When Ghost Meets Ghost Part 113

"Goose!--they would be sure to know."

"The only information I have goes to prove the contrary. When Voltaire's ghost came and spirit-rapped, or whatever you call it ..."

"I know. One turns tables, and it's very silly."

"... they said triumphantly that they supposed, now he was dead, he was convinced of another existence. And he--or it--rapped out:--'There is only one existence. I am not dead.' So he didn't know he was a ghost."

Gwen seemed tolerant of Voltaire, as a _pourparler_. "Perhaps," she said thoughtfully, "he found he jammed up against the other ghosts instead of coinciding with them.... You know Lady Katherine Stuartlaverock tried to kiss her lover's ghost, and he gave, and she went through."

"A very interesting incident," said Adrian. "If she had been a ghost, too, she would, as you say, have jammed. If Dr. Johnson had known that story, he would have been more reasonable about Bishop Berkeley.... What did he say about _him_? Why, he kicked a cask, and said if the Bishop could do that, and not be convinced of the reality of matter, he would be a fool, Sir. I wonder if one said 'Sir,' as often as Dr. Johnson, one would be allowed to talk as much nonsense."

"Boswell must have made that story."

"Very likely. But Boswell made Sam Johnson. Just as we only know of the existence of Matter through our senses, so we only know of Sam's existence through Bozzy. I am conscious that I am becoming prosy. Let's get back to the old ladies."

"Well--it was you that doddered away from them, to talk about Voltaire's bogy. If they _didn't_ know they were ghosts, what then?"

"If they didn't know they were ghosts, the discovery would have been just as excoriating as it has been here. Possibly worse, because--what does one know? Now your full-blown disembodied spirit ... Mind you, this is only my idea, and may be quite groundless!..."

"Now you've apologized, go on! 'Your full-blown disembodied spirit' ..."

"... may be so absorbed in the sudden and strange surprise of the change--Browning--as to be quite unable to partake of excruciation, even with a twin sister.... It is very disagreeable to think of, I admit.

But so is nearly every concrete form in which one clothes an imaginary other-worldliness."

"Why is it disagreeable to think of being able to shake off one's troubles, and forget all about them. _I_ like it."

"Well, I admit that I was beginning to say that I thought these two venerable ladies, meeting as ghosts--not spectres you know, in which case each would frighten t'other and both would run away--would probably be as superior to painful memories on this side as the emanc.i.p.ated b.u.t.terfly is to its forgotten wiggles as a chrysalis. But it has dawned upon me that Perfect Beings won't wash, and that the Blessed have drawbacks, and that their Choir would pall. I am inclined to back out, and decide that the two of them would have been more miserable if the discovery had come upon them post mortem than they will be now--in a little time at least. At first of course it must be maddening to think of the twenty odd years they have been cheated out of. Really the Divine Disposer of Events might have had a little consideration for the Dramatis Personae." He jumped to another topic. "You know your mamma paid our papa a visit last--last Thursday, wasn't it?--yes, Thursday!"

"Oh yes--I heard all about it. She had a short chat with him, and he gave her a very good cup of tea. He told her about some very old acquaintances whom she hadn't heard of for years who live in Tavistock Square."

"Was _that_ all?"

"No. The lady very-old acquaintance had been a Miss Tyrawley, and had married her riding-master."

"Was _that_ all?"

"No. She called you and 'Re 'the son and daughter.' Then she talked of our 'engagement as your father persists in calling it.' My blood boiled for quite five minutes."

"All that sounds--very usual! Was there nothing else? That was very little for such a long visit."

"How long was the visit?"

"Much too long for what you've told me. Think of something else!"

Now Gwen had been keeping something back. Under pressure she let it out.

"Well--mamma thought fit to say that your father entirely shared her views! Was that true?"

"Which of her views?... I suppose I know, though! I should say it was half-true--truish, suppose we call it!" Then Adrian began to feel he had been rash. How was he to explain to Gwen that his father thought she was perhaps--to borrow his own phrase--"sacrificing herself on his shrine"?

It would be like calling on her to attest her pa.s.sion for _him_. Now a young lady is at liberty to make any quant.i.ty of ardent protestations _off her own bat_, as the cricketers say; but a lover cannot solicit testimonials, to be produced if called for by parents or guardians.

However, Gwen had no intention of leaving explanation to him. She continued:--

"When my mother said that your father entirely shared her views, I know which she meant, perfectly well. She has got a foolish idea into her head--and so has my dear old papa, so she's not alone--that I am marrying you to make up to you for ... for the accident." She found it harder and harder to speak of the nature of the accident. This once, she must do it, _coute que coute_. She went on, speaking low that nothing should reach the backgammon-players. "They say it was _our_ fault that old Stephen shot you.... Well!--it _was_...."

"My darling, I have frequently pointed out the large share the Primum Mobile had in the matter, to say nothing of the undoubted influence of Destiny...."

"Silly man--I am talking seriously. I don't know that it really matters whether it was or wasn't--wasn't our fault, I mean--so long as they think I think it was. That's the point. Now, the question is, did or did not my superior mamma descend on your _comme-il-faut_ parent to drum this idea into him, and get him on her side?"

"Am I supposed to know?"

"Yes."

"Then I will be frank with you. Always be frank with mad bulls who b.u.t.t you into corners and won't let you out. Your mamma's communications with my papa had the effect you indicate, and he took me into his confidence the same evening. He too questions the purity of your motives in marrying me, alleging that they are vitiated by a spirit of self-sacrifice, tainted by the baneful influence of unselfishness. He is alive to the possibility that you hate me cordially, but are pretending."

"Oh, my dearest, I wish I _did_ hate you.... Why?--why of course then it would really _be_ a sacrifice, and something to boast of. As it is....

Well--I'm consulting my own convenience, and I ... I am the best judge of my own affairs. It suits me to ... to lead you to the altar, and I shall do it. As for what other people think, all I can say is, I will thank Europe to mind its own business."

Then Adrian said:--"I am conscious of the purity of my own motives. I believe it would be impossible to discover a case of a Selfishness more unalloyed than mine, if all the records of Human Weakness were carefully re-read by experts at the British Museum. I am a.s.suming the existence of some Digest or Codex of the rather extensive material...."

"Don't go off to that. I always have such difficulty in keeping you to the point. How selfish are you, and why?"

"I doubt if I can succeed in telling you how selfish I am, but there's no harm in trying." Speech hung fire for a moment, to seek for words; then found them. "I am a thing in the dark, with an object, and I call it Gwen. I am an atom adrift in a huge black silence, and it crushes my soul, and I am misery itself. Then I hear the voice that I call Gwen's, and forthwith I am happy beyond the wildest dreams of the Poets--though really that isn't saying much, because their wildest dreams are usually unintelligible, and frequently ungrammatical...."

"Never mind them! Go on with how selfish you are."

"Can't you let a poor beggar get to the end of his parenthesis? I was endeavouring to sketch the situation, as a preliminary to going on with how selfish I am. I was remarking that however dissatisfied I feel with the Most High, however sulky I am with the want of foresight in the Primum Mobile--or his indifference to my interests; it comes to the same thing--however inclined to cry out against the darkness, the darkness that once was light, I no sooner hear that voice that I call Gwen's than I am at least in the seven-hundredth heaven of happiness. When I hear that voice, I am all Christian forgiveness towards my Maker. When it goes, my heart is dumb and the darkness gains upon me. That I beg to state, is a simple prosaic statement of an everyday fact. When I have added that the powers that I ascribe to the voice that I know to be Gwen's are also inherent in the hand that I believe to be Gwen's....

Don't pull it away!"

"I only wanted to look at it. Just to see why you shouldn't know it was mine, as well as the voice."

"I _know_ I couldn't be mistaken about the voice. I don't _think_ I could be wrong about the hand, but I don't know that I couldn't."

"Well--now you've got it again! Now go on. Go on to how selfish you are--that's what I want!"

"I will endeavour to do so. I hope my imperfect indication of my view of my own position...."

"Don't be prosy. It is not fair to expect any girl to keep a popular lecturer's head in her lap...."

"I agree--I agree. It was my desire to be strictly practical. I will come to the point. I want to make it perfectly clear that you _are_ my life...."

"Don't get too loud!"

"All right!... that you are my life--my life--my glorious life! I want you to see and know that but for you I am nothing--a wisp of straw blown about by all the winds of Heaven--a mere unit of consciousness in a blank, black void. See what comes of it! Here was I, before this unfortunate result of what is from my point of view a lamentable miscarriage of Destiny, a tolerably well-informed ... English male!...

Well--what else am I?... Sonneteer, suppose we say...."

"Goose--suppose we say--or gander!"

"All right! Here was I, before this mishap, not a sc.r.a.p more brutally self-indulgent and inconsiderate of everybody else than the ruck of my fellow-ganders, and now look at me!"

"Well--I'm looking at you!"