Old Fires and Profitable Ghosts: A Book of StoriesQuiller-Couch, Arthur
General
Old Fires and Profitable Ghosts: A Book of Stories
Quiller-Couch, Arthur
Great Britain -- Social life and customs -- 19th century -- Fiction; Short stories
There was another funeral next day in Lansulyan churchyard--where so
many have come to be buried who never in life heard the name of
Lansulyan: the harvest of Menawhidden, commemorated on weather-beaten
stones and, within the church, on many tablets which I used to con on
Sundays during the Vicar's discourses. The life-boat men had mustered
in force, and altogether there was a large attendance at the graveside.
At one point a fit of coughing interrupted the Vicar in his recital of
the service. I was the one auditor, however, who understood the meaning
of it.
That evening we took our dessert again under the great elm. Somehow I
felt certain he would choose this hour for his explanation: and in due
course it came.
"I'm a truth-speaking man by habit," he began after a long gaze upwards
at the rooks now settling to roost and making a mighty pother of it.
"But I'm afraid there's no getting round the fact that this afternoon I
acted a lie. And yet, on the whole, my conscience is easy."
He sipped his wine, and went on meditatively--
"Morals have their court of equity as well as the law of the land: and
with us"--the Vicar was an old-fashioned Churchman--"that court is the
private conscience. In this affair you insisted on putting your
conscience into my hands. Well, I took the responsibility, and charge
myself with any wrong you have committed, letting your confidence stand
to your credit, as well as the service you have done for me--and
another. Do you know the grey marble tablet on the south wall of the
church--the _Nerbuddha_ monument?"
I nodded.
"'_Sacred to the memory of Lieutenant-Colonel Victor Stanhope, C.B., and
105 Officers and Men of Her Majesty's 2-th Regiment of Foot, lost in the
wreck of the Nerbuddha, East Indiaman, on Menawhidden, January 15th,
1857. . . ._' Then follows a list of the officers. Underneath, if you
remember, is a separate slab to the officers and crew of the
_Nerbuddha_, who behaved admirably, all the senior officers keeping
order to the last and going down with the ship."
I nodded again, for I knew the inscriptions pretty well by heart.
"The wreck happened in the first winter of my incumbency here. Then, as
now, I had one pupil living with me, an excellent fellow. Dick Hobart
was his name, his age seventeen or thereabouts, and my business to put
some polish on a neglected education before he entered the Army.
His elder brother had been a college friend of mine, and indeed our
families had been acquainted for years.
"Dick slept in the room you now occupy. He had a habit, which I never
cured, of sitting up late over a pipe and a yellow-backed novel: and so
he happened to be dressed that night when he saw the first signal of
distress go up from Menawhidden. He came to my room at once and called
me up: and while I tumbled out and began to dress, he ran down to Porth
to give the alarm.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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