Edith Nesbit - The Book of Shadows Vol 1

My father was on the point of following, when he heard a sort of sigh behind him; and there, sitting in the elbow-chair, was the very trumpeter he had just seen walk out by the door! If my father’s heart jumped before, you may believe it jumped quicker now. But after a bit, he went up to the man asleep in the chair, and put a hand upon him. It was the trumpeter in flesh and blood that he touched; but though the flesh was warm, the trumpeter was dead.

Well, sir, they buried him three days after; and at first my father was minded to say nothing about his dream (as he thought it). But the day after the funeral, he met Parson Kendall coming from Helston market: and the parson called out: “Have ’ee heard the news the coach brought down this mornin’?” “What news?” says my father. “Why, that peace is agreed upon.” “None too soon,” says my father. “Not soon enough for our poor lads at Bayonne,” the parson answered. “Bayonne!” cries my father, with a jump. “Why, yes”; and the parson told him all about a great sally the French had made on the night of April 13th. “Do you happen to know if the 38th Regiment was engaged?” my father asked, “Come, now,” said Parson Kendall, “I didn’t know you was so well up in the campaign. But, as it happens, I do know that the 38th was engaged, for ’twas they that held a cottage and stopped the French advance.”

Still my father held his tongue; and when, a week later, he walked into Helston and bought the Mercury off the Sherborne rider, and got the landlord of the Angel to spell out the list of killed and wounded, sure enough, there among the killed was Drummer John Christian, of the 38th Foot.

After this, there was nothing for a religious man but to make a clean breast. So my father went up to Parson Kendall and told the whole story. The parson listened, and put a question or two, and then asked:

“Have you tried to open the lock since that night?”

“I han’t dared to touch it,” says my father.

“Then come along and try.” When the parson came to the cottage here, he took the things off the hook and tried the lock. “Did he say ‘Bayonne’? The word has seven letters.”

“Not if you spell it with one ‘ n ’ as he did,” says my father.

The parson spelt it out – B-A-Y-O-N-E. “Whew!” says he, for the lock had fallen open in his hand.

He stood considering it a moment, and then he says, “I tell you what. I shouldn’t blab this all round the parish, if I was you. You won’t get no credit for truth-telling, and a miracle’s wasted on a set of fools. But if you like, I’ll shut down the lock again upon a holy word that no one but me shall know, and neither drummer nor trumpeter, dead nor alive, shall frighten the secret out of me.”

“I wish to gracious you would, parson,” said my father.

The parson chose the holy word there and then, and shut the lock back upon it, and hung the drum and trumpet back in their place. He is gone long since, taking the word with him. And till the lock is broken by force, nobody will ever separate those twain.

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