But here she yawned loudly and relinquished the whole proceeding.
That afternoon Susannah visited several employment agencies which dealt
with office help. She answered all the inquiries that their
questionnaires put to her; omitting any reference to the Carbonado
Mining Company. It was late in the afternoon when she finished. She
walked slowly homeward down the Avenue. Outside of her own door, she
tried to decide whether she would go immediately to dinner or lie down
first. A sudden fatigue forced decision in favor of a nap. She walked
wearily up the first flight of stairs. Ahead, someone was ascending the
second flight--a man. He turned down the hall. She followed. He stopped
at the room opposite hers; fumbled unsuccessfully with the key. As she
approached, she glanced casually in his direction.
It was Byan.
V
Dear Spink:
This is the kind of letter one never writes. But if you knew my mental
chaos.... And I've got to tell somebody about the thing that I can speak
about to nobody. If I don't.... What do you suppose I've done? I've
bought a house. Yep-- I'm a property owner now. Of course you guess! Or
do you guess? It's the Murray place. I could just make it and have
enough left over for a year or two or three. But after that, Spink, I'm
going to work because I'll have to.
I suppose you're wondering why I did it. You're not puzzled half as much
as I am; although in one way I know exactly why I did it. Perhaps I
didn't do it at all. Anyway, I didn't do it of my own volition. Somebody
made me. I'm going to tell you about that presently.
Yes, it's all mine: beautiful old square-roomed house with its carved
panelings and its generous Colonial fireplaces; its slender doors and
amusing door-latches; an upstairs of ample bedrooms; an old garret with
slave quarters; the downstairs with that little, charmingly incongruous,
galleried, mid-Victorian addition; barn; lawn; flower-garden. And how
beautiful I'm making that flower-garden you'll never suspect till you
see it. But you won't see it for quite a while--I withdraw all my
invitations to visit me. I don't want you now, Spink; although I never
wanted you so much in my life. I'll want you later, I think. Of course
it isn't from you personally--you beetle-eyed old scout--that I'm
withdrawing my invitation; it's from any flesh-and-blood being. If you
had an astral self-- I don't want anybody. I never wanted to be alone so
much in my life. In a moment I'm going to tell you why.
And the wine-glass elms are mine; and the lilacs and syringas and the
smoke-bush and the hollyhocks; and all the things I've planted; my
Canterbury bells (if they come up); my deep, rich dahlias and my
flame-colored phlox (if ditto). All mine! Gee, Spink, I never felt so
rich in my life, because what I've enumerated isn't twenty-five per cent
of what I own. In a minute I'm going to tell you what the remaining
seventy-five per cent is.
This place is full of birds and bees. I watch them from the house.
Spink, we flying-men are boobs. Have you ever watched a bee fly? I spend
hours, it seems to me, just studying them--trying to crab their act. And
the other day there was an air-fight just over my roof. A chicken-hawk
attacked by the whole bird population. It was a reproduction in
miniature of a bombing-machine pursued by a dozen combat-planes. Spink,
it was the best flying I've ever seen. You should have seen the sparrows
keeping on his tail! The little birds relied on their quickness of
attack, just as combat planes do. They attacked from all angles with
such rapidity that the hawk could do nothing but run for his life. The
little birds circled about, waiting for the moment to dive. A
combat-plane dives; its machines go ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta and it turns off
before the gunner can swing his guns over. The birds dived, picked
furiously at his eyes while the hawk turned bewildered from one attack
to another. But the little birds did something that planes can't even
attempt--they hovered over him almost motionless, waiting their moment
to attack. Here I am talking of flying! Flying! Did I ever fly? When I
got to New York, Greenwich Village seemed strange and unnatural, just a
pasteboard dream. Pau--Avord--Verdun--were the only real things in my
life. Now _they're_ shadows like Greenwich Village. Quinanog--the Murray
place--and Lutetia--seem the only real things.
I'm going to tell you all about it in a moment. I sure am. The world
seems to be full of landing-places, but for some reason I can't land.
Every time, I seem to come short on the field; or overshoot it. Perhaps
it's because I feel it ought not to be told-- Perhaps it's because I
feel you won't believe me--
But I've got to do it. So here goes!
Spink, the remaining seventy-five per cent that I own in this place is--
This place is haunted. Not by a ghost, but by _ghosts_! There are not
one of them, but four. Three I see occasionally. But one of the
quartet--I see her all the time. She is Lutetia.
It began-- Well, it all goes back to your rooms in New York. They're
haunted too, but you don't know it, you wall-eyed old grave-digger, you.
Not because you're inept or unsensitive or anything stupid-- It's
because there's something they want to say to _me_--a message they want
to give to me alone. But I can't stop to go into that now. To return to
your apartment, _something_ ... used to come ... to my bed at night ...
and bend over me ... I don't know who it was or what it was, except that
it was masculine. And how I knew that, I dunno.
It bothered me. One reason why I came down here was that I thought I was
going crazy. Perhaps I have gone crazy. Anyway, if I have I like it. But
here I am again! It's as though the world slipped out from under me. I
can fly on and on or climb, but it's the coming down that baffles me.
When I cut the motor off and the noise dies away, I feel sick and
afraid; the bus seems to take its own head. Now for a landing--even if I
do smash.
From the moment I entered this house, I felt as though there were others
here. Not specifically, you understand. At first, it was only a
sensation of warmth in the atmosphere that grew to a feeling of
friendliness that deepened to a sense of companionship until-- Well, I
found myself in a mood of eternal expectancy. Something was going to
happen but I didn't know what or how or when.... Oh yes, in a _way_ I
knew what. I was going to see something. Some time--I felt dimly--when I
should enter one of these rooms, so stark and yet so occupied, somebody
would be there to greet me ... or some day turning a corner I should
come suddenly on.... I did not dread that experience, Spink, I give you
my word. I reveled in the expectancy of it. It was beautiful; it was
rich. I wasn't anything of what you call _afraid_. I wanted it to
happen.
And it did happen.
One evening, as usual, I was reading Lutetia. I was sitting in my big
chair beside the refectory table. Outside, it was a perfect night I
remember; dark and still, and the stars so big that they seemed to spill
out of the heavens. Inside, the lamp was bright. My eyes were on my
book. Suddenly.... I was not alone. Don't ask me how I knew it. Only
take it from me that I did. I knew it all right. For--_oh, Spink_--(I've
underlined that just like a girl) all in a flash I didn't want--to look
up. I wanted to go away from this place and to go with considerable
speed, not glancing back. It was the worst sensation that I have ever
known--worse even than a night raid. After a while something came back;
courage I suppose you'd call it; a kind of calm, a poise. Anyway, I
found that I was going to be able to look up presently and not mind
it....
Of course I knew whom I was going to see....
I did look up. And I did see-- It was Lutetia. Spink, if you try to say
those things that people always say--that it was imagination, that I was
overwrought, that my mind, moving all the day among the facts and
realities of Lutetia's life, suddenly projected a picture--I'll never
speak to you again. There she sat, her elbow resting on the arm of her
chair, her chin in her hand, looking at me. I can't tell you how long
she stayed. But all the time she was there she looked at me. And all
that time I looked at her. I don't think, Spink, I have ever guessed how
much eyes can say. Her eyes said so much that I think I could write the
whole rest of the night about them. Except that I'm not quite sure what
they said. It was all entreaty; oh, blazing, blasting, blinding
entreaty.... Of that I am sure. But what she asked of me I haven't the
remotest idea. After a while ... something impelled me to look down at
my book again. When I lifted my eyes Lutetia was gone.
That wasn't all, Spink; for that night, or the next day-- But I'm going
to try to keep to a consecutive story. I didn't go to bed immediately. I
didn't feel like sleeping. You can understand it was considerable of a
shock. And very thrilling. Literally thrilling! I shook. It didn't
bother me an atom after it was over. I wasn't the least afraid. But I
vibrated for hours. I walked four or five miles--where, I don't know. I
must have passed the Fallows place, because I recall the scent of
honeysuckle. But I assure you I seemed to be walking through the
stars.... She is beautiful. I can't tell you how beautiful because I
have no colors to give you; no flesh to go by. Perhaps she is not
beautiful, but lovely. What queer things words are! I have called
females _pretty_ and _stunning_ and even _fascinating_ and _beautiful_.
I think I never called any woman _lovely_ before. I've been that young.
But I'm not as young as I was yesterday. I'm a century, an age, an aeon
older. I was obsessed though. If you believe it, when I went to bed, I
had only one idea in my mind--a hope that she would come back soon.
She didn't come back soon--at least not that night. But somebody else
did....
In the middle of the night, I suddenly found myself, wide-eyed and
clear-minded, sitting upright in bed and listening to something. I don't
know what I had heard, but I remember with perfect clearness--Spink, you
tell me this is a dream and I'll murder you--what I immediately did and
what I subsequently saw. I got up quite calmly and lighted a candle.
Then I opened the door.
Do you remember my writing you that the chamber, just back of the one I
occupy, must have been the room of a child--Lutetia's little niece? The
door of that room, of course, leads into the hall as mine does. As I
stood there, shading my candle from the draft, that door opened and
there emerged from the room--what do you suppose?
A little girl.
I say--a little girl. She wasn't, you understand, a real little girl.
Nor was she a dead little girl. Instantly I knew that--just as instantly
as I had known that Lutetia _was_ dead. I mean, and I hope this
phraseology is technically correct, that Lutetia, as I saw her, was the
ghost of someone who had once lived. This little girl was an apparition;
an appearance projected through space of some one who now lives. That
or--oh, how difficult this is, Spink--a sloughed-off, astral self left
in this old place; or--but I won't go into that.
I stood there, as I said, shading my candle. The little girl closed her
door with a meticulous care. Did I hear the ghost of a click? Perhaps my
ear supplied that. By one hand she was dragging a big doll--one of those
rag-dolls children have. I couldn't tell you anything about
Lutetia--except that she was lovely--ineffably lovely. But I can tell
you all about this little girl. She was pigtailed and freckled. The
pigtails were short, very thick, so tight that their ends snapped
upwards, like hundreds of little-girl pigtails that I have seen. There
was a row of tangled little ringlets on her forehead. She didn't look at
me. She didn't know that I was there. She proceeded straight across the
hall, busily stub-toeing her way like any freckled, pigtailed little
girl, the doll dragging on the floor behind her, until she reached the
garret stairs. She opened the garret door, closed it with the same
meticulous care. The last I got was a little white glimpse of her
down-dropped face, as she pulled the rag-doll's leg away from the
shutting door.
I waited there a long time--until my candle guttered to nothing. She did
not return. I did not see her or anybody else again that night.
I went back to bed and fell immediately into a perfectly quiet,
dreamless sleep. The next morning early, I went over to Hyde's
brother--his name is Corning--and bought this house. Perhaps you can
tell me why I did it. I don't exactly know myself; for of course I
couldn't afford it. I realized only that I could not--I simply and
absolutely could _not_--let anybody else buy Lutetia.
You think, of course, that I've finished now, Spink. But that isn't all.
Not by a million Persian parasangs--all. She has come again. I mean
Lutetia. For that matter, they both have come again. But I'll try to
tell my story categorically.
It was a night or two later; another dewy, placid large-starred night--
Strange how this beautiful weather keeps up! I had been reading as
usual; but my mind was as vacant as a glass bell from which you have
exhausted the air. I was rereading, I remember, Lutetia's _The Sport of
the Goddesses_. Spink, how that woman could write! And.... Again I
became aware that I wasn't alone. Just as definitely, I knew that it was
not Lutetia this time; nor even Little Pigtails. This time, and perhaps
it's because I'm getting used to this sort of thing, I had a sense
of--not _fear_--but only of what I'll call a _spiritual diffidence_.
Yet instantly I looked up.
He--it was a _he_ this time--was standing in the doorway, which leads
from this big living-room into the front hall. We were
vis-a-vis--tete-a-tete one might say. He was looking straight at me and
I--I assure you, Spink--I looked straight at him.
Spink, you have never heard of a jovial ghost, have you? I'm sure I
haven't. But this was or could have been a jovial ghost. He was big--not
fat but ample--middle-aged, more than middle-aged. He wore an enormous
beard cut square like the men in Assyrian mural tablets. Hair a little
long. I assure you he was the handsomest old beggar that I have ever
seen. He looked like a portrait by Titian. I got--it's like holding a
photographic negative up to the light and trying to get the figures on
it--that he wore a sort of flowing gown; it made him stately. And one of
those little round caps that conceal or protect baldness. I can't
describe him. How the devil _can_ you describe a ghost? I mean an
apparition. For he isn't dead either--any more than the little girls is.
He's alive somewhere.
Well, our steady exchange of looks went on and on and on. If I could
have said anything it would have been: "What do you want of me, you
handsome old beggar?" What he would have said to me I don't know;
although he was trying with all his ghostly strength to put some message
over. How he was trying! It was that effort that kept him from being
what he was--_is_--jovial. God, how that gaze burned--tore--ate. It grew
insupportable after a while--it was melting me to nothingness. I dropped
my eyes. Suddenly I could lift them, for I knew he was gone. Somehow I
had the feeling that a monstrous bomb had noiselessly exploded in the
room. His going troubled me no more than his coming. I remember I said
aloud: "I'm sorry I couldn't get you, old top! Better luck next time!"
I got up from my chair after a few minutes to take my usual
before-going-to-bed walk. I walked about the room; absent-mindedly
putting things to rights--the way women do. My mind--and I suspect my
eyes too--were still so full of him that when, on stepping outside, I
came across another--I was conscious of some shock. Again not of fear,
but of a terrific surprise.
Are you getting all this, Spink? Oh, of course you're not, because you
don't believe it. But try to believe it. Put yourself in my place! Try
to get the wonder, the magic, the terror, the touch now and then of
horror, but above all the fierce thrill--of living with a family of
ghosts?
This one--the fourth--was a man too. About thirty, I should say. And
awfully charming. Yes, you spaniel-eyed fish, you, one man is saying
this of another man. He was awfully charming. Short, dark. He
wore--again it is like holding a negative up to the light--he wore white
ducks or flannels. He stood very easily, his weight--listen to me, his
_weight_--mainly on one foot and one hand curved against his hip. In the
other hand, he carried his pipe. He looked at me--God, how he looked at
me! How, for that matter, they all look at me! They want something,
Spink. Of me. They're trying to tell me. I can't get it, though. But,
believe me, I'm trying. This was worse than the old fellow. For this
one, like Lutetia, was dead. And he, like her, was trying to put his
message across a world, whereas the old fellow had only to pierce a
dimension. How he looked at me; held me; bored into me. It was like
sustaining visual vitriol.... How he looked at me! It became
horrible.... Pretty soon I realized I wasn't going to be able to stand
it....
Yet I stayed with it as long as he did, and of course we continued to
glare at each other. I don't exactly know what the etiquette of these
meetings is; but I seem to feel vaguely that it's up to me to stay with
them as long as they're here. This time, it must have been all of five
minutes, although it seemed longer ... much longer ... and I, all the
time, trying to hold on. Then suddenly something happened. I don't know
what it was, but one instant he was there, and another he wasn't. Don't
ask me how he went away. I don't know. He simply ceased to be; and yet
so swifter-than-instantly, so exquisitely, so subtly that my only
question was--even though my mind was still stinging from his gaze--had
he been there at all. It was as though the tree back of him had
instantaneously absorbed him. It was a shock too--that disappearance.
Well, again I went out for a hike. I walked anywhere--everywhere. How
far I don't know. But half the night. Again it was as though I marched
through the stars....
I haven't seen the old painter again--I call him painter simply because
he wore that long robe. And I haven't seen the young guy again. But I
see Lutetia all the time. She comes and goes. Sometimes when I enter the
living-room, I find her already there.... Sometimes when I leave it, I
know she enters by another door.... We spend long evenings together....
I can't write when she's about; but curiously enough I can sometimes
read; that is to say, I can read Lutetia. I try to read because moments
come when I realize that she prefers me not to look at her. It's when
she's exhausted from trying to give me her message. Or when she's
girding herself up for another go. At those moments, the room is full of
a frightful struggle; a gigantic spiritual concentration. It seems to me
I could not look even if she wanted me. Oh, how she tries, Spink! It
wrings my heart. She's so helpless, so hopeless--so gentle, so tender,
so lovely! It's all my own stupidity. The iron-wall stupidity of flesh
and blood. Perhaps, if I were to kill myself--and I think I could do
that for her.... Only she doesn't want me to do that.... But what does
she want me to do? If I could only....
* * * * *
Lindsay had written steadily the whole evening; written at a violent
speed and with a fierce intensity. Now his speed died down. His hands
dropped from the typewriter. That mental intensity evaporated. He became
aware....
He was not alone.
The long living-room was doubly cheerful that night. The inevitable
tracks of living had begun to humanize it. A big old bean-pot full of
purple iris sat on one end of the refectory table. Lindsay's books and
notebooks; his paper and envelopes; his pens and pencils sprawled over
the length of table between him and the iris. That the night was a
little cool, Lindsay had seized as pretext to build a huge fire. The
high, jagged flames conspired with the steady glow of the big lamp to
rout the shadows from everywhere but the extreme corners.
No more than--after her coming--he was alone was Lutetia alone. It was,
Lindsay reflected, a picture almost as posed as for a camera. Lutetia
sat; and leaning against her, close to her knee, stood a pigtailed
little girl. She might have been listening to a story; for her little
ear was cocked in Lutetia's direction. That attitude brought to
Lindsay's observation a delicious, snub-nosed child profile. She gazed
unseeingly over her shoulder to a far corner. And Lutetia gazed straight
over the child's head at Lindsay--
They sat for a long time--a long long time--thus. The little girl's
vague eyes still fixed themselves on the shadows as on magic realms that
were being constantly unrolled to her. Lutetia's eyes still sought
Lindsay's. And Lindsay's eyes remained on Lutetia's; held there by the
agony of her effort and the exquisite torture of his own bewilderment.
After a while he arose. With slow, precise movements, he gathered up the
pages of his letter to Spink. He arranged them carefully according to
their numbers--twelve typewritten pages. He walked leisurely with them
over to the fireplace and deposited them in the flames.
When he turned, the room was empty.
The next day brought storm again.
* * * * *
The coolness of the night vanished finally before the sparkling sunshine
of a wind-swept day. Lindsay wrote for an hour or two. Then he gave
himself up to what he called the "chores." He washed his few dishes. He
toiled on the lawn and in the garden. He finished the work of repairing
the broken stairway in the barn. At the close of this last effort, he
even cast a longing look in the direction of the rubbish collection in
the second story of the barn. But his digestion apprised him that this
voyage of discovery must be put off until after luncheon. He emerged
from the back entrance of the barn, made his way, contrary to his usual
custom, by a circuitous route to the front of the house. He stopped to
tack up a trail of rosebush which had pulled loose from the trellis
there. He felt unaccountably tired. When he entered the house he was
conscious for the first time of a kind of loneliness....
He had not seen Lutetia, nor any of her companions, for three days. He
admitted to himself that he missed the tremendous excitement of the last
fortnight. But particularly he missed Lutetia. He paused absently to
glance into the two front rooms, still as empty as on the day he had
first seen them. He wandered upstairs into his bedroom. From there, he
journeyed to the child's room beyond; examined again the dim drawings on
the wall. It occurred to him that, by going over them with crayons, he
could restore some of their lost vividness. The idea brought a little
spurt of exhilaration to his jaded spirit. He returned to his own room,
just for the sake of descending Lutetia's little private stairway to
what must have been her private living-room below. He walked absently
and a little slowly; still conscious of loneliness. He did not pause
long in the living-room, although he made a tentative move in the
direction of the kitchen. Still absently and quite mechanically he
opened the back door; started to step out onto the broad flat stone
which made the step....
Most unexpectedly--and shockingly, he was not alone. A tiny figure ...
black ... sat on the doorstep; sat so close to the door that, as it
rose, his curdling flesh warned him he had almost touched it. A curious
thing happened. Lindsay swayed, pitched; fell backwards, white and
moveless.