THE PHANTOM COACH: Collected Ghost Stories (34 page)

But I was thinking too much of the younger brother just then to feel any curiosity about the elder; and I told myself that I would put up with the companionship of any number of clocks, rather than sleep under the same roof with that terrible face and those unearthly eyes.

‘I saw your pastor just now in the church,’ I said, with apparent indifference. ‘He’s a singular-looking man.’

‘He is too good for this world,’ said the landlady.

‘He is a saint upon earth!’ added the pretty
Fräulein
.

‘He is one of the best of men,’ said, more soberly, the husband and father. ‘I only wish he was less of a saint. He fasts, and prays, and works beyond his strength. A little more beef and a little less devotion would be all the better for him.’

‘I should like to hear something more about the life of so good a man,’ said I, having by this time come to the end of my simple dinner. ‘Come, Herr Wirth, let us have a bottle of your best, and then sit down and tell me your pastor’s history!’

The landlord sent his daughter for a bottle of the ‘green seal’, and, taking a chair, said:

‘
Ach Himmel! mein Herr
, there is no history to tell. The good father has lived here all his life. He is one of us. His father, Johann Chessez, was a native of Rheinfelden and kept this very inn. He was a wealthy farmer and vine-grower. He had only those two sons—Nicholas, who took to the church and became pastor of Feldkirche; and this one, Matthias, who was intended to inherit the business; but who also entered religion after the death of his elder brother, and is now pastor of the same parish.’

‘But why did he “enter religion?”’ I asked. ‘Was he in any way to blame for the accident (if it was an accident) that caused the death of his elder brother?’

‘Ah, heavens! no!’ exclaimed the landlady, leaning on the back of her husband’s chair. ‘It was the shock—the shock that told so terribly upon his poor nerves! He was but a lad at that time, and as sensitive as a girl—but the
Herr Engländer
does not know the story. Go on, my husband.’

So the landlord, after a sip of the ‘green seal’, continued:

‘At the time my wife alludes to,
mein Herr
, Johann Chessez was still living. Nicholas, the elder son, was in holy orders and established in the parish of Feldkirche, outside the walls; and Matthias, the younger, was a lad of about fourteen years old, and lived with his father. He was an amiable good boy—pious and thoughtful—fonder of his books than of the business. The neighbour-folk used to say even then that Matthias was cut out for a priest, like his elder brother. As for Nicholas, he was neither more nor less than a saint. Well,
mein Herr
, at this time there lived on the other side of the Rheinfelden, about a mile beyond the Basel Thor, a farmer named Caspar Rufenacht and his wife Margaret. Now Caspar Rufenacht was a jealous, quarrelsome fellow; and the Frau Margaret was pretty; and he led her a devil of a life. It was said that he used to beat her when he had been drinking, and that sometimes, when he went to fair or market, he would lock her up for the whole day in a room at the top of the house. Well, this poor, ill-used Frau Margaret——’

‘Tut, tut, my man,’ interrupted the landlady. ‘The Frau Margaret was a light one!’

‘Peace, wife! Shall we speak hard words of the dead? The Frau Margaret was young and pretty, and a flirt; and she had a bad husband, who left her too much alone.’

The landlady pursed up her lips and shook her head, as the best of women will do when the character of another woman is under discussion. The innkeeper went on:

‘Well,
mein Herr
, to cut a long story short, after having been jealous first of one and then of another, Caspar Rufenacht became furious about a certain German, a Badener named Schmidt, living on the opposite bank of the Rhine. I remember the man quite well—a handsome, merry fellow, and no saint; just the sort to make mischief between man and wife. Well, Caspar Rufenacht swore a great oath that, cost what it might, he would come at the truth about his wife and Schmidt; so he laid all manner of plots to surprise them—waylaid the Frau Margaret in her walks; followed her at a distance when she went to church; came home at unexpected hours; and played the spy as if he had been brought up to the trade. But his spying was all in vain. Either the Frau Margaret was too clever for him, or there was really nothing to discover; but still he was not satisfied. So he cast about for some way to attain his end, and, by the help of the Evil One, he found it.’

Here the innkeeper’s wife and daughter, who had doubtless heard the story a hundred times over, drew near and listened breathlessly.

‘What, think you,’ continued the landlord, ‘does this black-souled Caspar do? Does he punish the poor woman within an inch of her life, till she confesses? No. Does he charge Schmidt with having tempted her from her duty, and fight it out with him like a man? No. What else then? I will tell you. He waits till the vigil of St Margaret—her saint’s day—when he knows the poor sinful soul is going to confession; and he marches straight to the house of the Père Chessez—the very house where our own Père Chessez is now living—and he finds the good priest at his devotions in his little study, and he says to him:

‘“Father Chessez, my wife is coming to the church this afternoon to make her confession to you.”

‘“She is,” replies the priest.

‘“I want you to tell me all she tells you,” says Caspar; “and I will wait here till you come back from the church, that I may hear it. Will you do so?”

‘“Certainly not,” replies the Père Chessez. “You must surely know, Caspar, that we priests are forbidden to reveal the secrets of the confessional.”

‘“That is nothing to me,” says Caspar, with an oath. “I am resolved to know whether my wife is guilty or innocent; and know it I will, by fair means or foul.”

‘“You shall never know it from me, Caspar,” says the Père Chessez, very quietly.

‘“Then, by Heavens!” says Caspar, “I’ll learn it for myself.” And with that he pulls out a heavy horse-pistol from his pocket, and with the butt-end of it deals the Père Chessez a tremendous blow upon the head, and then another, and another, till the poor young man lay senseless at his feet. Then Caspar, thinking he had quite killed him, dressed himself in the priest’s own
soutane
and hat; locked the door; put the key in his pocket; and stealing round the back way into the church, shut himself up in the confessional.’

‘Then the priest died!’ I exclaimed, remembering the epitaph upon the tablet.

‘Ay,
mein Herr—
the Père Chessez died; but not before he had told the story of his assassination, and identified his murderer.’

‘And Caspar Rufenacht, I hope, was hanged?’

‘Wait a bit,
mein Herr
, we have not come to that yet. We left Caspar in the confessional, waiting for his wife.’

‘And she came?’

‘Yes, poor soul! she came.’

‘And made her confession?’

‘And made her confession,
mein Herr
.’

‘What did she confess?’

The innkeeper shook his head.

‘That no one ever knew, save the good God and her murderer.’

‘Her murderer!’ I exclaimed.

‘Ay, just that. Whatever it was that she confessed, she paid for it with her life. He heard her out, at all events, without discovering himself, and let her go home believing that she had received absolution for her sins. Those who met her that afternoon said she seemed unusually bright and happy. As she passed through the town, she went into the shop in the Mongarten Strasse, and bought some ribbons. About half-an-hour later, my own father met her outside the Basel Thor, walking briskly homewards. He was the last who saw her alive.

‘That evening (it was in October, and the days were short), some travellers coming that way into the town heard shrill cries, as of a woman screaming, in the direction of Caspar’s farm. But the night was very dark, and the house lay back a little way from the road; so they told themselves it was only some drunken peasant quarrelling with his wife, and passed on. Next morning, Caspar Rufenacht came to Rheinfelden, walked very quietly into the
Polizei
, and gave himself up to justice.

‘“I have killed my wife,” said he. “I have killed the Père Chessez. And I have committed sacrilege.”

‘And so, indeed, it was. As for the Frau Margaret, they found her body in an upper chamber, well-nigh hacked to pieces, and the hatchet with which the murder was committed lying beside her on the floor. He had pursued her, apparently, from room to room; for there were pools of blood and handfuls of long light hair, and marks of bloody hands along the walls, all the way from the kitchen to the spot where she lay dead.’

‘And so he was hanged?’ said I, coming back to my original question.

‘Yes, yes,’ replied the innkeeper and his womankind in chorus. ‘He was hanged—of course he was hanged.’

‘And it was the shock of this double tragedy that drove the younger Chessez into the church?’

‘Just so,
mein Herr
.’

‘Well, he carries it in his face. He looks like a most unhappy man.’

‘Nay, he is not that,
mein Herr!
’ exclaimed the landlady. ‘He is melancholy, but not unhappy.’

‘Well, then, austere.’

‘Nor is he austere, except towards himself.’

‘True, wife,’ said the innkeeper; ‘but, as I said, he carries that sort of thing too far. You understand,
mein Herr
,’ he added, touching his forehead with his forefinger, ‘the good pastor has let his mind dwell too much upon the past. He is nervous—too nervous, and too low.’

I saw it all now. That terrible light in his eyes was the light of insanity. That stony look in his face was the fixed, hopeless melancholy of a mind diseased.

‘Does he know that he is mad?’ I asked, as the landlord rose to go.

He shrugged his shoulders and looked doubtful.

‘I have not said that the Père Chessez is
mad
,
mein Herr
,’ he replied. ‘He has strange fancies sometimes, and takes his fancies for facts—that is all. But I am quite sure that he does not believe himself to be less sane than his neighbours.’

So the innkeeper left me, and I (my head full of the story I had just heard) put on my hat, went out into the marketplace, asked my way to the Basel Thor, and set off to explore the scene of the Frau Margaret’s murder.

I found it without difficulty—a long, low-fronted, beetle-browed farm-house, lying back a meadow’s length from the road. There were children playing upon the threshold, a flock of turkeys gobbling about the barn-door, and a big dog sleeping outside his kennel close by.

The chimneys, too, were smoking merrily. Seeing these signs of life and cheerfulness, I abandoned all idea of asking to go over the house. I felt that I had no right to carry my morbid curiosity into this peaceful home; so I turned away, and retraced my steps towards Rheinfelden.

It was not yet seven, and the sun had still an hour’s course to run. I re-entered the town, strolled back through the street, and presently came again to the Friedrich’s Thor and the path leading to the church. An irresistible impulse seemed to drag me back to the place.

Shudderingly, and with a sort of dread that was half longing, I pushed open the churchyard gate and went in. The doors were closed; a goat was browsing among the graves; and the rushing of the Rhine, some three hundred yards away, was distinctly audible in the silence. I looked round for the priest’s house—the scene of the first murder; but from this side, at all events, no house was visible. Going round, however, to the back of the church, I saw a gate, a box-bordered path, and, peeping through some trees, a chimney and the roof of a little brown-tiled house.

This, then, was the path along which Caspar Rufenacht, with the priest’s blood upon his hands and the priest’s gown upon his shoulders, had taken his guilty way to the confessional! How quiet it all looked in the golden evening light! How like the church-path of an English parsonage!