Mr Corbett's Ghost (7 page)

‘Come—for pity's sake, come away!'

‘My children . . .' whispered the ghost. ‘A glimpse of them. A last glimpse—'

Two sons had Mister Corbett: one was eight and the other was rising five. They were no more remarkable to look on than was their mother as they sat by her side awaiting their father's return. They had fair hair and pink faces and sleepy looks about them, even though they'd been promised a New Year's present when their father should return. The older one did not look so much the older—even though he was now the family's head.

‘Come away!' breathed Benjamin shakily, for the ghost was very close to the window, helplessly drawn by the sight within. Then—

‘For God's sake—no! No!'

The youngest child had looked up. He'd heard something. A twig snapping under Benjamin's foot.

‘Go back! Go back, Mister Corbett!'

Too late. The child had seen. Surprise and pleasure shone in his face.

‘Papa!' he shouted. ‘Look! Papa's in the garden! He's playing a game! He's hiding!'

In vain did their mother cry out that the air was cold and damp, that the hour was late, that their father would come in directly, directly. There was no stopping two such dancing children as they flew out into the garden on the saddest errand in all the world.

Their shouts and their laughter and the glimpses of their shining New Year faces were more terrible to Benjamin than all that had gone before. They were playing hide-and-seek with their father's ghost. Harsh beyond belief was this mockery of their innocence; monstrous beyond measure was this betrayal of their love.

‘Papa! Where are you? Come back!'

They saw Benjamin. Shouted: ‘Benjamin! Happy New Year! Come and help us catch Papa!'

But the apprentice crouched close to the ground, blinded by his tears.

‘Papa!' shrieked the youngest on a dreadful sudden. ‘I see you!'

The phantom, caught at last in the child's bright eyes, stood forlorn and still.

‘Papa! The present—the present!'

What could the ghost give except terror and freezing cold? But the child was scarcely five and could not know that.

‘No! No!' sobbed Benjamin, his proud heart and soul torn to shreds within him. The child was running with outstretched arms—in the way he'd run a thousand times before, and been caught up and swung high by his Papa.

‘Papa! Where are you?'

‘What have I done? What have I done?' moaned Benjamin Partridge; for the little boy had run and run—and passed through his father like air.

‘It was a trick! One of your tricks, Papa—'

Bewildered, the child had stumbled and fallen. Now he stood up, chilled by he knew not what. Tears came into his eyes. ‘Papa . . . where are you? Come back—'

But there was no one there. Despairingly, the apprentice and the phantom had fled as Mrs Corbett's voice called: ‘Tom! Tom! Come in, dear! The children will take cold!'

Where now was there left to go? The street, only the empty street. But there was no escape. A coach was coming, casting its bright yellow light too far and too wide.

The apothecary's shop alone offered sanctuary, bitter though it was. The shop with its high mahogany counter behind which Benjamin Partridge and his ghost might crouch in their misery and their shame and hide, for a little while, from all the world. For the door to the parlour and beyond was ever closed to Mrs Corbett and her children. To the last, the apothecary had kept tenderness out of his daily sight.

But even this refuge was denied. The shop door opened. Footsteps crossed the floor. Sharp knuckles rapped on the wood above Benjamin's head.

‘Benjamin Partridge! The mixture. You failed to deliver it!'

Benjamin stood up and stared at the New Year's first customer. Now he was tall and thin as a winter's tree and seemed to fill the shop from floor to ceiling—the terrible old man! His eyes burned with unnatural fire; but that might have been on account of his feverish cold.

Benjamin felt in his pockets. Found the undelivered jar. Then a desperate idea came to him. A frail hope . . .

‘Sir . . . we . . . we only give j-jars in exchange. An empty jar, sir. Please . . . have you the . . . an empty jar?
Please?
'

‘Do you mean
this
jar, Benjamin Partridge?' asked the old man, and held out the fatal jar with its knotted black ribbon.

From outside came the voices of Mrs Corbett and her children, searching in the garden. Already there was an edge to the unknowing widow's voice.

‘The jar!' pleaded Benjamin. ‘The jar!'

‘What will you give me now, Benjamin Partridge? I'm not in business for my health, young man.'

‘My heart and soul!' groaned Benjamin, believing at last that he'd done business with the Devil.

‘Pooh!' said the old man contemptuously. ‘A shifty bargain, that! To offer what ain't yours to give? It seems to me, Benjamin Partridge, that your heart and soul's been pretty heavily mortgaged already.'

‘Then take my life, sir,' whispered the crushed apprentice, and prepared to take his last look at the living world which, at that time, consisted in the queer old man and the piteous apothecary's ghost.

‘And have you haunt
me
, young man? Not yet . . . not yet.'

‘Then there's no hope for . . . for them?' He looked towards the door that led to the family's home.

The old man did not answer. A fit of violent snuffles had overtaken him. Then he sneezed three or four times and sprayed the air with the result.

‘You're lucky, young man, that I've got such a chill. In my younger days . . . in my younger days things would have been different. But I grow old. And these damp nights—'

Again he sneezed. ‘So give me my mixture, Benjamin Partridge, and take back the empty jar. But,' he said, as Benjamin reached out with shaking hands, ‘there'll still be something to pay for my trouble, young man. It was to have been a quarter of your life's earnings. Well, in the circumstances, we must make you an allowance, I suppose. Shall we say, a quarter of a week's earnings? Next week's? A quarter. I always work in quarters. Old habits—unlike apothecaries—die hard. That's fair, ain't it?'

‘Agreed! Agreed!' cried Benjamin, who'd gladly have settled for a great deal more. ‘When shall I pay?'

‘You'll see,' said the old man, taking his precious mixture. ‘It'll be when you least expect it.'

‘The jar!' breathed Benjamin.

‘The jar,' smiled the old man—and smashed it on the floor!

‘Tom! Tom! What's wrong? Are you in the shop? Are you ill? Answer me!' came Mrs Corbett's voice on the other side of the door.

From long, hard habit, Benjamin reached for a brush and pan to sweep up the sharp fragments of glass.

‘Good night, Benjamin Partridge,' murmured the old man mockingly. ‘A happy New Year!'

Benjamin moved round to the front of the counter.
Mister Corbett's corpse lay at his feet. But where was the apothecary's ghost?

It was rising from behind the counter and smiling meekly, gently, gratefully. Then that poor, fearful, lonely, anxious, obliging phantom laid its hands on Benjamin's breast, nodded as if in confirmation of an interesting fact—and crept back towards its mortal shell. Slowly, slowly it sank, till it and the corpse were one. The fit was perfect. The ghost was gone.

‘Tom! Tom! Please answer!' the door handle rattled; the door began to open . . .

‘A happy New Year, Alice!' exclaimed Mister Corbett, rising uncertainly to his feet and rubbing his troubled head!

Loud rejoicing and wild cheerfulness were not in the nature of things for that night. Mrs Corbett and her two children did not—then or ever—know that Mister Corbett had come back from the dead. Instead, their chief pleasure was that Benjamin Partridge had been brought back to drink a health with them all by the family fire.

There was nothing remarkable in Mister Corbett's returning. Indeed, why should there be.

‘We should have done this last year,' said Mrs Corbett, much touched by the tears of pleasure that stood in the apprentice's eyes.

‘I . . . I would have,' murmured Mister Corbett, ‘but I thought he was so anxious to be off—'

And, though Mister Corbett smiled in his old, old way, his apprentice could not restrain his tears of joy as he clasped his master's hand.

‘A happy New Year, Mister Corbett!'

The hand was strong and, thank God, it was warm!

Suddenly he began to wonder if his dark adventure had been a dream. The thought—the hope, even—took root and grew strong. When Mister Corbett offered,
indeed, insisted on taking him home in his own carriage, the hope had become all but a certainty. The Apprentice's Dream. That's what it had been. The Apprentice's Dream of his Master's Ghost. No more than that—

‘By the way, Master Partridge,' said Mister Corbett as they rattled towards Kentish Town. ‘Did you deliver that mixture?'

‘Yes indeed, sir,' said Benjamin uneasily.

‘Did the old fellow pay you?'

‘I . . . I forgot to ask, sir . . .'

Mister Corbett chuckled. ‘Never mind, Master Partridge. But I'll have to take it from your wages next week, my boy. It'll be—' He paused and rubbed his head as if trying to remember something. ‘Shall we say a quarter of your next week's wages? We must start the New Year right!'

Benjamin's composure suffered a very sharp set-back, and it was not till they reached Mrs Partridge's—an hour after midnight, but welcome none the less—and had sat and drunk healths and ‘happy New Years' in the firelight and candlelight, that Benjamin's heart began to beat evenly once more.

‘My son is lucky to have you for a master, Mister Corbett,' declared Mrs Partridge cheerfully.

‘And I'm lucky to have him for an apprentice,' said Mister Corbett courteously, but with an air of meaning it.

Then Mrs Partridge and Mister Corbett were both surprised and touched by the strength and passion of Benjamin's agreement.

‘Lucky?' he cried. ‘Lucky? Oh yes, indeed we are!'

For, though he'd studied Mister Corbett as hard as he could, against every manner and source of light, he'd not been able to see through him at all!

But what he had been able to see was a world restored. All its skies, seasons, fruits, and joys—all days, nights, friends, and pleasant evenings—were back with him once more.

And what he could see also—even then and for ever after, for such things once seen are never forgot—was that obliging, anxious, and oddly touching ghost, dwelling in its mansion of flesh: Mister Corbett's soul.

Each time he stared into Mister Corbett's eyes—which he did from time to time when there passed a sharpness between him and his master—he saw that ghost again . . . Then he smiled, and Mister Corbett smiled as he, too, half remembered a strange adventure between them, on New Year's Eve.

IT'S CERTAIN HE
has a great gift: but otherwise he is a very contemptible, vile little man—strong-smelling, even, and well known in the Amsterdam courts for fraud, embezzlement, and bankruptcy. It's very humiliating to be his pupil, but, as my father says, if God has planted a lily in a cesspit, one must stop up one's nose and go down. Of late, my task has been to choose his brushes, pigment, and canvas. He tells me this is as important a part of the craft of painting as there is, but the truth of the matter is that he's so much in debt and disgrace that he daren't show his face outside the studio. My name is Roger Vaarlem; my master is Joseph Tripp, of course.

A month ago he was before the burghers who told him his portrait of the admiral was unacceptable—insulting, even—and demanded their advance of guilders back. Having spent it, he offered to paint the admiral again, but was not trusted: and rightly. Truth to Nature was one thing (no one could deny the portrait had a deal of truth in it, for my master has his gift), but truth to one's country and employers must come first. So he was given the opportunity of redeeming himself by painting a grand battle-piece to be hung in the Town Hall. Or prosecution in the courts again. Angrily (he told me) he accepted, and was granted a cabin aboard the
Little Willelm
. We sailed at half past eight this morning.

Though the early morning had been warm and brilliant, he was muffled in every garment he could find, careless of their cleanliness, which is a strong point aboard Dutch ships. It was very shameful to be walking along beside him, carrying his sketchbooks and other belongings
which smelled worse than the tar and pickled fish with which the air was strong. There were two ships of ninety guns nodding in a stately fashion upon the gentle tide: cathedrals of gilded wood with triple spires and delicate crosses, netted and festooned like for a Saint's Day. The thought crossed my mind of parting from Mynheer Tripp and going to sea on my own, but my father would have prosecuted him for negligence and fraud and he'd have gone to gaol for it.