6. THE STORY OF THE INEXPERIENCED GHOST
The scene amidst which Clayton told his last story comes back veryvividly to my mind. There he sat, for the greater part of the time,in the corner of the authentic settle by the spacious open fire, andSanderson sat beside him smoking the Broseley clay that bore his name.There was Evans, and that marvel among actors, Wish, who is also amodest man. We had all come down to the Mermaid Club that Saturdaymorning, except Clayton, who had slept there overnight--which indeedgave him the opening of his story. We had golfed until golfing wasinvisible; we had dined, and we were in that mood of tranquil kindlinesswhen men will suffer a story. When Clayton began to tell one, wenaturally supposed he was lying. It may be that indeed he was lying--ofthat the reader will speedily be able to judge as well as I. He began,it is true, with an air of matter-of-fact anecdote, but that we thoughtwas only the incurable artifice of the man.
"I say!" he remarked, after a long consideration of the upward rain ofsparks from the log that Sanderson had thumped, "you know I was alonehere last night?"
"Except for the domestics," said Wish.
"Who sleep in the other wing," said Clayton. "Yes. Well--" He pulled athis cigar for some little time as though he still hesitated about hisconfidence. Then he said, quite quietly, "I caught a ghost!"
"Caught a ghost, did you?" said Sanderson. "Where is it?"
And Evans, who admires Clayton immensely and has been four weeks inAmerica, shouted, "CAUGHT a ghost, did you, Clayton? I'm glad of it!Tell us all about it right now."
Clayton said he would in a minute, and asked him to shut the door.
He looked apologetically at me. "There's no eavesdropping of course, butwe don't want to upset our very excellent service with any rumours ofghosts in the place. There's too much shadow and oak panelling to triflewith that. And this, you know, wasn't a regular ghost. I don't think itwill come again--ever."
"You mean to say you didn't keep it?" said Sanderson.
"I hadn't the heart to," said Clayton.
And Sanderson said he was surprised.
We laughed, and Clayton looked aggrieved. "I know," he said, with theflicker of a smile, "but the fact is it really WAS a ghost, and I'm assure of it as I am that I am talking to you now. I'm not joking. I meanwhat I say."
Sanderson drew deeply at his pipe, with one reddish eye on Clayton, andthen emitted a thin jet of smoke more eloquent than many words.
Clayton ignored the comment. "It is the strangest thing that has everhappened in my life. You know, I never believed in ghosts or anything ofthe sort, before, ever; and then, you know, I bag one in a corner; andthe whole business is in my hands."
He meditated still more profoundly, and produced and began to pierce asecond cigar with a curious little stabber he affected.
"You talked to it?" asked Wish.
"For the space, probably, of an hour."
"Chatty?" I said, joining the party of the sceptics.
"The poor devil was in trouble," said Clayton, bowed over his cigar-endand with the very faintest note of reproof.
"Sobbing?" some one asked.
Clayton heaved a realistic sigh at the memory. "Good Lord!" he said;"yes." And then, "Poor fellow! yes."
"Where did you strike it?" asked Evans, in his best American accent.
"I never realised," said Clayton, ignoring him, "the poor sort of thinga ghost might be," and he hung us up again for a time, while he soughtfor matches in his pocket and lit and warmed to his cigar.
"I took an advantage," he reflected at last.
We were none of us in a hurry. "A character," he said, "remains just thesame character for all that it's been disembodied. That's a thing we toooften forget. People with a certain strength or fixity of purpose mayhave ghosts of a certain strength and fixity of purpose--most hauntingghosts, you know, must be as one-idea'd as monomaniacs and as obstinateas mules to come back again and again. This poor creature wasn't." Hesuddenly looked up rather queerly, and his eye went round the room. "Isay it," he said, "in all kindliness, but that is the plain truth of thecase. Even at the first glance he struck me as weak."
He punctuated with the help of his cigar.
"I came upon him, you know, in the long passage. His back was towardsme and I saw him first. Right off I knew him for a ghost. He wastransparent and whitish; clean through his chest I could see the glimmerof the little window at the end. And not only his physique but hisattitude struck me as being weak. He looked, you know, as though hedidn't know in the slightest whatever he meant to do. One hand was onthe panelling and the other fluttered to his mouth. Like--SO!"
"What sort of physique?" said Sanderson.
"Lean. You know that sort of young man's neck that has two greatflutings down the back, here and here--so! And a little, meanish headwith scrubby hair--And rather bad ears. Shoulders bad, narrower than thehips; turn-down collar, ready-made short jacket, trousers baggy and alittle frayed at the heels. That's how he took me. I came very quietlyup the staircase. I did not carry a light, you know--the candles are onthe landing table and there is that lamp--and I was in my list slippers,and I saw him as I came up. I stopped dead at that--taking him in. Iwasn't a bit afraid. I think that in most of these affairs one isnever nearly so afraid or excited as one imagines one would be. I wassurprised and interested. I thought, 'Good Lord! Here's a ghost atlast! And I haven't believed for a moment in ghosts during the lastfive-and-twenty years.'"
"Um," said Wish.
"I suppose I wasn't on the landing a moment before he found out I wasthere. He turned on me sharply, and I saw the face of an immature youngman, a weak nose, a scrubby little moustache, a feeble chin. So for aninstant we stood--he looking over his shoulder at me and regarded oneanother. Then he seemed to remember his high calling. He turned round,drew himself up, projected his face, raised his arms, spread his handsin approved ghost fashion--came towards me. As he did so his little jawdropped, and he emitted a faint, drawn-out 'Boo.' No, it wasn't--not abit dreadful. I'd dined. I'd had a bottle of champagne, and being allalone, perhaps two or three--perhaps even four or five--whiskies, so Iwas as solid as rocks and no more frightened than if I'd been assailedby a frog. 'Boo!' I said. 'Nonsense. You don't belong to THIS place.What are you doing here?'
"I could see him wince. 'Boo-oo,' he said.
"'Boo--be hanged! Are you a member?' I said; and just to show I didn'tcare a pin for him I stepped through a corner of him and made to lightmy candle. 'Are you a member?' I repeated, looking at him sideways.
"He moved a little so as to stand clear of me, and his bearing becamecrestfallen. 'No,' he said, in answer to the persistent interrogation ofmy eye; 'I'm not a member--I'm a ghost.'
"'Well, that doesn't give you the run of the Mermaid Club. Is there anyone you want to see, or anything of that sort?' and doing it as steadilyas possible for fear that he should mistake the carelessness of whiskyfor the distraction of fear, I got my candle alight. I turned on him,holding it. 'What are you doing here?' I said.
"He had dropped his hands and stopped his booing, and there he stood,abashed and awkward, the ghost of a weak, silly, aimless young man. 'I'mhaunting,' he said.
"'You haven't any business to,' I said in a quiet voice.
"'I'm a ghost,' he said, as if in defence.
"'That may be, but you haven't any business to haunt here. This is arespectable private club; people often stop here with nursemaids andchildren, and, going about in the careless way you do, some poor littlemite could easily come upon you and be scared out of her wits. I supposeyou didn't think of that?'
"'No, sir,' he said, 'I didn't.'
"'You should have done. You haven't any claim on the place, have you?Weren't murdered here, or anything of that sort?'
"'None, sir; but I thought as it was old and oak-panelled--'
"'That's NO excuse.' I regarded him firmly. 'Your coming here is amistake,' I said, in a tone of friendly superiority. I feigned to seeif I had my matches, and then looked up at him frankly. 'If I were you Iwo
uldn't wait for cock-crow--I'd vanish right away.'
"He looked embarrassed. 'The fact IS, sir--' he began.
"'I'd vanish,' I said, driving it home.
"'The fact is, sir, that--somehow--I can't.'
"'You CAN'T?'
"'No, sir. There's something I've forgotten. I've been hanging abouthere since midnight last night, hiding in the cupboards of the emptybedrooms and things like that. I'm flurried. I've never come hauntingbefore, and it seems to put me out.'
"'Put you out?'
"'Yes, sir. I've tried to do it several times, and it doesn't come off.There's some little thing has slipped me, and I can't get back.'
"That, you know, rather bowled me over. He looked at me in such anabject way that for the life of me I couldn't keep up quite the high,hectoring vein I had adopted. 'That's queer,' I said, and as I spoke Ifancied I heard some one moving about down below. 'Come into my room andtell me more about it,' I said. 'I didn't, of course, understand this,'and I tried to take him by the arm. But, of course, you might as wellhave tried to take hold of a puff of smoke! I had forgotten my number,I think; anyhow, I remember going into several bedrooms--it was lucky Iwas the only soul in that wing--until I saw my traps. 'Here we are,' Isaid, and sat down in the arm-chair; 'sit down and tell me all about it.It seems to me you have got yourself into a jolly awkward position, oldchap.'
"Well, he said he wouldn't sit down! he'd prefer to flit up and down theroom if it was all the same to me. And so he did, and in a littlewhile we were deep in a long and serious talk. And presently, you know,something of those whiskies and sodas evaporated out of me, and I beganto realise just a little what a thundering rum and weird business it wasthat I was in. There he was, semi-transparent--the proper conventionalphantom, and noiseless except for his ghost of a voice--flitting toand fro in that nice, clean, chintz-hung old bedroom. You could seethe gleam of the copper candlesticks through him, and the lights on thebrass fender, and the corners of the framed engravings on the wall,--andthere he was telling me all about this wretched little life of his thathad recently ended on earth. He hadn't a particularly honest face, youknow, but being transparent, of course, he couldn't avoid telling thetruth."
"Eh?" said Wish, suddenly sitting up in his chair.
"What?" said Clayton.
"Being transparent--couldn't avoid telling the truth--I don't see it,"said Wish.
"_I_ don't see it," said Clayton, with inimitable assurance. "But it ISso, I can assure you nevertheless. I don't believe he got once a nail'sbreadth off the Bible truth. He told me how he had been killed--hewent down into a London basement with a candle to look for a leakageof gas--and described himself as a senior English master in a Londonprivate school when that release occurred."
"Poor wretch!" said I.
"That's what I thought, and the more he talked the more I thought it.There he was, purposeless in life and purposeless out of it. He talkedof his father and mother and his schoolmaster, and all who had ever beenanything to him in the world, meanly. He had been too sensitive, toonervous; none of them had ever valued him properly or understood him, hesaid. He had never had a real friend in the world, I think; he had neverhad a success. He had shirked games and failed examinations. 'It'slike that with some people,' he said; 'whenever I got into theexamination-room or anywhere everything seemed to go.' Engaged to bemarried of course--to another over-sensitive person, I suppose--when theindiscretion with the gas escape ended his affairs. 'And where are younow?' I asked. 'Not in--?'
"He wasn't clear on that point at all. The impression he gave me wasof a sort of vague, intermediate state, a special reserve for souls toonon-existent for anything so positive as either sin or virtue. _I_ don'tknow. He was much too egotistical and unobservant to give me any clearidea of the kind of place, kind of country, there is on the Other Sideof Things. Wherever he was, he seems to have fallen in with a set ofkindred spirits: ghosts of weak Cockney young men, who were on a footingof Christian names, and among these there was certainly a lot of talkabout 'going haunting' and things like that. Yes--going haunting! Theyseemed to think 'haunting' a tremendous adventure, and most of themfunked it all the time. And so primed, you know, he had come."
"But really!" said Wish to the fire.
"These are the impressions he gave me, anyhow," said Clayton, modestly."I may, of course, have been in a rather uncritical state, but that wasthe sort of background he gave to himself. He kept flitting up and down,with his thin voice going talking, talking about his wretched self, andnever a word of clear, firm statement from first to last. He was thinnerand sillier and more pointless than if he had been real and alive. Onlythen, you know, he would not have been in my bedroom here--if he HADbeen alive. I should have kicked him out."
"Of course," said Evans, "there ARE poor mortals like that."
"And there's just as much chance of their having ghosts as the rest ofus," I admitted.
"What gave a sort of point to him, you know, was the fact that he didseem within limits to have found himself out. The mess he had made ofhaunting had depressed him terribly. He had been told it would bea 'lark'; he had come expecting it to be a 'lark,' and here it was,nothing but another failure added to his record! He proclaimed himselfan utter out-and-out failure. He said, and I can quite believe it, thathe had never tried to do anything all his life that he hadn't made aperfect mess of--and through all the wastes of eternity he neverwould. If he had had sympathy, perhaps--. He paused at that, and stoodregarding me. He remarked that, strange as it might seem to me, nobody,not any one, ever, had given him the amount of sympathy I was doing now.I could see what he wanted straight away, and I determined to head himoff at once. I may be a brute, you know, but being the Only Real Friend,the recipient of the confidences of one of these egotistical weaklings,ghost or body, is beyond my physical endurance. I got up briskly. 'Don'tyou brood on these things too much,' I said. 'The thing you've got to dois to get out of this get out of this--sharp. You pull yourself togetherand TRY.' 'I can't,' he said. 'You try,' I said, and try he did."
"Try!" said Sanderson. "HOW?"
"Passes," said Clayton.
"Passes?"
"Complicated series of gestures and passes with the hands. That's howhe had come in and that's how he had to get out again. Lord! what abusiness I had!"
"But how could ANY series of passes--?" I began.
"My dear man," said Clayton, turning on me and putting a great emphasison certain words, "you want EVERYTHING clear. _I_ don't know HOW. AllI know is that you DO--that HE did, anyhow, at least. After a fearfultime, you know, he got his passes right and suddenly disappeared."
"Did you," said Sanderson, slowly, "observe the passes?"
"Yes," said Clayton, and seemed to think. "It was tremendously queer,"he said. "There we were, I and this thin vague ghost, in that silentroom, in this silent, empty inn, in this silent little Friday-nighttown. Not a sound except our voices and a faint panting he made whenhe swung. There was the bedroom candle, and one candle on thedressing-table alight, that was all--sometimes one or other would flareup into a tall, lean, astonished flame for a space. And queer thingshappened. 'I can't,' he said; 'I shall never--!' And suddenly he satdown on a little chair at the foot of the bed and began to sob and sob.Lord! what a harrowing, whimpering thing he seemed!
"'You pull yourself together,' I said, and tried to pat him on the back,and... my confounded hand went through him! By that time, you know,I wasn't nearly so--massive as I had been on the landing. I got thequeerness of it full. I remember snatching back my hand out of him, asit were, with a little thrill, and walking over to the dressing-table.'You pull yourself together,' I said to him, 'and try.' And in order toencourage and help him I began to try as well."
"What!" said Sanderson, "the passes?"
"Yes, the passes."
"But--" I said, moved by an idea that eluded me for a space.
"This is interesting," said Sanderson, with his finger in his pipe-bowl."You mean to say this ghost of yours gave away--"
"Did his level best to give away the whole confounded barrier? YES."
"He didn't," said Wish; "he couldn't. Or you'd have gone there too."
"That's precisely it," I said, finding my elusive idea put into wordsfor me.
"That IS precisely it," said Clayton, with thoughtful eyes upon thefire.
For just a little while there was silence.
"And at last he did it?" said Sanderson.
"At last he did it. I had to keep him up to it hard, but he did it atlast--rather suddenly. He despaired, we had a scene, and then he got upabruptly and asked me to go through the whole performance, slowly, sothat he might see. 'I believe,' he said, 'if I could SEE I should spotwhat was wrong at once.' And he did. '_I_ know,' he said. 'What do youknow?' said I. '_I_ know,' he repeated. Then he said, peevishly, 'ICAN'T do it if you look at me--I really CAN'T; it's been that, partly,all along. I'm such a nervous fellow that you put me out.' Well, we hada bit of an argument. Naturally I wanted to see; but he was as obstinateas a mule, and suddenly I had come over as tired as a dog--he tired meout. 'All right,' I said, '_I_ won't look at you,' and turned towardsthe mirror, on the wardrobe, by the bed.
"He started off very fast. I tried to follow him by looking in thelooking-glass, to see just what it was had hung. Round went his armsand his hands, so, and so, and so, and then with a rush came to the lastgesture of all--you stand erect and open out your arms--and so, don'tyou know, he stood. And then he didn't! He didn't! He wasn't! I wheeledround from the looking-glass to him. There was nothing, I was alone,with the flaring candles and a staggering mind. What had happened? Hadanything happened? Had I been dreaming?... And then, with an absurd noteof finality about it, the clock upon the landing discovered the momentwas ripe for striking ONE. So!--Ping! And I was as grave and sober asa judge, with all my champagne and whisky gone into the vast serene.Feeling queer, you know--confoundedly QUEER! Queer! Good Lord!"
He regarded his cigar-ash for a moment. "That's all that happened," hesaid.
"And then you went to bed?" asked Evans.
"What else was there to do?"
I looked Wish in the eye. We wanted to scoff, and there was something,something perhaps in Clayton's voice and manner, that hampered ourdesire.
"And about these passes?" said Sanderson.
"I believe I could do them now."
"Oh!" said Sanderson, and produced a penknife and set himself to grubthe dottel out of the bowl of his clay.
"Why don't you do them now?" said Sanderson, shutting his pen-knife witha click.
"That's what I'm going to do," said Clayton.
"They won't work," said Evans.
"If they do--" I suggested.
"You know, I'd rather you didn't," said Wish, stretching out his legs.
"Why?" asked Evans.
"I'd rather he didn't," said Wish.
"But he hasn't got 'em right," said Sanderson, plugging too much tobaccoin his pipe.
"All the same, I'd rather he didn't," said Wish.
We argued with Wish. He said that for Clayton to go through thosegestures was like mocking a serious matter. "But you don't believe--?"I said. Wish glanced at Clayton, who was staring into the fire, weighingsomething in his mind. "I do--more than half, anyhow, I do," said Wish.
"Clayton," said I, "you're too good a liar for us. Most of it was allright. But that disappearance... happened to be convincing. Tell us,it's a tale of cock and bull."
He stood up without heeding me, took the middle of the hearthrug, andfaced me. For a moment he regarded his feet thoughtfully, and then forall the rest of the time his eyes were on the opposite wall, with anintent expression. He raised his two hands slowly to the level of hiseyes and so began....
Now, Sanderson is a Freemason, a member of the lodge of the Four Kings,which devotes itself so ably to the study and elucidation of all themysteries of Masonry past and present, and among the students of thislodge Sanderson is by no means the least. He followed Clayton's motionswith a singular interest in his reddish eye. "That's not bad," hesaid, when it was done. "You really do, you know, put things together,Clayton, in a most amazing fashion. But there's one little detail out."
"I know," said Clayton. "I believe I could tell you which."
"Well?"
"This," said Clayton, and did a queer little twist and writhing andthrust of the hands.
"Yes."
"That, you know, was what HE couldn't get right," said Clayton. "But howdo YOU--?"
"Most of this business, and particularly how you invented it, I don'tunderstand at all," said Sanderson, "but just that phase--I do." Hereflected. "These happen to be a series of gestures--connected with acertain branch of esoteric Masonry. Probably you know. Or else--HOW?" Hereflected still further. "I do not see I can do any harm in telling youjust the proper twist. After all, if you know, you know; if you don't,you don't."
"I know nothing," said Clayton, "except what the poor devil let out lastnight."
"Well, anyhow," said Sanderson, and placed his churchwarden verycarefully upon the shelf over the fireplace. Then very rapidly hegesticulated with his hands.
"So?" said Clayton, repeating.
"So," said Sanderson, and took his pipe in hand again.
"Ah, NOW," said Clayton, "I can do the whole thing--right."
He stood up before the waning fire and smiled at us all. But I thinkthere was just a little hesitation in his smile. "If I begin--" he said.
"I wouldn't begin," said Wish.
"It's all right!" said Evans. "Matter is indestructible. You don't thinkany jiggery-pokery of this sort is going to snatch Clayton into theworld of shades. Not it! You may try, Clayton, so far as I'm concerned,until your arms drop off at the wrists."
"I don't believe that," said Wish, and stood up and put his arm onClayton's shoulder. "You've made me half believe in that story somehow,and I don't want to see the thing done!"
"Goodness!" said I, "here's Wish frightened!"
"I am," said Wish, with real or admirably feigned intensity. "I believethat if he goes through these motions right he'll GO."
"He'll not do anything of the sort," I cried. "There's only one way outof this world for men, and Clayton is thirty years from that. Besides...And such a ghost! Do you think--?"
Wish interrupted me by moving. He walked out from among our chairs andstopped beside the tole and stood there. "Clayton," he said, "you're afool."
Clayton, with a humorous light in his eyes, smiled back at him. "Wish,"he said, "is right and all you others are wrong. I shall go. I shall getto the end of these passes, and as the last swish whistles through theair, Presto!--this hearthrug will be vacant, the room will be blankamazement, and a respectably dressed gentleman of fifteen stone willplump into the world of shades. I'm certain. So will you be. I declineto argue further. Let the thing be tried."
"NO," said Wish, and made a step and ceased, and Clayton raised hishands once more to repeat the spirit's passing.
By that time, you know, we were all in a state of tension--largelybecause of the behaviour of Wish. We sat all of us with our eyes onClayton--I, at least, with a sort of tight, stiff feeling about me asthough from the back of my skull to the middle of my thighs my body hadbeen changed to steel. And there, with a gravity that was imperturbablyserene, Clayton bowed and swayed and waved his hands and arms before us.As he drew towards the end one piled up, one tingled in one's teeth. Thelast gesture, I have said, was to swing the arms out wide open, with theface held up. And when at last he swung out to this closing gesture Iceased even to breathe. It was ridiculous, of course, but you know thatghost-story feeling. It was after dinner, in a queer, old shadowy house.Would he, after all--?
There he stood for one stupendous moment, with his arms open and hisupturned face, assured and bright, in the glare of the hanging lamp. Wehung through that moment as if it were an age, and then came from allof us something that was half a sigh of infinite relief and half areassuring "NO!" For visibly--he wasn't going. It was all nonsense. Hehad t
old an idle story, and carried it almost to conviction, that wasall!... And then in that moment the face of Clayton, changed.
It changed. It changed as a lit house changes when its lights aresuddenly extinguished. His eyes were suddenly eyes that were fixed, hissmile was frozen on his lips, and he stood there still. He stood there,very gently swaying.
That moment, too, was an age. And then, you know, chairs were scraping,things were falling, and we were all moving. His knees seemed to give,and he fell forward, and Evans rose and caught him in his arms....
It stunned us all. For a minute I suppose no one said a coherent thing.We believed it, yet could not believe it.... I came out of a muddledstupefaction to find myself kneeling beside him, and his vest and shirtwere torn open, and Sanderson's hand lay on his heart....
Well--the simple fact before us could very well wait our convenience;there was no hurry for us to comprehend. It lay there for an hour; itlies athwart my memory, black and amazing still, to this day. Claytonhad, indeed, passed into the world that lies so near to and so far fromour own, and he had gone thither by the only road that mortal manmay take. But whether he did indeed pass there by that poor ghost'sincantation, or whether he was stricken suddenly by apoplexy in themidst of an idle tale--as the coroner's jury would have us believe--isno matter for my judging; it is just one of those inexplicable riddlesthat must remain unsolved until the final solution of all things shallcome. All I certainly know is that, in the very moment, in the veryinstant, of concluding those passes, he changed, and staggered, and felldown before us--dead!