The Ghost and Mrs. Muir (8 page)

“I really don’t mind very much what Lady Smythe says about me,” said Lucy. “I don’t mind what any one says about me,” she went on recklessly, “because most gossip is only the evil in people’s own minds coming to the surface.”

“Splendid!” said the captain. “I didn’t know you had it in you, me dear.”

“Are you accusing me of having an evil mind?” demanded Eva angrily.

“Isn’t that typical of the woman,” said the captain, “reducing everything to the personal! She’s beginning to bore me, Lucy, let’s be rid of her.”

“Because if you are, you have only to say so plainly,” went on Eva, her voice rising. “I mean I like to have things cut and dried——” She broke off suddenly and pulled her kimono more closely about her. “What a draught!” she said peevishly. “Where can it be coming from on such a warm night? I’m chilled to the bone.”

“It’s me, madam,” said the captain, “and I wish it were a cyclone.”

“Oh, dear!” giggled Lucy childishly.

“I see nothing to laugh at in my being frozen to death,” snapped Eva, “nothing at all—but perhaps you think I have no sense of humour as well as an evil mind.”

“I—I’m not laughing at you,” said Lucy weakly as another gale of merriment shook her.

“Then what are you laughing at?” asked Eva.

But Lucy could not tell her.

“Hysteria,” declared Eva. “I shall take you to a doctor the first thing in the morning.” She rose stiffly from the bed and went out, shutting the door with ostentatious quiet behind her.

But she did not take Lucy to the doctor on the following morning, for the doctor came to see Eva instead. Her neck
was so stiff that she could not turn her head. Being unused to illness in herself, she made an impatient and most disagreeable invalid.

“Such draughts!” she complained. “This will be a terrible place in winter.”

“I don’t feel any draught,” said Lucy gently, “but then I’m really very strong.”

“Don’t overdo it,” Lucy told the captain that night, “I don’t want her bedridden.”

“And that’s all the thanks I get for the trouble I’ve taken,” he said with a twinkle in his voice, “but don’t you worry, me dear, I’ll have her out of here in the turn of a screw.”

Eva’s neck was better by the following day, but her constitution seemed to have suffered. It was true that she went butterfly-catching with Cyril, but she seemed unable to keep on her feet, and tripped over hidden roots and into bramble bushes, and finally into a stream, coming home wet to the skin.

“Did you go with them?” asked Lucy accusingly when the captain came to visit her that evening.

“I did,” he said, “I pushed her in. What an ungentle manly thing to do, but there are no gentlemen and ladies after death.”

“Only saints and schoolboys, it seems,” said Lucy severely. “Heaven wouldn’t seem to have done much for you though you’ve been there twelve years.”

“I keep telling you that there is no time in this life,” said the captain, “and that I am not a perfect specimen of an after-lifer, since half my time is spent here. But don’t let’s argue about that; our job at present is to get rid of Eva and live in peace again.”

Eva was made of tough fibre and it took another ten days to dislodge her, and there was a scene, so much dreaded by Lucy, before she left.

“You are mad to stay in this exposed house for the winter,” Eva said as she and Lucy sat over a fire in the sitting-room after dinner.

Though the coals glowed redly, a most inexplicable column of smoke poured into Eva’s face wherever she sat, making her cough and shed tears. She had rheumatism in her knees and a cold in her head, and was very angry with herself, and Lucy, and life.

“Look at me,” she went on crossly, “aching in every joint—and I am never ill at home.”

Lucy said nothing with such significance that it penetrated even through Eva’s insensitiveness.

“Yes, I will go there, and what’s more, I’ll stay there,” she snapped. “You’ll have to go on your bended knees ever to get me to visit you in this benighted house again, and if you all die of pneumonia this winter, don’t blame me.”

“The place seems to suit us, we are very well here,” said Lucy, trying not to sound too complacent as a fresh cloud of smoke poured over her sister-in-law.

“Wait,” gasped Eva, “wait—in the meantime I will be making enquiries about inexpensive flats in Whitchester.”

“For whom?” asked Lucy.

“For you, when you come to your senses,” replied Eva.

“I have come to them,” said Lucy quietly.

“Thoroughly selfish, that’s what you’ve become,” said Eva.

“Why?” asked Lucy, bending over the sock she was darning to hide her flushing cheeks. If only she could argue with Eva without all this heat and physical agitation! “Why am I selfish? Just because I am living as I like at last?”

“You have always lived as you liked,” declared Eva.

“No,” said Lucy swiftly, “I’ve lived as Edwin liked and his mother liked, and as you and Helen liked. Now at last I am going to be myself.”

“In spite of your poor children’s health and happiness,” said Eva hotly.

“Because of it,” said Lucy. “I want them to grow up with a true sense of values, and we are quite healthy here, and very happy when we are alone.”

“When you are
alone
—I see,” said Eva. “Well, I can take a hint better than most people, sensitive as I am. You want me to go—don’t deny it—you want to be rid of your own husband’s sister—don’t deny it, I say.”

Lucy said nothing, sitting over her darning, her fingers trembling so that the needle shook in her hands.

“Don’t deny it,” shouted Eva for the third time, losing all control.

“I am not denying it,” said Lucy very quietly.

For a moment Eva stared at her in such astonishment that Lucy herself could scarcely believe that she had found the courage to say such wounding words. “I’m sorry, Eva,” she said impulsively, “but it’s true—you can’t live other people’s lives for them. Go home and make something worth while of your own.”

“Oh, I’ll go,” said Eva, bundling her knitting together, rising to her feet and striding to the door, “I’ll go by the very first train in the morning.”

I wish that I didn’t feel so mean, said Lucy to herself as she leaned on her window-sill the following night, looking at the lights of Whitecliff, curling round like a line of fireflies
to meet the winking lighthouse on the point beyond. The scent of honeysuckle and roses and lavender came to her on the summer breeze, that yet held the crisp saltness of the sea, and though the feeling of unfairness rimmed her happiness with a dark border, it seemed to throw up the colour of her peace in very contrast.

“Why do you feel mean?” asked the captain’s voice.

“Well, Eva means so well,” said Lucy, “and I did hurt her—terribly. It must be so awful not to be necessary to anyone, and she does intend to be kind.”

“I doubt it,” replied Captain Gregg. “She wants her own way at all costs, which is the reason that she has never been necessary to anyone. God help us! What a woman!”

“Poor Eva!” said Lucy.

“Now, Lucia, don’t be sentimental,” the captain commanded, “you didn’t feel ‘poor Eva’ while she was here, and it’s entirely surface and false to feel it now she’s gone.”

“My name is Lucy,” she said.

“After yesterday I shall call you Lucia,” replied Captain Gregg firmly. “Lucy is a name with no guts in it—Lucy would never have routed that woman as Lucia did. I was proud of you.”

“If you hadn’t weakened her knees and her spirit I should never have been able to stand up to her,” said Lucy. “I’m afraid Cyril will miss her,” she went on, “she was very good to him.”

“If she’d stayed much longer, she’d have turned Cyril into a spoiled little prig and Anna into a revolutionary,” said the captain. “Cyril is a damned little prig by nature, but so far he’s not spoiled.”

“Please remember that Cyril is my son,” Lucy said.

“Oh, no, he’s not,” answered the captain, “he’s Edwin’s son, not yours at all, and it’s no good lying to me, my dear girl, even from loyalty. Cyril bores you and you know it.”

“He’s my son and I love him,” protested Lucy.

“You may love him, mothers are peculiar, but you don’t like him,” argued the captain, “not as you like Anna.”

“It’s very wrong to have favourites in a family,” Lucy said sententiously.

“Oh, don’t be so damn silly,” said Captain Gregg. “If you’re going to talk like an old-fashioned copybook I’m off.”

“Where to?” asked Lucy with interest. “I do think you might tell me something of your other existence.”

“Grow up a little more and perhaps I will,” said the captain.

“At least you can tell me if it’s a happy state,” persisted Lucy.

“That depends on the individual,” replied Captain Gregg. “If a man has lived on earth merely for earthly desires of ambition, possessions, drink, and women, he’ll have a hell of a time at first because he’ll find no means of satisfying his lusts—but here’s something for you to think about, Lucia. Have you ever heard of a happy ghost?”

“No,” replied Lucy.

“No,” said the captain, “and why not? Because only the unhappy return to earth—the haunted—that’s a new idea for you. The souls that return are haunted in the next state by what has happened on earth. The average after-lifer never wants to return.”

“But isn’t that very selfish?” asked Lucy. “I mean when they see their relations and friends weeping their hearts out for one word of reassurance and comfort, don’t you think they might come back just once to tell them all is well?”

“Why,” asked the captain, “when all that’s wanting is their own faith? That beats me every time,” he went on, “all these psalm-singing hypocrites who spend half their lives in church, imploring God Almighty to give them wings like
doves to fly to Paradise, and when their friends get their wings, they smother themselves in black crape and refer to the departed as ‘poor’—there’s no consistency in it and no sense! As for hauling them back every few minutes to dry their tears—well, me dear, think of the confusion. And there again this question of time comes into it, and a great deal more that, as I told you before, I couldn’t begin to attempt to put into earthly language, because there are no words for it.”

“You said just now that only the unhappy do return,” said Lucy. “Are you then so unhappy?”

“Not unhappy so much as angry,” the captain admitted. “I always did consider that suicide in the general case was about the most cowardly end any man could have, and I resented and continue to resent that I should be branded as a coward, and I also resent the fact that that fellow in South America should have what I intended for honest sea captains, and I am also a pig-headed idiot and very little advanced in after-life, though I may sound so to you.”

“I must say you don’t sound unhappy,” Lucy said, “nor morbid, nor supernatural. I don’t feel a bit shivery when you visit me.”

“Well, you soon will,” said the captain, “if you don’t hop into bed. There’s a sea-mist blowing up—I’d sooner sail a ship through a nor’easter than a fog in the Channel,” he went on as Lucy obediently turned away from the open window. “There’s haunting for you—ghosts of ships wailing their sirens, and you driving your own into nothingness, as if you’d gone over the edge of the world. Tuck yourself up now, like a good girl, and I’ll tell you about the time a steamer rammed us in a fog off The Nore, when I was an apprentice in sail.”

“How can I tuck myself up when I’m not undressed yet?” said Lucy.

“Well, go ahead and undress,” said the captain, “it won’t worry me.”

“I was thinking of myself,” said Lucy stiffly. “Will you please go away?”

“There’s no need for my going,” replied the captain, “clothes or the lack of them mean nothing to me.” There was a chuckle, followed by a long silence. Lucy tentatively removed her dress.

“You’ve pretty shoulders,” said the captain dispassionately, “and a damn fine figure.”

“Oh, dear!” said Lucy, seizing her dressing-gown from its hook and holding it in front of her. “Are you still there? I thought you’d gone.”

“You wear the wrong sort of clothes,” the captain went on imperturbably, “and far too many of them. No one would ever guess you were a miniature Venus de Milo in all that upholstery you drape over yourself—there’s no need to blush though pink cheeks become you.”

“You’re hateful,” said Lucy, putting her hands up to her burning face and thereby dropping the dressing-gown. She picked it up quickly and put it round her.

“Go away, you horrible man, go away,” she ordered.

“Now, now, Lucia, control,” said the captain soothingly, “there’s no need to fly into a tantrum. Bodies as bodies mean damn little to me as I’ve told you before. All this nonsense about nudity is blasted rot anyway.”

“Will you go?” Lucy said, her temper rising.

“Dammit, no!” said the captain, “but I’ll turn what you would call my back.”

There was another silence. Lucy turned off the light and finished her undressing. She put on her old-fashioned nightdress, with its frilled collar and cuffs, and she stood looking out at the stars and the bright path of moonlight stretched
across the dark water, till it seemed to her that she became part of something much greater than herself, in which there was no room for false pride, nor false modesty, nor false imaginings.

“Good night,” she said gently, “I’m sorry I was cross.”

“Oh, Lucia,” the captain said softly, “you are so little and so lovely. How I would have liked to have taken you to Norway and shown you the fiords in the midnight sun, and to China—what you’ve missed, Lucia, by being born too late to travel the Seven Seas with me! And what I’ve missed, too.”

Summer sailed its magnificent way into autumn and autumn into the shelter of winter’s harbouring, and life went on in growth and peace at Gull Cottage.

The children were happy at their schools. Cyril was top of his class, with distinction in Latin, and wanted a microscope for his Christmas present. Anna was bottom in her exams, danced a solo at the end of term entertainment, and wanted a gramophone. Christmas day was the happiest that Lucy had spent since she was herself a child. Nothing marred the day that began with stockings full of home-made offerings, and continued through turkey, plum pudding and crackers, and a carol service, and chestnuts roasted in the open fire after supper, to contented sleep, with the glittering, star-spangled Christmas tree spreading its fairy-tale branches over the hours as if it had, indeed, a magic power to transform even dishwashing into romance.