“What did--the fellow--want?” roared Uncle Bain-bridge, who is deaf, and
brings out his words two or three at a time.
“Wanted to know--if we wanted--a ghost!” I roared in reply.
“Goat? Goat? Huh-huh!” shouted Uncle Bain-bridge. “No, sir! Get 'em a
pony--and a cart--little cart! That's the best--thing--for the kids!”
Uncle Bainbridge is, in fact, so deaf that he is never bothered by the
noises he makes when he eats. As a rule when you speak to him he first
says, “How?” Then he produces a kind of telephone arrangement. He plugs
one end into his ear, and shoves a black rubber disk at you. You talk
against the disk, and when he disagrees with you he pulls the plug out
of his ear to stop your foolish chatter, and snorts contemptuously. Once
my wife remarked to me that Uncle Bainbridge's hearing might be better
if he would only cut those bunches of long gray hair out of his ears.
They annoy every one except Uncle Bainbridge a great deal. But the plug
was in, after all, and he heard her, and asked one of the children in a
terrible voice to fetch him the tin box he keeps his will in.
Uncle Bainbridge is _my_ uncle. My wife reminds me of that every now and
then. And he is rather hard to live with. But Marian, in spite of
his little idiosyncrasies, has always been generous enough to wish to
protect him from designing females only too ready to marry him for his
money. So she encourages him to make his home with us. If he married
at all, she preferred that he should marry her cousin, Miss Sophia
Calderwod. That was also Miss Sophia's preference.
We did get a ghost, however, and a real English ghost. The discovery was
mine. I was sitting in the room we called the library one night, alone
with my pipe, when I heard a couple of raps in, on, about, or behind a
large bookcase that stood diagonally across one corner. It was several
days after we had refused the American applicant, and I had been
thinking of him more or less, and wondering what sort of existence he
led. One half the world doesn't know how the other half lives. I suppose
my reflections had disposed my mind to psychic receptivity; for when I
heard raps I said at once:
“Are there any good spirits in the room?” It is a formula I remembered
from the days when I had been greatly interested in psychic research.
Rap! rap! came the answer from behind the bookcase.
I made a tour of the room, and satisfied myself that it was not a
flapping curtain, or anything like that.
“Do you have a message for me?” I asked.
The answer was in the affirmative.
“What is it?”
There was a confused and rapid jumble of raps. I repeated the question
with the same result.
“Can you materialize?”
The ghost rapped no.
Then it occurred to me that probably this was a ghost of the sort that
can communicate with the visible world only through replying to such
questions as can be answered by yes or no. There are a great many of
these ghosts. Indeed, my experience in psychic research has led me to
the conclusion that they are in the majority.
“Were you sent down by the agent to take this place?” I asked.
“No!” It is impossible to convey in print the suggestion of hauteur and
offended dignity and righteous anger that the ghost managed to get into
that single rap. I have never felt more rebuked in my life; I have never
been made to feel more American.
“Sir or madam,” I said, letting the regret I felt be apparent in my
voice, “I beg your pardon. If you please, I should like to know whose
ghost you are. I will repeat the alphabet. You may rap when you wish me
to stop at a letter. In that way you can spell out your information. Is
that satisfactory?”
It was.
“Who are you?”
Slowly, and with the assured raps of one whose social position is
defined, fixed, and secure in whatever state of existence she may chance
to find herself, the ghost spelled out, “Lady Agatha Pelham.”
I hope I am not snobbish. Indeed, I think I have proved over and over
again that I am not, by frankly confessing that I am an American. But
at the same time I could not repress a little exclamation of pleasure
at the fact that we were haunted by the ghost of a member of the
English aristocracy. You may say what you will, but there is a certain
something--a manner--an air--I scarcely know how to describe it, but it
is there; it exists. In England, one meets it so often--I hope you take
me.
My gratification must have revealed itself in my manner. Lady Agatha
rapped out, if anything with more haughtiness than she had previously
employed--yes, even with a touch of defiance:
“I was at one time a governess.”
I gradually learned that while her own family was as good as the Pelham
family, Lady Agatha's parents had been in very reduced circumstances,
and she had had to become a governess. When Sir Arthur Pelham had
married her, his people acted very nasty. He hadn't any money, and they
had wanted him to marry some. He got to treating her very badly before
he died. And during his lifetime, and after it, Lady Agatha had had a
very sad life indeed. Still, you know, she was an aristocrat. She made
one feel that as she told her story bit by bit. For all this came very
gradually, as the result of many conversations, and not at once. We
speedily agreed upon a code, very similar to the Morse telegraphic code,
and we still further abbreviated this, until our conversations, after
a couple of weeks, got to be as rapid as that of a couple of telegraph
operators chatting over the wires. I intimated that it must be rather
rough on her to be haunting Americans, and she said that she had once
lived in our cottage and liked it.
In spite of her aristocracy, I don't suppose there ever was a more
domestic sort of ghost than Lady Agatha. We all got quite fond of her,
and I think she did of us, too, in spite of our being American. Even
the children got into the habit of taking their little troubles and
perplexities to her. And Marian used to say that with Lady Agatha in
the house, when Uncle Bain-bridge and I happened to be away, she felt so
_safe_ somehow.
I imagine the fact that she had once been a governess would have made
it rather difficult for Lady Agatha in the house of an English family of
rank. On the other hand, her inherent aristocratic feeling made it quite
impossible for her to haunt any one belonging to the middle or lower
classes. She could haunt us, as Americans, and not feel that the social
question mattered so much, in spite of what the American ghost had
hinted. We Americans are so unclassified that the English often take
chances with individuals, quite regardless of what each individual's
class would naturally be if he had a class. Even while they do this they
make us feel very often that we are hopelessly American; but they do it,
and I, for one, am grateful. Lady Agatha sympathized with our desire to
become as English as possible, she could quite understand that. I find
that many Englishmen approve the effort, although remaining confident
that it will end in failure.
Lady Agatha helped us a great deal. We used to have lessons in the
evenings in the library. For instance, the children would stand at
attention in front of the bookcase, and repeat a bit of typical English
slang, trying to do it in an absolutely English way. They would do it
over and over and over, until finally Lady Agatha would give a rap
of approval. Or I would pretend that I was an Englishman in a railway
carriage, and that an American had just entered and I was afraid he
would speak to me. I got rather good at this, and made two or three
trips to London to try it out. I found that Americans were imposed on,
and actually in one instance I made one Englishman think that I was an
Englishman who thought he was an American. He was a nobody, however,
and didn't really count. And then, I am afraid, I spoiled it all. We
Americans so often spoil it all! I enjoyed it so that I told him. He
looked startled and said, “But how American!” He was the only Englishman
I ever fooled.
But Lady Agatha's night classes were of great benefit to us. We used to
practise how to behave toward English servants at country houses, and
how to act when presented at court, and dozens of things like that: not
that we had been asked to a country house, or expected to be presented
at court soon. Marian and I had agreed that the greater part of this
information would be quite useless while Uncle Bainbridge was still
spared to us. Even in Brooklyn Uncle Bainbridge had been something of
a problem at times. But we thought it just as well to prepare ourselves
for the sad certainty that Uncle Bainbridge would pass into a better
world before many years.
Uncle Bainbridge, who is very wealthy indeed, affects more informality
than the usual self-made man. He used to attend our evening classes with
a contemptuous expression upon his face, and snort at intervals. Once he
even called me “Puppy!” Then he thrust his telephone arrangement before
my face and insisted that I tell him whether I was sane or not.
“Puppy!” he bellowed. “Quit apin' the English! I get along with 'em
myself--without any nonsense! Treat 'em white! Always treat me white! No
foolishness! Puppy!”
My wife and I soon discovered that Lady Agatha and Uncle Bainbridge were
on the most friendly terms. He would sit for hours in the library,
with his telephone receiver held patiently near the bookcase, shouting
questions and smiling and nodding over the answers. Marian and I were
afraid that Uncle Bainbridge, by his lack of polish, might offend Lady
Agatha. And at first it was her custom to hover about anxiously while
they were talking to each other. But Uncle Bainbridge discovered this,
and resented it to such an extent that she had to be cautious indeed.
His talks with Lady Agatha became longer and longer, and more and more
frequent, until finally he received more of her attention than all the
rest of us put together. Indeed, we need not have worried about Uncle
Bainbridge's offending Lady Agatha: the friendship grew closer and
closer. We were certain finally that it was taking on a strong tinge of
sentimentality. One day my wife stopped me just outside the library door
and said in a whisper, indicating the general direction of Lady Agatha's
bookcase with a wave of her hand:
“Henry, those two old things in there are calling each other Hiram and
Agatha!”
I listened, and it was so. A week later I heard Uncle Bainbridge seated
by the bookcase, bellowing out a sentimental song. He was having a great
deal of difficulty with it, and in order that he might hear himself he
was singing with the black disk arrangement held directly in front of
his own mouth.
I cannot say that Uncle Bainbridge became etherealized by the state of
his feelings toward Lady Agatha, whatever the exact state of his feeling
may have been. But he did change a little, and the change was for the
better. He cut out the bunches of gray hair from his ears, and he began
to take care of his fingernails. Lady Agatha was having a good influence
upon him.
One day, as he and I were standing by the front gate, he suddenly
connected himself for speech and roared at me, with a jerk of his thumb
toward the house.
“Fine woman!”
“Who?” I shouted back.
“Aggie.”
“Why, yes. I suppose she--was.”
“No nonsense!” he yelled. “Husband was a brute! Marry her myself! In
a minute--if possible. Ain't possible! Shame! Bet she could make--good
dumplings--apple dumplings! Huh!”
Uncle Bainbridge is very fond of apple dumplings. His final test of a
woman is her ability to make good apple dumplings. Several women might
have married him had they been able to pass that examination. He can pay
no higher compliment to a woman than to be willing to believe her able
to make good dumplings.
“Aggie, in there!” he roared again, impatient because I was slow
in answering. “Dumplings! That kind of woman--could have made--good
dumplings!”
I felt, somehow, that it was going a bit too far to imagine Lady Agatha
at so plebeian a task as making apple dumplings.
“Uncle Bainbridge,” I shouted, “the upper classes--in England--can't
make--apple dumplings!”
Even as I shouted I was aware that some bypasser, startled at our loud
voices, was pausing just outside the gate. I turned to encounter for
a moment the haughty glare of the most English-looking elderly woman
I have ever seen. She had a large, high nose, and she was a large,
high-looking handsome woman generally. She said no word to me; but as
she stared her lips moved ever so slightly. I fancied that to herself
she said, “Indeed!” I have never felt more utterly superfluous, more
abjectly American. She turned from me with an air that denied my
existence, a manner that indicated that such things as I _could not_
exist, and it would be foolish to try to make her believe they did
exist. She bowed to Uncle Bainbridge, smiled as he returned her bow, and
passed on. Uncle Bainbridge's eyes followed her admiringly.
“'Mother fine woman!” he thundered, so that she must have heard him.
“Friend of mine! Sensible woman! No frills!”
I tried to ask him who she was, when and where he had become acquainted
with her, and a dozen other questions; but Uncle Bainbridge unplugged
himself, cutting off all communication with the outer world, and
resolutely refused any information. That he should know the lady did not
surprise me, however. It had happened several times since we had been
in England that Uncle Bainbridge had become friendly with people whom
we did not know. We never got from him any exact idea as to the social
status of these persons, and indeed we always found that he had no
really definite ideas on that subject to communicate.
Our dear Lady Agatha was almost the only English friend my wife and I
had made.
My wife and I were very well contented that Uncle Bainbridge's feeling
for Lady Agatha should grow stronger and stronger. We argued that while
he was so intimately friendly with dear Lady Agatha he would not be so
likely to fall a prey to any person who might want to marry him for his
wealth. So we decided to encourage the friendship in every way possible,
and would have been only too glad to have it go on indefinitely.
“I feel so at peace about Uncle Bainbridge now,” was the way my wife
expressed it, “with him and dear Lady Agatha so wrapped up in each
other.”
But this cheerful condition of affairs was not destined to last many
weeks. One day my wife received a letter from her cousin, Miss Sophia
Calderwood. Cousin Sophia was in London, and would be with us on the
coming Saturday. She had spoken of the possibility of paying us a visit
while we were in England, and of course we had urged her to do so;
although at the time the possibility had seemed rather remote to us.
Miss Sophia was past her first youth, but still very girlish at times.
Under her girlishness there was a grim determination. She had made up
her mind to marry Uncle Bainbridge. My wife, as I have already said,
had been inclined to favour the idea, since it would keep strangers from
getting hold of Uncle Bainbridge's money. But now that Uncle Bainbridge
and Lady Agatha were getting along so well together my wife had begun
to hope that Uncle Bainbridge would never marry anybody. We both thought
the friendship might become an ideal, but none the less overmastering,
passion; one of those sacred things, you know, of the sort that keeps a
man single all his life. If Uncle Bainbridge remained unmarried out of
regard for Lady Agatha, we agreed, it would be much better for him at
his time of life than to wed Miss Sophia.
So we both considered Miss Sophia's visit rather inopportune. Not
that we felt that Uncle Bainbridge was predisposed toward her. On the
contrary, he had always manifested more fear than affection for
her. But, I repeat, she was a determined woman. The quality of her
determination needed no better evidence than the fact that she had, to
put it vulgarly, pursued her quarry across the seas. It was evident
that the citadel of Uncle Bainbridge's heart was to undergo a terrible
assault. As for him, when he heard she was coming, he only emitted a
noncommittal snort.
Miss Sophia, when she arrived, had apparently put in the months since we
had seen her in resolute attempts at rejuvenation. She was more girlish
than I had known her in fifteen years. And she had set up a lisp. She
greeted Uncle Bainbridge impulsively, effusively.
“You dear man,” she shrilled into his telephone, “you don't detherve
it, but gueth what I've brought you all the way acroth the ocean! A new
rethipe for apple dumplings!”
“How?” said Uncle Bainbridge. “What say?” And when she repeated it he
said “Umph!” disconnected himself, and blew his nose loudly. He rarely
said anything to her but “Umph!” walking away afterward with now and
then a worried backward glance.
When we told Miss Sophia about Lady Agatha, and she finally understood
the intimacy that had grown up between Lady Agatha and Uncle Bainbridge,
she looked reproachfully at my wife, as if to say, “You have been
a traitor to my cause!” And then she announced very primly, quite
forgetting her lisp, “I am quite sure that I, for one, do not care to
make the acquaintance of this person!”
“Cousin Sophia,” said my wife sharply, “what do you mean by that?”
“I think, Cousin Marian, that my meaning is sufficiently clear.”
“You forget,” rejoined my wife icily, “that dear Lady Agatha is our
guest.”
Miss Sophia sniffed, and was silent.
“Besides,” continued Marian, “what can you possibly have against her?”
“Marian,” said Miss Sophia, “will you answer me one question?”
“Perhaps, Cousin Sophia.”
“Cousin Marian, where, I ask you, _where_ is Sir Arthur Pelham?”
“Why, how should I know, Cousin Sophia?” My wife was genuinely puzzled
by the question, and so was I.
“Exactly!” And Miss Sophia's voice was acid. “How should you know?
I imagine it is a point upon which Lady Agatha Pelham, under the
circumstances, has not been very communicative.”
“But, Cousin Sophia----” I began.
She interrupted me. “Cousin Henry,” she said, “do you mean to say that
you approve of these goings-on in your house? The idea of a married
woman entering into a perfectly open flirtation with a man, as this Lady
Agatha Pelham has done! Not that I blame Hiram Bainbridge; for men are
susceptible when skillfully practised upon--especially with arts which I
have never stooped to employ. It is shameless, Cousin Henry, shameless!
If Cousin Marian's mother were alive, she would at least see that the
children were sent back to America before they become contaminated by
this atmosphere. Cousin Henry, to think that you have been so
corrupted by European ways already that you acquiesce in this anomalous
relationship!”
“I should hardly call it that, Cousin Sophia,” I ventured, “and for the
life of me I cannot see anything wrong.”
It took me a little while to catch Miss Sophia's point of view. I am
bound to say that she presented it rather convincingly. If Sir Arthur
had been alive, she said, she would have seen nothing wrong in Lady
Agatha forming any ties she might choose in the spirit world. Or if Sir
Arthur had been in the spirit world and Lady Agatha in the earth life,
she would have exonerated Lady Agatha from any indelicacy in forming a
close friendship with Uncle Bainbridge. But since both Sir Arthur and
Lady Agatha were in the spirit life, Lady Agatha's place was with Sir
Arthur.
“Aristocrat or not,” she said, “she is indelicate, she is unladylike,
she is coarse, or she would not carry on in this fashion with a man to
whom she is not married.”
“I will not have dear Lady Agatha insulted!” said my wife, white with
anger, rising from the chair in which she had been sitting.
“It is I who have been insulted, by being asked to a house where such
a brazen and indecent affair is accepted as a matter of course,” said
Cousin Sophia.
I hastily interposed. I saw that my wife was about to cast prudence to
the winds and tell Miss Sophia that if she felt that way about it she
might as well leave. Miss Sophia is very well-to-do herself, and my
wife is her only near relation. I did not fear that the rupture would be
permanent; for I had known Marian and Cousin Sophia to go quite this far
many times before, and, indeed, in an hour they had both apparently got
over their temper.
Miss Sophia, although certain now that she would receive no assistance
from my wife in her siege of Uncle Bainbridge, did not swerve from her
determination to subjugate him. I imagine it is rather difficult to give
battle when your rival is a ghost: the very intangibility of the tie
makes it hard to attack. Yet the person who is in the earth life has
certain advantages also. I do not know whether I have mentioned it
or not, but Miss Sophia could scarcely be called beautiful. One after
another, all her life, she had seen men upon whom she had set her
affection become the husbands of other women, and in her duel with the
ghost there was a quality of desperation that made the struggle,
every move of which I watched, extremely interesting. In spite of her
announcement that she did not care to meet Lady Agatha, she learned the
code by which she communicated with us, and did not absent herself from
our gatherings in the library.
Miss Sophia must have been desperate indeed, or she would not have
resorted to the trick she used. About a week after Miss Sophia's arrival
Lady Agatha suddenly ceased to communicate with us. We grew alarmed,
wondering what could have happened to her, as the days passed and the
friendly rappings were not resumed. In the light of what happened later
I am sure that Miss Sophia deliberately drove Lady Agatha away. What
method she used I do not know. But if she had said to Lady Agatha
directly the things that she had said to us about her, the insult would
have been quite sufficient to make that proud and gentle spirit take her
departure. Likely Miss Sophia got into communication with Lady Agatha
and hurled at her the bitter question, “Where is Sir Arthur Pelham?”
Lady Agatha was not the person to enter into any vulgar quarrel, nor yet
to vouchsafe explanations concerning her personal affairs.
Several days after Lady Agatha fell silent I heard Uncle Bainbridge
bellowing forth questions in the library. I was outside the house near
the library window, which was open. Thinking joyously that Lady Agatha
had returned to us, I stepped nearer to the window to make sure. I saw
at once, as I peeped in, that the bookcase, which set very near the
window, had been slightly moved. Miss Sophia, who was very thin, had
managed to introduce herself into the triangular space behind it--I had
mentioned that it set diagonally across one corner. She was
crouched upon the floor rapping out a conversation with Uncle
Bainbridge--impersonating Lady Agatha! Uncle Bainbridge, in front of the
bookcase, was apparently unsuspicious; nor did Miss Sophia suspect that
I saw her through the half-inch of window that commanded her hiding
place.
“You must marry!” rapped Miss Sophia, in the character of Lady Agatha.
“Who?” bellowed Uncle Bainbridge.
“Miss Sophia Calderwood,” said the fake ghost.
“Aggie, I'm hanged if I do!” yelled Uncle Bainbridge. “Ask
me--something--easy!”
“Hiram, listen carefully,” began the false Lady Agatha. Then she told
him that this would be their last interview. Circumstances over which
she had no control compelled her to depart. She was to assume another
phase of existence upon another plane. She could not explain to him so
that he would understand. But her interest in him would never flag.
And she knew that he would be happier wedded to some good woman. It was
apparent to her that Miss Sophia would make him the ideal wife. He
would soon learn to love Miss Sophia. She had considerable difficulty in
getting the promise; but finally Uncle Bainbridge snorted out a pledge
that he would marry, and stumped away.
That night he went to London. It was a week before he returned. I did
not communicate what I had seen and heard to Marion. The truth was, I
felt rather sorry for Miss Sophia. To resort to such a trick she must
have been desperate indeed. I tried to imagine what her life had been,
and not condemn her too harshly. And besides, if she was to marry Uncle
Bainbridge, which seemed settled now, I did not care to have her aware
that I knew her secret.
During the absence of Uncle Bainbridge she became quietly radiant, as
befits one who knows that the battle is won. She was evidently certain
that he would speak definitely upon his return.
The night that he came back he gathered us all about him in the library.
“Something to say! Important!” he shouted.
We all assumed attitudes of attention.
“Thinking maybe--get married!” said Uncle Bainbridge. It was just like
Uncle Bainbridge to announce the matter in the lady's presence before
having formally asked her; but I felt that it was a trifle hard on Miss
Sophia. But a glance at her reassured me on that score. She was flushed;
but it was the flush of triumph rather than the flush of embarrassment.
“Bought a brewery!” said Uncle Bainbridge. “Good brewery! Good beer!
Like English beer! Like English people!”
1 felt that this was a little irrelevant, and I am sure that Miss Sophia
felt the same way.
“Bought a castle!” said Uncle Bainbridge, warming to the work. “Fine
castle! Like castles! Fix it up! Live in it! Settle here! Like England!
Fine country.”
“A castle! Oh, how lovely!” shrilled Miss Sophia, clapping her hands
girlishly. “How lovely for all of us!”
“Not invited!” roared Uncle Bainbridge, taking us all in with one
sweeping gesture. “None of you!”
There was silence for a moment.
“Going to get married!” said Uncle Bainbridge, rising to his feet. “Not
Sophia! Caught Sophia--behind bookcase! Knew all the time! Sneaky trick!
Marry fine woman! Henry saw her--over the fence that day! Fine woman!
Curate's mother here! Dumplings! Fine dumplings! Learned to make 'em
for me! She don't want--to get too thick--with any my relations! She
says--all of you--are too American!”
And as Uncle Bainbridge blew his nose loudly and sat down there was a
sudden rattle of rapping from the bookcase: nothing so articulate as
a remark in the code, but a sound more like a ripple of well-bred
laughter. This was the last we ever heard from Lady Agatha, and I have
sometimes wondered just what she meant by it. It is so hard, sometimes,
to understand just what the English are laughing at.