Probably the least wise way to begin a ghoststory is to say that one
does not believe in ghosts. It suggests that one has never seen the real
article. Perhaps, in one sense, I never have; yet I am tempted to set
down a few facts that I have never turned over to the Society for
Psychical Research or discussed at my club. The fact is that I had
ingeniously forgotten them until I saw Harry Medway, the specialist--my
old classmate--a few years ago. I say “forgotten”; of course, I had not
forgotten them, but, in order to carry on the business of life, I had
managed to record them, as it were, in sympathetic ink. After I heard
what Harry Medway had to say, I took out the loose sheets and turned
them to the fire. Then the writing came out strong and clear
again--letter by letter, line by line, as fatefully as Belshazzar’s
“immortal postscript.” Did I say that I do not believe in ghosts?
Well--I am getting toward the end, and a few inconsistencies may be
forgiven to one who is not far from discoveries that will certainly be
inconsistent with much that we have learned by heart in this interesting
world. Perhaps it will be pardoned me as a last flicker of moribund
pride if I say that in my younger days I was a crack shot, and to the
best of my belief never refused a bet or a drink or an adventure. I do
not remember ever having been afraid of a human being; and yet I have
known fear. There are weeks, still, when I live in a bath of it. I think
I will amend my first statement, and say instead that I do not believe
in any ghosts except my own--oh, and in Wender’s and Lithway’s, of
course.
Some people still remember Lithway for the sake of his charm. He never
achieved anything, so far as I know, except his own delightful
personality. He was a classmate of mine, and we saw a great deal of each
other both in and after college--until he married, indeed. His marriage
coincided with my own appointment to a small diplomatic post in the
East; and by the time that I had served my apprenticeship, come into my
property, resigned from the service, and returned to America, Lithway’s
wife had suddenly and tragically died. I had never seen her but
once--on her wedding-day--but I had reason to believe that Lithway had
every right to be as inconsolable as he was. If he had ever had any
ambition in his own profession, which was law, he lost it all when he
lost her. He retired to the suburban country, where he bought a new
house that had just been put up. He was its first tenant, I remember.
That fact, later, grew to seem important. There he relapsed into a
semi-populated solitude, with a few visitors, a great many books, and an
inordinate amount of tobacco. These details I gathered from Wender in
town, while I was adjusting my affairs.
Never had an inheritance come so pat as mine. There were all sorts of
places I wanted to go to, and now I had money enough to do it. The
_wanderlust_ had nearly eaten my heart out during the years when I had
kicked my heels in that third-rate legation. I wanted to see Lithway,
but a dozen minor catastrophes prevented us from meeting during those
breathless weeks, and as soon as I could I positively had to be off.
Youth is like that. So that, although Lithway’s bereavement had been
very recent, at the time when I was in America settling my affairs and
drawing the first instalment of my beautiful income--there is no beauty
like that of unearned increment--I did not see him until he had been a
widower for more than two years.
The first times I visited Lithway were near together. I had begun what
was to be my almost life-long holiday by spending two months alone--save
for servants--on a house-boat in the Vale of Cashmere; and my next
flights were very short. When I came back from those, I rested on level
wing at Braythe. Lithway was a little bothered, on one of these
occasions, about the will of a cousin who had died in Germany, leaving
an orphan daughter, a child of six or seven. His conscience troubled him
sometimes, and occasionally he said he ought to go over and see that the
child’s inheritance was properly administered. But there was an aunt--a
mother’s sister--to look after the child, and her letters indicated that
there was plenty of money and a good lawyer to look after the
investments. Since his wife’s death, Lithway had sunk into lethargy. He
had enough to live on, and he drew out of business entirely, putting
everything he had into government bonds. When he hadn’t energy enough
left to cut off coupons, he said, he should know that it was time for
him to commit suicide. He really spoke as if he thought that final
indolence might arrive any day. I read the aunt’s letters. She seemed to
be a good sort, and the pages reeked of luxury and the maternal
instinct. I rather thought it would be a good excuse to get Lithway out
of his rut, and advised him to go; but, when he seemed so unwilling, I
couldn’t conscientiously say I thought the duty imperative. I had long
ago exhausted Germany--I had no instinct to accompany him.
Lithway, then, was perfectly idle. His complete lack of the executive
gift made him an incomparable host. He had been in the house three
years, and I was visiting him there for perhaps the third time, when he
told me that it was haunted. He didn’t seem inclined to give details,
and, above all, didn’t seem inclined to be worried. He sat up very late
always, and preferably alone, a fact that in itself proved that he was
not nervous. As I said, I had never been interested in ghosts, and the
newness of the house robbed fear of all seriousness. Ghosts batten on
legend and decay. There wasn’t any legend, and the house was almost
shockingly clean. When he told me of the ghost, then, I forbore to ask
for any more information than he, of his own volition, gave me. If he
had wanted advice or assistance, he would, of course, have said so. The
servants seemed utterly unaware of anything queer, and servants leave a
haunted house as rats a sinking ship. It really did not seem worth
inquiring into. I referred occasionally to Lithway’s ghost as I might
have done to a Syracusan coin which I should know him proud to possess
but loath to show.
On my return from Yucatan, one early spring, Lithway welcomed me as
usual. He seemed lazier than ever, and I noticed that he had moved his
books down from a second-story to a ground-floor room. He slept outdoors
summer and winter, and he had an outside stairway built to lead from his
library up to the sleeping-porch. A door from the sleeping-porch led
straight into his dressing-room. I laughed at his arrangements a
little.
“You live on this side of the house entirely now--cut off, actually,
from the other side. What is the matter with the east?”
He pointed out to me that the dining-room and the billiard-room were on
the eastern side and that he never shunned them. “It’s just a notion,”
he said. “Mrs. Jayne” (the housekeeper) “sleeps on the second floor, and
I don’t like to wake her when I go up at three in the morning. She is a
light sleeper.”