The Ghost and Mrs. Muir (2 page)

Mrs. Muir was a little woman. Every one was agreed upon that point. Where others were merely referred to as Mrs. Brown and Mrs. Smith, she was invariably spoken of as “little Mrs. Muir” or “dear little Mrs. Muir,” and latterly as “poor little Mrs. Muir,” for her husband, that upright member of the church and indifferent architect, had died suddenly, leaving her with two children and an inadequate income. So inadequate, in fact, that she was forced to sell the pseudo-Elizabethan house, which he had built for her as a wedding present, in order to meet the very real debts which poured in on every side, threatening to swamp her and carry away the familiar landmarks of her married life. An opposing torrent of advice poured down on her from her husband’s relatives and her acquaintances, flinging her future this way and that, now into three-roomed flats, now into semi-detached villas, now into hat shops or tea shops, and now into housekeeping for single gentlemen, while the children were swept away from her into charity schools, institutions, and even adoption.

“This,” said little Mrs. Muir, awakening one morning to a beam of March sunlight striking through the eastern window across her face, “this has got to stop. I must settle things
for myself.” And as if to encourage her in her independence, a blackbird’s brave song, full of spring and new beginnings, floated up to her from the garden below.

“I will leave Whitchester,” she said aloud, and suddenly sitting up in bed and flinging aside the blankets, she said again, “but I
will
leave Whitchester! Why didn’t I think of it before! It’s the only solution.”

Such a sense of freedom possessed her that she, too, sang as she dressed, snatches of melodies that she had not sung since she was a girl of seventeen, and Edwin Muir had come to her father’s house in the country to rebuild the library wing, and had remained to court her. There had been no eligible young men in Nether-Whitley, and she had been reading a novel at the time in which the hero had had a fair lock of hair falling over his forehead. Edwin’s hair had grown in the same way, and her absent-minded father, who lived mainly in the past among the Greek poets, was no authority on hair-cuts. The novel finished with a kiss in the rose garden, and the magic words, “and so they lived happily ever after,” and Lucy Muir, having been kissed in the orchard, could see no other ending to her own romance. But the hero in that book had not been an only son with a widowed mother and two strong-minded sisters living almost on the door-step. Not that her life had been unhappy, it had just not been her life at all. It had been old Mrs. Muir’s life, full of medicine cupboards, and emulsions to be rubbed on Edwin’s chest if he should clear his throat, and tonics to be measured out three times a day after meals if he should look a little pale, and red flannel protectors and pink knitted bed-socks. It had been Helen Gould’s life, and Helen, Edwin’s younger sister, had made her join all the clubs in the town, badminton clubs, croquet clubs, archery clubs, card clubs; and it had been Eva Muir’s life, with choral societies, dramatic societies, and literary societies. What
was left after all these activities and her household duties had been Edwin’s. Even at night her life had been entirely Edwin’s, and not her own, in the large double bed where his unfortunate habit of snoring shook even her dreams into his pattern. They left her nothing of her own. They chose her servants, her dresses, her hats, her books, her pleasures, even her illnesses. “Dear little Lucy looks pale, she must drink Burgundy,” and “Poor little Lucy seems to be losing weight, she must take cod-liver oil.” Lucy, who hated loud noises and argument and violence, let them have their own way, even with the children, Cyril and Anna. Indeed she had never had time to think before that it was not her way, too; only now, in the solitude from social activity that her sisters-in-law permitted her in her bereavement, was she coming to the realization that there were other ways of living that might be better suited to herself.

As soon as she had finished breakfast, before any intruders could arrive to trample on her new garden of independence, she put on the trailing black draperies, chosen for her by Helen, and hurried to the station.

“Where to, please?” asked the booking clerk as she hesitated outside the ticket-office window.

“To the sea,” replied Lucy on impulse. It would be quite a new thing to live by the sea, and so good for the children. What fun they would have, digging castles in the sand, paddling, bathing, with no nurses, no governesses, no aunts.…

“To Whitecliff?” asked the clerk patiently and for the second time.

“Yes, thank you, to Whitecliff,” replied Lucy.

It was one of those sunny, boisterous March days with great white clouds sailing across the blue sky, like full-rigged
galleons, and a wind that blew tiles off roofs, and hats off heads, and banged doors and slammed windows. The rude, rough day blew Lucy Muir, vainly attempting to grasp her hat, her handbag, her veil, and her skirts, in her two black-gloved hands, out of the station at Whitecliff, across the yard, round the corner into the main street, and into Itchen, Boles, and Coombe, house agents, with such strength, that she could only sit breathlessly on the red leather chair and lean on the wide desk that separated her from Mr. Coombe, junior partner, and stare helplessly at him, with no breath left for speaking.

“Was it a house that you were requiring?” asked Mr. Coombe politely, gazing at her through thick-lensed glasses.

Lucy Muir nodded. It was a small flat that she had had in mind, but at present she had not the means to tell him so.

“Ah!” said Mr. Coombe, and pulling a stout blue book towards him, he began to flick over the pages at a great rate, reading out the details of houses, mansions, and apparent palaces at such a speed that Lucy, though she was now in a position to speak, was unable to find a pause into which she could place so much as one word.

“Gull Cottage … three beds … two recep … bath … complete offices … gas … company’s water … small garden … charming site … ideally situated near bus route to shops on select cliff road … near church and schools … furnished … fifty-two pounds a year,” said Mr. Coombe and stopped abruptly.

“Fifty-two pounds a year for a furnished house!” repeated Lucy. “That’s very little to pay, surely—only a pound a week!”

“It’s an absurd price,” said Mr. Coombe crossly and slammed the book shut.

Furnished, thought Lucy rapidly, why that would save the expense of a big move, and I could sell all that heavy
mahogany and all those awful brass beds, and the palm trees and aspidistras, and those great china vases and——

“Laburnum Mount might suit you, or Beau Sejour,” said Mr. Coombe, opening a drawer and taking out a couple of Yale latchkeys.

“I should like to see Gull Cottage,” said Lucy.

“That wouldn’t suit you at all,” said Mr. Coombe firmly, “we’ll go to Beau Sejour first——”

“I wish to see Gull Cottage,” said Lucy, flushing. “It is the size that I require, and the price, though I can’t help feeling something must be wrong with it that it should be rented so low. Is it the drains?”

Mr. Coombe looked at her steadfastly for a moment without replying. A struggle seemed to be going on in his mind. Finally he reached, if not a decision, at least an armistice.

“No,” he said, “the drains are in perfect order. The owner lives in South America and is anxious to let it and get it off his hands.”

“We will go to Gull Cottage first,” said Lucy.

Mr. Coombe stared at her even more compellingly. She could almost see his thoughts, trying to swim out at her like pale goldfish from behind his glasses, as if he were trying to force some information into her mind by other means than words.

“I asked at the station, and they told me there were two house agents’ offices,” said Lucy, a little nervous at her own daring, but if this was a new life, she must begin at once to lead it in the way she meant to go on. “Perhaps they have Gull Cottage on their books, too.”

Mr. Coombe abruptly pulled open another drawer in his desk and took out a large iron doorkey.

“My car is outside,” he said, rising to his feet. “Since you are determined, I will drive you there myself.”

The little seaside resort of Whitecliff curved itself round the bay in a neat esplanade to bask in the sun. In the hollow behind the hotels and boarding-houses, behind the bandstand and bathing tents, lay the station and shops, the Town Hall, the fire and police stations, and a small neat garden, where an ancient cannon, commemorating some ancient war, slept like a fossilized monster in the middle of the flower-beds. Newly awakened daffodils were shaking their heads in the wind, which penetrated even to that sheltered spot.

To the east and the west of the town, white cliffs rose to the downland, and on the lower slopes stood the residential houses, the churches, and the schools. Mr. Coombe took the road to the east with his car, and Lucy, sitting beside him, gazed out with interest at all she set eyes on.

She remembered now, she had been to Whitecliff once before with Edwin and a prospective client, who had thought of turning an old windmill into a modern villa; but while the plans were yet in the drawing, he had bought a property in the Lake district instead, and Edwin had never come to Whitecliff again. Nor did the sisters-in-law favour the place, preferring the more fashionable and larger town of Whitmouth a few miles up the coast. On that brief visit, ten years ago, Whitecliff had not seemed of any significance to Lucy; now she looked with different observation at the rosy cheeks of the babies in their perambulators, at the sturdy limbs of the children playing on the shore, at the beach itself and the sea breaking on it, shaking off white plumes of spray in the wind, as if, in some way, it had already become part of her own living.

“Grammar schools,” said Mr. Coombe briefly, nodding to the left, where two red brick buildings, separated by a high red brick wall, stood in their asphalt play-grounds.

“They look very—suitable,” said Lucy.

“As good an education as you’ll get anywhere in the country,” said Mr. Coombe. “I went there myself.”

“How interesting,” said Lucy, “and the fees would be quite moderate, I dare say.”

“Quite,” agreed Mr. Coombe, “and they’re well endowed. You can win scholarships to almost any university, besides the school scholarships themselves.”

“Did you win one?” asked Lucy politely.

“Well, no, as a matter of fact there was no need,” replied Mr. Coombe. “I had this business waiting for me and I took my father’s place in it when I was twenty—this is Cliff Road,” he added, as he changed gear for the steeper slope that rose from the end of the esplanade. Comfortable houses in well-kept gardens stood back from the road on one side, and the cliff and the sea on the other.

“And this is Gull Cottage,” he said a few minutes later as he stopped the car in front of the last house in the road, which ended abruptly at the edge of the down, continuing on as a narrow, white footpath.

It was a small, grey stone house, standing at some distance from its larger neighbour. A grey stone wall curved out into a round bastion, dividing the house and garden from the road. A large bow-window with faded blue shutters looked out from the upper floor over the sea, as if it were a trap to catch the sun’s rays from every angle of the day.

“I like it,” said Lucy impulsively, peering out of the car window. “I like it very much indeed.”

Mr. Coombe switched off the engine. “You can’t,” he said almost aggressively, “possibly judge anything by the outside,” and made no move to leave the car and show her the inside of the property.

“I think I should point out to you,” he continued, “that for a single lady it is very isolated.”

“But I’m not single,” said Lucy, staring at him in astonishment, for surely anyone must realize that she, with her over-craped draperies, her black kid and jet, her whole appearance of black-edged cards and faded lilies, was a widow.

“You are, I imagine,” said Mr. Coombe more gently, “but recently widowed, which means that you will be living alone without a man’s protection.”

“But wherever I live I shall be just as unprotected,” said Lucy.

“But not so isolated,” said Mr. Coombe.

“In your book you call this house ideally situated,” said Lucy. “You read it out to me.”

“It is ideally situated, but not for a single lady,” persisted Mr. Coombe. “Do let me drive you to Beau Sejour.”

“After we have seen Gull Cottage,” said Lucy, and opened the door of the car at her side.

Mr. Coombe muttered something unintelligible beneath his breath, but he left the car and hurried round to help Lucy alight, continuing to hold her arm as he opened the gate and led her up the flagged path. It was obvious that he, too, was thinking, “Poor little thing,” as he disentangled her long, black veil from his coat button and held it down against the blustering wind.

The large key turned rustily in the old-fashioned lock, and the hinges of the faded blue door groaned as Mr. Coombe pushed it open. Facing the entrance, a staircase curved its way up to the floor above, and three dingy-white doors opened onto the square hall that was lit by a round window like a porthole. The doors stood open, and Lucy could see through to the kitchen at the back and the dining-room next to it. In the sitting-room on the right there was a black marble fireplace and over it an oil painting of a sea captain in his uniform. It was not a good painting; there was
a stiff woodenness about the hand clasping the too-brassy telescope, an almost strawberry redness about the square-jowled cheeks, a look of twisted wire about the curly dark hair, but perhaps in very contrast the vivid blue eyes stared down at her with such intense vitality that for one moment Lucy thought one of them had winked at her, in a manner most unbecoming in a stranger at any time, and quite improper when the one winked at was such a very black-draped widow.

“What is the painting of?” she asked Mr. Coombe, looking up as severely as she could at the painting as they entered the room, and hoping to subdue the twinkling blue eyes to their proper status of dead paint by speaking of the owner thus neutrally.