Page:How I Helped to Lay a Ghost.pdf/8

690 "But what became of Wells?" objected Major.

"Help! help!" shrieked a woman's voice at this instant.

We all ran towards the door, just as the porter's wife rushed from it in a frenzy of terror.

"The ghost! the ghost!" she cried, and collapsed into Major's arms.

I heard a growl of something which sounded like "Keep quiet, or I'll brain you!" and one of the most woe-begone and forlorn objects I have ever seen rushed along the passage, then stopped, amazed at the sight of us, and leant gasping against the doorpost. It was a man, haggard and filthy, his face covered with many days' stubble, who crouched blinking and shading his eyes with one hand, the other grasping a coal-hammer, his jaws inarticulately chattering the while.

"Why, if it isn't Wells!" roared Major.

On this the creature recovered his voice, and clawing at Meadowcroft, as if fending off some horrid apparition, he huskily ejaculated:

"Take him away! It's not true—I never done it!"

"Why, Wells, don't you know me?" asked Meadowcroft, holding out his hand to him.

"Keep off! Don't come a-haunting me in daylight!" the man screamed, shuffling back into the passage.

By this time the fresh air had revived the porter's wife, so propping her against the step Major dashed after the retreating figure, who was stumbling towards a dark and narrow stairway. Dragging him back by the collar of his dilapidated coat, Major confronted him with Meadowcroft.

"It's all right, Wells; don't be frightened," said the latter soothingly.

"Why, are—aren't you dead, sir?" stammered the poor wretch.

"Not a bit of it; feel me!" And with that he grasped the dirty one's hand and wrung it, by no means gently.

"Oh, the Lord be praised! I thought you were shot."

"Well, who did it?" asked Major.

"Not me—not me! It was an accident."

Meadowcroft and I exchanged glances.

"But tell us," I asked, "how did it happen?"

"Oh, my! You're sure it's all right? I ain't a murderer, am I?" and he began to whimper, as much, I could see, from the effects of weakness as from the mental strain he must have gone through. "Oh, Mr. Meadowcroft, the pistol went off as I handed it to you, and the horse reared—I always said he was too flighty for our work—and you fell out of the cart, and I thought you were shot, and everyone would say I'd done it, and I should perish on the scaffold, and—and I didn't know what to do!"

"But what became of the horse and trap?" said Meadowcroft.

"He galloped out of the yard, bad luck to him! And then I made sure they'd say I'd shot you to get the money, and I ran downstairs to the furthest cellar, and there I hid. Oh, dear! oh dear! What I've suffered these five days down in that cellar with all the slugs and devil's coach-horses and horrid things. I never come out in daylight till to-day, and then I ran straight against this good lady, whoever she is, and she screamed so I thought the whole place would be roused, and it would be all up with me."

"You haven't had much to eat?" I suggested.

"No, sir, indeed that's true. I used to try and forage a bit in the larder o' nights, but I feared to take much in case they'd miss it."

"Yes," chimed in the lady indignantly, "frightening folk out of their senses wandering about all night! I thought the food was going faster than it ought, but I didn't say nothing, as I knew ghosts didn't eat, and my husband would only have laughed at me."

"Well, now Wells has turned up at last, I wonder what ought to be done with him?" said Major, who seemed half-inclined to take the unfortunate porter into custody.

"Give him a wash and a good meal," said I.

It was quite six months later as we passed the bank on a market day that I asked my wife whether the substantial figure in a porter's uniform at the door quite realised her ideal of a ghost; but I regret to say that neither his "presence" nor the dignity of his office protect Wells from the ribaldry of the village boys, who, after the manner of their tribe, do not suffer him to forget his painful experience.