The Ghost and Mrs. Muir (7 page)

He stood on the grass looking up at her, a fat little boy with round glasses on a sharp little nose, and mouse-coloured hair growing stiffly up from his high forehead. He was so good and so conscientious, and her first-born and a son. Why, then, did she not appreciate him more? And suddenly the reason came to her—he was Eva’s child far more than hers; he was Eva herself, in a grey shirt and shorts, and that was a depressing thought, to have produced a man like a maiden aunt, if only in miniature.

“Darling!” she said with fierce affection as the unwelcome truth took a firmer grip on her consciousness, “darling, what a lovely lake you made!”

“It wasn’t a lake, it was a reservoir,” said Cyril in his precise voice, “and Anna wouldn’t help me. Did the postman come?” he continued, his gaze on the white envelope sticking up from his mother’s pocket.

“Yes, dear,” said Lucy.

That was typical of Cyril, approaching everything obliquely. There was no direct communication between them, and the only comfort in that was, that in this, at least, he was unlike his aunt, who had the directness of a sledgehammer in her questioning.

“Hello, mummy!” cried another voice behind her.

Turning, Lucy saw her daughter clinging to the top of the wall. With a last scrambling effort the child hooked a brown leg over, and, swinging herself upright, groped in the elastic of her cotton knickers and pulled out a handful of broken shells.

“Oh,” she said in dismay, “I scrunched them getting over the beastly wall. There was a mother-of-pearl one, and a yellow periwinkle, and a little pink one like a fan, and I got them specially for you, mummy dear, but never mind,” she said, flinging the fragments to the wind, “there are plenty more. I’ll get you lovelier ones to-morrow. I’m hungry, what’s for supper?”

“Salad and cream cheese, brown bread and butter and honey, milk, cake, and fruit,” replied Lucy.

“Scrumptious,” said Anna. “You do think of the goodest food.” She snuggled down like a puppy beside her mother on the top of the wall, noticing in her turn the letter in her pocket. “You’ve had a letter,” she said. “Who from?”

“From Aunt Eva,” replied Lucy, trying to keep prejudice far away from her speaking.

“Oh, golly!” said Anna. “What does she want?”

“I haven’t read it yet,” replied her mother. “My hands were rather earthy,” she added lamely under Cyril’s steady gaze. “I’ll read it at supper.”

The letter was not a long one. It merely stated that everyone was well and that the writer intended to come and stay on August the fourteenth.

“But she can’t,” burst out Anna, “there’s no bedroom for her.”

“I will write and explain that we have no spare room,” said Lucy, but without any real hope in her heart.

Nor did that fact deter Eva Muir. She would sleep, she wrote by return, anywhere, on a divan in the sitting-room if need be, and she would come on August the fourteenth by the train arriving at Whitecliff at 5:45 p.m.

This is awful, thought Lucy as she undressed the night after she had received this second letter.

“Write and tell her you have smallpox,” came Captain Gregg’s advice.

“That would be useless,” said Lucy. “She would come and nurse me—nothing would put Eva off once she has made up her mind. And the trouble is that I have only just got used to making up mine for myself. She’ll ruin everything. Either I shall have to go her way or there will be scenes——”

“You never seem to mind about making scenes with me,” said Captain Gregg.

“Yes, but you’re different,” explained Lucy. “I can’t see you getting red and ugly with anger. I shall give in to Eva, I know I shall, and be ‘poor little Lucy’ again, and I do despise ‘poor little Lucy’ so, weak little fool!”

“Leave her to me, me dear, leave her to me,” said Captain Gregg. “I’ve had female passengers like her aboard my ships many a time and I sorted them—no woman tried to run my ship for me more than once.”

“No!” said Lucy. “You must promise me you’ll never speak to her, you must promise me! She’d have me out of the house at once if she knew about you, indeed she would. Or she’d have me in a mental home, for she doesn’t believe in ghosts.”

“She’ll believe in me all right,” Captain Gregg assured her.

“No, she mustn’t,” protested Lucy. “She must never know about you at all.”

“The damned cheek of the woman,” growled the captain, “marching into my house without a by-your-leave!”

“Of course she thinks it’s my house,” said Lucy, “and she always has considered that what is mine is hers.”

“Well, this time she’ll find she’s mistaken,” said the captain.

“No,” said Lucy, “you must promise not to come near me till she has gone away.”

“I’ll do no such thing,” replied the captain.

“Oh, dear me!” said Lucy. “What am I to do?”

“You do nothing,” said the captain with a sudden chuckle, “you leave the doing to me.”

“What you ought to do,” said Eva, “is to start a few hens. You’ve plenty of room out at the back, and you could sell the eggs.”

“I don’t know anything about hens,” said Lucy.

“Well, you could learn, my dear child, you could learn,” said Eva.

She had not been in the house twenty-four hours, but already she had rearranged Lucy’s entire way of living to her own satisfaction, or rather she had arranged it in her own mind, for dear little Lucy was proving surprisingly obstinate about carrying out her advice. Obviously she needed shaking up. Why had she joined no clubs, no societies? It was, of course, right and fitting that she should mourn for her departed husband, but there was a happy medium even in mourning, and it was all wrong that she should be living the life of a recluse. People would think her odd, and there was no greater handicap for children than the background of an odd home.

She must go out and make friends, play tennis and golf, and join a bridge club. And the first thing she must do was to replan the house. There was no schoolroom for the children.
Surely Lucy must know that it was essential for children to have a place of their own, and though, of course, they each had a bedroom furnished as a bed-sitting room, it was most unhealthy to spend too much time in the rooms in which they slept, and wasn’t it rather selfish of dear little Lucy to have chosen the best room in the house for her own bedroom? That should be the schoolroom, and Lucy and Anna could share the back bedroom, and “such a very strange way to furnish your room,” said Eva, marching into Lucy’s privacy without knocking, “and what on earth do you want with that great telescope?”

“I like to look at the stars,” said Lucy weakly.

“You never wanted to look at stars in Whitchester,” said Eva. “I should leave that to the astrologers, my dear, or you may go very odd indeed, and really, Lucy, do you think it quite nice to have such a large portrait of a strange man in your bedroom? Wouldn’t it be in better taste to have an enlargement made of that excellent cabinet photograph of dear Edwin? And why have you nothing but pictures of ships on the walls? And no photographs anywhere, only a couple of miniatures of the children?” What had become of that expensive likeness of Eva herself, taken only last Christmas, and presented to her in the engraved silver frame? And why had she taken to sleeping in a plain iron bedstead? What had become of the pretty brass bed Aunt Henry had given her as a wedding present?

Lucy could only shake her head. She had always hated the brass bed, decorated with its obese, gilt cupids, and had sold it to a second-hand dealer for a very moderate sum, but her head ached under the onslaught of Eva’s bludgeoning words, and she could say nothing.

“There, there,” said Eva, clapping her on the back with a firm hand, “you must pull yourself together, my dear, you
must buck up. Edwin wouldn’t like you to give way like this. I see that my place is here for the present—no, don’t thank me, I have always known my duty and have never shirked it. But if you don’t mind, I will have the divan moved out of the dining-room into Anna’s room; I never did like the idea of sleeping in the same room as one eats.”

Lucy did mind. She minded very much, and so did Anna.

“She snores, mummy,” protested Anna, “and she makes the room smell of tooth-paste and cold cream, and she asks me problems in arithmetic while I’m dressing. It isn’t fair! Why does she have to be here when we were so happy without her?”

Why, indeed, thought Lucy. The only one contented in her presence was Cyril, for Eva loved collections and so did he. Together they coursed the hills and valleys about Whitecliff, with a green butterfly net and a cyanide of potassium killing-bottle, snaring red admirals, fritillaries, sulphur-yellows, and tortoise-shells. All the fleeting loveliness that fluttered like dancing flower petals in the sun was brought home in triumph, and their fragile wings were stretched out in stiff crucifixion on the setting boards and speared in a collection of death in a neat little cabinet. In the same way they tramped for miles gathering flowers, squashing the results flat between blotting paper in a great wooden press, labelling the faded corpses with dead Latin names.

“He’s so keen,” said Eva after one such expedition, “and I must say I do like keenness. That’s where you fail, Lucy, you are not keen.”

“I am, about my own things,” said Lucy, “but I prefer growing things to taking life.”

“Taking life!” repeated Eva. “You talk as if I were a murderess!”

“Well, aren’t you?” said Lucy.

“My dear child!” said Eva. “A few flowers and insects! Where is your sense of proportion? Besides, think what a lot Cyril is learning.”

“He could learn it just as well out of books,” said Lucy, “without destroying so much beauty. Oh, I know it’s necessary for scientists to destroy life in order to preserve it, but I cannot see that it’s essential for little boys to make these morgues of birds’ eggs and butterflies and——”

“I must start you on some knitting,” interrupted Eva. “Knitting is wonderful for the nerves, and I think you should take a tonic. You aren’t yourself—I wrote to Helen yesterday about you—‘dear little Lucy is not at all herself,’ I said, ‘and I shall stay until she is.’ ”

“I can’t bear it, I can’t bear it,” wailed Lucy into her pillow that night, “and as for you,” she went on, raising her head and looking across at the portrait of Captain Gregg, glinting sardonically down at her in the moonlight that streamed through her uncurtained windows, “as for you, you’re no help at all. You said I was to leave Eva to you, and you haven’t been near me for a week!”

“If you will remember our last conversation, you implored me not to come near you till that woman had gone away,” said the captain’s voice.

“And you said you’d do no such thing,” said Lucy.

“Perverse little creature, aren’t you?” The captain chuckled. “Well, if you ask me nicely, perhaps I’ll help you after all.”

“What will you do?” asked Lucy, doubtful again now that she had forced the issue.

“Never you mind, that’s my business.”

“You must tell me,” said Lucy, “you must tell me,” and
stopped abruptly and lay flat in the bed at the sound of a door opening across the passage and footsteps shuffling in bedroom slippers.

“Are you all right?” asked Eva, coming into the room.

“Quite, thank you,” said Lucy, pulling the sheet up to her chin and peering over it at the square figure of Eva in a pale pink kimono, her hair in a tight thin plait tied with white tape, her face smeared with cold cream shining pallidly in the moonlight, her short-sighted eyes searching about the room.

“I thought I heard you cry out,” said Eva.

“Did you?” remarked Lucy nervously. She could feel the captain’s presence almost like a buffer between her and Eva, and she trembled under the bed-clothes lest he should break into the conversation.

“You must have been having a nightmare,” said Eva, settling herself on the end of the bed.

“No,” said Lucy, “I wasn’t asleep.”

“But I distinctly heard you cry out,” persisted Eva. “ ‘You must tell me,’ I thought I heard you call that out twice.”

“It must have been your imagination,” said Lucy, “voices—you know—like Joan of Arc——”

“My dear child!” exclaimed Eva. “What an idea! I can assure you that
I
have my imagination completely under control—voices indeed! Really, Lucy, I am quite worried about you. You must get away for a bit, you must go on a cruise.”

“A cruise!” said Lucy.

“Yes,” replied Eva, “lots of people go on them and have loads of fun. It would do you all the good in the world—stop all this brooding nonsense. You could go to the West Indies or the Greek Islands and meet the nicest people—you’d love it.”

“Tell her to go on a cruise herself,” roared Captain Gregg, “and drown herself.”

Lucy closed her eyes and waited for pandemonium to break over her head; but all was quiet, and she opened them again to see Eva sitting there quite placidly as if she were deaf.

“Of course she’s deaf,” said the captain, “spiritually deaf. She can’t hear me—she’s only tuned in to earth and herself. And if you have anything to say to me, think it. There’s no need for you to speak to me out loud, I can hear all you think. And don’t you be bullied into going on any blasted cruise.”

“I won’t,” began Lucy out loud, and stopped abruptly.

“My dear Lucy, how can you possibly tell whether you will enjoy it or not till you’ve been on it,” said Eva tartly, “and I don’t think it’s very polite to speak in that tone to me when I’m only trying to help you.”

“It’s very good of you, Eva,” replied Lucy, “but I don’t need any help.”

“That’s the ticket,” put in the captain.

“I am perfectly well and happy here,” continued Lucy, emboldened by the captain’s encouragement. “All I want is to be left alone to live my life as I wish and not as other people think best for themselves.”

“And put that in your pipe and smoke it, madam,” said the captain triumphantly.

“Really, Lucy, I can’t think what has happened to you lately,” said Eva. “You used to be such a sweet little thing. Lady Smythe always used to say to me, ‘I’m so fond of your sister-in-law, she’s such a sweet little thing’—I doubt if she would say so now.”

“Who cares a damn what Lady Smythe thinks or doesn’t think?” roared the captain. “Go on, Lucy, tell her that.”