The Ghost and Mrs. Muir

by R. A. Dick

  “No,” said the captain, “she is a very faithful wife and forgives him every time.”

  “She’s a better wife than I should have been,” Lucy admitted.

  “She’s in love with him, not romance,” said the captain, “and real love isn’t blind, it sees everything and has an endless capacity for forgiving.”

  “Were you ever in love?” asked Lucy.

  “I thought I was, often,” answered the captain, “but I never went so far as wanting to marry any of them. The nearest I came to proposing was one time in Dublin. She had black hair, and black-lashed blue eyes, and an Irish complexion.”

  “What was her name?” asked Lucy, a little stiffly.

  “God bless my soul! I don’t remember,” replied the captain. “I used to visit her home every evening I could get free, the week we were in port. She used to sing to me. But the sea and my ships always came first with me.”

  “Cyril says he thinks celibacy is a very fine ideal,” said Lucy.

  “You wait,” said Captain Gregg, “the Bishop has a daughter with quite other ideas.”

  “He never told me about a daughter,” said Lucy, “but that is like Cyril, he has always been secretive, so unlike Anna—which makes me think you must be wrong about her wanting to become a dancer as I’m sure she would have told me about it.”

  “She will tell you,” said the captain, “and then the trouble will begin. Be gentle with her, Lucy, it means a lot to her.”

  The trouble started the following week after Anna had danced at a charity concert. She came home bright-eyed and flushed with excitement.

  “Mummy,” she cried, bursting into the kitchen where Lucy was preparing the supper, having hurried home before her, “mummy! Madame Lachinsky was at the concert and she says she’ll take me.”

  “Take you, darling,” said Lucy, putting butter in a pan for the omelette, “take you where?”

  “Into her dancing school in London,” said Anna. “She’s been on holiday at The Hotel here, and I went to see her and she said she’d come and see me dance and I never dreamed she would, and there she was and she says she’ll teach me. Oh, mummy, I’m going to be a dancer!” and, seizing her mother around the waist, she waltzed her about the kitchen.

  “What’s all this noise about?” asked Cyril, coming in from the dining-room where he had been writing, it being a week before his college term began.

  “I’m going to be a dancer, a dancer, a dancer,” sang Anna, continuing to whirl alone as Lucy sank breathlessly onto a chair, still grasping the frying pan.

  “A dancer!” said Cyril suspiciously. “What sort of a dancer?”

  “A beautiful ballet dancer,” said Anna, seizing a dishcloth and pirouetting on her toes.

  “Not on the stage!” said Cyril.

  “Of course on the stage,” retorted Anna, coming to a full stop in front of him. “Why not?”

  “Mother, she can’t,” said Cyril, turning to Lucy. “What will the Bishop say?”

  “Who cares what the Bishop says?” said Anna.

  “I do,” said Cyril.

  “Well, I don’t,” said Anna, dropping the dishcloth over her brother’s head. “That for the old Bishop!”

  Cyril removed the dishcloth and turned on his sister in cold anger. “It may not strike you, but if you go on the stage it may ruin my whole career,” he said.

  “And what about my career?” asked Anna hotly.

  “The church would appear to be rather more important than the stage,” said Cyril, “and more Christian.”

  “Not your sort of church,” flashed Anna. “Christianity doesn’t think of careers, and gaiters, and mitres.”

  “Now, children, don’t lose your tempers,” said Lucy, rising and going on with her work. “We must talk this over quietly and——”

  “But, mother, make her see——”

  “But, mummy, make him see——”

  “We won’t discuss it at all until after supper,” said Lucy. “Anna, go and lay the table.”

  Nor would she listen to a word from either of them on the subject until they had eaten, Cyril in white, sulky silence, Anna pink-cheeked and voluble on the subject of Miss Ming, and the garden, and anything that came into her head.

  “And now,” said Lucy after the supper things had been washed up and put away, “we will go into the sitting-room and try and talk this matter out in a sensible, grownup way, not like unbalanced children. What are your objections, Cyril, to your sister’s becoming a dancer?” she went on, seating herself in the armchair.

  “The Bishop doesn’t approve of the stage,” said Cyril, “and if he hears that my sister is exhibiting herself practically naked——”

  “Who says I’m going to be practically naked?” burst out Anna.

  “Please, Anna, we will hear what Cyril has to say first,” said Lucy. How much she hated violence, and here was violence surging up all round her again, wrecking the peace of her home.

  “And it’s a well-known fact that most stage people are immoral,” said Cyril. “Of course, Anna’s my sister, so I expect she would be all right, but I don’t want to be connected with the stage, it might do me a great deal of harm.”

  “Aren’t your ideas rather old-fashioned, dear?” said Lucy.

  “They aren’t his ideas, they’re the Bishop’s,” said Anna scornfully, “and Noah put him in the Ark in mistake for a camel.”

  “Anna!” said Lucy sternly, fighting down the laughter that rose in her, for Bishop Winstanley did look very like a camel. “If you say another word before it is your turn, you will go to bed.”

  “If she must dance,” went on Cyril, “why can’t she take it up as a teacher and give lessons to people we know.”

  Anna hurled herself on to the sofa and stuffed a corner of a cushion into her mouth.

  “That’s all I have to say,” said Cyril, “except that if she insists on being so selfish she will ruin everything for me.”

  “And what about you, aren’t you being selfish?” demanded Anna, sitting up. “I’ve wanted to dance ever since I was a baby. I’ve practised and practised ever since I could stand almost, and Cyril has thought of being all sorts of things—a doctor, you remember, when he cut up those frogs all over the house, and a banker, and a politician. It’s only since the Bishop took him up that he’s wanted to be a Bishop, too; as he says, it’s a career. To me dancing is a vocation, and I am going to dance. Madame Lachinsky doesn’t take just anyone into her school, it’s a great honour.”

  “There must be some solution,” said Lucy.

  They were still seeking it at eleven o’clock when Lucy sent them to bed and went wearily to her own.

  “I feel like a battered shuttlecock,” she thought as she slid down between the cool linen sheets.

  “If I hadn’t said I would never interfere with anyone again, I should suggest that they compromise,” said the captain’s voice.

  “In what way?” asked Lucy.

  “Tell them that they must each give in a little,” said the captain. “If Anna wants to become a dancer, she must change her name; then they can go their several ways and their lives need never meet.”

  “But isn’t that rather sad,” said Lucy, “a complete break between a brother and a sister?”

  “It seems to me that that would come in any case,” said the captain, “and if the church is right for Cyril and the stage for Anna, it will work out for the best—but I’m not interfering, let that be clearly understood.”

  “I will sleep on it,” said Lucy. “I don’t want to interfere with my children’s lives any more than you do, but I want them to be happy. Must growing up always mean a breaking up?” she asked sadly.

  “No, but it often means a breaking away,” the captain said. “And you wouldn’t want them to stay anchored for the rest of their existence, growing barnacles all over them and rotting away with rust.”

  There being no better way out of the impasse, Cyril agreed that if Anna were to change her name, there need be
no further connection between them.

  “Do you mean that you’ll never speak to Anna again?” asked Lucy, seeking him out in the privacy of his bedroom.

  “I shall always be pleased to speak to Anna as Miss Muir, and if she is living a life suitable to my sister,” he replied gravely.

  There it is coming out again, thought Lucy, the possessiveness of the Muirs with their “my … my … my,” trying to force the world and everyone in it into their own pattern as if they had been given the copyright of living by God Himself.

  “Try and be a little more tolerant, Cyril dear,” she said gently; “it will make life so much easier for you and other people,” and she went away to help Anna pack for she was to leave immediately for London.

  “And I should be going with her,” said Lucy that evening to Captain Gregg. “I don’t like the idea of Anna alone in London.”

  “Alone in London!” the captain scoffed. “Isn’t she going to live with Martha?”

  “Yes,” agreed Lucy. “Of course it was unfortunate that her husband should die, but I feel it is providential that she should have returned to London and set up a lodging house. I would trust Anna with Martha anywhere.”

  “Then stop worrying about it,” said the captain. “God bless my soul, if you set your ship on a certain course you stick to it; you’d never get anywhere if you navigated backwards half the time.”

  “Perhaps I’m selfish,” went on Lucy, determined to talk the matter out, “but I do feel so lost in London, so many people hurrying along, and I always feel that I’m the only one going slowly in the opposite direction, and she can always come home for the week-ends, and it would only make more trouble with Cyril if I went with her, and she’ll have to work very hard at her dancing, Madame Lachinsky says, and she told me that she would keep an eye on her, too, and besides, I couldn’t afford to keep up Gull Cottage and live in London as well,” she ended breathlessly.

  “And now I hope you feel better,” said the captain, “and, dammit, there’s no question of your giving up Gull Cottage, so of course you must live in it.”

  II

  Presently that very question did arise. Lucy had never been extravagant, but she had very little knowledge of money matters. So much money was paid into her bank, and she spent so much money; but suddenly her expenses seemed to be running ahead of her income in an alarming manner. Taxes increased and dividends went down. One company in which she held shares failed altogether. And though Cyril had won a scholarship, he needed money for clothes and books; indeed he seemed to need more and more money, and there were Anna’s expenses to be paid as well. And then Cyril fell ill, and the doctor said that an operation for appendicitis was necessary.

  “It’s no use,” said Lucy to Captain Gregg on the evening that she found that it meant that she must sell out capital to pay the surgeon’s fees, “I shall have to let Gull Cottage.”

  “You can’t,” said the captain.

  “I can,” said Lucy, “and I must. In the summer I can get eight guineas a week for a furnished house in a good position like this.”

  “I will not have my house let,” said the captain; “if you allow strangers to come here I shall haunt them.”

  “If I don’t let it, I shall go bankrupt and then the house will go altogether to strangers,” retorted Lucy.

  “I’ll haunt the lot of them!” stormed the captain. “You dare go bankrupt! Why can’t that Eva woman help?”

  “I would sooner die than ask Eva for a penny,” said Lucy hotly.

  “Then you must make some money,” said the captain.

  “I might take boarders,” said Lucy.

  “Take hell!” said the captain. “They’d be worse than passengers. I won’t have a boarder in this house—you a landlady! You’d be driven to drink.”

  “Well, what can you suggest?” asked Lucy. “I’m no good at dressmaking, I can’t paint pictures or write books, or do anything like that, and I’m rather old to learn to be a stenographer. I seem to be quite useless.”

  “Write books,” said the captain.

  “I’ve just told you that I can’t,” said Lucy. “I find it difficult enough to write a letter.”

  “No, but I can,” said the captain, “I can write a book—bless my soul, I can write a best-seller of a book—and you shall put it down—buy a typewriter and some foolscap to-morrow.”

  “But what will the book be about?” said Lucy doubtfully.

  “Me,” said the captain. “It will be the story of my life—and I shall call it—I shall call it, Blood and Swash.”

  “I don’t think that’s at all a nice title,” said Lucy.

  “It’s not meant to be.” The captain chuckled. “But it’s arresting. Get a pad and some paper and we’ll start tonight.”

  “Not so fast,” said Lucy, “typewriters cost money. How can I buy a typewriter when I’m overdrawn at the bank and there are Cyril’s hospital expenses yet to be paid?”

  “You must sell something,” the captain replied after a pause. “Sell that hideous pearl ring to begin with.”

  “Edwin’s mother left me that ring,” said Lucy. “I don’t think I ought to sell that.”

  “Well, pawn it,” said the captain impatiently. “You really are in a tight place, Lucy, and in tight places there’s no room for false sentiment. You didn’t like Edwin’s mother and you hate her ring. And, dammit, I can see no difference in its lying hidden in your jewel case or in a pawnbroker’s safe. Get your jewel case out and let’s see what else you can get rid of.”

  “How you do order me about!” said Lucy, but she went to fetch her blue leather jewel case from the drawer in her dressing table. She returned to the bed and spread out the contents on the coverlet.

  “Earrings,” said the captain, “you never wear earrings, you can get rid of that lot.”

  “I might wear them,” said Lucy, “these are very pretty,” and she held up a pair of coral drops against her ears.

  “Might as well wear a ring in your nose,” said the captain. “Is that dove made of real diamonds?”

  “Yes,” said Lucy, “and the olive branch it has in its beak is of emeralds. Edwin gave me that as a wedding present.”

  “As a safeguard against strife?” asked the captain.

  “No, his mother chose it for him,” said Lucy.

  “Then you can’t have any sentiment about that,” said the captain, “and if those diamonds are good, you ought to be able to buy a typewriter and pay the hospital fees with that brooch alone. Pawn it to-morrow.”

  “But where?” asked Lucy. “I couldn’t go into a pawnshop here even if there is one.”

  “There’s one opposite the Three Feathers,” said the captain, “and there are two in Whitmouth. Perhaps you’d better go there, you’ll probably get a better price, and don’t let them do you—those diamonds look good to me.”

  “Are you sure there’s no other way of making money?” asked Lucy.

  “I can’t think of anything else,” said the captain, “and you might say in this case that a bird at the pop-shop is worth two on the bosom. Go on and sell it, there’s a good girl.”

  On the following day, unable to think of any better solution, Lucy took the brooch and herself to Whitmouth by the afternoon bus.

  It was a Saturday and the seaside resort was full of weekend trippers though it was late in September, and for once Lucy was glad to be in a crowd. She felt that the passers-by hid her purpose as well as herself, as she paused in front of a jeweller’s shop, with “Old Gold Bought” on a printed sign in the window, and three unobtrusive golden balls hanging over the doorway. Yet it took time for her to summon up enough courage to cross the threshold, and as she was still hesitating, gazing in unseeingly at a tray of wedding rings in the front of the shop window, she heard a familiar voice behind her, and, turning, found Eva at her elbow, a stouter Eva with greying hair, but otherwise the same Eva.

  “So,” said her sister-in-law in her firm voice, “it is Lucy. Well, I was never one
to bear a grudge, though personally I think you might have written and asked how I was after all I endured in that frightful house of yours, and I always said, ‘If Lucy ever holds out the olive branch I’ll be the first to take it.’ ”

  “Olive branch!” said Lucy, feeling that the diamond dove in her bag had grown to the size of an eagle calling out to Eva that it was about to be sold, olive branch and all.

  “You do look pale, my dear,” said Eva with ill-concealed satisfaction, “I always said that house was no place for you. You’d better come along and have a cup of tea with me. I always say let bygones be bygones and never rake up the past. Come along, my dear,” and, taking Lucy by the arm, she led her away to a tea shop near by. With Lucy in a chair at a corner table, she took the one beside her and, ordering tea, proceeded to rake up the past to the last memory.

  “Of course I swore I’d never set foot in the house again,” ended Eva, liberally buttering her third scone, “but if you needed me, I’d sacrifice my word. I mean, I’ve a sense of proportion, and duty always comes first with me.”

  “It’s very good of you,” said Lucy, wondering when the pawnshop closed, for she would never summon up enough courage to get even so far as the door-step again, “but I really don’t need help. I’m alone at present, Cyril has gone to the Theological College in Whitchester—though he’s in the hospital at present——”

  “I know,” said Eva, “actually Cyril and I have been corresponding for some time.”

  How like Cyril to say nothing about it, thought Lucy.

  “And I saw him yesterday,” continued Eva. “He said he was going home to convalesce next week—dear boy, he’s so like poor Edwin, and he’s doing very well. The Bishop thinks a lot of him. But what’s all this about Anna,” she went on, “taking up dancing? Cyril was very worried about it—he’s become such a man, shouldering all the cares of his family.”

  “There’s no care about it,” said Lucy tartly. “Anna has gone to Madame Lachinsky’s school of dancing. She thinks a lot of Anna——”

  “Lachinsky—a foreigner,” said Eva, “Russian, I suppose, and quite untrustworthy, and probably Red.”