A Ghost Story for Christmas
by Dudley Costello.
Originally published in Ainsworth's Magazine: A Miscellany of Romance (Chapman and Hall) vol.11 #1 (1847).
There was a man once
Dwelt by a churchyard.—Winter's Tale.
Some years ago—longer since than I care to particularise—it was my chance to reside for a time in a small village in the North Riding of Yorkshire, situated about half-way between the old town of Richmond and the beautiful scenery of the Greta.
The name of the village is Kirkby, known on the maps as Kirkby Ravensworth, to distinguish it from others similarly designated, from being placed near a church, but more familiarly known throughout the country-side as Kirby Hill.
It well deserves the latter nomenclature, for though it stands on one of the spurs of the loftier moors that stretch behind it to the borders of Westmoreland, it forms the most prominent feature in the landscape when seen from the wide valley through which one of the tributaries of the Swale takes its course, with its frequent becks and many windings. The old gray church that stands on the brow of the hill is a landmark for miles round, and it is scarcely necessary to climb to the battlements of the belfry-tower to catch a glimpse of the glittering waters which mark where Whitby lies at least sixty miles distant.
Except the old church, Kirby Hill has little to recommend it to the lover of the picturesque, for all it consists of is a green of no very great extent, surrounded on three sides by the houses that form the village, and bounded on the fourth by the low churchyard wall. Indeed, were its claims upon the traveller's admiration much greater than they are, it would scarcely obtain a place in his memory while he recalled the woods and rocks of Greta, or the deep gills and foaming torrents which intersect his path as he journeys from Catterick Bridge to Barnard Castle. Of historical association there is not much, the hill being memorable only as the place where Cromwell is said to have planted his cannon when he battered down the proud walls of Ravensworth Castle, whose ivy-covered ruins in the valley beneath have since that day been tenantless, save to owls and daws and "the crannying wind."
But what the village of Kirby Hill wants in actual beauty or past celebrity, it gains from its isolated position; for in this remote spot still flourished at the time I speak of, undisturbed by any rays of the light of modern philosophy, the superstitious belief and observances of the middle ages. Here, on the village green, the morris-dancers still assembled to usher in the new year; here May was welcomed with all her honours; here the yule log merrily burnt, and the cup of firmity passed from hand to hand; and here, on St. Mark's eve, the watcher of the dead took his annual stand to number the spectres of those who were destined to disappear from earth before the year had gone its round.
This last practice, which once was common wherever the Danes or Norsemen had penetrated, has long been peculiar to Yorkshire; and Brande, in his "Popular Antiquities," speaks of it as follows:—
"It is customary," he says, "in Yorkshire, for the common people to sit and watch in the chureh-porch on St. Mark's Eve, from eleven o'clock at night till one in the morning. The third year (for it must be done thrice) they are supposed to see the ghosts of all those who are to die next year pass by into the church. When any one sickens that is thought to have been seen in this manner, it is presently whispered about that he will not recover, for that such, or such an one, who has watched on St. Mark's Eve says so."
At Kirby Hill there were some local traditions, which might be added to Brande's account. The most important were, that the Watcher was bound to strict secresy—his own life being endangered by any indiscreet revelation; and also, that if he chanced to fall asleep during his vigil, his death before the close of the year might be looked upon as certain. These consequences were necessary, for the first secured the reputation of the Watcher, who was tongue-tied only before the hand of death smote any of the inhabitants; and the second took away the privilege of immortality which would otherwise have been enjoyed by the self-appointed witness to the coming events of mortality.
The men who address themselves to pursuits of a ghostly or mortal nature, are ordinarily distinguished from the common herd by some personal attribute, which we appear instinctively to recognise. Sullenness of character and repulsiveness of demeanour usually mark the finisher of the law; the sexton has a grim, grave-like aspect, that tells of a communion with earth-worms and skulls, mildewed shrouds and mouldering coffins; the very parish clerk, with whom are many mortuary associations prevailing over happier rites, wears the air of one who joys him in the doleful melody of the passing-bell; and the ghost-seer has, or ought to have, the visionary expression and dreamy eye of one whose commerce is solely with the world of spirits. But there are exceptions to all thin and when Shakspeare painted a merry grave-digger, and Walter Scott described a jocular hangman, they only gave evidence of the knowledge of human nature that was in them, and proclaimed the well-known truth of fronti nulla fides.
The Watcher of Kirby Hill seemed born to give the negative to all such impressions as are connected with the character of a man's occupations. He was a stout, thick-set, jovial-looking, round-headed fellow, as one could hope to meet with on a summer's day. The full-blown peony was scarcely of so deep a hue as the ruddy cheeks of which he was the owner; the grin on his face was ready at a moment's notice; and his voice was the loudest and merriest in the village. It is true that he had a habit of staring with a pair of blue eyes, planted, as the French term it, à fleur de tête, but this, when his mysterious pursuit is remembered, can easily be accounted for. The man who is in the habit of looking a legion of ghosts out of countenance may be readily pardoned, if his eyes have more of the lobster than the gazelle in their expression. He was by trade a carpenter, superadding not only the construction of tenements both for the living and the dead, but the avocations also of parish-sexton. There was nothing ghostly in his appearance, nor did his appellation savour of the gloom of romance. His name was Tom Punder.
His character corresponded with his personal appearance. He was good-natured to a fault and honest as he skin between his brows; somewhat prone to gossip, and by no means disinclined to that species of fellowship which, when friends are assembled, increases as the night grows shorter. This tendency was not unfrequently developed at the weekly club, invariably held every Saturday evening at the "Shoulder of Mutton," in the corner of the Green, of which Tom Punder was the perpetual president, and undoubted oracle; dignities which he enjoyed, the first, in right of his social qualifications, and the second, less from the deep lessons of truth which he expounded than from the profoundly wise air with which he delivered his thoughts when called upon for an opinion. His age, at the period I speak of, was about fifty; he was well to do in the world, was married—his wife, by the by, was a bit of a shrew—and he had a very pretty daughter on the verge of womanhood, who already began to create a sensation, which was not confined to her native village.
With these attributes of happiness and comfort within and around him, it may be asked what motive Tom Punder could possibly have had for taking upon himself the lonely and melancholy office of supervising the world of spirits. It might, perhaps, have arisen from a professional desire to ascertain for how many guests he was called upon in the course of the year to prepare their last abode; or, giving him credit for more metaphysical views, from that inscrutable yearning after the unknown which exists in all minds with more or less of intensity. He might, perhaps, have calculated that the act would add to his personal importance, and, if he did so, he was right, for even a shake of the head from Tom Punder, when "mortal consequences" were discussed, was worth volumes of observations from other men. The vicar himself, with the burial service to back him, was not invested with a tithe of the mysterious influence which attached to the jovial and sententious sexton. "T'parson," the men of Kirby used to say, "t'parson can see no but what his bukes tell him,—now Tom Punder can see right thro' bukes, parson, and all." The wholesome awe in which his reverence should have been held was also somewhat diminished from rather a singular cause. He had the misfortune to be club-footed, and those who are fond of associating "judgments" with physical infirmities, declared he had been "struck so" in consequence of having, in his youth, gone out fishing on a Sunday! He was, in fact, a quiet, inoffensive man, whose principal object always seemed to me to get through his clerical duties as quickly as possible, and then hobble back to his books, or take a solitary ride on the moors on his old, white, wall-eyed horse. But whether the vicar of Kirby was deemed of harshly or wisely by his parishioners, it is quite certain that they held it no error of judgment to look upon Tom Punder as the best quotable authority extant.
At what period of his life Tom Punder first qualified himself as a Watcher of the Dead I never exactly knew. The old people in the village remembered his predecessor, and that was all; they had no interest now in recalling the power of a defunct potentate; their fate was in the keeping of Punder, and on Punder therefore they reverently gazed. Even old Becky Coates, who had reached her hundredth year, used to mumble out an unintelligible salutation to the prophetic sexton whenever he passed the stone-bink in front of the alms-house where she daily placed herself—as if she, too, thought that the sickle of death might be turned aside from gathering in the ripe harvest, by a show of courtesy to the bosom friend of the reaper.
The night of St. Mark's Eve in the year 18—, was a singularly inclement one for that season of the year; for although winter lingers long on the dreary Yorkshire moors, it does not often happen that snow is to be seen on the ground after the beginning of April and it was an accidental change of the weather that produced this effect on the present occasion. Throughout the whole day the snow had fallen heavily, and by nightfall it lay as thick as if it had been Christmas.
Tom Punder was not in the habit of preparing for his lonely vigil by fasting and maceration. On the contrary, it was his constant practice to repair betimes to the "Shoulder of Mutton," and then and there so to fortify the inward man as to render it spirit-proof. Though few of the Kirby "lads" would have joined in his watch, there were plenty who had no objection to assist him in arming for the ghostly encounter, and on the evening in question the cold weather had driven a goodly knot to the ale-house fireside. Amongst the number was a young man named Joe Talentyre, the son of a small farmer who lived in the neighbouring village of Gayles; he was a lively, good-looking, active young fellow, the master of many rural accomplishments, and, what raised him highly in the popular estimation, the fastest runner in the whole country side. The favours of the fair are always the prize which youth esteems the highest, and those favours are with equal certainty bestowed by the fair upon such as achieve the mastery over their companions. From these premises it follows that Phoebe Punder, whose beauty we have already hinted at, had met with an Orlando in Joe Talentyre, and she had become his Roselind. But Tom Punder, though a very good-hearted fellow in the main, was occasionally wrong-headed, and, if the truth must be told, a little under the influence of the gray mare at home. That lady, in spite of her husband's vocation and maugre his being, to a certain extent, one of the pillars of the church of England (inasmuch as his occupation led him to its foundations), had a strong tendency towards Methodism, and looked upon all rural pastimes as vanity—not to say wickedness. Now Joe Talentyre was a head and front offender in the mother's eyes in that which had won for him the daughter's heart, and she had not only forbidden him the house, but set the worthy sexton's face against him also—as far as related to the encouragement of his suit, though without succeeding in causing any personal estrangement. The common room of the "Shoulder of Mutton" was therefore neutral ground where Tom Punder and the youth, who sought to ally himself to his house, might meet and converse as freely as if the course of true love were the smoothest track in the world instead of being as rugged and stony as a Welch crossroad.
The ale cup circulated freely amongst the younger men, and certain of the elders did not withhold their hands from compounding, nor their lips from tasting fluids of a stronger nature;—we need scarcely say that Tom Punder by virtue of his calling, if he had been at a loss for a better reason, belonged to the last-named category, and he was ably supported by old Charley Wright, the village postman, who was the last to join the party, his widely-extended daily walk having been unusually protracted owing to the state of the weather. Charley Wright was a character in his way. His favourite vice was "potting," if that could be called a vice, which drew from him such sound precepts of morality while under its influence. There was one maxim which he was constantly in the habit of repeating, and it derived additional force from his practical illustration for its truth. It was couched in verse and ran thus:
Enough's as good as a feast
If we did but our pleasure know,
But a drunkard's worse than a beast
For he drinks till he cannot go.
It was usually in the last stage of intoxication that Charley Wright arrived at this conclusion. He was rather a quaint sort of person to look at, being very short, very spare, and his legs very much bowed, he had a particularly long, hooked nose, and was deeply pitted with the small-pox. Had he been less remarkable in appearance the peripatetic dignity with which he was invested would have made him notable, for in a country place the postman always enjoys a certain consideration. From the mere fact of his being the unconscious distributor of so much joy and sorrow, his character is at once invested with a mysterious claim to respect, as if the contents of the letters which he carries had transfigured him. It was something of this feeling—though there were other causes, too,—which qualified him for companionship with the Watcher of the Dead.
"Well, lad," said the sexton, without removing his pipe from his mouth, as he smoked in the chimney, "where'st ha' been so late t'night. I thowt thou'dst been lost i't snaw."
"More unlikely things have happened," returned Charley Wright, whose dialect was less Yorkshire than that of his interlocutor, probably owing to his familiarity with letters, "t'drift was very deep, 'specially down by Ask-beck."
"What,—at neukin o't lonnin?"
"Ay; where t'owd man was lost two year ago; him as you seed."
"Ah!" said Tom Punder, with the solemn air which always came over him when he spoke of his praternatural occupation, "I mind having seed him, and yan more as war t' follow."
A cold shudder ran through the company at this indefinite omen;—every man thought of himself, but every one made a point of looking at the postman as if to fix him with the chance. He seemed little affected by the sexton's words; perhaps he understood better than they who was meant. At any rate it did not disturb the equanimity with which he took a prodigiously long pull at the mug of ale before him.
"But it warn't only the drift at Ask-beck that kept me out so late," rejoined the postman, "I had to go round by Squire Cradock's."
"Ony news from t'outlandish parts?" inquired Tom Punder, throwing into his eye a strong fishy expression.
"A letter with a black seal," replied Charley, "I needn't to tell you the rest."
"I know'd it," said Tom Punder, "t'young squire's dead."
"Yes," said the postman, "killed a fightin' agin the French at t'battle of Calimanco."
"Where's Calimanco?" asked Joe Talentyre.
"In Amerriky," replied Tom Punder, oracularly.
No one presumed to question this novel geographical discovery, for the company inwardly argued, that as the sexton knew what was going on in the other world, he could not surely be at a loss to decide upon every thing that takes place in this.
There was one exception to this general belief. Joe Talentyre doubted not only Tom Punder's geography, but even his powers of divination; he took care, however, not to say so openly though he had formed a plan for putting them to the test.
The conversation, as a matter of course, now took the tone imparted to it by the postman's announcement, and many dreary stories were told of warnings, dreams, and apparitions. Tom Punder contenting himself with looking as if he knew "all about it," smoked his pipe in silence, interrupting that occupation only to pay his addresses to something very hot which stood on the hob beside him, and which any one by at the brewage would have pronounced a very skilfully compounded jorum of nogg. Charley Wright, who seemed fatigued with his day's exertions, gradually lost his loquacity, and ceasing to give utterance to the great moral truths which the spirit of John Barleycorn invariably evoked, fell fast asleep in his chair. The company being thus occupied, the silent departure of Joe Talentyre was not noticed,—and so intent on their subject were the alternate narrators and listeners, that the clock had struck ten before they were aware—or seemed to be aware—of the lateness of the hour;—we say seemed, for in proportion as the night waned, the disposition to sit up became more manifest, none liking to be the first to move. This craven thought entered not into the mind of Tom Punder; nicotia and nogg had done their work bravely, and steeled him to his annual task. Casting his eyes on the clock, he said, "Well, lads, I mun go. T owd kirk-yard will be waitin'! Yan on ye, help me on wi' t' topcoat."
He rose as he spoke, and was speedily equipped. The party in the "Shoulder of Mutton" accompanied him to the door, and hurriedly bade him good night, amazed at the coolness with which he went to confront his fate.
A curious or less superstitious observer might, however, have detected the cause of his courage in a certain obliquity left by his track across the snow, as if the flesh had been weaker than the spirit. It was clear, at all events, that metaphysical aid had been called in to sustain him. So thought the rest of the topers who, now that Tom Punder had left them, began to think the "Shoulder of Mutton" scarcely a safe place to abide in, and that their wisest policy was to reach their own homes as speedily as possible, where, with doors bolted and windows barred, and a bit of mountain ash thrust into the key-hole, they were safe from the spirits who wandered abroad that night. Having roused up the little postman, and placed him in the middle of the chain formed by their linked arms, they sallied forth in a body, and dropping off one by one at their respective doors, in a few minutes the village of Kirby Hill was as silent as the churchyard which formed one of its boundaries.
The house where Tom Punder dwelt, was in a manner let into a corner of the churchyard, but there was only one window which commanded a view of it. This was in the side of the building, on the ground-floor, and was distant only a few feet from the pathway which led from the gate direct to the church porch; so that a finer position for observing the passers-by could not possibly be had. It was of course at this window that the Watcher of the Dead took his solitary stance, to number and note down the doomed ones.
As no person had ever yet been known of sufficient hardihood to keep a check upon the operations of the spiritual world besides the watcher himself, it followed that, in rendering an account of his vigil, Tom Punder had it all his own way, and might, in a certain sense, be said to have prophecied on velvet, his predictions being always aprés le coup.
His subsequent revelations in reference to this occasion were of a more remarkable nature than common. To give them verbatim, in the broad Doric in which he used to indulge, would rather confuse than enlighten the reader, we will therefore take the liberty of translating his language into somewhat plainer English.
"As soon as I got home," ran the narrative, "as all the people had gone to bed, I fetched myself a can of strong ale from the cellar—some that the parson gives me, in part wages, every October—and put that and a horn to drink it out of on a table close at hand. I then made a sort of bolster of my carpenter's flannel-jacket and apron to prop me up as I sat in the window-seat, and putting on my thick red nightcap, I just took one horn of ale and began to watch. Well, for the matter of half an hour, or it might be more, nothing stirred. Thinks I, isn't old Becky Coates a-coming to-night? How much longer does she mean to sit on the alms-house bink? says I, to myself; I should have fancied that her time was almost up. Old Jemmy Gray, too, is pretty nigh as old as she is, and he's had the megrims all the Winter. On a sudden I felt a sort of cold shiver come over me, just as if some one had opened a street-door right at my back, but I knew too well what I was about to turn my head. I wasn't a going to have the devil fetch me out of my own fondness. Says I, it's a coming now, and sure enough it did come. The snow, which lay half a foot deep in the churchyard, had left off falling; the night was clear, and the moon being at the full I could see right into the church-porch. Presently I heard something a rustling at the churchyard-gate like the dry-leaves swept into a corner by the wind in Autumn. The wicket then flew open, and two figures, dressed in white, glided swiftly by. It's ordained that these creturs must turn their faces towards him that watches that he may know who's who, and prepare their graves accordingly. A ghastly sight it is, for the most part. The face looks hollow like a bird's, the mouth is always wide open and shaped like an O, and the eyes are dull and no more colour in them than water has. Well, this time, instead of looking towards me, the heads was turned quite t'other way, and I could make nothing out of 'em but that one seemed a good deal taller than the other. Says I to myself this is something out of the common; I wonder what it means. Two at a time never came here before; it's the first time, too, that I recollect a spirit being ashamed to look me in the face. So I took a good long draught of ale and kept my eye on the church-porch through which they had vanished, for the church-door is always set wide open on St. Mark's Eve, as no one knows where the ghosts may want to go to. In about ten minutes, as nigh as I can guess, while I was a staring with all my might, back again comes the two apparitions. An, says I, I shall have 'em this time; they forgot their duty just now. I shouldn't wonder if they was some of the gentlefolks up the Hall—there hasn't been a burying in the family for some time. They moved slowly on, just like the squire's two silver peacocks in the great gravel-walk; their heads was bound up with grave-clothes, and long white shrouds fluttered round them. As they got nearer, the light fell on their two faces, and I never felt such a turn as came over me then, for I saw, as plainly as ever I saw any thing in my life, that those faces belonged to Joe Talentyre and my daughter Phoebe. They came on smiling-like, looking first of all at each other and then at me very pleasantly. Of course I says nothing, for I was fit to drop, but I watches them with all my eyes, expecting every moment to see them vanish through the wicket. Instead of that, when they came right opposite to where I sat looking through the grating, they stopped of their own accord, and poor Joe's ghost looking straight at me, opened his mouth and spoke—
"'We're a-goin', Tom,' says the ghost.
"'Where to?' says I, breaking silence for the first time since I had been a watcher.
"'You'll know that soon enough,' replies Joe's spirit. 'Your dame wouldn't let us come together in this world, so we're bound off for the other.'
"'Can't nothing prevent it?' says I, gasping-like, for Joe's spirit looked awful pale and fierce.
"'Yes,' says he, 'you can. You have the power to save poor Phoebe's life, and mine, and the dame's too—she's a comin' by-and-by.'
"'Only tell me what it is, then, and dammee if I don't do it.'
"'It's no' but this, mun,' says the ghost, in a more affable tone, 'consent to let Phoebe marry me, and leave off watching for the future.'
"'Do,' cried the small ghost, as represented my daughter.
"'Amen,' says I, solemnly; 'she shall have him.'
"The words was no sooner out of my mouth than the ghosts was clean gone away from the place where they stood. The little spirit seemed to be hoisted up into the air by the other, who shot off like a flash of lightning behind the churchyard-wall; at the same moment I heard a loud bang and a kind of wild, unearthly laughter. I recollect nothing more that happened that night, and I suppose I must have gone to sleep about daybreak. There was no ale left in the can when I woke, and I went up-stairs to bed.
"'Tom Punder,' says my wife, 'hast seen owght by the common i't'night, thou look'st dreadful scared.'
"'Tibby,' says I, 'I've seen and heerd more nor ever I did afore in all my life. Do you want to see our Phebe carried to the grave?'
"'Tom,' says she, with a shriek, a jumpin' up in the bed. 'I'd rather you—that is, I—went there mysen.'
"'Then she mun marry Joe Talentyre, and that's the long and the short on't.'
"'Umph,' growled Tibby, a snatching the bed-clothes round her, and flopping tare on the pillow. 'That half-wit!'
"She lay silent for a minute or two, and then spoke again—
"'What mad' thee open t' street-door last night, and bang 't again so loud, Tom?'
"'I did nowt o't kind,' I replied.
"'As sure as I'm here I heerd it go, and voices a talking, and some one a laughing.'
"'You did?' says I; 'then there can't be no doubt about it. Don't you ask no more questions, Tibby, or p'r'aps you'll hear summot more than you like.'
"Poor Tib began to shiver at these words, and lay quite still.
"She never afterwards said a syllable agin Joe Talentyre. I kept my promise to the spirit; Phoebe and he was married the next month, and went to live at Gayles; I blocked up the window that looked into the churchyard, and never saw no more ghosts. I somehow think that they be banished quite out of the Riding, and as for Joe Talentyre, he can never hear tell on 'em without laughing till he's fit to bust."
This is Tom Punder's version of on took place on the last eve of St. Mark when he was a Watcher.