JOHNSON AND EMILY
OR
THE FAITHFUL GHOST
(Teddy Biffles' Story)
I was little more than a lad when I first met with Johnson. I was
home for the Christmas holidays, and, it being Christmas Eve, I had
been allowed to sit up very late. On opening the door of my little
bedroom, to go in, I found myself face to face with Johnson, who
was coming out. It passed through me, and uttering a long low wail
of misery, disappeared out of the staircase window.
I was startled for the moment--I was only a schoolboy at the time,
and had never seen a ghost before,--and felt a little nervous about
going to bed. But, on reflection, I remembered that it was only
sinful people that spirits could do any harm to, and so tucked
myself up, and went to sleep.
In the morning I told the Pater what I had seen.
"Oh yes, that was old Johnson," he answered. "Don't you be
frightened of that; he lives here." And then he told me the poor
thing's history.
It seemed that Johnson, when it was alive, had loved, in early
life, the daughter of a former lessee of our house, a very
beautiful girl, whose Christian name had been Emily. Father did
not know her other name.
Johnson was too poor to marry the girl, so he kissed her good-bye,
told her he would soon be back, and went off to Australia to make
his fortune.
But Australia was not then what it became later on. Travellers
through the bush were few and far between in those early days; and,
even when one was caught, the portable property found upon the body
was often of hardly sufficiently negotiable value to pay the simple
funeral expenses rendered necessary. So that it took Johnson
nearly twenty years to make his fortune.
The self-imposed task was accomplished at last, however, and then,
having successfully eluded the police, and got clear out of the
Colony, he returned to England, full of hope and joy, to claim his
bride.
He reached the house to find it silent and deserted. All that the
neighbours could tell him was that, soon after his own departure,
the family had, on one foggy night, unostentatiously disappeared,
and that nobody had ever seen or heard anything of them since,
although the landlord and most of the local tradesmen had made
searching inquiries.
Poor Johnson, frenzied with grief, sought his lost love all over
the world. But he never found her, and, after years of fruitless
effort, he returned to end his lonely life in the very house where,
in the happy bygone days, he and his beloved Emily had passed so
many blissful hours.
He had lived there quite alone, wandering about the empty rooms,
weeping and calling to his Emily to come back to him; and when the
poor old fellow died, his ghost still kept the business on.
It was there, the Pater said, when he took the house, and the agent
had knocked ten pounds a year off the rent in consequence.
After that, I was continually meeting Johnson about the place at
all times of the night, and so, indeed, were we all. We used to
walk round it and stand aside to let it pass, at first; but, when
we grew at home with it, and there seemed no necessity for so much
ceremony, we used to walk straight through it. You could not say
it was ever much in the way.
It was a gentle, harmless, old ghost, too, and we all felt very
sorry for it, and pitied it. The women folk, indeed, made quite a
pet of it, for a while. Its faithfulness touched them so.
But as time went on, it grew to be a bit of a bore. You see it was
full of sadness. There was nothing cheerful or genial about it.
You felt sorry for it, but it irritated you. It would sit on the
stairs and cry for hours at a stretch; and, whenever we woke up in
the night, one was sure to hear it pottering about the passages and
in and out of the different rooms, moaning and sighing, so that we
could not get to sleep again very easily. And when we had a party
on, it would come and sit outside the drawing-room door, and sob
all the time. It did not do anybody any harm exactly, but it cast
a gloom over the whole affair.
"Oh, I'm getting sick of this old fool," said the Pater, one
evening (the Dad can be very blunt, when he is put out, as you
know), after Johnson had been more of a nuisance than usual, and
had spoiled a good game of whist, by sitting up the chimney and
groaning, till nobody knew what were trumps or what suit had been
led, even. "We shall have to get rid of him, somehow or other. I
wish I knew how to do it."
"Well," said the Mater, "depend upon it, you'll never see the last
of him until he's found Emily's grave. That's what he is after.
You find Emily's grave, and put him on to that, and he'll stop
there. That's the only thing to do. You mark my words."
The idea seemed reasonable, but the difficulty in the way was that
we none of us knew where Emily's grave was any more than the ghost
of Johnson himself did. The Governor suggested palming off some
other Emily's grave upon the poor thing, but, as luck would have
it, there did not seem to have been an Emily of any sort buried
anywhere for miles round. I never came across a neighbourhood so
utterly destitute of dead Emilies.