The Story of the Inexperienced Ghost

The scene amidstwhich Clayton told his last story comes back very
vividly to my mind. There he sat, for the greater part of thetime,
in the corner of the authentic settle by the spacious open fire,and
Sanderson sat beside him smoking the Broseley clay that bore hisname.
There was Evans, and that marvel among actors, Wish, who is alsoa
modest man. We had all come down to the Mermaid Club thatSaturday
morning, except Clayton, who had slept there overnight--whichindeed
gave him the opening of his story. We had golfed until golfingwas
invisible; we had dined, and we were in that mood of tranquil
kindliness when men will suffer a story. When Clayton began totell
one, we naturally supposed he was lying. It may be that indeed hewas
lying--of that the reader will speedily be able to judge as wellas I.
He began, it is true, with an air of matter-of-fact anecdote, but
that we thought was only the incurable artifice of the man.

"I say!" he remarked, after a long consideration of theupward
rain of sparks from the log that Sanderson had thumped, "youknow
I was alone here last night?"

"Except for the domestics," said Wish.

"Who sleep in the other wing," said Clayton. "Yes.Well--" He pulled
at his cigar for some little time as though he still hesitatedabout
his confidence. Then he said, quite quietly, "I caught aghost!"

"Caught a ghost, did you?" said Sanderson. "Whereis it?"

And Evans, who admires Clayton immensely and has been four weeks
in America, shouted, "CAUGHT a ghost, did you, Clayton? I'mglad
of it! Tell us all about it right now."

Clayton said he would in a minute, and asked him to shut the door.

He looked apologetically at me. "There's no eavesdropping ofcourse,
but we don't want to upset our very excellent service with anyrumours
of ghosts in the place. There's too much shadow and oak panelling
to trifle with that. And this, you know, wasn't a regular ghost.
I don't think it will come again--ever."

"You mean to say you didn't keep it?" said Sanderson.

"I hadn't the heart to," said Clayton.

And Sanderson said he was surprised.

We laughed, and Clayton looked aggrieved. "I know," hesaid, with
the flicker of a smile, "but the fact is it really WAS aghost,
and I'm as sure of it as I am that I am talking to you now. I'mnot
joking. I mean what I say."

Sanderson drew deeply at his pipe, with one reddish eye onClayton,
and then emitted a thin jet of smoke more eloquent than manywords.

Clayton ignored the comment. "It is the strangest thing thathas
ever happened in my life. You know, I never believed in ghosts
or anything of the sort, before, ever; and then, you know, I bag
one in a corner; and the whole business is in my hands."

He meditated still more profoundly, and produced and began topierce
a second cigar with a curious little stabber he affected.

"You talked to it?" asked Wish.

"For the space, probably, of an hour."

"Chatty?" I said, joining the party of the sceptics.

"The poor devil was in trouble," said Clayton, bowedover his cigar-end
and with the very faintest note of reproof.

"Sobbing?" some one asked.

Clayton heaved a realistic sigh at the memory. "Good Lord!"he said;
"yes." And then, "Poor fellow! yes."

"Where did you strike it?" asked Evans, in his bestAmerican accent.

"I never realised," said Clayton, ignoring him, "thepoor sort of
thing a ghost might be," and he hung us up again for a time,while
he sought for matches in his pocket and lit and warmed to hiscigar.

"I took an advantage," he reflected at last.

We were none of us in a hurry. "A character," he said,"remains
just the same character for all that it's been disembodied.That's
a thing we too often forget. People with a certain strength or
fixity of purpose may have ghosts of a certain strength andfixity
of purpose--most haunting ghosts, you know, must be as one-idea'd
as monomaniacs and as obstinate as mules to come back again andagain.
This poor creature wasn't." He suddenly looked up ratherqueerly, and
his eye went round the room. "I say it," he said,"in all kindliness,
but that is the plain truth of the case. Even at the first glance
he struck me as weak."

He punctuated with the help of his cigar.

"I came upon him, you know, in the long passage. His backwas towards
me and I saw him first. Right off I knew him for a ghost. He was
transparent and whitish; clean through his chest I could see theglimmer
of the little window at the end. And not only his physique but
his attitude struck me as being weak. He looked, you know, asthough
he didn't know in the slightest whatever he meant to do. One hand
was on the panelling and the other fluttered to his mouth. Like--SO!"

"What sort of physique?" said Sanderson.

"Lean. You know that sort of young man's neck that has twogreat
flutings down the back, here and here--so! And a little, meanishhead
with scrubby hair--And rather bad ears. Shoulders bad, narrower
than the hips; turn-down collar, ready-made short jacket,trousers
baggy and a little frayed at the heels. That's how he took me.
I came very quietly up the staircase. I did not carry a light,
you know--the candles are on the landing table and there is thatlamp--
and I was in my list slippers, and I saw him as I came up. Istopped
dead at that--taking him in. I wasn't a bit afraid. I think that
in most of these affairs one is never nearly so afraid or excited
as one imagines one would be. I was surprised and interested.
I thought, 'Good Lord! Here's a ghost at last! And I haven'tbelieved
for a moment in ghosts during the last five-and-twenty years.'"

"Um," said Wish.

"I suppose I wasn't on the landing a moment before he foundout I
was there. He turned on me sharply, and I saw the face of animmature
young man, a weak nose, a scrubby little moustache, a feeble chin.
So for an instant we stood--he looking over his shoulder at me
and regarded one another. Then he seemed to remember his highcalling.
He turned round, drew himself up, projected his face, raised hisarms,
spread his hands in approved ghost fashion--came towards me.
As he did so his little jaw dropped, and he emitted a faint,drawn-out
'Boo.' No, it wasn't--not a bit dreadful. I'd dined. I'd had abottle
of champagne, and being all alone, perhaps two or three--perhaps
even four or five--whiskies, so I was as solid as rocks and nomore
frightened than if I'd been assailed by a frog. 'Boo!' I said.
'Nonsense. You don't belong to THIS place. What are you doinghere?'

"I could see him wince. 'Boo-oo,' he said.

"'Boo--be hanged! Are you a member?' I said; and just toshow
I didn't care a pin for him I stepped through a corner of him and
made to light my candle. 'Are you a member?' I repeated, looking
at him sideways.

"He moved a little so as to stand clear of me, and hisbearing
became crestfallen. 'No,' he said, in answer to the persistent
interrogation of my eye; 'I'm not a member--I'm a ghost.'

"'Well, that doesn't give you the run of the Mermaid Club.Is there
any one you want to see, or anything of that sort?' and doing itas
steadily as possible for fear that he should mistake thecarelessness
of whisky for the distraction of fear, I got my candle alight.
I turned on him, holding it. 'What are you doing here?' I said.

"He had dropped his hands and stopped his booing, and therehe stood,
abashed and awkward, the ghost of a weak, silly, aimless youngman.
'I'm haunting,' he said.

"'You haven't any business to,' I said in a quiet voice.

"'I'm a ghost,' he said, as if in defence.

"'That may be, but you haven't any business to haunt here.This is
a respectable private club; people often stop here withnursemaids
and children, and, going about in the careless way you do, somepoor
little mite could easily come upon you and be scared out of herwits.
I suppose you didn't think of that?'

"'No, sir,' he said, 'I didn't.'

"'You should have done. You haven't any claim on the place,have you?
Weren't murdered here, or anything of that sort?'

"'None, sir; but I thought as it was old and oak-panelled--'

"'That's NO excuse.' I regarded him firmly. 'Your cominghere is
a mistake,' I said, in a tone of friendly superiority. I feigned
to see if I had my matches, and then looked up at him frankly.
'If I were you I wouldn't wait for cock-crow--I'd vanish rightaway.'

"He looked embarrassed. 'The fact IS, sir--' he began.

"'I'd vanish,' I said, driving it home.

"'The fact is, sir, that--somehow--I can't.'

"'You CAN'T?'

"'No, sir. There's something I've forgotten. I've beenhanging
about here since midnight last night, hiding in the cupboards
of the empty bedrooms and things like that. I'm flurried. I'venever
come haunting before, and it seems to put me out.'

"'Put you out?'

"'Yes, sir. I've tried to do it several times, and itdoesn't come off.
There's some little thing has slipped me, and I can't get back.'

"That, you know, rather bowled me over. He looked at me insuch
an abject way that for the life of me I couldn't keep up quite
the high, hectoring vein I had adopted. 'That's queer,' I said,
and as I spoke I fancied I heard some one moving about down below.
'Come into my room and tell me more about it,' I said. 'I didn't,
of course, understand this,' and I tried to take him by the arm.
But, of course, you might as well have tried to take hold of apuff
of smoke! I had forgotten my number, I think; anyhow, I remember
going into several bedrooms--it was lucky I was the only soul
in that wing--until I saw my traps. 'Here we are,' I said, andsat
down in the arm-chair; 'sit down and tell me all about it. Itseems
to me you have got yourself into a jolly awkward position, oldchap.'

"Well, he said he wouldn't sit down! he'd prefer to flit upand down
the room if it was all the same to me. And so he did, and in alittle
while we were deep in a long and serious talk. And presently,
you know, something of those whiskies and sodas evaporated out ofme,
and I began to realise just a little what a thundering rum andweird
business it was that I was in. There he was, semi-transparent--
the proper conventional phantom, and noiseless except for hisghost
of a voice--flitting to and fro in that nice, clean, chintz-hung
old bedroom. You could see the gleam of the copper candlesticks
through him, and the lights on the brass fender, and the corners
of the framed engravings on the wall,--and there he was tellingme
all about this wretched little life of his that had recentlyended
on earth. He hadn't a particularly honest face, you know, butbeing
transparent, of course, he couldn't avoid telling the truth."

"Eh?" said Wish, suddenly sitting up in his chair.

"What?" said Clayton.

"Being transparent--couldn't avoid telling the truth--Idon't see it,"
said Wish.

"_I_ don't see it," said Clayton, with inimitableassurance. "But
it IS so, I can assure you nevertheless. I don't believe he gotonce
a nail's breadth off the Bible truth. He told me how he had been
killed--he went down into a London basement with a candle to look
for a leakage of gas--and described himself as a senior English
master in a London private school when that release occurred."

"Poor wretch!" said I.

"That's what I thought, and the more he talked the more Ithought it.
There he was, purposeless in life and purposeless out of it. Hetalked
of his father and mother and his schoolmaster, and all who hadever
been anything to him in the world, meanly. He had been toosensitive,
too nervous; none of them had ever valued him properly orunderstood
him, he said. He had never had a real friend in the world,
I think; he had never had a success. He had shirked games andfailed
examinations. 'It's like that with some people,' he said;'whenever
I got into the examination-room or anywhere everything seemed togo.'
Engaged to be married of course--to another over-sensitiveperson, I
suppose--when the indiscretion with the gas escape ended hisaffairs.
'And where are you now?' I asked. 'Not in--?'

"He wasn't clear on that point at all. The impression hegave me was
of a sort of vague, intermediate state, a special reserve forsouls
too non-existent for anything so positive as either sin or virtue.
_I_ don't know. He was much too egotistical and unobservant togive
me any clear idea of the kind of place, kind of country, there ison
the Other Side of Things. Wherever he was, he seems to havefallen in
with a set of kindred spirits: ghosts of weak Cockney young men,
who were on a footing of Christian names, and among these therewas
certainly a lot of talk about 'going haunting' and things likethat.
Yes--going haunting! They seemed to think 'haunting' a tremendous
adventure, and most of them funked it all the time. And soprimed,
you know, he had come."

"But really!" said Wish to the fire.

"These are the impressions he gave me, anyhow," saidClayton, modestly.
"I may, of course, have been in a rather uncritical state,but that
was the sort of background he gave to himself. He kept flittingup and
down, with his thin voice going talking, talking about hiswretched
self, and never a word of clear, firm statement from first tolast.
He was thinner and sillier and more pointless than if he had been
real and alive. Only then, you know, he would not have been in my
bedroom here--if he HAD been alive. I should have kicked him out."

"Of course," said Evans, "there ARE poor mortalslike that."

"And there's just as much chance of their having ghosts asthe rest
of us," I admitted.

"What gave a sort of point to him, you know, was the factthat
he did seem within limits to have found himself out. The mess hehad
made of haunting had depressed him terribly. He had been told
it would be a 'lark'; he had come expecting it to be a 'lark,'
and here it was, nothing but another failure added to his record!
He proclaimed himself an utter out-and-out failure. He said, and
I can quite believe it, that he had never tried to do anythingall
his life that he hadn't made a perfect mess of--and through all
the wastes of eternity he never would. If he had had sympathy,
perhaps--. He paused at that, and stood regarding me. He remarkedthat,
strange as it might seem to me, nobody, not any one, ever, hadgiven
him the amount of sympathy I was doing now. I could see what hewanted
straight away, and I determined to head him off at once. I may bea
brute, you know, but being the Only Real Friend, the recipient ofthe
confidences of one of these egotistical weaklings, ghost or body,is
beyond my physical endurance. I got up briskly. 'Don't you broodon
these things too much,' I said. 'The thing you've got to do is toget
out of this get out of this--sharp. You pull yourself togetherand
TRY.' 'I can't,' he said. 'You try,' I said, and try he did."

"Try!" said Sanderson. "HOW?"

"Passes," said Clayton.

"Passes?"

"Complicated series of gestures and passes with the hands.That's
how he had come in and that's how he had to get out again. Lord!
what a business I had!"

"But how could ANY series of passes--?" I began.

"My dear man," said Clayton, turning on me and puttinga great
emphasis on certain words, "you want EVERYTHING clear. _I_don't
know HOW. All I know is that you DO--that HE did, anyhow, atleast.
After a fearful time, you know, he got his passes right andsuddenly
disappeared."

"Did you," said Sanderson, slowly, "observe thepasses?"

"Yes," said Clayton, and seemed to think. "It wastremendously queer,"
he said. "There we were, I and this thin vague ghost, inthat silent
room, in this silent, empty inn, in this silent little Friday-night
town. Not a sound except our voices and a faint panting he madewhen
he swung. There was the bedroom candle, and one candle on thedressing-
table alight, that was all--sometimes one or other would flare upinto
a tall, lean, astonished flame for a space. And queer thingshappened.
'I can't,' he said; 'I shall never--!' And suddenly he sat downon
a little chair at the foot of the bed and began to sob and sob.
Lord! what a harrowing, whimpering thing he seemed!

"'You pull yourself together,' I said, and tried to pat himon the
back, and . . . my confounded hand went through him! By thattime,
you know, I wasn't nearly so--massive as I had been on thelanding.
I got the queerness of it full. I remember snatching back my handout
of him, as it were, with a little thrill, and walking over to the
dressing-table. 'You pull yourself together,' I said to him, 'and
try.' And in order to encourage and help him I began to try aswell."

"What!" said Sanderson, "the passes?"

"Yes, the passes."

"But--" I said, moved by an idea that eluded me for aspace.

"This is interesting," said Sanderson, with his fingerin his pipe-
bowl. "You mean to say this ghost of yours gave away--"

"Did his level best to give away the whole confoundedbarrier? YES."

"He didn't," said Wish; "he couldn't. Or you'dhave gone there too."

"That's precisely it," I said, finding my elusive ideaput into words
for me.

"That IS precisely it," said Clayton, with thoughtfuleyes upon the
fire.

For just a little while there was silence.

"And at last he did it?" said Sanderson.

"At last he did it. I had to keep him up to it hard, but hedid it
at last--rather suddenly. He despaired, we had a scene, and then
he got up abruptly and asked me to go through the wholeperformance,
slowly, so that he might see. 'I believe,' he said, 'if I couldSEE
I should spot what was wrong at once.' And he did. '_I_ know,'
he said. 'What do you know?' said I. '_I_ know,' he repeated.
Then he said, peevishly, 'I CAN'T do it if you look at me--Ireally
CAN'T; it's been that, partly, all along. I'm such a nervousfellow
that you put me out.' Well, we had a bit of an argument.Naturally
I wanted to see; but he was as obstinate as a mule, and suddenly
I had come over as tired as a dog--he tired me out. 'All right,'
I said, '_I_ won't look at you,' and turned towards the mirror,
on the wardrobe, by the bed.

He started off very fast. I tried to follow him by looking in
the looking-glass, to see just what it was had hung. Round went
his arms and his hands, so, and so, and so, and then with a rush
came to the last gesture of all--you stand erect and open outyour
arms--and so, don't you know, he stood. And then he didn't! Hedidn't!
He wasn't! I wheeled round from the looking-glass to him. Therewas
nothingl I was alone, with the flaring candles and a staggeringmind.
What had happened? Had anything happened? Had I been dreaming? .. .
And then, with an absurd note of finality about it, the clockupon
the landing discovered the moment was ripe for striking ONE. So!--Ping!
And I was as grave and sober as a judge, with all my champagneand
whisky gone into the vast serene. Feeling queer, you know--confoundedly
QUEER! Queer! Good Lord!"

He regarded his cigar-ash for a moment. "That's all thathappened," he
said.

"And then you went to bed?" asked Evans.

"What else was there to do?"

I looked Wish in the eye. We wanted to scoff, and there wassomething,
something perhaps in Clayton's voice and manner, that hamperedour
desire.

"And about these passes?" said Sanderson.

"I believe I could do them now."

"Oh!" said Sanderson, and produced a penknife and sethimself to grub
the dottel out of the bowl of his clay.

"Why don't you do them now?" said Sanderson, shuttinghis pen-knife
with a click.

"That's what I'm going to do," said Clayton.

"They won't work," said Evans.

"If they do--" I suggested.

"You know, I'd rather you didn't," said Wish,stretching out his legs.

"Why?" asked Evans.

"I'd rather he didn't," said Wish.

"But he hasn't got 'em right," said Sanderson, pluggingtoo much
tobacco in his pipe.

"All the same, I'd rather he didn't," said Wish.

We argued with Wish. He said that for Clayton to go through those
gestures was like mocking a serious matter. "But you don'tbelieve--?"
I said. Wish glanced at Clayton, who was staring into the fire,weighing
something in his mind. "I do--more than half, anyhow, I do,"said Wish.

"Clayton," said I, "you're too good a liar for us.Most of it was
all right. But that disappearance . . . happened to be convincing.
Tell us, it's a tale of cock and bull."

He stood up without heeding me, took the middle of the hearthrug,
and faced me. For a moment he regarded his feet thoughtfully, and
then for all the rest of the time his eyes were on the oppositewall,
with an intent expression. He raised his two hands slowly to thelevel
of his eyes and so began. . . .

Now, Sanderson is a Freemason, a member of the lodge of the FourKings,
which devotes itself so ably to the study and elucidation of allthe
mysteries of Masonry past and present, and among the students ofthis
lodge Sanderson is by no means the least. He followed Clayton'smotions
with a singular interest in his reddish eye. "That's notbad," he said,
when it was done. "You really do, you know, put thingstogether,
Clayton, in a most amazing fashion. But there's one little detailout."

"I know," said Clayton. "I believe I could tellyou which."

"Well?"

"This," said Clayton, and did a queer little twist andwrithing
and thrust of the hands.

"Yes."

"That, you know, was what HE couldn't get right," saidClayton.
"But how do YOU--?"

"Most of this business, and particularly how you inventedit, I don't
understand at all," said Sanderson, "but just thatphase--I do."
He reflected. "These happen to be a series of gestures--connected
with a certain branch of esoteric Masonry. Probably you know.
Or else--HOW?" He reflected still further. "I do notsee I can do
any harm in telling you just the proper twist. After all, if youknow,
you know; if you don't, you don't."

"I know nothing," said Clayton, "except what thepoor devil let
out last night."

"Well, anyhow," said Sanderson, and placed hischurchwarden very
carefully upon the shelf over the fireplace. Then very rapidly he
gesticulated with his hands.

"So?" said Clayton, repeating.

"So," said Sanderson, and took his pipe in hand again.

"Ah, NOW," said Clayton, "I can do the whole thing--right."

He stood up before the waning fire and smiled at us all. But Ithink
there was just a little hesitation in his smile. "If I begin--"
he said.

"I wouldn't begin," said Wish.

"It's all right!" said Evans. "Matter isindestructible. You don't
think any jiggery-pokery of this sort is going to snatch Clayton
into the world of shades. Not it! You may try, Clayton, so far as
I'm concerned, until your arms drop off at the wrists."

"I don't believe that," said Wish, and stood up and puthis arm
on Clayton's shoulder. "You've made me half believe in thatstory
somehow, and I don't want to see the thing done!"

"Goodness!" said I, "here's Wish frightened!"

"I am," said Wish, with real or admirably feignedintensity. "I
believe that if he goes through these motions right he'll GO."

"He'll not do anything of the sort," I cried. "There'sonly one way
out of this world for men, and Clayton is thirty years from that.
Besides . . . And such a ghost! Do you think--?"

Wish interrupted me by moving. He walked out from among ourchairs
and stopped beside the tole and stood there. "Clayton,"he said,
"you're a fool."

Clayton, with a humorous light in his eyes, smiled back at him.
"Wish," he said, "is right and all you others arewrong. I shall go.
I shall get to the end of these passes, and as the last swishwhistles
through the air, Presto!--this hearthrug will be vacant, the room
will be blank amazement, and a respectably dressed gentleman of
fifteen stone will plump into the world of shades. I'm certain.
So will you be. I decline to argue further. Let the thing betried."

"NO," said Wish, and made a step and ceased, andClayton raised
his hands once more to repeat the spirit's passing.

By that time, you know, we were all in a state of tension--largely
because of the behaviour of Wish. We sat all of us with our eyeson
Clayton--I, at least, with a sort of tight, stiff feeling aboutme
as though from the back of my skull to the middle of my thighs my
body had been changed to steel. And there, with a gravity thatwas
imperturbably serene, Clayton bowed and swayed and waved hishands
and arms before us. As he drew towards the end one piled up, one
tingled in one's teeth. The last gesture, I have said, was toswing
the arms out wide open, with the face held up. And when at lasthe
swung out to this closing gesture I ceased even to breathe. Itwas
ridiculous, of course, but you know that ghost-story feeling. Itwas
after dinner, in a queer, old shadowy house. Would he, after all--?

There he stood for one stupendous moment, with his arms open andhis
upturned face, assured and bright, in the glare of the hanginglamp.
We hung through that moment as if it were an age, and then camefrom
all of us something that was half a sigh of infinite relief andhalf a
reassuring "NO!" For visibly--he wasn't going. It wasall nonsense.
He had told an idle story, and carried it almost to conviction,that
was all! . . . And then in that moment the face of Clayton,changed.

It changed. It changed as a lit house changes when its lights are
suddenly extinguished. His eyes were suddenly eyes that werefixed,
his smile was frozen on his lips, and he stood there still. Hestood
there, very gently swaying.

That moment, too, was an age. And then, you know, chairs werescraping,
things were falling, and we were all moving. His knees seemed togive,
and he fell forward, and Evans rose and caught him in his arms. .. .

It stunned us all. For a minute I suppose no one said a coherent
thing. We believed it, yet could not believe it. . . . I came out
of a muddled stupefaction to find myself kneeling beside him,
and his vest and shirt were torn open, and Sanderson's hand lay
on his heart. . . .

Well--the simple fact before us could very well wait ourconvenience;
there was no hurry for us to comprehend. It lay there for anhour;
it lies athwart my memory, black and amazing still, to this day.
Clayton had, indeed, passed into the world that lies so near to
and so far from our own, and he had gone thither by the only road
that mortal man may take. But whether he did indeed pass there
by that poor ghost's incantation, or whether he was strickensuddenly
by apoplexy in the midst of an idle tale--as the coroner's jurywould
have us believe--is no matter for my judging; it is just one ofthose
inexplicable riddles that must remain unsolved until the finalsolution
of all things shall come. All I certainly know is that, in thevery
moment, in the very instant, of concluding those passes, hechanged,
and staggered, and fell down before us--dead!