“henry turley was one of those awkward old chaps as had more money than he knowed what to do wi'. shadrach we called him, the silly man. he had worked for it, worked hard for it, but when he was old he stuck to his fortune and wouldn’t spend a sixpence of it on his comforts. what a silly man!”
the thatcher, who was thus talking of henry turley (long since dead and gone) in the “black cat” of starncombe, was himself perhaps fifty years old. already there was a crank of age or of dampness or of mere custom in most of his limbs, but he was bluff and gruff and hale enough, with a bluffness of manner that could only offend a fool—and fools never listened to him.
“shadrach—that’s what we called him—was a good man wi’ cattle, a masterpiece; he would strip a cow as clean as a tooth and you never knowed a cow have a bad quarter as henry turley ever milked. and when he was buried he was buried with all that money in his coffin, holding it in his hand, i reckon. he had plenty of relations—you wouldn’t know ’em, it is thirty years ago i be speaking of—but it was all down in black and white so’s no one could touch it. a lot of people in these parts had a right to some of it, jim scarrott for one, and issy hawker a bit, mrs. keelson, poor woman, ought to have had a bit, and his own brother, mark turley; but he left it in the will as all his fortune was to be buried in the coffin along of him. ’twas cruel, but so it is and so it will229 be, for whenever such people has a shilling to give away they goes and claps it on some fat pig’s haunches. the foolishness! sixty pounds it was, in a canister, and he held it in his hand.”
“i don’t believe a word of it,” said a mild-faced man sitting in the corner. “henry turley never did a deed like that.”
“what?” growled the thatcher with unusual ferocity.
“coorse i’m not disputing what you’re saying, but he never did such a thing in his life.”
“then you calls me a liar?”
“certainly not. o no, don’t misunderstand me, but henry turley never did any such thing, i can’t believe it of him.”
“huh! i be telling you facts, and facts be true one way or another. now you waunts to call over me, you waunts to know the rights of everything and the wrongs of nothing.”
“well,” said the mild-faced man, pushing his pot toward the teller of tales, “i might believe it to-morrow, but it’s a bit of a twister now, this minute!”
“ah, that’s all right then”—the thatcher was completely mollified. “well the worst part of the case was his brother mark. shadrach served him shameful, treated him like a dog. (good health!) ah, like a dog. mark was older nor him, about seventy, and he lived by himself in a little house out by the hanging pust, not much of a cottage, it warn’t—just wattle and daub wi’ a thetch o’ straa'—but the lease was running out 230(‘twas a lifehold affair) and unless he bought this little house for fifty pound he’d got to go out of it. well, old mark hadn’t got no fifty pounds, he was ate up wi’ rheumatics and only did just a little light labour in the woods, they might as well a’ asked him for the king’s crown, so he said to his master: would he lend him the fifty pounds?
“‘no, i can’t do that,’ his master says.
“‘you can reduct it from my wages,’ mark says.
“‘nor i can’t do that neither,’ says his master, ‘but there’s your brother henry, he’s worth a power o’ money, ask him.‘ so mark asks shadrach to lend him the fifty pounds, so’s he could buy this little house. ’no,’ says henry, ‘i can’t.’ nor he wouldn’t. well—old mark says to him: ‘i doan wish you no harm henry,’ he says, ‘but i hope as how you’ll die in a ditch.’ (good health!) and sure enough he did. that was his own brother, he were strooken wi’ the sun and died in a ditch, henry did, and when he was buried his fortune was buried with him, in a little canister, holding it in his hand, i reckons. and a lot of good that was to him! he hadn’t been buried a month when two bad parties putt their heads together. levi carter, one was, he was the sexton, a man that was half a loony as i always thought. o yes, he had got all his wits about him, somewheres, only they didn’t often get much of a quorum, still he got them—somewheres. t’other was a chap by the name of impey, lived in slack the shoemaker’s house down by the old traveller’s garden. he wasn’t much of a mucher, helped in the fieldwork and did shepherding at odd times. and these two chaps made up their minds to goo and collar henry231 turley’s fortune out of his coffin one night and share it between theirselves. ’twas crime, ye know, might a been prison for life, but this impey was a bad lot—he’d the manners of a pig, pooh! filthy!—and i expects he persuaded old levi on to do it. bad as body-snatchen, coorse ’twas!
“so they goos together one dark night, ’long in november it was, and well you knows, all of you, as well as i, that nobody can’t ever see over our churchyard wall by day let alone on a dark night. you all knows that, don’t you?” asserted the thatcher, who appeared to lay some stress upon this point in his narrative. there were murmurs of acquiescence by all except the mild-faced man, and the thatcher continued: “‘twere about nine o’clock when they dug out the earth. ’twarn’t a very hard job, for henry was only just a little way down. he was buried on top of his old woman, and she was on top of her two daughters. but when they got down to the coffin impey didn’t much care for that part of the job, he felt a little bit sick, so he gives the hammer and the screwdriver to levi and he says: ’levi,’ he says, ‘are you game to make a good job o’ this?’
“‘yes, i be,’ says old levi.
“‘well, then,’ impey says, ‘yous’ll have my smock on now while i just creeps off to old wannaker’s sheep and collars one of they fat lambs over by the 'lotments.’
“‘you’re not going to leave me here,’ says carter, ‘what be i going to do?’
“‘you go on and finish this ’ere job, levi,’ he says,232 ‘you get the money and put back all the earth and don’t stir out of the yard afore i comes or i’ll have yer blood.’
“‘no,’ says carter, ‘you maun do that.’
“‘i ’ull do that,’ impey says, ‘he’ve got some smartish lambs i can tell ’ee, fat as snails.’
“‘no,’ says carter, ‘i waun’t have no truck wi’ that, tain’t right.’
“‘you will,’ says impey, ‘and i ’ull get the sheep. here’s my smock. i’ll meet ’ee here again in ten minutes. i’ll have that lamb if i ’as to cut his blasted head off.’ and he rooshed away before levi could stop him. so carter putts on the smock and finishes the job. he got the money and putt the earth back on poor henry and tidied it up, and then he went and sat in the church poorch waiting for this impey to come back. just as he did that an oldish man passed by the gate. he was coming to this very place for a drop o’ drink and he sees old levi’s white figure sitting in the church poorch and it frittened him so that he took to his heels and tore along to this very room we be sittin’ in now—only 'twas thirty years ago.
“‘what in the name of god’s the matter wi’ you?‘ they says to him, for he’d a face like chalk and his lips was blue as a whetstone. ’have you seen a goost?’
“‘yes,’ he says, ‘i have seen a goost, just now then.’
“‘a goost?’ they says, ‘a goost? you an’t seen no goost.’
“‘i seen a goost.’
“‘where a’ you seen a goost?’
233
“so he telled ’em he seen a goost sitting up in the church poorch.
“‘i shan’t have that,’ says old mark turley, for he was a setting here.
“‘i tell you ’twas then,’ says the man.
“‘can’t be nothing worse’n i be myself,’ mark says.
“‘i say as ’tis,’ the man said, and he was vexed too. ‘goo and see for yourself.’
“‘i would goo too and all,’ said old mark, ‘if only i could walk it, but my rheumatucks be that scrematious i can’t walk it. goosts! there’s ne’er a mortal man as ever see’d a goost. i’d go, my lad, if my legs ’ud stand it.’ and there was a lot of talk like that until a young sailor spoke up—irish he was, his name was pat crowe, he was on furlough. i dunno what he was a-doing in this part of the world, but there he was and he says to mark: ‘if you be game enough, i be, and i’ll carry you up to the churchyard on my back.’ a great stropping feller he was. ‘you will?’ says mark. ‘that i will,’ he says. ‘well i be game for ’ee,’ says mark, and so they ups him on to the sailor’s shoulders like a sack o’ corn and away they goos, but not another one there was man enough to goo with them.
“they went slogging up to the churchyard gate all right, but when they got to staggering along ’tween the gravestones mark thought he could see a something white sitting in the poorch, but the sailor couldn’t see anything at all with that lump on his shoulders.
“‘what’s that there?’ mark whispers in pa234t’s ear. and pat crowe whispers back, just for joking: ‘old nick in his nightshirt.’
“‘steady now,’ mark whispers, ‘go steady pat, it’s getting up and coming.’ pat only gives a bit of a chuckle and says: ‘ah, that’s him, that’s just like him.’
“then levi calls out from the poorch soft like: ‘you got him then! is he a fat ’un?’
“‘holy god,’ cried the sailor, ‘it is the devil!’ and he chucks poor mark over his back at levi’s feet and runs for his mortal life. he was the most frittened of the lot ’cos he hadn’t believed in anything at all—but there it was. and just as he gets to the gate he sees someone else coming along in the dark carrying a something on its shoulder—it was impey wi’ the sheep. ‘powers above,’ cried pat crowe, ‘it’s the day of judgment come for sartin!’ and he went roaring the news up street like a madman, and impey went off somewheres too—but i dunno where impey went.
“well, poor old mark laid on the ground, he were a game old cock, but he could hardly speak, he was strook dazzled. and levi was frittened out of his life in the darkness and couldn’t make anythink out of nothink. he just creeps along to mark and whispers: ‘who be that? who be that?’ and old mark looks up very timid, for he thought his last hour was on him, and he says: ‘be that you, satan?’ drackly levi heard that all in a onexpected voice he jumped quicker en my neighbour’s flea. he gave a yell bigger nor pat crowe and he bolted too. but as he went he dropped the little tin canister235 and old mark picked it up. and he shook the canister, and he heerd money in it, and then something began to dawn on him, for he knowed how his brother’s fortune had been buried.
“‘i rede it, i rede it,’ he says, ‘that was levi carter, the dirty thief! i rede it, i rede it,’ he says. and he putt the tin can in his pocket and hopped off home as if he never knowed what rheumatucks was at all. and when he opened that canister there was the sixty golden sovereigns in that canister. sixty golden sovereigns! ‘bad things ’ull be worse afore they’re better,’ says mark, ‘but they never won’t be any better than this.’ and so he stuck to the money in the canister, and that’s how he bought his cottage arter all. ’twarn’t much of a house, just wattle and daub, wi’ a thetch o’ straa', but ’twas what he fancied, and there he ended his days like an old christian man. (good health!)”
