第16章

It was very sad, I quite understand, my dear lady.Your lovers both were killed, and you retired to a convent.Believe me, I am sincerely sorry for you, but why waste every night renewing the whole painful experience? Would it not be better forgotten? Good Heavens, madam, suppose we living folk were to spend our lives wailing and wringing our hands because of the wrongs done to us when we were children? It is all over now.Had he lived, and had you married him, you might not have been happy.I do not wish to say anything unkind, but marriages founded upon the sincerest mutual love have sometimes turned out unfortunately, as you must surely know.

Do take my advice.Talk the matter over with the young men themselves.Persuade them to shake hands and be friends.Come in, all of you, out of the cold, and let us have some reasonable talk.

Why seek you to trouble us, you poor pale ghosts? Are we not your children? Be our wise friends.Tell me, how loved the young men in your young days? how answered the maidens? Has the world changed much, do you think? Had you not new women even then? girls who hated the everlasting tapestry frame and spinning-wheel? Your father's servants, were they so much worse off than the freemen who live in our East-end slums and sew slippers for fourteen hours a day at a wage of nine shillings a week? Do you think Society much improved during the last thousand years? Is it worse? is it better?

or is it, on the whole, about the same, save that we call things by other names? Tell me, what have YOU learned?

Yet might not familiarity breed contempt, even for ghosts.

One has had a tiring day's shooting.One is looking forward to one's bed.As one opens the door, however, a ghostly laugh comes from behind the bed-curtains, and one groans inwardly, knowing what is in store for one: a two or three hours' talk with rowdy old Sir Lanval--he of the lance.We know all his tales by heart, and he will shout them.Suppose our aunt, from whom we have expectations, and who sleeps in the next room, should wake and overhear! They were fit and proper enough stories, no doubt, for the Round Table, but we feel sure our aunt would not appreciate them:--that story about Sir Agravain and the cooper's wife! and he always will tell that story.

Or imagine the maid entering after dinner to say--"Oh, if you please, sir, here is the veiled lady.""What, again!" says your wife, looking up from her work.

"Yes, ma'am; shall I show her up into the bedroom?""You had better ask your master," is the reply.The tone is suggestive of an unpleasant five minutes so soon as the girl shall have withdrawn, but what are you to do?

"Yes, yes, show her up," you say, and the girl goes out, closing the door.

Your wife gathers her work together, and rises.

"Where are you going?" you ask.

"To sleep with the children," is the frigid answer.

"It will look so rude," you urge."We must be civil to the poor thing; and you see it really is her room, as one might say.She has always haunted it.""It is very curious," returns the wife of your bosom, still more icily, "that she never haunts it except when you are down here.

Where she goes when you are in town I'm sure I don't know."This is unjust.You cannot restrain your indignation.

"What nonsense you talk, Elizabeth," you reply; "I am only barely polite to her.""Some men have such curious notions of politeness," returns Elizabeth."But pray do not let us quarrel.I am only anxious not to disturb you.Two are company, you know.I don't choose to be the third, that's all." With which she goes out.

And the veiled lady is still waiting for you up-stairs.You wonder how long she will stop, also what will happen after she is gone.

I fear there is no room for you, ghosts, in this our world.You remember how they came to Hiawatha--the ghosts of the departed loved ones.He had prayed to them that they would come back to him to comfort him, so one day they crept into his wigwam, sat in silence round his fireside, chilled the air for Hiawatha, froze the smiles of Laughing Water.

There is no room for you, oh you poor pale ghosts, in this our world.Do not trouble us.Let us forget.You, stout elderly matron, your thin locks turning grey, your eyes grown weak, your chin more ample, your voice harsh with much scolding and complaining, needful, alas! to household management, I pray you leave me.I loved you while you lived.How sweet, how beautiful you were.I see you now in your white frock among the apple-blossom.But you are dead, and your ghost disturbs my dreams.

I would it haunted me not.

You, dull old fellow, looking out at me from the glass at which Ishave, why do you haunt me? You are the ghost of a bright lad Ionce knew well.He might have done much, had he lived.I always had faith in him.Why do you haunt me? I would rather think of him as I remember him.I never imagined he would make such a poor ghost.