Mr Corbett's Ghost Read online

  If only, thought Nicholas, she would nod or bid me good morning. If only something remarkable would happen. If only—

  In his tender extremity, he had wafted out his hand as if to summon up a miracle from somewhere. It was the hand in which he’d been holding his pipe. Unluckily it caught against the rope. The pipe dropped. It fell maybe a yard beyond the rope. It was out of his reach. A kindly passenger made to help . . . but was forestalled.

  A swift rustling passed him by and a smell of roses was briefly on the air.

  ‘That forward hussy!’ remarked a third female passenger. ‘She didn’t need much invitation!’

  Miss Warboys never heard her. Having picked up the young convict’s pipe, she gave it to him—and with it her hand, which he held with some determination.

  ‘My name is Nicholas Kemp—Nicholas Kemp,’ he said very rapidly, as if he’d brought the good news a great distance and was anxious to deliver it. ‘From Preston in Sussex. Nicholas Kemp—’

  ‘Caroline Warboys,’ said she, with the chief weight on Caroline.

  (Though she spoke soft, ‘Caroline’ was taken up by several convicts and tried out humorously.)

  ‘Caroline—’

  ‘Yes, Mr Kemp?’

  ‘No—no! I was going to say it’s a sweet name. And suits you well, Miss Warboys.’

  ‘It was on account of the Queen, you know. I was called after the Queen—’

  ‘Queens should be called after you!’

  ‘Neatly spoke, sonny!’

  Bartleman had passed by. He’d grinned, as if well pleased with himself. His passage had been brief—but of consequence.

  Till he’d come, Nicholas and Miss Warboys had stood, it seemed to them, in some springtime field, or by a gentle river quite overhung with willow in which unusually musical birds were singing—or anywhere, in short, save on the worldly ship with its windy stench and peevish jostlings.

  Miss Warboys withdrew her hand from Nicholas’s.

  ‘Will you be . . . er . . . long in . . . in Virginia, Mr Kemp?’

  ‘Seven years.’

  ‘Was you very wicked, Mr Kemp?’

  Bitterly, he shook his head. The spell had been broke. Gone was the mysterious springtime. He frowned. Miss Warboys did likewise. The wind had somehow got inside of her bonnet. Her cheeks felt chilled. A sharp melancholy invaded her . . . though the exact nature of it was outside of her telling. Now she wondered what she was doing, standing so close to the convict’s rope, even with tears in her eyes.

  ‘I hope your pipe wasn’t broke, Mr Kemp.’

  He said it wasn’t.

  ‘If you’ll pardon me now, Mr Kemp—I must go back—’

  ‘Will I meet you again?’

  ‘I expect so, Mr Kemp. The ship’s a small world. Good morning to you—’

  ‘Miss Warboys!’

  ‘Yes, Mr Kemp?’

  ‘Miss Warboys—please—I beg of you—if you’d do me the honour . . . I’d be happy—so happy—and . . . and there’s no one else, I assure you! Please, please accept this!’

  In last desperation to recapture what he dreaded had been lost, he was holding out Bartleman’s brooch.

  ‘It was my . . . my mother’s!’ he added hopefully.

  Miss Warboys looked at it. Saw it was charming. She looked up at Nicholas. Found him even more so. She struggled with herself. She hesitated.

  In all justice, vanity had something to do with her decision. In all honesty, greed had something to do with it. But in all truth, affection and even the beginnings of love gave the final push.

  ‘I really shouldn’t, Mr Kemp . . . I really oughtn’t . . . But . . . but as you’ve no one else . . . and . . . and it was your mother’s, and . . . and . . . there, but for the Grace of God might be any gentleman . . . Indeed, Mr Kemp, the honour’s quite mine, you know!’

  She took the brooch and, as she did so, Nicholas briefly kissed her hand.

  So what was Bartleman now? A fallen angel—or a rising devil? The blood-stained pipe and the brooch. Both had been the embezzler’s gift. Both had helped to bring him Miss Warboys.

  Absently, Nicholas put the pipe in his mouth. His teeth encountered the deep dents made by the Marshalsea man’s before him. For a moment, he fancied alien thoughts to be blowing through his mind: thoughts of some fierceness, such as a stabbed man might have had if he could. (‘You stinking little fool—’)

  Hurriedly, Nicholas put the pipe away, and with it much of his disquiet. Very soon he reasoned himself out of uneasiness over Bartleman, and reflected that the embezzler had been good to him. To distrust him was ungrateful. Bartleman had put a sun in his grey sky. And what a sun!

  He turned his thoughts—without much hardship—to Miss Warboys, and in a happy frame of mind, composed himself for sleep. It was close on midnight and the convict hold was quiet. Nicholas sighed, then sighed again, and slipped away into his mysterious springtime.

  This was a great gift of his—to push uneasiness under a cushion of hope; even to sleep when other men might well have stayed awake . . .

  CHAPTER FOUR

  NICHOLAS KEMP WAS visited by the sweetest of dreams. He rode a white horse out of darkling woods across wide, spangled fields. And, as he jogged along, his horse’s harness jingled cheerfully (which may or may not have been the clinking of the leg-irons in the compartment aft). Then he was in a trim, fair garden where sunshine and the cypresses played chess across the lawn and a fountain splashed musically (which may or may not have been the dark ocean slapping the vessel’s sides).

  Now he was in an avenue of scarlet and yellow rose trees, walking with Miss Warboys and talking with Miss Warboys, and offering Miss Warboys the keys of his heart. And she, with a rustle of silk and a twinkling of eyes, was declaring, ‘I really shouldn’t . . . I really oughtn’t . . . but seeing as how—’

  Then a shadow fell across their path as, from between the trees stepped a squat lackey, looking remarkably like Bartleman, with another key.

  ‘Here, son. Give her this. It’s the key of heaven. Take it. It’s going begging!’

  ‘Thank ’ee, my man,’ said Nick, in his dream. ‘Much obliged. Miss Warboys, pray accept this further trifle!’

  Miss Warboys’ eyes shone with pleasure that was enchanting to behold. The key was charming, set with garnet and pearl.

  ‘Just sign this receipt, sonny. Evidence that I gave it, y’know—’

  The lackey held out a pen and paper that he’d produced from nowhere.

  ‘Sign!’

  ‘But there’s nothing on the paper—’

  ‘You ain’t signed it yet.’

  ‘But where’s the ink, my man?’

  ‘Ink, sonny? You sign for this in blood!’

  With that, he promptly stuck the pen into Nicholas’s finger.

  ‘Sign, son—’

  ‘That hurt! I’m bleeding! Stop it—stop it, I say! It hurt—’

  ‘There’s worse to come, Kemp. Worse to come! Get up, you lousy thief! On your feet!’

  Voices outside of his dream were shouting in his ear. Hands outside of his dream were dragging him to his feet.

  ‘On your feet, Kemp! Move or, by God, you’ll suffer!’

  ‘That hurt! Stop, I say—’ cried Nicholas confusedly, for he was still but half-awake and much distracted.

  The convicts’ hold seemed filled with swinging lanterns and angry faces. Someone had hold of his shoulder with a grip of iron. It was the boatswain.

  ‘The yard-arm for you, my lad! You may have ’scaped Tyburn, but the Phoenix’ll finish you off! Move, I say!’

  He moved: was dragged up the companionway into the freezing night air. It was but half an hour after midnight.

  He was surprised to see the stars and a wedge of the moon shining both aloft and in the sea: a pair of kissing heavens. Yet such was his bewilderment, he knew not which was which.

  He’d not the faintest notion of what was afoot, nor of the peril in which he stood.

  ‘So you are Nicholas Kemp
,’ said the captain, as if he had long been trying to find a face to fit that name.

  This was on the quarter-deck. The captain was much muffled and plainly feeling the chill. Though it was of no consequence, Nicholas recalled very clearly the captain muttering to an officer of his, ‘No, mister. Cold or no, we’ll do it out here. They whiff so strong, y’know, that, take ’em inside and the whole place stinks for a month! Like cats, y’know . . .’

  Under the staring moonlight, the Phoenix was a silver ship with a silver deck much hacked and slashed with the black shadows flung by the lofty tentage of masts, sails, and shrouds. In and out of these shadows, phantom-like, came more of the ship’s officers to gather in a formidable group about the stout little captain.

  ‘Call Miss Warboys,’ he said somewhat wearily.

  At once into Nicholas’s shaking brain came the unlikely hope that the captain was intending to marry them.

  But even his extraordinary optimism and unusual capacity for overlooking plain disaster suffered a setback when Miss Warboys appeared.

  Her face under its hood was worried and mournful. Nor was it improved by the sight of Nicholas. She scowled and began, quietly, to cry.

  ‘Is this him, Miss Warboys?’

  She nodded, and Nicholas’s heart began to beat unequally. What had he done?

  The captain turned from the lady to the convict.

  ‘You gave her a brooch?’

  ‘Indeed I did, sir. Oh yes, yes—’

  ‘This brooch?’

  The captain was holding out the charming trifle that Bartleman had given him.

  ‘That’s it, sir! Why—’

  But before he could finish speaking, the captain violently told him.

  The damnable brooch had been prigged! When, for God’s sake? The very first day the convicts had come on deck. A paying passenger had been robbed by the rope. At first she’d said nothing—on account of being ashamed of ignoring the captain’s advice. But then, in the Great Cabin that very night (not two hours ago), an unpleasant scene. The paying passenger—a lady of means—had spied the brooch, her brooch, on Miss Warboys. Called her a thief. Miss Warboys had gone white as a topsail. Witnesses—the lady’s husband (a man of means), her daughter, her friends—had all confirmed the brooch’s ownership. Miss Warboys had burst into tears. Swore the brooch had been a gift. Who from? Nicholas Kemp. And who was he when he was at home? Here, Miss Warboys had looked ill. Piteously. Swallowed hard so’s her pretty neck had jumped. A . . . a convict—

  The captain ran on a while longer with detail on damning detail. But Nicholas no longer heard him plainly. Instead, an old familiar dismay invaded him. Once more, his need to offer more than he owned had been his downfall.

  Mournfully he heard at last, as in a harsher dream than ever he’d had before, the captain grate: ‘Take him below. Put him in irons. I’ll have him hanged in the morning. So help me, I will!’

  ‘It’s no use crying, miss,’ a grim voice declared as he was dragged away. ‘He’s had his chance in this world. Tomorrow, in the clean fresh air, he’ll get his chance for the next. From a rope at the end of that pole up yonder.’

  ‘I ain’t crying for him,’ came a tearful reply. Then, with bewildered melancholy, ‘I’m crying for myself, sir.’

  There was an iron ring bolted to the mainmast where it sank through the compartment aft of the convicts’ hold. To this ring was fixed four foot of chain—and to this chain, by his left ankle, was fettered Nicholas Kemp.

  For company he had—in this dark place—some half-dozen busy rats, the two grinding hillocks of leg-irons (which were lashed to bolt heads in the vessel’s ribs on either side), and his thoughts.

  These were of a sombre, frantic cast. They were deep inasmuch as they were low; they were far-reaching inasmuch as they reached far back to the first-love to whom he’d given his heart (and more) . . . then on through many such buds and lovely blossoms to the black-haired beauty of Lewes and now Miss Warboys herself . . . A bouquet of sweet disaster.

  For a while he attempted to sing in time to the regular uproar of the lashed irons. But such songs as he knew were all ballads of forsaken love, neglected love, despised love, graveyard love, fruitless love, betrayed love, impossible love, love at death’s door—in short, his songs were all of a love that was scarce more prosperous than his own. Did he but know it he was passed beyond the third stage of first-sight love. He was now in its fourth stage, from which there is no turning back and for which not even death is a sure cure; it lingers on in the air . . .

  He paused in his singing and listened once more to the solemn grinding of the invisible irons. Between their clankings, he could hear the industrious rats. They seemed to be at dinner. He shuddered to imagine the course. He sat down and attempted to compose himself for sleep. Then considered he had no cause to wish the morning nearer. Yet waking held no profit, either.

  His thoughts kept turning back with dismal anger to the three kind friends who’d seen him off at Deal. Seen him off indeed! He saw them now, as he’d seen them so often before—those three well-born young gentlemen—sitting easy in some coffee house, jingling the guineas he’d prigged for them and waiting for more.

  ‘Well done, Nick, old dear!’

  ‘Lord! You’re a marvel, Nick!’

  ‘Don’t know what we’d do without you, Nick!’

  Desolately, he stared into the darkness and wondered who had made the world and why. Where was his mysterious springtime gone? Where were the hopes with which he’d been born? Where was his birthright of innocence now? He’d not spent it—and that was for sure. Yet here he was, Nicholas Kemp, scarce two and twenty, an outcast and a scapegoat, damned if ever a man was—even waiting to be hanged. He’d a glum notion that, though many a naked beggar got into heaven, gentlemen who wore cravats of rope were most likely directed elsewhere.

  Suddenly, the rhythm of the chains was disturbed. The regular tolling was changed into a rapid clatter. Likewise, the heaving motion of the ship (which, in the extreme darkness Nicholas was profoundly sensitive to) altered to a curious shuddering.

  On deck the helmsman struggled with the wheel, for the Phoenix was come upon one of the strong submarine currents whose presence, in sunlight, proclaims itself in long, glass-smooth fingers stretched across the rippled sea. The effect was as if some profound monster was wrenching at the ship’s keel.

  The entire passage across this current lasted maybe no more than seven or eight minutes, but such was the loudness and violence of the shaking irons that Nicholas was all but deafened. When it stopped, and the old beating was resumed, he could hear nothing external for several minutes, and mistook an urgent knocking for his own blood banging in his head.

  ‘Sonny! Sonny—are you there? Answer me, boy! It’s Bartleman here! Speak up if you’re still alive!’

  Amazed out of his misery, Nicholas cried out: ‘Is it you? Is it really you?’

  Bartleman laughed, and there was no mistaking the sound of it.

  ‘It’s really me, sonny. Ain’t that a fine thing to hear in the dark?’

  ‘You’ve no idea, Mr Bartleman! No idea at all how fine it is! Where are you?’

  ‘Behind the bulkhead, sonny. Had you forgot? We’re all here. Tell this poor, unhappy lad you’re all here! Let him hear your voices!’

  Directly came a score of voices, low but thick with affection, wishing him well and urging him keep in good heart.

  ‘That’s enough!’ ordered Bartleman. ‘Quiet, now. Time enough for roaring later. Eh? Eh?’

  Nicholas’s spirits began to flicker and to rise. If ever he’d suspected the embezzler’s kindness, such suspicions would now have been truly laid. Fierce and thieving as was that man, there was a heart in him such as few possessed. There was some good in the world after all—be it never so oddly lodged.

  ‘They’ll not hang you, sonny.’

  ‘Much thanks for your comfort, Mr Bartleman, but I think they will.’

  ‘No contradictions, sonny. When Bartlema
n says they won’t, they won’t. For it’s not Bartleman alone. There’s eighty downtrodden gentlemen here who say the same. Ain’t that so, gentlemen?’

  Came a chorus of agreement—most determined: most formidable.

  ‘Did you hear that powerful eighty, sonny? Each and every one of ’em feels it would be right villainous to hang a gentle, simple soul like you. And will put his feelings into action—without which, feelings is so much trash!’ (Here, the embezzlers voice took on a cutting edge.) ‘D’you take my meaning, sonny?’

  ‘The ship? You’ll take over the ship, Mr Bartleman? D’you mean mutiny, sir?’

  Nicholas’s spirits began to dive and twist and whirl, as might a leaf or a fledgling caught in a sudden crosswind. The sensible part of his mind assured him that Mr Bartleman was but trying to comfort him in his last hours by filling them with hope; but another part of his mind provoked an unnatural excitement.

  ‘Call it what you like, sonny. For my part, I’ll call it the terrible meek in’eriting a little bit of the earth. Or a rising up, sonny, on be’alf of you. Or, if you like, a rightchus anger for the poor little bleeding oppressed. Take your pick, son—it’s six of one and ’alf a dozen of the other. All that matters is, that you can sleep easy, sonny. Bartleman’s a-watching over you.’

  Nicholas did sleep—but not easily. His soul was much torn with excitement and uneasiness and a gloomy conviction he’d have no more luck in escaping the hangman’s rope than he’d had in what was gruesomely known as love.

  ‘Love!’ murmured Nicholas, dreamily. ‘You’ve broke my heart, and now you’ll break my neck.’

  Then, little by little, his old nature asserted itself and hope came creeping back. Bartleman, the embezzler—whose voice he could hear murmuring from time to time on the other side of the bulkhead—would not let poor Nick Kemp die. He had promised. Bartleman would—