When Ghost Meets Ghost

by William De Morgan

The body had not been carried into a room of the cottage, but into what goes by the name of the Verderer's Hall, some fifty yards off. That much carriage was spared by doing so. It now lies on the "Lord's table," so called not from any reference to sacramental usage, but because the Lord of the Manor sat at it on the occasions of the Manorial Courts. Three centuries have passed since the last Court Baron; the last landlord who sat in real council with his tenantry under its roof having been Roger Earl of Ancester, who was killed in the Civil War. But old customs die hard, and every Michaelmas Day—except it fall on a Sunday—the Earl or his Steward at twelve o'clock receives from the person who enjoys a right of free-warren over certain acres that have long since harboured neither hare nor rabbit, an annual tribute which a chronicle as old as Chaucer speaks of as "iiij tusshes of a wild bore." If no boars' tusks are forthcoming, he has to be content with some equivalent devised to meet their scarcity nowadays. Otherwise, the old Hall grows to be more and more a museum of curios connected with the Park and outlying woodlands, the remains of the old forest that covered the land when even Earls were upstarts. A record pair of antlers on the wall is still incredulously measured tip to tip by visitors unconvinced by local testimony, and a respectable approach to Roman Antiquities is at rest after a learned description by Archæology. The place smells sweet of an old age that is so slow—that the centuries have handled so tenderly—that one's heart thinks of it rather as spontaneous preservation than decay. It will see to its own survival through some lifetimes yet, if no man restores it or converts it into a Studio.

Is his rating "Death" or not, whose body is so still on its extemporised couch—just a mattress from the keeper's cottage close at hand? Was the doctor's wording warranted when he said just now under his breath:—"It is in here"? Could he not have said "He"? What does the dog think, that waits and watches immovable at its feet? If this is death, what is he watching for? What does the old keeper himself think, who lingers by this man whom he may have slain—this man who may live, yet? He has scarcely taken his eyes off that white face and its strapped-up wound from the first moment of his sight of it. He does not note the subdued entry of Lady Gwendolen and the two doctors, and when touched on the shoulder to call his attention to the presence of a ladyship from the Castle, defers looking round until a fancy of his restless hope dies down—a fancy that the mouth was closing of itself. He has had such fancies by scores for the last few hours, and said farewell to each with a groan.

"My mother is at the cottage, Stephen," says Gwen. "She would like to see you, I know." Thereon the old man turns to go. He looks ten years older than his rather contentious self of yesterday. The young lady says no word either way of his responsibility for this disaster. She cannot blame, but she cannot quite absolve him yet, without a grudge. Her mother can; and will, somehow.

The dog has run to her side for a moment—has uttered an undertone of bewildered complaint; then has gone back patiently to his old post, and is again watching. The great surgeon and the girl stand side by side, watching also. The humbler medico stands back a little, his eyes rather on his senior than on the body.

"It is absolutely certain—this?" says Lady Gwen; questioning, not affirming. She is wonderfully courageous—so Sir Coupland thinks—in the presence of Death. But she is ashy white.

He utters the barest syllable of doubt; then half-turns for courtesy to his junior, who echoes it. Then each shakes his head, looking at the other.

"Is there no sound—nothing to show?" Gwen has some hazy idea that there ought to be, if there is not, some official note of death due from the dying, a rattle in the throat at least.

Sir Coupland sees her meaning. "In a case of this sort," says he, "sheer loss of blood, the breath may cease so gradually that sound is impossible. All one can say is that there is no breath, and no action of the heart—so far as one can tell." He speaks in a business-like way that is a sort of compliment to his hearer; no accommodation of facts as to a child; then raises the lifeless hand slightly and lets it fall, saying:—"See!"

To his surprise the girl, without any comment, also raises the band in hers, and stands holding it. "Yes—it will fall," says he, as though she had spoken questioning it. But still she holds it, and never shrinks from the horror of its mortality, somewhat to the wonder of her only spectator. For the other doctor has withdrawn, to speak to someone outside.

Of a sudden the dog Achilles starts barking. A short, sharp, startled bark—once, twice—and is silent. The girl lays the dead hand gently down, not dropping it, but replacing it where it first lay. She does not speak for a moment—cannot, perhaps. Then it comes with a cry, neither of pain nor joy—mere tension. "Oh, Dr. Merridew ... the fingers closed.... They closed on mine ... the fingers closed.... I know it. I know it.... The fingers closed!..." She says it again and again as though in terror that her word might be doubted. He sees as she turns to him that all her pride of self-control has given way. She is fighting against an outburst of tears, and her breath comes and goes at will, or at the will of some power that drives it. Sir Coupland may be contemplating speech—something it is correct to say, something the cooler judgment will endorse—but whatever it is he keeps it to himself. He is not one of those cheap sages that has hysteria on his tongue's tip to account for everything. It may be that; but it may be ... Well—he has seen some odd cases in his time.