Do not! Do not do so, I beg! cried the ghost. Let me move on. I feel myself growing rigid as it is. If we stop here, I shall be frozen stiff.
That, madam, said the master slowly, and seating himself on an ice-cake that is why I have brought you here. We have been on this spot just ten minutes, we have fifty more. Take your time about it, madam, but freeze, that is all I ask of you.
I cannot move my right leg now, cried the ghost, in despair, and my overskirt is a solid sheet of ice. Oh, good, kind Mr. Oglethorpe, light a fire, and let me go free from these icy fetters.
Never, madam. It cannot be. I have you at last.
Alas! cried the ghost, a tear trickling down her frozen cheek. Help me, I beg. I congeal!
Congeal, madam, congeal! returned Oglethorpe, coldly. You have drenched me and mine for two hundred and three years, madam. To-night you have had your last drench.
Ah, but I shall thaw out again, and then youll see. Instead of the comfortably tepid, genial ghost I have been in my past, sir, I shall be iced-water, cried the lady, threateningly.
No, you wont, either, returned Oglethorpe; for when you are frozen quite stiff, I shall send you to a cold-storage warehouse, and there shall you remain an icy work of art forever more.
But warehouses burn.
So they do, but this warehouse cannot burn. It is made of asbestos and surrounding it are fire-proof walls, and within those walls the temperature is now and shall forever be 416 degrees below the zero point; low enough to make an icicle of any flame in this world or the next, the master added, with an ill-suppressed chuckle.
For the last time let me beseech you. I would go on my knees to you, Oglethorpe, were they not already frozen. I beg of you do not doo
Here even the words froze on the water ghosts lips and the clock struck one. There was a momentary tremor throughout the ice-bound form, and the moon, coming out from behind a cloud, shone down on the rigid figure of a beautiful woman sculptured in clear, transparent ice. There stood the ghost of Harrowby Hall, conquered by the cold, a prisoner for all time.
The heir of Harrowby had won at last, and to-day in a large storage house in London stands the frigid form of one who will never again flood the house of Oglethorpe with woe and sea-water.
As for the heir of Harrowby, his success in coping with a ghost has made him famous, a fame that still lingers about him, although his victory took place some twenty years ago; and so far from being unpopular with the fair sex, as he was when we first knew him, he has not only been married twice, but is to lead a third bride to the altar before the year is out.
Aunt Joanna (Sabine Baring-Gould)
In the Lands End district is the little church-town of Zennor. There is no village to speak of a few scattered farms, and here and there a cluster of cottages. The district is bleak, the soil does not lie deep over granite that peers through the surface on exposed spots, where the furious gales from the ocean sweep the land. If trees ever existed there, they have been swept away by the blast, but the golden furze or gorse defies all winds, and clothes the moorland with a robe of splendour, and the heather flushes the slopes with crimson towards the decline of summer, and mantles them in soft, warm brown in winter, like the fur of an animal.
In Zennor is a little church, built of granite, rude and simple of construction, crouching low, to avoid the gales, but with a tower that has defied the winds and the lashing rains, because wholly devoid of sculptured detail, which would have afforded the blasts something to lay hold of and eat away. In Zennor parish is one of the finest cromlechs[36] in Cornwall[37], a huge slab of unwrought stone like a table, poised on the points of standing upright blocks as rude as the mass they sustain.
Near this monument of a hoar and indeed unknown antiquity lived an old woman by herself, in a small cottage of one story in height, built of moor stones set in earth, and pointed only with lime. It was thatched with heather, and possessed but a single chimney that rose but little above the apex of the roof, and had two slates set on the top to protect the rising smoke from being blown down the chimney into the cottage when the wind was from the west or from the east. When, however, it drove from north or south, then the smoke must take care of itself. On such occasions it was wont to find its way out of the door, and little or none went up the chimney.
The only fuel burnt in this cottage was peat not the solid black peat from deep, bogs, but turf of only a spade graft, taken from the surface, and composed of undissolved roots. Such fuel gives flame, which the other does not; but, on the other hand, it does not throw out the same amount of heat, nor does it last one half the time.
The woman who lived in the cottage was called by the people of the neighbourhood Aunt Joanna. What her family name was but few remembered, nor did it concern herself much. She had no relations at all, with the exception of a grand-niece, who was married to a small tradesman, a wheelwright near the church. But Joanna and her great-niece were not on speaking terms. The girl had mortally offended the old woman by going to a dance at St. Ives[38], against her express orders. It was at this dance that she had met the wheelwright, and this meeting, and the treatment the girl had met with from her aunt for having gone to it, had led to the marriage. For Aunt Joanna was very strict in her Wesleyanism[39], and bitterly hostile to all such carnal amusements as dancing and play-acting. Of the latter there was none in that wild west Cornish district, and no temptation ever afforded by a strolling company setting up its booth within reach of Zennor. But dancing, though denounced, still drew the more independent spirits together. Rose Penaluna had been with her great-aunt after her mothers death. She was a lively girl, and when she heard of a dance at St. Ives, and had been asked to go to it, although forbidden by Aunt Joanna, she stole from the cottage at night, and found her way to St. Ives.
Her conduct was reprehensible certainly. But that of Aunt Joanna was even more so, for when she discovered that the girl had left the house she barred her door, and refused to allow Rose to re-enter it. The poor girl had been obliged to take refuge the same night at the nearest farm and sleep in an outhouse, and next morning to go into St. Ives and entreat an acquaintance to take her in till she could enter into service. Into service she did not go, for when Abraham Hext, the carpenter, heard how she had been treated, he at once proposed, and in three weeks married her. Since then no communication had taken place between the old woman and her grand-niece. As Rose knew, Joanna was implacable in her resentments, and considered that she had been acting aright in what she had done.
The nearest farm to Aunt Joannas cottage was occupied by the Hockins. One day Elizabeth, the farmers wife, saw the old woman outside the cottage as she was herself returning from market; and, noticing how bent and feeble Joanna was, she halted, and talked to her, and gave her good advice.
See you now, auntie, youm gettin old and crimmed wi rheumatics. How can you get about? An theres no knowin but you might be took bad in the night. You ought to have some little lass wi you to mind you.
I dont want nobody, thank the Lord.
Not just now, auntie, but suppose any chance ill-luck were to come on you. And then, in the bad weather, youm not fit to go abroad after the turves, and you cant get all you want tay and sugar and milk for yourself now. It would be handy to have a little maid by you.
Who should I have? asked Joanna.
Well, now, you couldnt do better than take little Mary, Rose Hexts eldest girl. Shes a handy maid, and bright and pleasant to speak to.
No, answered the old woman, Ill have none o they Hexts, not I. The Lord is agin Rose and all her family, I know it. Ill have none of them.
But, auntie, you must be nigh on ninety.
I be ower that. But what o that? Didnt Sarah[40], the wife of Abraham[41], live to an hundred and seven and twenty years, and that in spite of him worritin of her wi that owdacious maid of hem, Hagar[42]? If it hadnt been for their goings on, of Abraham and Hagar, its my belief that shed ha held on to a hundred and fifty-seven. I thank the Lord Ive never had no man to worrit me. So why I shouldnt equal Sarahs life I dont see.
Then she went indoors and shut the door.
After that a week elapsed without Mrs. Hockin seeing the old woman. She passed the cottage, but no Joanna was about. The door was not open, and usually it was. Elizabeth spoke about this to her husband. Jabez, said she, I dont like the looks o this; Ive kept my eye open, and there be no Auntie Joanna hoppin about. Whativer can be up? Its my opinion us ought to go and see.
Well, Ive naught on my hands now, said the farmer, so I reckon we will go. The two walked together to the cottage. No smoke issued from the chimney, and the door was shut. Jabez knocked, but there came no answer; so he entered, followed by his wife.
There was in the cottage but the kitchen, with one bedroom at the side. The hearth was cold. Theres someut up, said Mrs. Hockin.
I reckon its the old lady be down, replied her husband, and, throwing open the bedroom door, he said: Sure enough, and no mistake there her be, dead as a dried pilchard.
And in fact Auntie Joanna had died in the night, after having so confidently affirmed her conviction that she would live to the age of a hundred and twenty-seven.
Whativer shall we do? asked Mrs. Hockin. I reckon, said her husband, us had better take an inventory of what is here, lest wicked rascals come in and steal anything and everything.
Folks baint so bad as that, and a corpse in the house, observed Mrs. Hockin. Dont be sure o that these be terrible wicked times, said the husband. And I sez, sez I, no harm is done in seein what the old creetur had got.
Well, surely, acquiesced Elizabeth, there is no harm in that. In the bedroom was an old oak chest, and this the farmer and his wife opened. To their surprise they found in it a silver teapot, and half a dozen silver spoons.
Well, now, exclaimed Elizabeth Hockin, fancy her havin these and me only Britannia metal[43].
I reckon she came of a good family, said Jabez. Leastwise, Ive heard as how she were once well off.
And look here! exclaimed Elizabeth, theres fine and beautiful linen underneath sheets and pillow-cases.
But look here! cried Jabez, blessed if the taypot baint chock-full o money! Whereiver did she get it from?
Hers been in the way of showing folk the Zennor Quoit, visitors from St. Ives and Penzance[44], and shes had scores o shillings that way.
Lord! exclaimed Jabez. I wish shed left it to me, and I could buy a cow; I want another cruel bad.
Ay, we do, terrible, said Elizabeth. But just look to her bed, what torn and wretched linen be on that and here these fine bedclothes all in the chest.
Wholl get the silver taypot and spoons, and the money? inquired Jabez.
Her had no kin none but Rose Hext, and her couldnt abide her. Last words her said to me was that shed have never naught to do wi the Hexts, they and all their belongings.