Читать книгу Botany Bay, True Tales of Early Australia - Lang John - Страница 5

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About a month previous to the day of sale, an old man, one David Weir, who farmed a small piece of land in the Penrith Road, and who took every week to the Sydney market, butter, eggs, fowls, and a few bushels of Indian maize, was returning to his home when he saw, seated on a rail, the well-known form of Mr. Fisher. It was very dark, but the figure and the face were as plainly visible as possible. The old man, who was not drunk, though he had been drinking at Dean's public house, pulled up and called out, "Halloa, Mr. Fisher! I thought you were at home in England!" There was no reply, and the old man, who was impatient to get home, as was his horse, loosed the reins and proceeded on his journey.

"Mother," said old Weir to his wife, while she was helping him off with his old top-coat, "I've seen either Mr. Fisher or his ghost."

"Nonsense!" cried the old woman; "you could not have seen Mr. Fisher, for he is in Old England; and as for spirits, you never see any without drinking them; and you are full of 'em now."

"Do you mean to say I'm drunk, mother?"

"No, but you have your liquor on board."

"Yes; but I can see, and hear, and understand, and know what I am about."

"Well, then, have your supper and go to bed; and take my advice and say nothing to anybody about this ghost, or you will only get laughed at for your pains. Ghostesses, indeed! at your age to take on about such things; after swearing all your life you never believed in them."

"But I tell you I saw him as plain as plain could be; just as we used to see him sitting sometimes when the day was warm and he had been round looking at his fences to see that they were all right."

"Yes, very well; tell me all about it to-morrow," said the old woman. "As I was up before daylight, and it is now nearly midnight, I feel too tired to listen to a story about a ghost. Have you sold everything well?"

"Yes, and brought back all the money safe. Here it is." The old man handed over the bag to his partner and retired to his bed; not to rest, however, for the vision had made so great an impression upon his mind he could not help thinking of it, and lay awake till daylight, when he arose, as did his wife, to go through the ordinary avocations of the day. After he had milked the cows and brought the filled pails into the dairy, where the old woman was churning, she said to him:

"Well, David, what about the ghost?"

"I tell you I seed it," said the old man. "And there's no call for you to laugh at me. If Mr. Fisher be not gone away--and I don't think he would have done so without coming to say good-bye to us--I'll make a talk of this. I'll go and tell Sir John, and Doctor MacKenzie, and Mr. Cox, and old parson Fulton, and everybody else in the commission of the peace. I will, as I'm a living man! What should take Fisher to England? England would be no home for him after being so many years in this country. And what's more, he has told me as much many a time."

"Well, and so he has told me, David. But then, you know, people will alter their minds, and you heard what Mr. Smith said about that woman?"

"Yes. But I don't believe Smith. I never had a good opinion of that man, for he could never look me straight in the face, and he is too oily a character to please me. If, as I tell you, Mr. Fisher is not alive and in this country, then that was his ghost that I saw, and he has been murdered!"

"Be careful, David, what you say; and whatever you do, don't offend Mr. Smith. Remember, he is a rich man and you are a poor one; and if you say a word to his discredit he may take the law of you, and make you pay for it; and that would be a pretty business for people who are striving to lay by just enough to keep them when they are no longer able to work."

"There's been foul play, I tell you, old woman. I am certain of it."

"But that can't be proved by your saying that you saw 'a ghost sitting on a rail, when you were coming home from market none the better for what you drank upon the road. And if Mr. Fisher should still be alive in England--and you know that letters have been lately received from him--what a precious fool you would look!"

"Well, perhaps you are right. But when I tell you that I saw either Mr. Fisher or his ghost sitting on that rail, don't laugh at me, because you will make me angry."

"Well, I won't laugh at you, though it must have been your fancy, old man. Whereabouts was it you saw, or thought you saw him?"

"You know the cross fence that divides Fisher's land from Smith's--near the old bridge at the bottom of Iron Gang Hill?"

"Yes."

"Well, it was there. I'll tell you what he was dressed in. You know that old fustian coat with the brass buttons, and the corduroy waistcoat and trousers, and that red silk bandanna handkerchief that he used to tie round his neck?"

"Yes."

"Well, that's how he was dressed. His straw hat he held in his left hand, and his right arm was resting on one of the posts. I was about ten or eleven yards from him, for the road is broad just there and the fence stands well back."

"And you called him, you say?"

"Yes; but he did not answer. If the horse had not been so fidgety I'd have got down and gone up to him."

"And then you would have found out that it was all smoke."

"Say that again and you will put me into a passion."

The old woman held her tongue, and suffered old David to talk all that day and the next about the ghost, without making any remark whatever.