The Ghost and Mrs. Muir

by R. A. Dick

  It was strange, thought Lucy, how much greater and more lasting the work of man’s hands and mind was than man himself. Looking up at the exquisite tracery of the vaulted roof, listening to the majestic music pealing up to join it, she felt dwarfed and humble, yet raised up in spirit beyond her own little ant hill of living. And Captain Gregg had been right, there was something grand about the Bishop; at his own dinner table he might be a booming foghorn of a man, but here he fitted in, his voice taking up from the organ notes the resounding words of the medieval marriage service as he united his daughter in holy matrimony with her son.

  She was reluctant to leave her pew after the ceremony was over, reluctant to join the chattering throng that clustered about the newly married pair, drinking to their happiness in champagne and scattering cake crumbs and feeble jests. It was too rapid a descent from the sublime, if not to the ridiculous at least to the banal. If only Anna were here, she would understand; but Anna, though Cyril had been persuaded to send her an invitation, had a matinée and could not be present.

  As soon as she decently could, after the bridal pair had driven away to the station to catch the train to London on their way to Rome, Lucy crept upstairs to her own room, avoiding Eva under a palm tree in the hall, engrossed in telling cousin George all he did not want to hear about Morris dancing; avoiding Mrs. Winstanley waving a little blue handkerchief that she had meant Celia to wear at the wedding; above all avoiding the Bishop and his ideas on rightness. They had asked her to stay over the week-end but she had refused with difficulty. She must, she had said, get home; she had left her little dog with the gardener and was not sure how she would be treated, which was a gross libel on the kindly man, who came one half-day a week to dig and mow, and perhaps an even grosser libel on herself, marking her as one of those besotted dog fanatics that could not be parted from her pet for more than twenty-four hours.

  She was to be driven to the station to catch the local train to Whitecliff at a quarter to six, and it was after five when Lucy, having changed into her travelling clothes, had closed her suitcase. But if she thought she had evaded the Bishop’s conscience, she was mistaken, for presently a tap came at her door and the parlour-maid informed her that the Bishop was in his study and would be pleased if she could spare a few minutes to speak with him.

  The study had been hastily swept back to normal; but as a spring tide will leave flotsam above the usual tide line, so the wedding had left jetsam lurking in odd corners; a champagne glass stood on the pedestal below Milton’s dark bronze image; a twist of silver ribbon ornamented a brass candlestick on the mantelshelf; a gardenia, bruised and browning, lay in the grate, its exotic scent mingling with the bookish smell of leather; and the wastepaper basket frothed with white tissue paper.

  The Bishop, rising from his massive chair behind his massive desk, on which a pad of foolscap awaited to-morrow’s sermon, greeted her and waved her to the armchair nearest to him, and, seating himself again when she was settled, plunged without preamble into Celia’s ideas for the future.

  If only, thought Lucy sitting meekly with folded hands in a crimson leather chair, if only bishops could remain enrobed in the aloof splendour of cathedrals, rather than gaitered in the everydayness of houses, how much more inspiring they would continue to be. And it was all such a waste of the poor man’s time, with his sermon crying out to be written on the blank pages before him. If only he would get on with his own affairs and leave her to mind hers! But obviously he felt, goaded on by Celia and no doubt by Eva, that Lucy, if not a brand to be snatched from the burning, was at least a widow to be led from wandering—and did he use a button hook every time he put on those gaiters or did Mrs. Winstanley fasten them for him with her own fingers? And why did bishops wear gaiters? Lucy wondered. Was it some relic of the past when they were prepared to wade at any moment through storm and flood to rescue sheep strayed from the fold? She tried to picture the Bishop in such circumstances and realized it was not so difficult to picture him weathering any storm into which his conscience might lead him.

  “—and I am sure, Mrs. Muir, that put in this way you will agree with me,” ended the Bishop. “They are putting your welfare first, they are not thinking of themselves at all.”

  Lucy, bringing her mind back to the matter in hand, was not so sure of that. There had been that talk of babies left with her and jaunts abroad for Celia and Cyril, and while, of course, she would be delighted to be a grandmother, she had no intention of being a head nurse. But could she mention these as yet unborn infants to her co-parent-in-law of scarcely a few hours without shocking his Puritanical susceptibilities? Though he had unblushingly declaimed in the cathedral before a large congregation the church’s mediaeval ideas on marriage and the procreation of children, she doubted if the words would be quite as acceptable to him in the intimacy of his study.

  “Celia and Cyril are very kind and thoughtful,” she murmured, “but I have no intention of being a burden on them.”

  “But you would not be a burden, Mrs. Muir,” said the Bishop, “far less in fact than if you were living in that lonely house with your weak heart and——”

  “My heart is perfectly strong,” said Lucy sharply, and added, “thank you,” for after all the poor man was doing his best.

  “And, indeed, far from being a burden,” continued the Bishop, “you might be of great assistance to the young couple, for as St. Paul says in the second chapter of Titus, ‘The aged women likewise, that they be in behaviour as becometh holiness, not false accusers, not given to much wine, teachers of good things; that they may teach the young women to be sober, to love their husbands, to love their children, to be discreet, chaste, keepers at home, good, obedient to their husbands, that the word of God be not blasphemed.’ ”

  “Oh, but I couldn’t teach Celia any of that,” said Lucy. “I couldn’t teach her anything—I mean you have taught her so well yourself.”

  “We have done our best,” said the Bishop simply, “but only children are at a disadvantage in marriage, for they have never had to share life intimately with their own generation, and sharing is a habit not easily acquired after childhood.”

  Oh, dear, thought Lucy, this is a really good man; he makes me feel cheap and very small, for undoubtedly I am thinking of myself first in this matter. If I don’t get away very soon I shall be agreeing to everything he says and, selfish or not, I know it wouldn’t work and we would all be miserable. The trouble is this man-made measuring of time; he thinks of me as an aged woman, when really I am far younger in many ways than Celia and should have no more influence over her than an out-of-date gramophone record.

  “Don’t come to any hurried decision,” said the Bishop kindly, “go away and think it over.”

  “Oh, I will, I will,” said Lucy fervently. “I will think it over very carefully, and I would like to tell you——” She stopped abruptly. It was impossible to tell him that she was sorry that she had thought of him as a camel, and a pompous camel at that. “—I would like to tell you,” she ended, “how much I appreciate all you have said, and how glad I am to know you better.”

  In the new warmth of her feeling towards him, she was about to bring Anna into the conversation, in the hope that she too might be enveloped in this new cloak of understanding, but the butler appeared and informed her that the car was waiting at the door to take her to the station.

  And perhaps it was as well that he had interrupted them, thought Lucy driving on her way, for St. Paul could have had no comforting texts for dancers, and the Bishop, in many ways, was very like St. Paul.

  III

  “I shall have a quiet rest till lunchtime,” thought Lucy on the following morning as she lay in bed with Miss Ming warming her feet. “There is nothing and no one to disturb me.”

  But she was wrong, for even as she dozed a car stopped on the road outside her gate, and Anna’s voice came floating up to her through the open window.

  “All right, darling,” she said, “come back at twelve and take
us out to lunch.”

  Who was darling? Lucy wondered. Anna had so many friends; but she wasn’t going to spy on her daughter from behind window curtains, and anyway, if darling was coming back at twelve, she would see him then. Anna had her own latchkey and would let herself in; but Lucy hastily slipped out of bed and, seating herself at her dressing table, began to smear on her clear skin some of the expensive night cream that Anna had brought her on her last visit. Deceitful, no doubt, she thought even as she smeared, but Anna would be hurt if she found the pot unopened.

  “Mummy—mummy, where are you?” called Anna in the hall below.

  “Upstairs, darling,” said Lucy, flinging her favourite old quilted dressing-gown into the cupboard and enveloping herself in the handsome blue housecoat that Anna had given her on her last birthday.

  She was back at the dressing table, brushing out her hair with her ivory hairbrush, when Anna burst into the room. She embraced her mother warmly and flung herself onto the bed and embraced the Pekinese, too.

  “You lazy old woman,” she laughed, “hogging it in bed till all hours on this lovely sunny morning.”

  “I’m a little tired after the wedding,” said Lucy, guiltily wiping off the cream she had so lately put on.

  “Yes, I want to hear all about the wedding,” said Anna. “Celia looked like a Vogue dream in white satin, and Cyril looked like a crow in black—so unlucky, one crow at a wedding, but I expect there were heaps of crows in the audience—and you looked a poppet in that blue dress we bought—and what did the bridesmaids wear? Thank God they didn’t ask me to be one—and that’s not sour grapes, I sent them a lovely telegram and a silver salver. What did you give them, mummy?”

  “I gave Celia a pearl ring.”

  “The one like a bloated teardrop that Granny left you?” asked Anna with interest.

  “I had it reset,” said Lucy, “and I gave Cyril a cheque for the honeymoon,” and suddenly the realization struck her that Cyril was taking his bride to Rome on the first royalties from Blood and Swash and she began to laugh. If only he knew! But she could never tell him.

  “What’s funny?” asked Anna, smiling in sympathy.

  “Nothing, darling,” said Lucy. She couldn’t even tell Anna, and how dearly she would love to share the secret with her; but Anna had called someone “darling,” and reticence had never been Anna’s strong point with those she loved.

  “We’ve been wrong about the Bishop,” Lucy said. “He really is rather a fine man. I know he looks like a camel, but he is very impressive in the cathedral, and very kind in his own home.”

  “If anyone’s kind to you, you think they’re saints,” said Anna, “when really they’d be devils if they weren’t. How was Aunt Eva?”

  “Very much there in mauve and a purple hat,” replied Lucy.

  “And what’s all this about Cyril’s wanting you to go and live with them?” asked Anna.

  “How did you know?” asked Lucy in surprise.

  “Oh, I know everything,” answered Anna, “but you can’t go and live with them, I should never be able to go and stay with you—besides, if you live with any one, you’ll live with Bill and me.”

  “Bill!” said Lucy.

  “His real name’s Evelyn Anthony Peregrine Scaithe,” said Anna, “so of course he’s called Bill, and the ghastly thing is he’s a baronet.”

  “But why ghastly?” asked Lucy in bewilderment.

  “I don’t want to be a lady,” said Anna with genuine disgust in her voice. “Oh, mummy, isn’t life odd? I did my best to fall in love with someone quite different, but I couldn’t bear him nearer me than the other side of a table, and I don’t want to be respectable! Here, living with Cyril, who disapproved of me utterly, I felt bold and bad, the Queen of the Underworld in fact; but on the stage I am the original Quaker girl—I still love to dance, but I want to do it privately, when I want, not every night for anyone to see. When Bill asked me to marry him, I implored him to take me away for a weekend to Brighton. I thought if I were a fallen woman I might be all I thought I was. But it was useless—Bill doesn’t want me to be Miss Dale—he prefers me as Miss Muir, and if Cyril ever says, ‘I told you so,’ I’ll go and commit bigamy—oh, mummy, do you understand what a failure I feel as Me?”

  “Yes, darling, I think so,” said Lucy, though in truth she felt a little overwhelmed at Anna’s outpouring. “I gather you are engaged to Sir Evelyn Scaithe and are going to marry him and settle down, and you feel it’s rather a tame ending to your career.”

  “I knew you’d understand,” cried Anna. “Dancing isn’t just liking to move about to music, in or out of the limelight; it’s living it, being possessed by it—that is, if you are to be at the very top, and I could never bear to be half-way in anything. But I love too many things—I love the theatre, and music and parties, and I love to ride, and I love to drive a car on the racing track and to sail a boat in a rough sea, and most of all,” she ended simply, “I love Bill.”

  “You will never be lonely,” said Lucy, and tried not to think of how much she had missed herself.

  “And you will never be lonely either,” said Anna. “You shall come and live with us.”

  “No, darling,” Lucy said quietly. Impossible to explain, even to Anna, that loneliness was not a matter of solitude but of the spirit and often much greater in company for that very reason. And it was selfish to give herself even a passing thought when Anna was so happy.

  “I’m so glad for you,” she said, “and so thankful that you are going to settle down.”

  “Oh, I don’t suppose I’ll settle very down,” said Anna. “Bill loves the theatre, too, and he’s going to turn an old barn on his country place into a theatre, and we’re going to put on all the ballets and plays that no one else will accept and have lots of fun.”

  “Bill has money,” said Lucy.

  “Yes,” said Anna, “but that has nothing to do with Us—I’d have married him if he’d been a bus conductor, but it does make life more amusing—and you are coming to live with us and be amused, too.”

  “Now, Anna,” said Lucy firmly, “don’t you begin arguing with me—the Bishop nearly persuaded me that it was my duty to live with Cyril and Celia which I know in my bones could only lead to trouble. I have my own house and I mean to live in it.”

  “With Captain Gregg?” said Anna.

  Lucy turned and stared speechlessly at her daughter.

  “Oh, I know all about him,” said Anna casually. “The girls at school told me about his haunting and asked me if I ever saw him, and I used to invent lovely stories and say that I did—I don’t know that they believed me, but it made me very popular.”

  “You never told me,” said Lucy weakly.

  “No,” said Anna, “I didn’t want to frighten you if you didn’t know; but I fell in love with his picture when I was eleven, and I used to pretend that he came and talked to me.”

  “Pretend!” repeated Lucy.

  “Of course he never did,” said Anna, “but I always felt he was still in the house. You remember that night you went out and met that man——”

  “Anna!” said Lucy. “What man?”

  “I didn’t know his name,” said Anna, “but he had red hair, and Bond Street clothes. I didn’t spy on you, mummy, but you were so different that spring, and I was picking bluebells in the wood one afternoon—yes, I know I should have been in school but it was such a glorious day to be out—and I saw him kiss you. I went home at once and prayed you wouldn’t marry him.”

  “Go on,” said Lucy weakly.

  “Of course I never told a soul—Cyril never knew he existed; but that other evening when you went out, I knew you were going to meet him and I was miserable and went and sat in your room and I felt Captain Gregg was very near, telling me not to worry, that it would be all right—jealous little beast I must have been.”

  “He never—I mean I never knew you knew about Miles,” stammered Lucy.

  “Was that his name?” asked Anna. “Oh, yes
, I knew. Parents are always saying there’s nothing they don’t know about their children; but I should say it was the other way round, because most children are very observant and their home is most of their world. What I could never understand was Miles’ jilting you.”

  “He didn’t,” said Lucy, “I jilted him—if you could call it that when he was a married man.”

  “Oh, I see,” said Anna, “yes, that must have been hard. I mean if you are jilted it’s inevitable, but if you’re the jilter you must have awful moods of wishing you hadn’t. So Miles was married—I only saw him that once, but I thought I’d never seen anyone so out of place in a wood.”

  “And I always thought Cyril was the secretive one of you two,” marvelled Lucy.

  “It wasn’t exactly secretive of me, when it was your secret, darling,” said Anna.

  “No,” agreed Lucy. “I wonder why you never said anything to me?”

  “I think I was afraid,” said Anna. “If I admitted I knew I felt it would really be true—and then when it was over I was only too glad to forget it.”

  “Did you ever hear Captain Gregg’s voice?” asked Lucy as casually as she could.

  “Good lord, no,” said Anna. “You know how imaginative children are and how they invent friends for themselves; and I did feel Captain Gregg was my friend, and a wise one. And I’ll tell you something else that I’ve never told a soul, not even Bill. I nearly got myself involved with a very odd set of people when I first went to London, and it was only the feeling of how much my old sea captain would have despised them that held me back. That may sound crazy to you, darling, but I do feel that he left a very definite atmosphere in this house. I should hate anyone else to live in it; but I do wish you didn’t have to be quite so alone.”