THE GAY GHOSTS OF LONDON
“TO-DAY’S the third, isn’t it?” observed Babe carelessly the
next morning at breakfast. “I believe I’ll stay at home and write some
letters.”
Babbie, who was sitting by the window, happened to glance out at the
street just then. “You needn’t,” she announced calmly. “He’s arriving
this very minute in a hansom.”
“Who is arriving, Babbie?” asked Mrs. Hildreth. Whereupon Babbie
assured her that she was utterly disqualified as a competent chaperon;
she ought to have grasped the connection between John Morton and Babe’s
mad desire to write letters without any help at all.
John was in high spirits. “Hope you’ve noticed that I’m exactly on
time,” he told Babe in a confidential aside. “Old Dwight nearly passed
away with surprise when he saw me settling down to a good steady
grind. It’s queer how people always think that if a fellow doesn’t
work it’s because he hasn’t brains enough. Old Dwight said he actually
envied me my clear and logical mind. I told him to tell that to dad,
and he did--wrote a corking letter all about me and my industry and my
marvelous progress. I can’t wait to get dad’s answer.”
“He’ll be sure to be awfully pleased,” said Babe sympathetically. “I’m
pleased too. If you hadn’t finished in time I should have given you
back your pin. I wouldn’t take a pin from a shirk.”
“Are you going to escort us out to see the sights of London, John?”
asked Babbie.
“Of course. That’s why I came around so early, before you’d had a
chance to get started off without me on a picnic or a ghost-hunt or any
other interesting festivity. What shall we do first?”
“Oh, let’s have a ghost-hunt!” cried Babbie eagerly. “We haven’t paid
the least speck of attention to ghosts since we left Oban. I can’t have
my dominant interest so neglected.”
“All right,” agreed John. “Only it isn’t moonlight, and we should
probably be ‘taken in charge,’ as the police say over here, if we made
a sheeted ghost walk in London.”
“Then how are we going to have a ghost-party?” asked Betty. “Madeline,
think up a way.”
Madeline considered. “First, we’ve got to choose our ghosts--there
are such quantities in London. Then we must seek out their haunts and
conjure them to appear. If they won’t, we shall have to go back some
evening, and try again by moonlight. Let’s each write the name of our
favorite London ghost on a slip of paper. Babbie can draw one, because
ghosts are her dominant interest, and then we’ll all start out in
pursuit.”
This arrangement suited everybody, and Madeline hunted up pencils and
paper. She wrote the name of her favorite ghost without an instant’s
consideration, but the others had to think hard, and Babe was caught
slyly consulting a London Baedeker. John chewed his pencil in solemn
silence until the rest were through. Then all at once he banged the
table triumphantly with his fist, scribbled a name on his slip, and
handed it to Madeline, who was acting as mistress of ceremonies.
“You’d better choose my ghost, Babbie,” he announced. “If you do, I
invite you all to have luncheon with me at an appropriate place.”
“It’s not fair offering bribes,” cried Babe. “My ghost did that, and it
got him into a horrible scrape.”
“My ghost is a lady,” said Betty. “I think she deserves some
consideration on that account.”
“The special advantage of mine,” put in Madeline, “is that his haunts
are miles away from here. Think of the lovely long ’bus ride we could
have.”
“Mine is both a lady and a royal personage,” said Babbie impressively,
“so she really ought to come in ahead of any of yours. But I’m going to
be perfectly fair; I’ll draw out a slip with my eyes shut. Dr. Samuel
Johnson wins,” she announced a minute later.
“And he’s mine!” cried John. “Now remember, everybody, the meal-tickets
are to be on me. Did you girls ever hear of the ‘Cheshire Cheese’?”
No one had but Madeline.
“What ignorance!” laughed John, and then confessed that he never had
heard of it either, until Mr. Dwight mentioned it the night before. “It
seems it was quite a haunt of old Dr. Johnson’s,” he explained. “It’s a
queer little eating-house just off Fleet Street. You girls may not like
it, but if you don’t we needn’t stay.”
Babbie’s ghost was Queen Victoria, Betty’s Becky Sharp, Madeline’s
Carlyle, and Babe’s Lord Bacon.
“What a collection!” laughed Madeline. “Perhaps we can take in some of
the others on our way to the ‘Cheshire Cheese.’ Hand me the Baedeker
please, Babe.”
But John objected. “We’ve got to make perfectly sure of Dr. Johnson
first,” he said firmly. “What’s the use of choosing a ghost if you
don’t keep to him? Besides, remember, I got down here only late last
evening. If we have any extra time, I want to go and register my
address at the American Express office and get my mail. I’m expecting
an important letter.” John looked at Babe impressively.
After much lively discussion it was voted to walk to the “Cheshire
Cheese,” or at least to walk until some one got tired. It would be so
much more convenient for showing John the sights. And, as Madeline
observed, pretty nearly everything in London is a sight in one way
or another, so that it was really lunch-time when John and Babe, who
were ahead, suddenly turned down a dark little alley and waited at the
corner for the rest to come up.
“Is the ‘Cheshire Cheese’ in here?” asked the fastidious Babbie
doubtfully. “Well, this certainly looks like a splendid place for
ghosts,” she added, diving down the alley after the others.
John pointed ahead to the quaint old swinging sign that read “Ye Old
Cheshire Cheese.” It was a tiny little inn, the one small dining-room
opening right on to the street. A waiter came bustling forward to meet
the party.
“Good-morning,” said John gravely, looking inquiringly around the room.
“Which is Dr. Johnson’s chair, please?”
The waiter bowed and pointed to a seat in one corner against the wall.
“Oh, I see, he’s not here yet,” said John solemnly. “We were hoping to
find him. Well, I suppose we’d better sit down and have something to
eat while we wait.” He led the way to the doctor’s table.
The waiter, wearing a perplexed expression, pulled out the
chairs,--John insisting that Dr. Johnson’s seat should be left
vacant,--and recited the menu for the day.
“Which are the Doctor’s favorite dishes?” John asked him.
“Hi really couldn’t say, sir.” The waiter’s tone was full of mild
reproach. “The lark-pie his our special dish, sir, and the stewed
cheese his hexcellent heatin’ and a general favorite.”
“Then we’ll have those, shan’t we, girls?” asked John. “And bring
enough for Dr. Johnson, in case he should look in,” he added gravely,
and the waiter went off, shaking his head and murmuring something about
“those mad Hamericans.”
“I want to sit in Dr. Johnson’s chair,” complained Babbie, when he had
gone. “There’s no sense in saving a place for a ghost, John. Don’t you
know that they can sit where there is somebody just as well as where
there isn’t?”
“That may be,” admitted John. “But I consider that it’s more
respectful. Speaking of ghosts, is that the ghost of Billy Benson that
I see before me, or is it Billy in person?”
John tumbled his chair over in his eagerness to get to the door and
wring the hand of a tall, broad-shouldered youth, who seemed just as
delighted to see John as John was to see him. He had a friend with him,
whom John evidently did not know, for presently Billy remembered him
and summarily pulled him forward to be introduced. Then the three came
over to the girls’ table.
“May I present Mr. William Benson?” John began. “Best fellow in
the world, Billy is. Rooms in my hall at Harvard. And this is Mr.
Trevelyan, a friend of Billy’s.”
Mr. Trevelyan was several years older than John or Billy. He was tall,
dark, and slender, with a distinguished manner, queer, near-sighted
gray eyes that were slightly out of focus, making it hard to tell
just where he was looking, and a very peculiar way of speaking--it
was difficult to decide whether he had a slight foreign accent or an
impediment in his speech.
“You fellows will join us, won’t you?” asked John hospitably. “Mr.
Trevelyan, you can have Dr. Johnson’s seat, and Billy, you can be
Boswell and squeeze in somewhere, I’m sure.”
But Mr. Trevelyan demurred politely. “You have found friends,” he told
Billy. “I insist that you let me withdraw.”
“Oh, nonsense!” said John decisively, and when Babbie seconded the
invitation, Mr. Trevelyan allowed himself to be persuaded to stay.
“You see the Doctor did come,” John announced triumphantly to the
waiter, when that functionary reappeared with the lark-pie and stewed
cheese. “And Boswell is with him, so you’d better bring us something
extra.”
“Very well, sir,” said the waiter, smiling condescendingly at the
absurdity of the “Hamericans,” and Babbie overheard a rosy-cheeked
English girl at the next table say she did wish people wouldn’t persist
in treating England as if it were a queer, old-fashioned toy that it
was fun to spend your summers playing with.
“Come, John, you mustn’t tease that poor waiter any more,” she
commanded. “Mr. Trevelyan and Mr. Benson don’t even know why you’re
doing it.”
So John explained to his guests that they had unwittingly joined a
ghost-hunt, and then the girls told about the Dunstaffnage ghost, and
Mr. Trevelyan followed their story up with an account of a ghost he had
seen in the Australian cattle-country.
He was an Australian, he explained, and John, who was tremendously
interested in queer, out-of-the-way places, kept him busy telling his
experiences in the bush all through luncheon. He told his stories so
well that every one else stopped talking to listen, and they sat over
their luncheon long after every one else had left.
“Goodness, but you’ve had an interesting life, Mr. Trevelyan,” said
Madeline, when they finally rose to go. “Aren’t you crazy to get back
to Australia? Everything else must seem tame after that.”
Mr. Trevelyan bowed gravely in acknowledgment of her interest. “I
shall not go back at present. My widowed sister and I are planning to
settle down near Paris. We have bought a house, and she is already in
France, visiting a friend. As soon as I have finished a little business
that I have here I shall join her and we will set up housekeeping. And
now I must really leave you. I have a business engagement.”
“All right, old man,” said Billy gaily. “Only don’t forget to turn up
for dinner and the theatre.”
“Unless you wish to postpone----” began Mr. Trevelyan.
“No, indeed,” Billy assured him. “Perhaps Morton will join us. His
hotel is near ours.”
Mr. Trevelyan murmured something about its being a great pleasure to
have met them all and hurried away.
“Isn’t he great?” said Billy eagerly. “He’s the most modest fellow you
ever saw. Never mentions his own part in all those woolly Australian
tales until you quiz him, and then you find he was ‘it’ every time.
Now I happen to know that his sister is visiting a countess, but you
notice he was careful to say just ‘a friend.’”
“If he’d said a countess it would have been blowing,” said John
decidedly. “No nice fellow would have lugged in the countess in that
connection. How’d you meet him, Billy?”
“On the street,” laughed Billy. “He asked me the way to the Army and
Navy Club. When I told him, he noticed I was an American, of course----”
“Oh, come off, Billy,” John broke in. “He’d know that the minute he set
eyes on you.”
“He didn’t know it till I spoke,” persisted Billy. “You see he doesn’t
belong here--hasn’t been in London before for fifteen years. Well,
anyhow he said he was glad an American could tell him what he’d asked
half a dozen Englishmen who couldn’t. Then we walked on together a bit,
and found we were both traveling alone and seeing the sights, and I
asked him to meet me for dinner. Then we went to the Tower together,
and out to Kew Gardens, and then he moved to my hotel and we rather
joined forces. He’s an awfully good sort.”
“I don’t doubt that he is,” agreed John heartily.
“The way he speaks interests me,” said Madeline. “Was he born in
England? Were his parents both English, do you know?”
Billy nodded. “Australians get to speaking queerly, he says.”
“Very likely,” agreed Madeline, “but I should have been almost positive
that he was French.”
“He lisps,” declared Babe. “That’s one thing that adds to the queerness
of his talk. Well, what are we going to do next?”
“We might pursue the ghost of Dr. Johnson to his grave in Westminster
Abbey,” suggested Madeline. “Graveyards are the logical places to hunt
ghosts in, I suppose.”
But John objected. “The very reason I chose Dr. Johnson was so we
wouldn’t have to go to any musty old churchyards. I haven’t any
use for them or for picture-galleries. Let’s go up to the American
Express Office, and by that time it will be late enough to pursue your
specialty, Miss Ayres, and drink tea somewhere.”
Billy Benson accepted with alacrity an invitation to join the
tea-party. On the way to the Express Office he told Babbie something
about his plans for the summer.
“You see, I’m on the Harvard crew,” he explained, “and they’re all
coming over later to have a month’s practice on the course here. We row
Cambridge in the fall, you know.”
Babbie didn’t know, and inquired eagerly when and where the race was to
come off.
“Why, right here, on the regular course up near Hampton,” Billy told
her, “and early in September, just before college opens. It’s going to
be simply great. Can’t you manage to be on hand?”
Babbie explained that they were going over to France and had meant to
sail for home from a French port. “But there isn’t any reason why we
shouldn’t come back to England first,” she declared. “I’m going to ask
mother if we can’t do that. We could leave a week earlier now, and have
a week here in September.”
“Well, as I was saying,” Billy took up his own story, “my roommate
was coming with me in June, but he caught the measles from his kid
brother--wasn’t that the complete limit of a thing to do?--so I just
came along alone. I was afraid if I waited over another boat for him,
my guardian might change his mind about letting me go.” Billy smiled
pensively. “He can change his mind all he likes now. I’m twenty-one. My
birthday was yesterday and I celebrated by cabling home for more money.
You see,” he added confidentially, “I’m having some clothes made by a
Bond Street tailor.”
Babbie laughed. “They say what women come abroad for is to buy clothes,
but I didn’t suppose men cared much about shopping over here.”
“Well, the point is that I didn’t bring over any glad rags,” Billy
explained. “Didn’t expect to need any, just knocking about by myself.
But I’m going to run over to Paris when Trevelyan goes--I shall have
just time to see the town before the crew gets here--and the countess
that his sister is visiting is going to give a dance for her just about
that time. Trevelyan insists that she’ll want me to come, when she
hears from him that I’m with him, and so of course I’ve got to have the
proper things ready.”
“How exciting,” laughed Babbie, “to be going to a countess’s ball.
Madeline has a cousin who is a viscountess, but she’s not in Paris just
now, and I’m afraid that spoils our only chance of breaking into titled
society.”
Meanwhile they had reached the Express Office, and John demanded his
mail and received the expected missive from his father with a grin of
rapture.
“Excuse me while I read this,” he said, waving it triumphantly aloft
and retiring in haste to a quiet corner.
Two minutes later he was back, the letter and the smile both out of
sight.
“Come on,” he said grimly. “Let’s go and drown our sorrows in tea.”
“What’s the matter?” Babe inquired sympathetically, when the party
had paired off to walk to a tea-shop that Madeline knew of on Regent
Street. “Wasn’t he as pleased as you thought he would be?”
“Pleased!” repeated John gloomily. “He wasn’t pleased at all. He told
me in polite language that Dwight had lied about me, and insinuated
that I’d put him up to it, because I wanted to get something out of my
father. He says he had a very high opinion of Dwight when he hired him
in the spring, but he sees now that he’s only an ‘amiable futility,’
like all the other tutors I’ve had. Then he ended by saying that when
he wanted information about my mental capacity he would ask for it, and
that if I couldn’t get along with the allowance we settled on when I
came across, I would just have to cut down my expenses.”
“What a shame!” Babe’s voice was full of righteous indignation. “And
you didn’t want any more money, did you?”
“I should say not! Why, I saved a lot while we were staying in Oban.
Besides I wouldn’t take that way to get it,--I’d ask right out, as I
generally do. It’s so maddening to have him always assume as a matter
of course that a fellow’s in the wrong.”
“Is he that way about everything?”
John nodded. “I told you how he hated this vacation that he’s taking.
He enjoys grumbling over things as much as you or I enjoy laughing
about them.”
“Just like the funny old gentleman we met in Grasmere,” said Babe.
“Why, John, is your father’s name Jasper J. Morton?”
John nodded. “Just suits him, too.”
“Why, then he was the very one we met.” Babe laughed delightedly.
“Didn’t I write you anything about it? Well, it was this way.” She gave
a brief sketch of the encounter, ending with, “He may be hard to get
along with sometimes, John, but he’s an old dear just the same. Betty
thinks so, too. She saw more of him than I did.”
“Well, we don’t hit it off somehow, he and I.” John’s tone was as
gloomy as ever. “I feel sometimes as if I might as well stop trying
to please him. Makes you envy a chap like Billy Benson who’s always
done about as he pleased and now is absolutely his own master. I’m six
months older than Billy, but my being of age doesn’t make the least
difference in the way my father treats me, and now I’ve done my level
best this summer, and that hasn’t made the least difference either.”
“Oh, but it must in the end,” Babe reassured him cheerfully. “You’ll
feel better after you’ve had some tea.”
But John refused to be cheered, though Billy Benson and Madeline gave
absurd imitations of English people taking tea, and Billy read a
thrilling letter from the captain of the Harvard crew, which made all
the girls as eager as Babbie had been to come back in September for the
race.
“I shan’t see that race,” John confided in low tones to Babe. “I bet
you all the money I saved in Oban against your blue tie that my father
chooses that particular day to sail from Liverpool.”
“I never bet,” Babe returned laughingly. “But if I see your father
again--he told us he hoped we might meet somewhere over in France--I’ll
mention the race and invite him to take me to it.”
“But if I go, I shall want to take you myself,” objected John.
“Humph!” observed Babe, “it seems to me that Mr. Jasper J. Morton has
not monopolized all the contrariety there is in the family.”