Home Again Part 10

"You are not very polite!" said Lufa.

"Only truthful," replied Sefton.

"Please go on?"

"We are dying to hear!"

"A real ghost story!"

"Is it your best, George?"

"It is my only one," Sefton answered, and was silent a few moments, as if arranging his thoughts.

"Well, here goes!" he began. "I was staying at a country house--"

"Not here, I hope!" said Lufa.

"I have reasons for not saying where it was, or where it wasn't. It may have been in Ireland, it may have been in Scotland, it may have been in England; it was in one of the three--an old house, parts very old. One morning I happened to be late, and found the breakfast-table deserted. I was not the last, however; for presently another man appeared, whom I had met at dinner the day before for the first time. We both happened to be in the army, and had drawn a little together. The moment I saw him, I knew he had pa.s.sed an uncomfortable night. His face was like dough, with livid spots under the eyes. He sat down and poured himself out a cup of tea. 'Game-pie?' I said, but he did not heed me. There was n.o.body in the room but ourselves, and I thought it best to leave him alone. 'Are you an old friend of the family?' he said at length. 'About the age of most friends,' I answered. He was silent again, for a bit, then said, 'I'm going to cut!' 'Ha, ha!' thought I, and something more. 'No, it's not that!' he said, reading my thought, which had been about a lady in the house with us. 'Pray don't imagine I want to know,' I replied. 'Neither do I want to tell,' he rejoined. 'I don't care to have fellows laugh at me!' 'That's just what I don't care to do. Nothing hurts me less than being laughed at, so I take no pleasure in it,' I said. 'What I do want,' said he, 'is to have you tell Mrs. ---' There! I was on the very edge of saying her name! and you would have known who she was, all of you! I _am_ glad I caught myself in time!--'tell Mrs. Blank,' said he, 'why I went.' 'Very well! I will. Why are you going?' 'Can't you help a fellow to an excuse? I'm not going to give _her_ the reason.' 'Tell me what you want me to say, and I will tell her you told me to say so.' 'I will tell _you_ the truth.' 'Fire away, then.' 'I was in a beastly funk last night. I dare say you think as I did, that a man ought never to be a hair off the cool?' 'That depends,' I replied; 'there are some things, and there may be more, at which any but an idiot might well be scared; but some fools are such fools they can't s.h.i.+ver! What's the matter? I give you my word I'll not make game of it.' The fellow looked so seedy, don't you know, I couldn't but be brotherly, or, at least, cousinly to him!--that don't go for much, does it, Lufa? 'Well,' he said, 'I will tell you. Last night, I had been in bed about five minutes, and hadn't even had time to grow sleepy, when I heard a curious shuffling in the pa.s.sage outside my door, and an indescribable terror came over me. To be perfectly open with you, however, I _had_ heard that was the sign she was coming!' '_Who_ coming?' said I. 'The ghost, of course!' he answered. 'The ghost!' 'You don't mean to say you never heard of the ghost?' 'Never heard a word of it.' 'Well, they don't like to speak of it, but everybody knows it!' 'Go on,' said I; and he did, but plainly with a tearing effort. 'The shuffling was like feet in slippers much too big. As if I had been five instead of five-and-thirty, I dived under the blankets, and lay so for minutes after the shuffling had ceased. But at length I persuaded myself it was but a foolish fancy, and I had never really heard anything. What with fear and heat I was much in want of breath too, I can tell you! So I came to the surface, and looked out.'

Here he paused a moment, and turned almost livid. 'There stood a horrible old woman, staring at me, as if she had been seeing me all the time, and the blankets made no difference!' 'Was she really ugly?' I asked. 'Well, I don't know what you call ugly,' he answered, 'but if you had seen her stare, you would have thought her ugly enough! Had she been as beautiful as a houri, though, I don't imagine I should have been less frightened!' 'Well,' said I, for he had come to a pause, 'and what came next?' 'I can not tell. I came to myself all trembling, and as cold and as wet as if I had been dipped in a well' 'You are sure you were not dreaming?' I said. '_I was not._ But I do not expect you believe me!'

'You must not be offended,' I said, 'if I find the thing stiff to stow!

I believe _you_ all the same.' 'What?' he said, not quite understanding me. 'An honest man and a gentleman,' I answered. 'And a coward to boot!'

'G.o.d forbid!' I returned: 'what man can answer for himself at every moment! If I remember, Hector turned at last and ran from Achilles!' He said nothing, and I went on. 'I once heard a preaching fellow say, "When a wise man is always wise, then is the kingdom of heaven!" and I thought he knew something!' I talked, don't you know, to quiet him. 'I once saw,' I said, 'the best-tempered man I ever knew, in the worst rage I ever saw man in--though I must allow he had good reason!' He drank his cup of tea, got up, and said, 'I'm off. Good-bye--and thank you! A million of money wouldn't make me stay in the house another hour! There is that in it I fear ten times worse than the ghost?' 'Gracious! what is that?' I said. 'This horrible cowardice oozing from her like a mist. The house is full of it!' 'But what shall I say to Mrs. Blank?' 'Anything you like.' 'I will say then, that you are very sorry, but were compelled to go.' 'Say what you please, only let me go! Tell them to send my traps after me. Good-bye! I'm in a sepulcher! I shall have to throw up my commission!' So he went."

"And what became of him?"

"I've neither seen nor heard of him to this day!"

He ceased with the cadence of an ended story.

"Is that all?"

"You spoke of an adventure of your own!"

"I was flattering myself," said Lufa, "that in our house Mr. Colman was at last to hear a ghost story from the man's own lips!"

"The sun is coming out!" said Sefton. "I will have a cigar at the stables."

The company protested, but he turned a deaf ear to expostulation, and went.

CHAPTER XIX.

THE BODILESS.

In the drawing-room after dinner, some of the ladies gathered about him, and begged the story of his own adventure. He smiled queerly.

"Very well, you shall have it!" he answered.

They seated themselves, and the company came from all parts of the room--among the rest, Lufa and Walter.

"It was three days, if I remember," began Sefton, "after my military friend left, when one night I found myself alone in the drawing-room, just waked from a brown study. No one had said good-night to me. I looked at my watch; it was half past eleven. I rose and went. My bedroom was on the first-floor.

"The stairs were peculiar--a construction later than much of the house, but by no means modern. When you reached the landing of the first-floor and looked up, you could see above you the second-floor, descended by a bal.u.s.trade between arches. There were no carpets on stairs or landings, which were all of oak.

"I can not certainly say what made me look up; but I think, indeed I am almost sure, I had heard a noise like that the ghost was said to make, as of one walking in shoes too large: I saw a lady looking down over the bal.u.s.ters on the second-floor. I thought some one was playing me a trick, and imitating the ghost, for the ladies had been chaffing me a good deal that night; they often do. She wore an old-fas.h.i.+oned, browny, silky looking dress. I rushed up to see who was taking the rise out of me. I looked up at her as I ran, and she kept looking down, but apparently not at me. Her face was that of a middle-aged woman, beginning, indeed, to be old, and had an intent, rather troubled look, I should say; but I did not consider it closely.

"I was at the top in a moment, on the level where she stood leaning over the handrail. Turning, I approached her. Apparently, she neither saw nor heard me. 'Well acted!' I said to myself--but even then I was beginning to be afraid, without knowing why. Every man's impulse, I fancy, is to go right up to anything that frightens him--at least, I have always found it so. I walked close up to the woman. She moved her head and turned in my direction, but only as if about to go away. Whether she looked at me I can not tell, but I saw her eyes plain enough. By this time, I suppose, the idea of a ghost must have been uppermost, for, being now quite close to her, I put out my hand as if to touch her. _My hand went through her--through her head and body!_ I am not joking in the least; I mean you to believe, if you can, exactly what I say. What then she did, or whether she took any notice of my movement, I can not tell; I only know what I did, or rather what I did not do. For, had I been capable, I should have uttered a shriek that would have filled the house with ghastliest terror; but there was a load of iron on my chest, and the hand of a giant at my throat. I could not help opening my mouth, for something drew all the muscles of my jaws and throat, but I could not utter a sound. The horror I was in, was entirely new to me, and no more under my control than a fever. I only wonder it did not paralyze me, that I was able to turn and run down the stair! I ran as if all the cardinal sins were at my heels. I flew, never seeming to touch the stairs as I went. I darted along the pa.s.sage, burst into my room, shut and locked the door, lighted my candles, fell into a chair, shuddered, and began to breathe again."

He ceased, not without present signs of the agitation he described.

"But that's not all!"

"And what else?"

"Did anything happen?"

"Do tell us more."

"I have nothing more to tell," answered Sefton. "But I haven't done wondering what could have put me in such an awful funk! You can't have a notion what it was like!"

"I know I should have been in a worse!"

"Perhaps--but why? Why should any one have been terrified? The poor thing had lost her body, it is true, but there she was notwithstanding--all the same! It might be nicer or not so nice to her, but why should it so affect me? that's what I want to know! Am I not, as Hamlet says, 'a thing immortal as itself?' I don't see the sense of it!

Sure I am that one meets constantly--sits down with, eats and drinks with, hears sing, and play, and remark on the weather, and the fate of the nation--"

He paused, his eyes fixed on Walter.

"What _are_ you driving at?" said Lufa.

"I was thinking of a much more fearful kind of creature," he answered.

"What kind of a creature?" she asked.

"A creature," he said, slowly, "that has a body, but no soul to it. All body, with brain enough for its affairs, it has _no_ soul. Such will never wander about after they are dead! there will be nothing to wander!

Good-night, ladies! Were I to tell you the history of a woman whose acquaintance I made some years ago at Baden, you would understand the sort Good-night!"

There was silence for a moment or two. Had his sister not been present, something other than complimentary to Sefton might have crept about the drawing-room--to judge from the expression of two or three faces. Walter felt the man worth knowing, but felt also something about him that repelled him.

CHAPTER XX.

THE SOULLESS.