The Ghost of Opalina

by Peggy Bacon

  When evening came, one of the chambermaids pointed out the door to the paneled room and told Lily to go and turn down the bed. In her nervous haste to get away, the chambermaid forgot to warn the girl to carry a lighted candle when she went. So Lily came in and felt along the wall, in a vain effort to find the light switch.

  The kittens and I were in the old red chair, and the back of the chair was turned toward the door, so that a soft light circled the chair back, like the halo around a total eclipse of the sun. As she stepped around to see what caused the light, Lily’s eyes fell on the contents of the chair. She fled, screaming at the top of her lungs all the way to the downstairs hail. Everyone in the Inn came on the run, the boarders deserting their dinners, the servants their duties, to hear her wild account of the horrible beast, blazing away in a chair like the devil himself! Lily was leaving the first thing tomorrow! She wouldn’t be able to sleep all night for thinking of the terrible sight she’d seen!

  Next morning, Lily wasn’t the only one to leave the Pankey Inn by the early train. She was accompanied by another chambermaid, the second cook and two of the waitresses. But before they left, while the staff were having breakfast, a bright young man popped into the servants’ dining room to interview Lily for the local paper. He took down everything she said in shorthand; and when the paper came out on the following day, it carried a sensational report of the gruesome ghost that haunted the Pankey Inn. Lily had made me a gigantic beast, equipped with tusks and breathing fire and smoke — a combination dragon and saber-toothed tiger! After that write-up, Miss Pankey couldn’t persuade a single soul in the whole countryside to take a job at the Inn.

  The Pankey Inn was now so short of help that the servants who had stayed were overworked. Wearying, they dropped off, one by one. So did the boarders, since the Pankey Inn grew daily more neglected and forlorn. Then the chef gave notice. That was the end. The few remaining servants and boarders departed, and Miss Pankey suddenly found herself alone.

  All alone in that great big silent building, with the vacant bedrooms, halls and corridors, the lofty hollow- sounding drawing rooms! All alone she was, poor Clara Pankey, except for Pettijohn and Crackerjack and, of course, myself.

  Not that I was any comfort to her! Though she hadn’t believed the ghost stories, she knew that something had frightened Lily and old Mrs. Wicket, and possibly Dr. Topplegate as well. With everyone else gone, for the first time Miss Pankey couldn’t help feeling ill at ease at the thought of sleeping in the paneled room. So she moved her belongings out of the wing to a bedroom over in the main part of the house.

  At dusk she went to the huge empty kitchen where, for a change, nothing whatever was cooking. Calling Pettijohn and Crackerjack, she gave them a saucer of scraps and a bowl of milk. She made herself tea and toast. Then she sat by the parlor window gazing out upon the darkening scene alone — for the kittens had run upstairs.

  It had commenced to rain, which was depressing. Miss Pankey sat there wondering what she could do to earn her living now that the Inn had failed — wondering if she could face rattling around all by herself in this enormous place — wondering, too, if there was a chance of selling it. Who would wish to buy a haunted house?

  The rain was coming down harder. Night had fallen, and now Miss Pankey heard a coughing sound. A battered old Ford was lurching along the drive. It sputtered and shook itself like a wet dog and came to a halt at the end of the front path.

  A man got out and peered at the sign which hung from the limb of a tree by the drive: The Pankey Inn. He opened the car door for a woman and child, and all three walked up the path.

  Miss Pankey switched on the lights and opened the door.

  “Can you take us in for the night?” the man inquired.

  “I’m sorry. The Inn is closed. It closed today.”

  “Oh dear! We can’t go any further tonight. We’ve driven all day — all summer, as a matter of fact. We started out from California. Couldn’t you manage to put us up for the night?”

  “The servants are gone. I’m here entirely alone, and there’s nothing to eat in the house.”

  “Oh, never mind that! We have some food in the car, and we’re used to roughing it. We’ve been camping out all the way across the continent. It’s raining and we’re all awfully tired. Please let us in!”

  Kind Miss Pankey couldn’t well refuse. In they came and introduced themselves: Bruno Britt, artist; Amanda, his wife, and Bruno, junior, nicknamed Bingo — an odd-looking group. Mr. Britt’s hair was too long, his wife’s was too short, and the boy’s eyes were dreamy and absentminded, and their clothes were unlike any Miss Pankey had ever seen before. She led them upstairs to a double bedroom.

  “It’s a lovely room,” said Amanda Britt wistfully, “but it looks expensive. We can’t afford much.”

  Miss Pankey sighed. “I hardly think I can charge you anything. You see, there’s nobody to wait on you and the place is dusty. Here’s a connecting room that will do for the child.”

  “One room is all we need,” Amanda said. “Bingo doesn’t like to sleep in a bed. He’s used to a sleeping bag.”

  “He may have a room to himself, at any rate,” Miss Pankey said.

  “I don’t want that room, thank you,” said the boy.

  “Bingo will find himself a place to sleep,” said his father. “I’ll go and fetch the things from the car.”

  “At least I won’t be alone in the house tonight,” Miss Pankey said to herself, as she watched Mr. Britt busily piling the family chattels in the hail. Their possessions consisted of well-worn camp equipment, an easel and a sketch box, a couple of duffel bags and a stack of dilapidated fairy books.

  The Britts were quick to make themselves at home. Amanda carried the duffel bags upstairs. Bingo came after her, dragging his sleeping bag. While his mother unpacked, he raced through the halls, opening and closing doors, one after another, till it sounded as if the Inn was full of people.

  “He’s deciding where he wants to sleep tonight,” Mr. Britt explained to Miss Pankey in passing. He carried a small oil stove and a basket of groceries out to the kitchen and started cooking a meal.

  A delicious odor spread through the downstairs rooms. It made Miss Pankey hungry for something heartier than tea and toast. An hour and a half later, Mr. Britt came to the parlor and invited Miss Pankey to dine with them in the kitchen. “Dinner, Amanda!” he shouted up the stairs. “Come to dinner, Bingo!” And they came.

  Three places were laid at one end of the long kitchen table. On the floor at the other end of the table, a fourth place was laid on a paper napkin.

  “Bingo likes to picnic,” Bruno remarked, ladling out chicken and rice onto four plates.

  Bingo took his plate under the table. “I’m sitting under an oak tree,” he said. “There’s a dryad in it.”

  Then they all attacked the food with appetite, and Miss Pankey declared she had never tasted anything quite as delicious as the chicken stew.

  “It’s the saffron,” said Mr. Britt.

  “Where did you finally put your sleeping bag, Bingo?” Amanda asked her son.

  “In the room with the cats.”

  “So you have cats, Miss Pankey?”

  “I have two kittens.”

  “We all love cats,” said Bruno. “Bingo adores them.”

  “Oh, so do I!” Miss Pankey exclaimed with warmth.

  “And Mother, the kittens have the cutest names — Pettijohn and Crackerjack! Pettijohn is my favorite cereal.”

  Miss Pankey was puzzled. “How did you know their names?”

  “Opalina told me.”

  “Opalina! Who is she?” Miss Pankey asked nervously.

  “The big white cat who takes care of the kittens,” Bingo replied.

  Miss Pankey dropped her fork. “But — but Bingo! I have no big white cat!”

  “Oh, she’s not real, Miss Pankey! She’s a ghost. She’s a filmy, diaphanous being from another world, made of the finest grade of atmosphere. She told me so.�
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  Mr. Britt burst out laughing. “You mustn’t mind Bingo! He’s stuffed to the gills with fairy stories, Miss Pankey.”

  “He has a vivid imagination,” said Amanda. “He’s always seeing things that aren’t quite there.” She rose and carried the empty plates to the sink.

  “What’s for dessert, Daddy?” Bingo asked.

  Bruno set a bowl of apples on the table. “Only apples. I didn’t have time for a pudding. We got here too late. Will you have some coffee, Miss Pankey?”

  “Yes please! — I mean no-no-th-thank you!” she stammered, accepting the cup of coffee from his hand. She was too upset to know what she was doing. She helped herself repeatedly to sugar, stirring it into her coffee absentmindedly.

  After dinner when Amanda told Bingo to go and get ready for bed, Miss Pankey spoke up: “Bingo had better not sleep in the room with the kittens. There’s no electricity there and I don’t think it’s safe to trust the child with a kerosene lamp.”

  “There’s plenty of light from Opalina,” said Bingo. He kissed his parents, said good night to Miss Pankey and trotted off upstairs.

  “Bingo has never been afraid of the dark or of anything else,” his father said with pride.

  You can see that Bingo Britt was already on friendly terms with the kittens and me.

  Amanda washed the dishes. Miss Pankey wiped them, while Bruno gave her a summary of their life. He was an itinerant portrait painter, and because of his profession, the Britts were nomads. They traveled all over the country in the car, stopping for a while in this village or that. Then Bruno would go from house to house, painting pictures of anyone willing to sit for him and selling them for a few dollars apiece. He worked quickly and always got a likeness. In this way he managed to earn enough money for food and gas for the old Ford — never enough for them to rent or buy a cottage and settle down in their own home.

  “Wherever we are, Bruno does all the cooking. He’s a fine cook,” said Amanda. “I can’t cook at all.”

  “But Amanda is wonderful at everything else,” Bruno declared. “She knits our socks and sweaters and makes all our clothes. She made me the jacket I’m wearing out of an Army blanket she found in a ditch. And she cuts up my worn-out clothes into suits for Bingo.”

  “I made this dress,” said Amanda, “from a bedspread I bought for thirty-five cents at a rummage sale in Ohio.”

  “How clever of you!” cried Miss Pankey; and she thought: “That accounts for the little tufts all over it! It was a candlewick spread!” She also thought: “The Britts are really dears!” So she took them into her confidence, revealing the tragic Rise and Fall of the Pankey Inn, omitting, however, all mention of the ghost.

  The Britts listened with sympathetic attention.

  “If the business was so good, I can’t understand why it should suddenly fail,” Bruno exclaimed.

  Miss Pankey hesitated to tell them everything, for fear they would pack up and go; but she was honest, and they had been frank with her. So she described Mrs. Wicket’s abrupt departure, followed by that of Dr. Topplegate, and the frightening apparition which the old lady and Lily both claimed to have seen. “And it shocks me to learn that Bingo has seen it too.”

  The Britts were not alarmed. “Whatever he saw, it didn’t frighten him. Why should the others have panicked?” Amanda wondered.

  “Most people are matter of fact, Amanda,” said Bruno. “They don’t like things they can’t explain. They go to pieces when they come face to face with something that they don’t believe exists.”

  “Well, nothing unnatural would ever disturb Bingo,” Amanda remarked airily. “He believes in everything weird and magical — goblins, witches, ogres, poltergeists, fairies, dragons and, of course, ghosts.”

  Amanda and Bruno chuckled contentedly. Their carefree attitude comforted Miss Pankey. She was glad of their companionship. Perhaps she could persuade them to remain.

  That night the temperature dropped. Winter had come. A blizzard sprang up and smothered the village in snow. The occupants of the Pankey Inn were snowbound. By the time the roads were clear enough for the Britts to resume their journey, they had no wish to do so.

  In fact, they needed no coaxing to stay where they were. They liked Miss Pankey as much as she liked them, and they were happy to cease their wanderings. The Britts had money for food but no place to live. Miss Pankey owned a house but nothing else. These three came to a speedy understanding: in return for their lodgings at the Pankey Inn, the Britts would feed Miss Pankey and the kittens — a simple arrangement, satisfactory to all.

  For the next few months everything went well. Bruno was able to get enough portrait commissions to pay for their food and fuel for the furnace. And the meals he cooked for them were most delicious. Miss Pankey got quite plump and the kittens grew fat. They were a handsome pair and full of fun.

  Bingo petted them and played with them, bringing them little toys for their amusement, such as pebbles, chestnut burrs and walnuts. He read his fairy books in the paneled room by the light of my eyes; he played outdoors, building castles of snow, modeling a snow queen crowned with pine cones, and a big snow cat, which he said was a portrait of me. He printed “Opalina” in holly berries along the foot of the statue. His parents considered it a work of art.

  Amanda and Miss Pankey kept the house clean, at least the parts of the building now in use. Miss Pankey helped Amanda with the mending; Amanda made a new suit for Bingo out of a purple woolen dressing gown that one of the summer boarders had left behind. Altogether the time passed pleasantly until the following spring.

  Then one day Bruno returned to the Inn without any money to buy the evening meal. Every household in Heatherfield now possessed at least one family portrait. There were no more customers for Bruno in this part of the world, and it seemed to the Britts that the time had come when they must move along.

  This was a sorrowful prospect! The husband and wife discussed it by themselves. They hated to tear Bingo away from the kittens and they hated to leave Miss Pankey alone in the house. The poor woman had no way of earning her living. Surely the villagers wouldn’t allow her to starve! But if the Britts remained at the Pankey Inn without any money, they would all starve together!

  That night the dinner consisted of lentil soup, and not too much of that. Instead of their usual plate of liver or fish, Pettijohn and Crackerjack received a bowl of milk, which wasn’t nearly enough for two big growing kittens. They were still hungry when they came upstairs. Bingo came with them, weeping bitterly, for his parents had broken the news to him and Miss Pankey that they would be going away tomorrow morning.

  I am not worldly. I am no materialist. I care nothing for luxury or riches; and as a ghost I am indifferent to food. But I know that living creatures require nourishment and that human beings need that thing called money to buy what they eat. If Miss Pankey couldn’t afford to feed herself and the kittens, what was to become of them? I didn’t worry too much about the Britts, but Miss Pankey and the kittens were my affair.

  I couldn’t allow them to be underfed!

  As you have heard, right from the first Bingo had taken possession of the paneled room. He kept the kittens company during the day, and every night when he crawled inside his sleeping bag, I told him a bedtime story. Tonight, as Bingo sobbed in his cocoon, it suddenly occurred to me that between us we might be able to save the situation. So I urged him to stop crying and listen to me, and I told him the tale of Saul and the missing jewels and the diamond bracelet lost in the secret room.

  “Bingo,” I said, “you must get into that room and find the diamond bracelet for Miss Pankey. It is a valuable piece of jewelry and a rare antique, worth even more today than it was one hundred and eighty-two years ago. If you can find it, maybe you and your parents won’t be leaving Heatherfield, after all.”

  Bingo eagerly did as I directed. I flashed my eyes on the panel beside the mantel to light up the dent in the wood. He slid the panel back without any trouble, and I went with him int
o the secret room, showing him the crack beside the chimney where the bracelet had fallen on that fateful night. Bingo dug out a layer of dust like felt, and there lay the long lost bracelet, sure enough!

  Miss Pankey and the Britts were in the parlor, mourning the fact that they must separate, when Bingo burst in, excitedly waving the bracelet. “See what I found!” he shouted. “See what I found!”

  The others examined the precious object with awe.

  “Diamonds!” breathed Amanda. “And a lovely setting!”

  “Genuine stones!” Bruno exclaimed gleefully. “Just what the doctor ordered!”

  Miss Pankey was troubled. “Oh dear! One of the boarders must have lost it! I wonder who it was. Where did you find it?”

  “In a crack by the chimney in the secret room.”

  “What secret room?” Miss Pankey was mystified.

  “It’s back of the room with the cats but you’d never know it, unless you knew about the sliding panel.”

  “And how did you know that?”

  “Opalina told me, and she showed me where to look for the bracelet.”

  “Opalina seems to be quite a character,” Bruno observed.

  “When I was a child,” said Amanda thoughtfully, “I had an imaginary playmate called Moosha. She was always telling me what to do.”

  “Come on, let’s see this secret room,” cried Bruno. Miss Pankey was lighting a lamp with trembling hands.

  “We don’t need that, Miss Pankey,” Bingo said. “It’s plenty light enough with Opalina.”

  “Bingo can see in the dark like a cat,” said his father. “But the rest of us can’t. I’ll carry the lamp, Miss Pankey.”

  When the grown-ups passed through the gap in the paneling and saw the dust of ages on the floor, undisturbed save by the prints of Bingo’s small bare feet, they realized that the bracelet had not belonged to one of Miss Pankey’s boarders or to any person now in the land of the living. They also saw, to their complete amazement, glass cases stretched from floor to ceiling, lined with velvet and filled with metal discs.