Misery

familiar faces arrived at the same time, and one felt called upon to make introductions.
“I hope I’ll not be disturber” ye, sair,” this visitor said. He was twisting a cheap cloth cap restlessly in his hands, and in the light cast by the lamp Geoffrey held up, his face looked lined and yellow and terribly worried — frightened, even. “It’s just that I didn’t want to go to Dr. Bookings, nor did I want to disturb His Lordship. Not, at least, until I’d spoken to you, if ye take my meaning, sair.” Geoffrey didn’t, but quite suddenly he did know one thing — who this late-coming visitor was. The mention of Dr. Bookings, the C of E Minister, had done it. Three days ago Dr. Bookings had performed Misery’s few last rites in the churchyard which lay behind the rectory, and this fellow had been there — but lurking considerately in the background, where he was less apt to be noticed.
His name was Colter. He was one of the church sextons. To be brutally frank, the man was a gravedigger.
“Colter,” he said. “What can I do for you?” Colter spoke hesitantly. “It’s the noises, sair. The noises in the churchyard. Her Ladyship rests not easy, sair, so she doesn’t, and I’m afeard. I — “ Geoffrey felt as if someone had punched him in the midsection. He pulled in a gasp of air and hot pain needled his side, where his ribs had beers tightly taped by Dr. Shinebone. Shinebone’s gloomy assessment had been that Geoffrey would almost certainly take pneumonia after lying in that ditch all night in the chilly rain, but three days had passed and there had been no onset of fever and coughing. He had known there would not be; God did not let off the guilty so easily. He believed that God would let him live to perpetuate his poor lost darling’s memory for a long, long time.
“Are ye all “right, sair?” Colter asked. “I heard ye were turrible bunged up t’other night.”“ He paused. “The night herself died.”
“I’m fine,” Geoffrey said slowly. “Colter, these sounds you say you hear… you know they are just imaginings, don’t you?” Colter looked shocked.
“Imaginings?” he asked. “Sair! Next ye’ll be tellin me ye have no belief in Jesus and the life everlastin’! Why, didn’t Duncan Fromsley see old man Patterson not two days after his funeral, glowin” just as white as marsh-fire (which was just what it probably was, Geoffrey thought, marsh-fire plus whatever came out of old Fromsley’s last bottle)? And ain’t half the bleedin” town seen that old Papist monk that walks the battlements of Ridgeheath Manor? They even sent down a coupler ladies from the bleedin” London Psychic Society to look inter that “un!” Geoffrey knew the ladies Colter meant; a Couple of hysterical beldames probably suffering from the alternate calms and monsoons of midlife, both as dotty as a child’s Draw-It-Name-It puzzle.
“Ghosts are just as real as you or me, sair,” Colter was saying earnestly. “I don’t mind the idea of them — but these noises are fearsome spooky, so they are, and I hardly even like to go near the churchyard — and I have to dig a grave for the little Roydman babe tomorrow, so I do.” Geoffrey said an inward prayer for patience. The urge to bellow at this poor sexton was almost insurmountable. He had been dozing peacefully enough in front of his own fire with a book in his lap when Colter came, waking him up… and he was coming more and more awake all the time, and at every second the dull sorrow settled more deeply over him, the awareness that his darling was gone. She was three days in her grave, soon to be a week… a month… a year… ten years. The sorrow, he thought, was like a rock on the shoreline of the ocean. When one was sleeping it was as if the tide was in, and there was some relief. Sleep was like a tide which covered the rock of grief. When one woke, however, the tide began to go out and soon the rock was visible again, a barnacle-encrusted thing of inarguable reality, a thing which would be there forever, or until God chose to wash it away.
And this fool dared to come here and prate of ghosts!
But the man’s face looked so wretched that Geoffrey was able to control himself.
“Miss Misery — Her Ladyship — was much 1oved, “ Geoffrey said quietly.
“Aye, sair, so she was,” Colter agreed fervently. He switched custody of his cloth cap to his left hand solely, and with his right produced a giant red handkerchief from his pocket. He honked mightily into it, his eyes watering.
“All of us sorrow at her passing.” Geoffrey’s hands went to his shirt and rubbed the heavy muslin wrappings beneath it restlessly.
“Aye, so we do, sair, so we do.” Colter’s words were muffled in the handkerchief, but Geoffrey could see his eyes; the man was really, honestly weeping. The last of his own selfish anger dissolved in pity. “She were a good lady, sair! Aye, she were a great lady, and it