father had lost the half of it over cards; now he himself had thrown away the rest in like manner. There was the grouse moor; he counted up the 'amenities' as he lay in bed, even as a lover enumerates the charms of his mistress.

The wine-dark moorland--how he loved it! And the great days in autumn after grouse and blackc.o.c.k. Then the fis.h.i.+ng in the beck for trout as a boy, and the call of the sounding 'forces.' Then the huntings afoot on the high fells, and the reckless gallops on the haughs below. No wonder he loved it, for he and his forefathers were part and parcel of the land. They had been there and owned it since the days of the Testa de Nevil. He was 'hefted' to it, as the farmers said of their stock.

Well, all was now over. The 'lament' must sound over Heronsbeck.

Mosenthal must take the estate; he himself would take Lily abroad and live forgotten, for he had rejected Mosenthal's proposal now, absolutely.

Just at this decisive moment he distinctly heard the cry of a peac.o.c.k sound--weird and discordant--without.

'The peac.o.c.k's cry!' It was as the wail of the banshee in his ear.

Peac.o.c.ks had long since disappeared from the Hall, yet their fateful cry, which had sounded through the night of the strange death of his ancestor who first brought them there, had been wonderfully allied with the fortunes of his house.

He accepted the omen.

Rising up with the first gleam of dawn, he went out into the park.

He determined to appraise and make an inventory of all that remained on the place that he could call his own still and sell. There was some timber left. Then all the stock on the home farm would be disposed of.

As he endeavoured to 'tot' this up he noticed a figure swinging along across the park at a great pace. Was a stranger already fearless about trespa.s.s?

Turning away from the approaching intruder, he commenced his calculation afresh. Suddenly a voice hailed him joyfully.

'Back again! Back again, Pater, at long last! Yes, the rolling stone has gathered some moss after all--honourably, if luckily, come by. So here I am, Pater, like the Prodigal--to crave forgiveness, and--to repay you my debts.'

Heronsbeck turned and stared upon the speaker. 'Joe!' he cried faintly, but with Joe, his only son, he had quarrelled. Joe had vanished on the Klond.y.k.e in a blizzard. This must be his ghost.

'Come, Dad!' called the beloved figure in front of him beseechingly.

'My boy, my boy!' cried his father, pressing his son to his bosom.

'Thank G.o.d for ye, my boy, my boy! But how can it be that you're alive?'

he asked apprehensively, as though fearing his son might vanish again from his eyes.

'A good Samaritan--this time disguised as a Jesuit Father, rescued me.

Then I saved a pal myself eventually, who died of fever and left me all his pile.'

'Yet I heard the peac.o.c.k cry this morning,' muttered Heronsbeck to himself, still apprehensive of misfortune.

'And did you also, Pater, hear the peac.o.c.k shouting?' asked his son in astonishment.

'Why, as I came over the fell by the Hanging Stone at break o' day--just above the young larch plantation where we had the record woodc.o.c.k shoot--I heard his rasping cry.

"Hallo!" I called back to him. "Hallo, old bugler! You've got it all wrong this time. 'Tis not 'The Last Post,' but 'Reveille' that you must sound over Heronsbeck Hall this day."'

KITTY'S BOWER

When Eric Chesters of Chesters Castle married Miss Brocklebridge--the bold and handsome heiress of Sir William, ironmaster, baronet, and expectant baron, all the world and his wife clapped hands and cried 'an ideal arrangement,' and foretold long years of success and happiness for the happy pair.

At the club after the wedding the 'best man,' however, set forth a different view of the matter.

'Of course on paper it's ideal,' he said; 'Sir William is of the order of Melchisedec--having neither father nor mother, while Eric's pedigree is the joy of the Heralds' College. Edith's money will pay off the mortgages on Chesters Castle, no doubt, but, as Stevenson shrewdly said, "_The Bohemian must not marry the Puritan._" Now Eric is not naturally a marrying man; he yielded to his aged mother's solicitations and the well-developed charms and black eyes of his wife. She sighs for a career, and thinks Chesters Castle a fine foundation for it, but her crest is a ladder; Eric's is a pierrot. In short, she is an Alpine climber, and Eric a charming Prince Florizel of Bohemia. I give them a year in which to find each other out--_apres cela le deluge_.'

The 'best man' proved right in his casting of their horoscope, for a prolonged honeymoon spent in going round the world revealed a rift in the lute which a season in town developed into an undoubted crack.

Thus, when Mrs. Chesters pressed on her husband the desirability of entering Parliament, he protested that he had only seven skins; and when she wished to pay a round of visits to distinguished people he maintained that they ought to reside at Chesters Castle for a while.

She yielded, but her husband's castle completed her disillusion. She had thought of it as a social _point d'appui_--she found it in her own words 'a gloomy shooting barrack.'