The Story of the Inexperienced Ghost
The scene amidst which Clayton told his last story comes back veryvividly to my mind. There he sat, for the greater part of the time,in the corner of the authentic settle by the spacious open fire, andSanderson sat beside him smoking the Broseley clay that bore his name.There was Evans, and that marvel among actors, Wish, who is also amodest man. We had all come down to the Mermaid Club that Saturdaymorning, except Clayton, who had slept there overnight--which indeedgave him the opening of his story. We had golfed until golfing wasinvisible; we had dined, and we were in that mood of tranquilkindliness when men will suffer a story. When Clayton began to tellone, we naturally supposed he was lying. It may be that indeed he waslying--of that the reader will speedily be able to judge as well as I.He began, it is true, with an air of matter-of-fact anecdote, butthat we thought was only the incurable artifice of the man."I say!" he remarked, after a long consideration of the upwardrain of sparks from the log that Sanderson had thumped, "you knowI was alone here last night?""Except for the domestics," said Wish."Who sleep in the other wing," said Clayton. "Yes. Well--" He pulledat his cigar for some little time as though he still hesitated abouthis confidence. Then he said, quite quietly, "I caught a ghost!""Caught a ghost, did you?" said Sanderson. "Where is it?"And Evans, who admires Clayton immensely and has been four weeksin America, shouted, "Caught a ghost, did you, Clayton? I'm gladof it! Tell us all about it right now."Clayton said he would in a minute, and asked him to shut the door.He looked apologetically at me. "There's no eavesdropping of course,but we don't want to upset our very excellent service with any rumoursof ghosts in the place. There's too much shadow and oak panellingto trifle with that. And this, you know, wasn't a regular ghost.I don't think it will come again--ever.""You mean to say you didn't keep it?" said Sanderson."I hadn't the heart to," said Clayton.And Sanderson said he was surprised.We laughed, and Clayton looked aggrieved. "I know," he said, withthe flicker of a smile, "but the fact is it really was a ghost,and I'm as sure of it as I am that I am talking to you now. I'm notjoking. I mean what I say."Sanderson drew deeply at his pipe, with one reddish eye on Clayton,and then emitted a thin jet of smoke more eloquent than many words.Clayton ignored the comment. "It is the strangest thing that hasever happened in my life. You know, I never believed in ghostsor anything of the sort, before, ever; and then, you know, I bagone in a corner; and the whole business is in my hands."He meditated still more profoundly, and produced and began to piercea second cigar with a curious little stabber he affected."You talked to it?" asked Wish."For the space, probably, of an hour.""Chatty?" I said, joining the party of the sceptics."The poor devil was in trouble," said Clayton, bowed over his cigar-endand with the very faintest note of reproof."Sobbing?" some one asked.Clayton heaved a realistic sigh at the memory. "Good Lord!" he said;"yes." And then, "Poor fellow! yes.""Where did you strike it?" asked Evans, in his best American accent."I never realised," said Clayton, ignoring him, "the poor sort ofthing a ghost might be," and he hung us up again for a time, whilehe sought for matches in his pocket and lit and warmed to his cigar."I took an advantage," he reflected at last.We were none of us in a hurry. "A character," he said, "remainsjust the same character for all that it's been disembodied. That'sa thing we too often forget. People with a certain strength orfixity of purpose may have ghosts of a certain strength and fixityof purpose--most haunting ghosts, you know, must be as one-idea'das monomaniacs and as obstinate as mules to come back again and again.This poor creature wasn't." He suddenly looked up rather queerly, andhis eye went round the room. "I say it," he said, "in all kindliness,but that is the plain truth of the case. Even at the first glancehe struck me as weak."He punctuated with the help of his cigar."I came upon him, you know, in the long passage. His back was towardsme and I saw him first. Right off I knew him for a ghost. He wastransparent and whitish; clean through his chest I could see the glimmerof the little window at the end. And not only his physique buthis attitude struck me as being weak. He looked, you know, as thoughhe didn't know in the slightest whatever he meant to do. One handwas on the panelling and the other fluttered to his mouth. Like--SO!""What sort of physique?" said Sanderson."Lean. You know that sort of young man's neck that has two greatflutings down the back, here and here--so! And a little, meanish headwith scrubby hair--And rather bad ears. Shoulders bad, narrowerthan the hips; turn-down collar, ready-made short jacket, trousersbaggy and a little frayed at the heels. That's how he took me.I came very quietly up the staircase. I did not carry a light,you know--the candles are on the landing table and there is that lamp--and I was in my list slippers, and I saw him as I came up. I stoppeddead at that--taking him in. I wasn't a bit afraid. I think thatin most of these affairs one is never nearly so afraid or excitedas one imagines one would be. I was surprised and interested.I thought, 'Good Lord! Here's a ghost at last! And I haven't believedfor a moment in ghosts during the last five-and-twenty years.'""Um," said Wish."I suppose I wasn't on the landing a moment before he found out Iwas there. He turned on me sharply, and I saw the face of an immatureyoung man, a weak nose, a scrubby little moustache, a feeble chin.So for an instant we stood--he looking over his shoulder at meand regarded one another. Then he seemed to remember his high calling.He turned round, drew himself up, projected his face, raised his arms,spread his hands in approved ghost fashion--came towards me.As he did so his little jaw dropped, and he emitted a faint, drawn-out'Boo.' No, it wasn't--not a bit dreadful. I'd dined. I'd had a bottleof champagne, and being all alone, perhaps two or three--perhapseven four or five--whiskies, so I was as solid as rocks and no morefrightened than if I'd been assailed by a frog. 'Boo!' I said.'Nonsense. You don't belong to this place. What are you doing here?'"I could see him wince. 'Boo-oo,' he said."'Boo--be hanged! Are you a member?' I said; and just to showI didn't care a pin for him I stepped through a corner of him andmade to light my candle. 'Are you a member?' I repeated, lookingat him sideways."He moved a little so as to stand clear of me, and his bearingbecame crestfallen. 'No,' he said, in answer to the persistentinterrogation of my eye; 'I'm not a member--I'm a ghost.'"'Well, that doesn't give you the run of the Mermaid Club. Is thereany one you want to see, or anything of that sort?' and doing it assteadily as possible for fear that he should mistake the carelessnessof whisky for the distraction of fear, I got my candle alight.I turned on him, holding it. 'What are you doing here?' I said."He had dropped his hands and stopped his booing, and there he stood,abashed and awkward, the ghost of a weak, silly, aimless young man.'I'm haunting,' he said."'You haven't any business to,' I said in a quiet voice."'I'm a ghost,' he said, as if in defence."'That may be, but you haven't any business to haunt here. This isa respectable private club; people often stop here with nursemaidsand children, and, going about in the careless way you do, some poorlittle mite could easily come upon you and be scared out of her wits.I suppose you didn't think of that?'"'No, sir,' he said, 'I didn't.'"'You should have done. You haven't any claim on the place, have you?Weren't murdered here, or anything of that sort?'"'None, sir; but I thought as it was old and oak-panelled--'"'That's no excuse.' I regarded him firmly. 'Your coming here isa mistake,' I said, in a tone of friendly superiority. I feignedto see if I had my matches, and then looked up at him frankly.'If I were you I wouldn't wait for cock-crow--I'd vanish right away.'"He looked embarrassed. 'The fact is, sir--' he began."'I'd vanish,' I said, driving it home."'The fact is, sir, that--somehow--I can't.'"'You can't?'"'No, sir. There's something I've forgotten. I've been hangingabout here since midnight last night, hiding in the cupboardsof the empty bedrooms and things like that. I'm flurried. I've nevercome haunting before, and it seems to put me out.'"'Put you out?'"'Yes, sir. I've tried to do it several times, and it doesn't come off.There's some little thing has slipped me, and I can't get back.'"That, you know, rather bowled me over. He looked at me in suchan abject way that for the life of me I couldn't keep up quitethe high, hectoring vein I had adopted. 'That's queer,' I said,and as I spoke I fancied I heard some one moving about down below.'Come into my room and tell me more about it,' I said. 'I didn't,of course, understand this,' and I tried to take him by the arm.But, of course, you might as well have tried to take hold of a puffof smoke! I had forgotten my number, I think; anyhow, I remembergoing into several bedrooms--it was lucky I was the only soulin that wing--until I saw my traps. 'Here we are,' I said, and satdown in the arm-chair; 'sit down and tell me all about it. It seemsto me you have got yourself into a jolly awkward position, old chap.'"Well, he said he wouldn't sit down! he'd prefer to flit up and downthe room if it was all the same to me. And so he did, and in a littlewhile we were deep in a long and serious talk. And presently,you know, something of those whiskies and sodas evaporated out of me,and I began to realise just a little what a thundering rum and weirdbusiness it was that I was in. There he was, semi-transparent--the proper conventional phantom, and noiseless except for his ghostof a voice--flitting to and fro in that nice, clean, chintz-hungold bedroom. You could see the gleam of the copper candlesticksthrough him, and the lights on the brass fender, and the cornersof the framed engravings on the wall,--and there he was telling meall about this wretched little life of his that had recently endedon earth. He hadn't a particularly honest face, you know, but beingtransparent, of course, he couldn't avoid telling the truth.""Eh?" said Wish, suddenly sitting up in his chair."What?" said Clayton."Being transparent--couldn't avoid telling the truth--I don't see it,"said Wish."I don't see it," said Clayton, with inimitable assurance. "Butit is so, I can assure you nevertheless. I don't believe he got oncea nail's breadth off the Bible truth. He told me how he had beenkilled--he went down into a London basement with a candle to lookfor a leakage of gas--and described himself as a senior Englishmaster in a London private school when that release occurred.""Poor wretch!" said I."That's what I thought, and the more he talked the more I thought it.There he was, purposeless in life and purposeless out of it. He talkedof his father and mother and his schoolmaster, and all who had everbeen anything to him in the world, meanly. He had been too sensitive,too nervous; none of them had ever valued him properly or understoodhim, he said. He had never had a real friend in the world,I think; he had never had a success. He had shirked games and failedexaminations. 'It's like that with some people,' he said; 'wheneverI got into the examination-room or anywhere everything seemed to go.'Engaged to be married of course--to another over-sensitive person, Isuppose--when the indiscretion with the gas escape ended his affairs.'And where are you now?' I asked. 'Not in--?'"He wasn't clear on that point at all. The impression he gave me wasof a sort of vague, intermediate state, a special reserve for soulstoo non-existent for anything so positive as either sin or virtue.I don't know. He was much too egotistical and unobservant to giveme any clear idea of the kind of place, kind of country, there is onthe Other Side of Things. Wherever he was, he seems to have fallen inwith a set of kindred spirits: ghosts of weak Cockney young men,who were on a footing of Christian names, and among these there wascertainly a lot of talk about 'going haunting' and things like that.Yes--going haunting! They seemed to think 'haunting' a tremendousadventure, and most of them funked it all the time. And so primed,you know, he had come.""But really!" said Wish to the fire."These are the impressions he gave me, anyhow," said Clayton, modestly."I may, of course, have been in a rather uncritical state, but thatwas the sort of background he gave to himself. He kept flitting up anddown, with his thin voice going talking, talking about his wretchedself, and never a word of clear, firm statement from first to last.He was thinner and sillier and more pointless than if he had beenreal and alive. Only then, you know, he would not have been in mybedroom here--if he had been alive. I should have kicked him out.""Of course," said Evans, "there are poor mortals like that.""And there's just as much chance of their having ghosts as the restof us," I admitted."What gave a sort of point to him, you know, was the fact thathe did seem within limits to have found himself out. The mess he hadmade of haunting had depressed him terribly. He had been toldit would be a 'lark'; he had come expecting it to be a 'lark,'and here it was, nothing but another failure added to his record!He proclaimed himself an utter out-and-out failure. He said, andI can quite believe it, that he had never tried to do anything allhis life that he hadn't made a perfect mess of--and through allthe wastes of eternity he never would. If he had had sympathy,perhaps--. He paused at that, and stood regarding me. He remarked that,strange as it might seem to me, nobody, not any one, ever, had givenhim the amount of sympathy I was doing now. I could see what he wantedstraight away, and I determined to head him off at once. I may be abrute, you know, but being the Only Real Friend, the recipient of theconfidences of one of these egotistical weaklings, ghost or body, isbeyond my physical endurance. I got up briskly. 'Don't you brood onthese things too much,' I said. 'The thing you've got to do is to getout of this get out of this--sharp. You pull yourself together andtry.' 'I can't,' he said. 'You try,' I said, and try he did.""Try!" said Sanderson. "How?""Passes," said Clayton."Passes?""Complicated series of gestures and passes with the hands. That'show he had come in and that's how he had to get out again. Lord!what a business I had!""But how could any series of passes--?" I began."My dear man," said Clayton, turning on me and putting a greatemphasis on certain words, "you want everything clear. I don'tknow how. All I know is that you do--that he did, anyhow, at least.After a fearful time, you know, he got his passes right and suddenlydisappeared.""Did you," said Sanderson, slowly, "observe the passes?""Yes," said Clayton, and seemed to think. "It was tremendously queer,"he said. "There we were, I and this thin vague ghost, in that silentroom, in this silent, empty inn, in this silent little Friday-nighttown. Not a sound except our voices and a faint panting he made whenhe swung. There was the bedroom candle, and one candle on the dressing-table alight, that was all--sometimes one or other would flare up intoa tall, lean, astonished flame for a space. And queer things happened.'I can't,' he said; 'I shall never--!' And suddenly he sat down ona little chair at the foot of the bed and began to sob and sob.Lord! what a harrowing, whimpering thing he seemed!"'You pull yourself together,' I said, and tried to pat him on theback, and . . . my confounded hand went through him! By that time,you know, I wasn't nearly so--massive as I had been on the landing.I got the queerness of it full. I remember snatching back my hand outof him, as it were, with a little thrill, and walking over to thedressing-table. 'You pull yourself together,' I said to him, 'andtry.' And in order to encourage and help him I began to try as well.""What!" said Sanderson, "the passes?""Yes, the passes.""But--" I said, moved by an idea that eluded me for a space."This is interesting," said Sanderson, with his finger in his pipe-bowl. "You mean to say this ghost of yours gave away--""Did his level best to give away the whole confounded barrier? Yes.""He didn't," said Wish; "he couldn't. Or you'd have gone there too.""That's precisely it," I said, finding my elusive idea put into wordsfor me."That is precisely it," said Clayton, with thoughtful eyes upon thefire.For just a little while there was silence."And at last he did it?" said Sanderson."At last he did it. I had to keep him up to it hard, but he did itat last--rather suddenly. He despaired, we had a scene, and thenhe got up abruptly and asked me to go through the whole performance,slowly, so that he might see. 'I believe,' he said, 'if I could seeI should spot what was wrong at once.' And he did. 'I know,'he said. 'What do you know?' said I. 'I know,' he repeated.Then he said, peevishly, 'I can't do it if you look at me--I reallycan't; it's been that, partly, all along. I'm such a nervous fellowthat you put me out.' Well, we had a bit of an argument. NaturallyI wanted to see; but he was as obstinate as a mule, and suddenlyI had come over as tired as a dog--he tired me out. 'All right,'I said, 'I won't look at you,' and turned towards the mirror,on the wardrobe, by the bed.He started off very fast. I tried to follow him by looking inthe looking-glass, to see just what it was had hung. Round wenthis arms and his hands, so, and so, and so, and then with a rushcame to the last gesture of all--you stand erect and open out yourarms--and so, don't you know, he stood. And then he didn't! He didn't!He wasn't! I wheeled round from the looking-glass to him. There wasnothingl I was alone, with the flaring candles and a staggering mind.What had happened? Had anything happened? Had I been dreaming? . . .And then, with an absurd note of finality about it, the clock uponthe landing discovered the moment was ripe for striking one. So!--Ping!And I was as grave and sober as a judge, with all my champagne andwhisky gone into the vast serene. Feeling queer, you know--confoundedlyqueer! Queer! Good Lord!"He regarded his cigar-ash for a moment. "That's all that happened," hesaid."And then you went to bed?" asked Evans."What else was there to do?"I looked Wish in the eye. We wanted to scoff, and there was something,something perhaps in Clayton's voice and manner, that hampered ourdesire."And about these passes?" said Sanderson."I believe I could do them now.""Oh!" said Sanderson, and produced a penknife and set himself to grubthe dottel out of the bowl of his clay."Why don't you do them now?" said Sanderson, shutting his pen-knifewith a click."That's what I'm going to do," said Clayton."They won't work," said Evans."If they do--" I suggested."You know, I'd rather you didn't," said Wish, stretching out his legs."Why?" asked Evans."I'd rather he didn't," said Wish."But he hasn't got 'em right," said Sanderson, plugging too muchtobacco in his pipe."All the same, I'd rather he didn't," said Wish.We argued with Wish. He said that for Clayton to go through thosegestures was like mocking a serious matter. "But you don't believe--?"I said. Wish glanced at Clayton, who was staring into the fire, weighingsomething in his mind. "I do--more than half, anyhow, I do," said Wish."Clayton," said I, "you're too good a liar for us. Most of it wasall right. But that disappearance . . . happened to be convincing.Tell us, it's a tale of cock and bull."He stood up without heeding me, took the middle of the hearthrug,and faced me. For a moment he regarded his feet thoughtfully, andthen for all the rest of the time his eyes were on the opposite wall,with an intent expression. He raised his two hands slowly to the levelof his eyes and so began. . . .Now, Sanderson is a Freemason, a member of the lodge of the Four Kings,which devotes itself so ably to the study and elucidation of all themysteries of Masonry past and present, and among the students of thislodge Sanderson is by no means the least. He followed Clayton's motionswith a singular interest in his reddish eye. "That's not bad," he said,when it was done. "You really do, you know, put things together,Clayton, in a most amazing fashion. But there's one little detail out.""I know," said Clayton. "I believe I could tell you which.""Well?""This," said Clayton, and did a queer little twist and writhingand thrust of the hands."Yes.""That, you know, was what he couldn't get right," said Clayton."But how do you--?""Most of this business, and particularly how you invented it, I don'tunderstand at all," said Sanderson, "but just that phase--I do."He reflected. "These happen to be a series of gestures--connectedwith a certain branch of esoteric Masonry. Probably you know.Or else--how?" He reflected still further. "I do not see I can doany harm in telling you just the proper twist. After all, if you know,you know; if you don't, you don't.""I know nothing," said Clayton, "except what the poor devil letout last night.""Well, anyhow," said Sanderson, and placed his churchwarden verycarefully upon the shelf over the fireplace. Then very rapidly hegesticulated with his hands."So?" said Clayton, repeating."So," said Sanderson, and took his pipe in hand again."Ah, now," said Clayton, "I can do the whole thing--right."He stood up before the waning fire and smiled at us all. But I thinkthere was just a little hesitation in his smile. "If I begin--"he said."I wouldn't begin," said Wish."It's all right!" said Evans. "Matter is indestructible. You don'tthink any jiggery-pokery of this sort is going to snatch Claytoninto the world of shades. Not it! You may try, Clayton, so far asI'm concerned, until your arms drop off at the wrists.""I don't believe that," said Wish, and stood up and put his armon Clayton's shoulder. "You've made me half believe in that storysomehow, and I don't want to see the thing done!""Goodness!" said I, "here's Wish frightened!""I am," said Wish, with real or admirably feigned intensity. "Ibelieve that if he goes through these motions right he'll go.""He'll not do anything of the sort," I cried. "There's only one wayout of this world for men, and Clayton is thirty years from that.Besides . . . And such a ghost! Do you think--?"Wish interrupted me by moving. He walked out from among our chairsand stopped beside the tole and stood there. "Clayton," he said,"you're a fool."Clayton, with a humorous light in his eyes, smiled back at him."Wish," he said, "is right and all you others are wrong. I shall go.I shall get to the end of these passes, and as the last swish whistlesthrough the air, Presto!--this hearthrug will be vacant, the roomwill be blank amazement, and a respectably dressed gentleman offifteen stone will plump into the world of shades. I'm certain.So will you be. I decline to argue further. Let the thing be tried.""No," said Wish, and made a step and ceased, and Clayton raisedhis hands once more to repeat the spirit's passing.By that time, you know, we were all in a state of tension--largelybecause of the behaviour of Wish. We sat all of us with our eyes onClayton--I, at least, with a sort of tight, stiff feeling about meas though from the back of my skull to the middle of my thighs mybody had been changed to steel. And there, with a gravity that wasimperturbably serene, Clayton bowed and swayed and waved his handsand arms before us. As he drew towards the end one piled up, onetingled in one's teeth. The last gesture, I have said, was to swingthe arms out wide open, with the face held up. And when at last heswung out to this closing gesture I ceased even to breathe. It wasridiculous, of course, but you know that ghost-story feeling. It wasafter dinner, in a queer, old shadowy house. Would he, after all--?There he stood for one stupendous moment, with his arms open and hisupturned face, assured and bright, in the glare of the hanging lamp.We hung through that moment as if it were an age, and then came fromall of us something that was half a sigh of infinite relief and half areassuring "No!" For visibly--he wasn't going. It was all nonsense.He had told an idle story, and carried it almost to conviction, thatwas all! . . . And then in that moment the face of Clayton, changed.It changed. It changed as a lit house changes when its lights aresuddenly extinguished. His eyes were suddenly eyes that were fixed,his smile was frozen on his lips, and he stood there still. He stoodthere, very gently swaying.That moment, too, was an age. And then, you know, chairs were scraping,things were falling, and we were all moving. His knees seemed to give,and he fell forward, and Evans rose and caught him in his arms. . . .It stunned us all. For a minute I suppose no one said a coherentthing. We believed it, yet could not believe it. . . . I came outof a muddled stupefaction to find myself kneeling beside him,and his vest and shirt were torn open, and Sanderson's hand layon his heart. . . .Well--the simple fact before us could very well wait our convenience;there was no hurry for us to comprehend. It lay there for an hour;it lies athwart my memory, black and amazing still, to this day.Clayton had, indeed, passed into the world that lies so near toand so far from our own, and he had gone thither by the only roadthat mortal man may take. But whether he did indeed pass thereby that poor ghost's incantation, or whether he was stricken suddenlyby apoplexy in the midst of an idle tale--as the coroner's jury wouldhave us believe--is no matter for my judging; it is just one of thoseinexplicable riddles that must remain unsolved until the final solutionof all things shall come. All I certainly know is that, in the verymoment, in the very instant, of concluding those passes, he changed,and staggered, and fell down before us--dead!
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