whom I met at Saratoga one summer four or five years ago?" said Dear
Jones.
"Probably she was," Uncle Larry responded.
"She was a horrid old woman. The boys used to call her Mother Gorgon."
"The pretty Kitty Sutton with whom Eliphalet Duncan had fallen in love
was the daughter of Mother Gorgon. But he never saw the mother, who was
in Frisco, or Los Angeles, or Santa Fe, or somewhere out West, and he
saw a great deal of the daughter, who was up in the White Mountains. She
was traveling with her brother and his wife, and as they journeyed from
hotel to hotel Duncan went with them, and filled out the quartette.
Before the end of the summer he began to think about proposing. Of
course he had lots of chances, going on excursions as they were every
day. He made up his mind to seize the first opportunity, and that very
evening he took her out for a moonlight row on Lake Winipiseogee. As he
handed her into the boat he resolved to do it, and he had a glimmer of
suspicion that she knew he was going to do it, too."
"Girls," said Dear Jones, "never go out in a rowboat at night with a
young man unless you mean to accept him."
"Sometimes it's best to refuse him, and get it over once for all," said
Baby Van Rensselaer, impersonally.
"As Eliphalet took the oars he felt a sudden chill. He tried to shake it
off, but in vain. He began to have a growing consciousness of impending
evil. Before he had taken ten strokes--and he was a swift oarsman--he
was aware of a mysterious presence between him and Miss Sutton."
"Was it the guardian-angel ghost warning him off the match?" interrupted
Dear Jones.
"That's just what it was," said Uncle Larry. "And he yielded to it, and
kept his peace, and rowed Miss Sutton back to the hotel with his
proposal unspoken."
"More fool he," said Dear Jones. "It will take more than one ghost to
keep me from proposing when my mind is made up." And he looked at Baby
Van Rensselaer.
"The next morning," continued Uncle Larry, "Eliphalet overslept himself,
and when he went down to a late breakfast he found that the Suttons had
gone to New York by the morning train. He wanted to follow them at once,
and again he felt the mysterious presence overpowering his will. He
struggled two days, and at last he roused himself to do what he wanted
in spite of the spook. When he arrived in New York it was late in the
evening. He dressed himself hastily, and went to the hotel where the
Suttons were, in the hope of seeing at least her brother. The guardian
angel fought every inch of the walk with him, until he began to wonder
whether, if Miss Sutton were to take him, the spook would forbid the
banns. At the hotel he saw no one that night, and he went home
determined to call as early as he could the next afternoon, and make an
end of it. When he left his office about two o'clock the next day to
learn his fate, he had not walked five blocks before he discovered that
the wraith of the Duncans had withdrawn his opposition to the suit.
There was no feeling of impending evil, no resistance, no struggle, no
consciousness of an opposing presence. Eliphalet was greatly encouraged.
He walked briskly to the hotel; he found Miss Sutton alone. He asked her
the question, and got his answer."
"She accepted him, of course?" said Baby Van Rensselaer.
"Of course," said Uncle Larry. "And while they were in the first flush
of joy, swapping confidences and confessions, her brother came into the
parlor with an expression of pain on his face and a telegram in his
hand. The former was caused by the latter, which was from Frisco, and
which announced the sudden death of Mrs. Sutton, their mother."
"And that was why the ghost no longer opposed the match?" questioned
Dear Jones.
"Exactly. You see, the family ghost knew that Mother Gorgon was an awful
obstacle to Duncan's happiness, so it warned him. But the moment the
obstacle was removed, it gave its consent at once."
The fog was lowering its thick, damp curtain, and it was beginning to be
difficult to see from one end of the boat to the other. Dear Jones
tightened the rug which enwrapped Baby Van Rensselaer, and then withdrew
again into his own substantial coverings.
Uncle Larry paused in his story long enough to light another of the tiny
cigars he always smoked.
"I infer that Lord Duncan"--the Duchess was scrupulous in the bestowal
of titles--"saw no more of the ghosts after he was married."
"He never saw them at all, at any time, either before or since. But they
came very near breaking off the match, and thus breaking two young
hearts."
"You don't mean to say that they knew any just cause or impediment why
they should not forever after hold their peace?" asked Dear Jones.
"How could a ghost, or even two ghosts, keep a girl from marrying the
man she loved?" This was Baby Van Rensselaer's question.
"It seems curious, doesn't it?" and Uncle Larry tried to warm himself by
two or three sharp pulls at his fiery little cigar. "And the
circumstances are quite as curious as the fact itself. You see, Miss
Sutton wouldn't be married for a year after her mother's death, so she
and Duncan had lots of time to tell each other all they knew. Eliphalet
got to know a good deal about the girls she went to school with; and
Kitty soon learned all about his family. He didn't tell her about the
title for a long time, as he wasn't one to brag. But he described to
her the little old house at Salem. And one evening towards the end of
the summer, the wedding-day having been appointed for early in
September, she told him that she didn't want a bridal tour at all; she
just wanted to go down to the little old house at Salem to spend her
honeymoon in peace and quiet, with nothing to do and nobody to bother
them. Well, Eliphalet jumped at the suggestion: it suited him down to
the ground. All of a sudden he remembered the spooks, and it knocked him
all of a heap. He had told her about the Duncan banshee, and the idea of
having an ancestral ghost in personal attendance on her husband tickled
her immensely. But he had never said anything about the ghost which
haunted the little old house at Salem. He knew she would be frightened
out of her wits if the house ghost revealed itself to her, and he saw at
once that it would be impossible to go to Salem on their wedding trip.
So he told her all about it, and how whenever he went to Salem the two
ghosts interfered, and gave dark seances and manifested and materialized
and made the place absolutely impossible. Kitty listened in silence, and
Eliphalet thought she had changed her mind. But she hadn't done anything
of the kind."
"Just like a man--to think she was going to," remarked Baby Van
Rensselaer.
"She just told him she could not bear ghosts herself, but she would not
marry a man who was afraid of them."
"Just like a girl--to be so inconsistent," remarked Dear Jones.
Uncle Larry's tiny cigar had long been extinct. He lighted a new one,
and continued: "Eliphalet protested in vain. Kitty said her mind was
made up. She was determined to pass her honeymoon in the little old
house at Salem, and she was equally determined not to go there as long
as there were any ghosts there. Until he could assure her that the
spectral tenant had received notice to quit, and that there was no
danger of manifestations and materializing, she refused to be married at
all. She did not intend to have her honeymoon interrupted by two
wrangling ghosts, and the wedding could be postponed until he had made
ready the house for her."
"She was an unreasonable young woman," said the Duchess.
"Well, that's what Eliphalet thought, much as he was in love with her.
And he believed he could talk her out of her determination. But he
couldn't. She was set. And when a girl is set, there's nothing to do but
to yield to the inevitable. And that's just what Eliphalet did. He saw
he would either have to give her up or to get the ghosts out; and as he
loved her and did not care for the ghosts, he resolved to tackle the
ghosts. He had clear grit, Eliphalet had--he was half Scotch and half
Yankee and neither breed turns tail in a hurry. So he made his plans and
he went down to Salem. As he said good-by to Kitty he had an impression
that she was sorry she had made him go; but she kept up bravely, and
put a bold face on it, and saw him off, and went home and cried for an
hour, and was perfectly miserable until he came back the next day."
"Did he succeed in driving the ghosts away?" asked Baby Van Rensselaer,
with great interest.
"That's just what I'm coming to," said Uncle Larry, pausing at the
critical moment, in the manner of the trained story-teller. "You see,
Eliphalet had got a rather tough job, and he would gladly have had an
extension of time on the contract, but he had to choose between the girl
and the ghosts, and he wanted the girl. He tried to invent or remember
some short and easy way with ghosts, but he couldn't. He wished that
somebody had invented a specific for spooks--something that would make
the ghosts come out of the house and die in the yard. He wondered if he
could not tempt the ghosts to run in debt, so that he might get the
sheriff to help him. He wondered also whether the ghosts could not be
overcome with strong drink--a dissipated spook, a spook with delirium
tremens, might be committed to the inebriate asylum. But none of these
things seemed feasible."
"What did he do?" interrupted Dear Jones. "The learned counsel will
please speak to the point."
"You will regret this unseemly haste," said Uncle Larry, gravely, "when
you know what really happened."
"What was it, Uncle Larry?" asked Baby Van Rensselaer. "I'm all
impatience."
And Uncle Larry proceeded:
"Eliphalet went down to the little old house at Salem, and as soon as
the clock struck twelve the rival ghosts began wrangling as before. Raps
here, there, and everywhere, ringing bells, banging tambourines,
strumming banjos sailing about the room, and all the other
manifestations and materializations followed one another just as they
had the summer before. The only difference Eliphalet could detect was a
stronger flavor in the spectral profanity; and this, of course, was only
a vague impression, for he did not actually hear a single word. He
waited awhile in patience, listening and watching. Of course he never
saw either of the ghosts, because neither of them could appear to him.
At last he got his dander up, and he thought it was about time to
interfere, so he rapped on the table, and asked for silence. As soon as
he felt that the spooks were listening to him he explained the situation
to them. He told them he was in love, and that he could not marry unless
they vacated the house. He appealed to them as old friends, and he laid
claim to their gratitude. The titular ghost had been sheltered by the
Duncan family for hundreds of years, and the domiciliary ghost had had
free lodging in the little old house at Salem for nearly two centuries.
He implored them to settle their differences, and to get him out of his
difficulty at once. He suggested that they had better fight it out then
and there, and see who was master. He had brought down with him all
needful weapons. And he pulled out his valise, and spread on the table a
pair of navy revolvers, a pair of shotguns, a pair of dueling-swords,
and a couple of bowie knives. He offered to serve as second for both
parties, and to give the word when to begin. He also took out of his
valise a pack of cards and a bottle of poison, telling them that if they
wished to avoid carnage they might cut the cards to see which one should
take the poison. Then he waited anxiously for their reply. For a little
space there was silence. Then he became conscious of a tremulous
shivering in one corner of the room, and he remembered that he had heard
from that direction what sounded like a frightened sigh when he made the
first suggestion of the duel. Something told him that this was the
domiciliary ghost, and that it was badly scared. Then he was impressed
by a certain movement in the opposite corner of the room, as though the
titular ghost were drawing himself up with offended dignity. Eliphalet
couldn't exactly see those things, because he never saw the ghosts, but
he felt them. After a silence of nearly a minute a voice came from the
corner where the family ghost stood--a voice strong and full, but
trembling slightly with suppressed passion. And this voice told
Eliphalet it was plain enough that he had not long been the head of the
Duncans, and that he had never properly considered the characteristics
of his race if now he supposed that one of his blood could draw his
sword against a woman. Eliphalet said he had never suggested that the
Duncan ghost should raise his hand against a woman, and all he wanted
was that the Duncan ghost should fight the other ghost. And then the
voice told Eliphalet that the other ghost was a woman."
"What?" said Dear Jones, sitting up suddenly. "You don't mean to tell me
that the ghost which haunted the house was a woman?"
"Those were the very words Eliphalet Duncan used," said Uncle Larry;
"but he did not need to wait for the answer. All at once he recalled the
traditions about the domiciliary ghost, and he knew that what the
titular ghost said was the fact. He had never thought of the sex of a
spook, but there was no doubt whatever that the house ghost was a woman.
No sooner was this firmly fixed in Eliphalet's mind than he saw his way
out of the difficulty. The ghosts must be married!--for then there would
be no more interference, no more quarreling, no more manifestations and
materializations, no more dark seances, with their raps and bells and
tambourines and banjos. At first the ghosts would not hear of it. The
voice in the corner declared that the Duncan wraith had never thought of
matrimony. But Eliphalet argued with them, and pleaded and pursuaded and
coaxed, and dwelt on the advantages of matrimony. He had to confess, of
course, that he did not know how to get a clergyman to marry them; but
the voice from the corner gravely told him that there need be no
difficulty in regard to that, as there was no lack of spiritual
chaplains. Then, for the first time, the house ghost spoke, a low,
clear, gentle voice, and with a quaint, old-fashioned New England
accent, which contrasted sharply with the broad Scotch speech of the
family ghost. She said that Eliphalet Duncan seemed to have forgotten
that she was married. But this did not upset Eliphalet at all; he
remembered the whole case clearly, and he told her she was not a married
ghost, but a widow, since her husband had been hanged for murdering her.
Then the Duncan ghost drew attention to the great disparity in their
ages, saying that he was nearly four hundred and fifty years old, while
she was barely two hundred. But Eliphalet had not talked to juries for
nothing; he just buckled to, and coaxed those ghosts into matrimony.
Afterwards he came to the conclusion that they were willing to be
coaxed, but at the time he thought he had pretty hard work to convince
them of the advantages of the plan."
"Did he succeed?" asked Baby Van Rensselaer, with a woman's interest in
matrimony.
"He did," said Uncle Larry. "He talked the wraith of the Duncans and the
specter of the little old house at Salem into a matrimonial engagement.
And from the time they were engaged he had no more trouble with them.
They were rival ghosts no longer. They were married by their spiritual
chaplain the very same day that Eliphalet Duncan met Kitty Sutton in
front of the railing of Grace Church. The ghostly bride and bridegroom
went away at once on their bridal tour, and Lord and Lady Duncan went
down to the little old house at Salem to pass their honeymoon."
Uncle Larry stopped. His tiny cigar was out again. The tale of the rival
ghosts was told. A solemn silence fell on the little party on the deck
of the ocean steamer, broken harshly by the hoarse roar of the
fog-horn.
THE WATER GHOST OF HARROWBY HALL
BY JOHN KENDRICK BANGS
From _The Water Ghost, and other Stories_, by John Kendrick Bangs.
Copyright, 1904, by Harper Brothers. By permission of the publishers and
John Kendrick Bangs.
The Water Ghost of Harrowby Hall
BY JOHN KENDRICK BANGS
The trouble with Harrowby Hall was that it was haunted, and, what was
worse, the ghost did not content itself with merely appearing at the
bedside of the afflicted person who saw it, but persisted in remaining
there for one mortal hour before it would disappear.
It never appeared except on Christmas Eve, and then as the clock was
striking twelve, in which respect alone was it lacking in that
originality which in these days is a _sine qua non_ of success in
spectral life. The owners of Harrowby Hall had done their utmost to rid
themselves of the damp and dewy lady who rose up out of the best bedroom
floor at midnight, but without avail. They had tried stopping the clock,
so that the ghost would not know when it was midnight; but she made her
appearance just the same, with that fearful miasmatic personality of
hers, and there she would stand until everything about her was
thoroughly saturated.
Then the owners of Harrowby Hall caulked up every crack in the floor
with the very best quality of hemp, and over this were placed layers of
tar and canvas; the walls were made waterproof, and the doors and
windows likewise, the proprietors having conceived the notion that the
unexorcised lady would find it difficult to leak into the room after
these precautions had been taken; but even this did not suffice. The
following Christmas Eve she appeared as promptly as before, and
frightened the occupant of the room quite out of his senses by sitting
down alongside of him and gazing with her cavernous blue eyes into his;
and he noticed, too, that in her long, aqueously bony fingers bits of
dripping seaweed were entwined, the ends hanging down, and these ends
she drew across his forehead until he became like one insane. And then
he swooned away, and was found unconscious in his bed the next morning
by his host, simply saturated with sea-water and fright, from the
combined effects of which he never recovered, dying four years later of
pneumonia and nervous prostration at the age of seventy-eight.
The next year the master of Harrowby Hall decided not to have the best
spare bedroom opened at all, thinking that perhaps the ghost's thirst
for making herself disagreeable would be satisfied by haunting the
furniture, but the plan was as unavailing as the many that had preceded
it.
The ghost appeared as usual in the room--that is, it was supposed she
did, for the hangings were dripping wet the next morning, and in the
parlor below the haunted room a great damp spot appeared on the
ceiling. Finding no one there, she immediately set out to learn the
reason why, and she chose none other to haunt than the owner of the
Harrowby himself. She found him in his own cosey room drinking
whiskey--whiskey undiluted--and felicitating himself upon having foiled
her ghost-ship, when all of a sudden the curl went out of his hair, his
whiskey bottle filled and overflowed, and he was himself in a condition
similar to that of a man who has fallen into a water-butt. When he
recovered from the shock, which was a painful one, he saw before him the
lady of the cavernous eyes and seaweed fingers. The sight was so
unexpected and so terrifying that he fainted, but immediately came to,
because of the vast amount of water in his hair, which, trickling down
over his face, restored his consciousness.
Now it so happened that the master of Harrowby was a brave man, and
while he was not particularly fond of interviewing ghosts, especially
such quenching ghosts as the one before him, he was not to be daunted by
an apparition. He had paid the lady the compliment of fainting from the
effects of his first surprise, and now that he had come to he intended
to find out a few things he felt he had a right to know. He would have
liked to put on a dry suit of clothes first, but the apparition declined
to leave him for an instant until her hour was up, and he was forced to
deny himself that pleasure. Every time he would move she would follow
him, with the result that everything she came in contact with got a
ducking. In an effort to warm himself up he approached the fire, an
unfortunate move as it turned out, because it brought the ghost directly
over the fire, which immediately was extinguished. The whiskey became
utterly valueless as a comforter to his chilled system, because it was
by this time diluted to a proportion of ninety per cent of water. The
only thing he could do to ward off the evil effects of his encounter he
did, and that was to swallow ten two-grain quinine pills, which he
managed to put into his mouth before the ghost had time to interfere.
Having done this, he turned with some asperity to the ghost, and said:
"Far be it from me to be impolite to a woman, madam, but I'm hanged if
it wouldn't please me better if you'd stop these infernal visits of
yours to this house. Go sit out on the lake, if you like that sort of
thing; soak the water-butt, if you wish; but do not, I implore you, come
into a gentleman's house and saturate him and his possessions in this
way. It is damned disagreeable."
"Henry Hartwick Oglethorpe," said the ghost, in a gurgling voice, "you
don't know what you are talking about."
"Madam," returned the unhappy householder, "I wish that remark were
strictly truthful. I was talking about you. It would be shillings and
pence--nay, pounds, in my pocket, madam, if I did not know you."
"That is a bit of specious nonsense," returned the ghost, throwing a
quart of indignation into the face of the master of Harrowby. "It may
rank high as repartee, but as a comment upon my statement that you do
not know what you are talking about, it savors of irrelevant
impertinence. You do not know that I am compelled to haunt this place
year after year by inexorable fate. It is no pleasure to me to enter
this house, and ruin and mildew everything I touch. I never aspired to
be a shower-bath, but it is my doom. Do you know who I am?"
"No, I don't," returned the master of Harrowby. "I should say you were
the Lady of the Lake, or Little Sallie Waters."
"You are a witty man for your years," said the ghost.
"Well, my humor is drier than yours ever will be," returned the master.
"No doubt. I'm never dry. I am the Water Ghost of Harrowby Hall, and
dryness is a quality entirely beyond my wildest hope. I have been the
incumbent of this highly unpleasant office for two hundred years
to-night."
"How the deuce did you ever come to get elected?" asked the master.
"Through a suicide," replied the specter. "I am the ghost of that fair
maiden whose picture hangs over the mantelpiece in the drawing-room. I
should have been your great-great-great-great-great-aunt if I had lived,
Henry Hartwick Oglethorpe, for I was the own sister of your
great-great-great-great-grandfather."
"But what induced you to get this house into such a predicament?"
"I was not to blame, sir," returned the lady. "It was my father's fault.
He it was who built Harrowby Hall, and the haunted chamber was to have
been mine. My father had it furnished in pink and yellow, knowing well
that blue and gray formed the only combination of color I could
tolerate. He did it merely to spite me, and, with what I deem a proper
spirit, I declined to live in the room; whereupon my father said I could
live there or on the lawn, he didn't care which. That night I ran from
the house and jumped over the cliff into the sea."
"That was rash," said the master of Harrowby.
"So I've heard," returned the ghost. "If I had known what the
consequences were to be I should not have jumped; but I really never
realized what I was doing until after I was drowned. I had been drowned
a week when a sea-nymph came to me and informed me that I was to be one
of her followers forever afterwards, adding that it should be my doom to
haunt Harrowby Hall for one hour every Christmas Eve throughout the rest
of eternity. I was to haunt that room on such Christmas Eves as I found
it inhabited; and if it should turn out not to be inhabited, I was and
am to spend the allotted hour with the head of the house."
"I'll sell the place."
"That you cannot do, for it is also required of me that I shall appear
as the deeds are to be delivered to any purchaser, and divulge to him
the awful secret of the house."