THE PHANTOM COACH: Collected Ghost Stories (39 page)

‘Then bring us the best you have, and plenty of it, and as fast as you can. We’ll begin on the
voorst
and a bottle of your best wine, while the ham and eggs are frying; and we’ll have the coffee to finish.’

The man nodded; went to a door at the other end of the room—repeated the order to some one out of sight; and came back again, his hands in his pockets. The first brother, meanwhile, was lounging against the table, looking on at the players.

‘It’s a long game,’ he said.

‘Ay—but it’s just ended,’ replied one of the men, putting down his card with an air of triumph.

His adversary pondered, threw down his hand, and, with a round oath, owned himself beaten.

Then they divided the remaining contents of the stone jug, drained their mugs, and rose to go. The loser pulled out a handful of small coin, and paid the reckoning for both.

‘We’ve sat late,’ said he, with a glance at the clock. ‘Goodnight, Karl—goodnight, Friedrich.’

The first brother, whom I judged to be Karl, nodded sulkily. The second muttered a gruff sort of goodnight. The countrymen lit their pipes, took another long stare at Bergheim and myself, touched their hats, and went away.

The first brother, Karl, who was evidently the master, went out with them, shutting the door with a tremendous bang. The younger, Friedrich, cleared the board, opened a cupboard under the dresser, brought out a loaf of black bread, a lump of
voorst
, and part of a goat’s milk cheese, and then went to fetch the wine. Meanwhile we each drew a chair to the table, and fell to vigorously. When Friedrich returned with the wine, a pleasant smell of broiling ham came in with him through the door.

‘You are hungry,’ he said, looking down at us from under his black brows.

‘Ay, and thirsty,’ replied Gustav, reaching out his hand for the bottle. ‘Is your wine good?’

The man shrugged his shoulders.

‘Drink and judge for yourself,’ he answered. ‘It’s the best we have.’

‘Then drink with us,’ said my companion, good-humouredly, filling a glass and pushing it towards him across the table.

But he shook his head with an ungracious ‘
Nein, nein
,’ and again left the room. The next moment we heard his heavy footfall going to and fro overhead.

‘He is preparing our beds,’ I said. ‘Are there no women, I wonder, about the place?’

‘Well, yes—this looks like one,’ laughed Bergheim as the door leading to the inner kitchen again opened, and a big stolid-looking peasant girl came in with a smoking dish of ham and eggs, which she set down before us on the table. ‘Stop! stop!’ he exclaimed, as she turned away. ‘Don’t be in such a hurry, my girl. What is your name?’

She stopped with a bewildered look, but said nothing. Bergheim repeated the question.

‘My—my name?’ she stammered. ‘Annchen.’

‘Good. Then, Annchen,’ (filling a bumper and draining it at a draught), ‘I drink to thy health. Wilt thou drink to mine?’ And he pointed to the glass poured out for the landlord’s brother.

But she only looked at him in the same scared, stupid way, and kept edging away towards the door.

‘Let her go,’ I said. ‘She is evidently half an idiot.’

‘She’s no idiot to refuse that wine,’ replied Bergheim, as the door closed after her. ‘It’s the most abominable mixture I ever put inside my lips. Have you tasted it?’

I had not tasted it as yet, and now I would not; so, the elder brother coming back just at that moment, we called for beer.

‘Don’t you like the wine?’ he said, scowling.

‘No,’ replied Bergheim. ‘Do you? If so, you’re welcome to the rest of it.’

The landlord took up the bottle and held it between his eyes and the lamp.

‘Bad as it is,’ he said, ‘you’ve drunk half of it.’

‘Not I—only one glass, thanks be to Bacchus! There stands the other. Let us have a
schoppen
of your best beer—and I hope it will be better than your best wine.’

The landlord looked from Bergheim to the glass—from the glass to the bottle. He seemed to be measuring with his eye how much had really been drunk. Then he went to the inner door; called to Friedrich to bring a
schoppen
of the
bairisch
, and went away, shutting the door after him. From the sound of his footsteps, it seemed to us as if he also was gone upstairs, but into some more distant part of the house. Presently the younger brother re-appeared with the beer, placed it before us in silence, and went away as before.

‘The most forbidding, disagreeable, uncivil pair I ever saw in my life!’ said I.

‘They’re not fascinating, I admit,’ said Bergheim, leaning back in his chair with the air of a man whose appetite is somewhat appeased. ‘I don’t know which is the worst—their wine or their manners.’

And then he yawned tremendously, and pushed out his plate, which I heaped afresh with ham and eggs. When he had swallowed a few mouthfuls, he leaned his head upon his hand, and declared he was too tired to eat more.

‘And yet,’ he added, ‘I am still hungry.’

‘Nonsense!’ I said; ‘eat enough now you are about it. How is the beer?’

He took a pull of the
schoppen
.

‘Capital,’ he said. ‘Now I can go on again.’

The next instant he was nodding over his plate.

‘I am ashamed to be so stupid,’ he said, rousing himself presently; ‘but I am overpowered with fatigue. Let us have the coffee; it will wake me up a bit.’

But he had no sooner said this than his chin dropped on his breast, and he was sound asleep.

I did not call for the coffee immediately. I let him sleep, and went on quietly with my supper. Just as I had done, however, the brothers came back together, Friedrich bringing the coffee—two large cups on a tray. The elder, standing by the table, looked down at Bergheim with his unfriendly frown.

‘Your friend is tired,’ he said.

‘Yes, he has walked far today—much further than I have.’

‘Humph! you will be glad to go to bed.’

‘Indeed we shall. Are our rooms ready?’

‘Yes.’

I took one of the cups, and put the other beside Bergheim’s plate.

‘Here, Bergheim,’ I said, ‘wake up; the coffee is waiting.’

But he slept on, and never heard me.

I then lifted my own cup to my lips—paused—set it down untasted. It had an odd, pungent smell that I did not like.

‘What is the matter with it?’ I said, ‘it does not smell like pure coffee.’

The brothers exchanged a rapid glance.

‘It is the
Kirschenwasser
,’ said Karl. ‘We always put it in our black coffee.’

I tasted it, but the flavour of the coffee was quite drowned in that of the coarse, fiery spirit.

‘Do you not like it?’ asked the younger brother.

‘It is very strong,’ I said.

‘But it is very good,’ replied he; ‘real Black Forest Kirsch—the best thing in the world, if one is tired after a journey. Drink it off,
mein Herr
; it is of no use to sip it. It will make you sleep.’

This was the longest speech either of them had yet made.

‘Thanks,’ I said, pulling out my cigar-case, ‘but this stuff is too powerful to be drunk at a draught. I shall make it last out a cigar or two.’

‘And your friend?’

‘He is better without the Kirsch, and may sleep till I am ready to go to bed.’

Again they looked at each other.

‘You need not sit up,’ I said impatiently; for it annoyed me, somehow, to have them standing there, one at each side of the table, alternately looking at me and at each other. ‘I will call the
Mädchen
to show us to our rooms when we are ready.’

‘Good,’ said the elder brother, after a moment’s hesitation. ‘Come, Friedrich.’

Friedrich turned at once to follow him, and they both left the room.

I listened. I heard them for awhile moving to and fro in the inner kitchen; then the sound of their double footsteps going up the stairs; then the murmur of their voices somewhere above, yet not exactly overhead; then silence.

I felt more comfortable, now that they were fairly gone, and not likely to return. I breathed more freely. I had disliked the brothers from the first. I had felt uneasy from the moment I crossed their threshold. Nothing, I told myself, should induce me at any time, or under any circumstances, to put up under their roof again.

Pondering thus, I smoked on, and took another sip of the coffee. It was not so hot now, and some of the strength of the spirit had gone off; but under the flavour of the
Kirschenswasser
I could (or fancied I could) detect another flavour, pungent and bitter—a flavour, in short, just corresponding to the smell that I had at first noticed.

This startled me. I scarcely knew why, but it did startle me, and somewhat unpleasantly. At the same instant I observed that Bergheim, in the heaviness and helplessness of sleep, had swayed over on one side, and was hanging very uncomfortably across one arm of his chair.

‘Come, come,’ I said, ‘wake up, Herr fellow-traveller. This sort of dozing will do you no good. Wake up, and come to bed.’

And with this I took him by the arm, and tried to rouse him. Then for the first time I observed that his face was deadly white—that his teeth were fast clenched—that his breathing was unnatural and laboured.

I sprang to my feet. I dragged him into an upright posture; I tore open his neckcloth; I was on the point of rushing to the door to call for help, when a suspicion—one of those terrible suspicions which are suspicion and conviction in one—flashed suddenly upon me.

The rejected glass of wine was still standing on the table. I smelt it—tasted it. My dread was confirmed. It had the same pungent odour, the same bitter flavour as the coffee.

In a moment I measured all the horror of my position; alone —unarmed—my unconscious fellow-traveller drugged and helpless on my hands—the murderers overhead, biding their time—the silence and darkness of night—the unfrequented road—the solitary house—the improbability of help from without—the imminence of the danger from within. . . . I saw it all! What could I do? Was there any way, any chance, any hope?

I turned cold and dizzy. I leaned against the table for support. Was I also drugged, and was my turn coming? I looked round for water, but there was none upon the table. I did not dare to touch the beer, lest it also should be doctored.

At that instant I heard a faint sound outside, like the creaking of a stair. My presence of mind had not as yet for a moment deserted me, and now my strength came back at the approach of danger. I cast a rapid glance round the room. There was the blunderbuss over the chimney-piece, there were the two hatchets in the corner. I moved a chair loudly, and hummed some snatches of songs.

They should know that I was awake—this might at least keep them off a little longer. The scraps of songs covered the sound of my footsteps as I stole across the room and secured the hatchets. One of these I laid before me on the table; the other I hid among the wood in the wood-basket beside the hearth—singing, as it were to myself, all the time.

Then I listened breathlessly.

All was silent.

Then I clinked my tea-spoon in my cup—feigned a long yawn—under cover of the yawn took down the blunderbuss from its hook—and listened again.