Chapter VI: The Ghosts Tell Stories, and Compare Notes (2)

The invisible band began to play and a man stepped out in the middle of the floor, while all the others formed a circle around him. They were so many that no one could have counted them, and all kept an expectant attitude, so that the words just uttered seemed quite unnecessary. As the music continued he was astonished to find that it was a rag-time dance and “coon song” combined just as he had seen only a few days ago in one of the theaters. As the man sang this the whole assembly took it quite seriously and applauded him with the rhythmic regularity of a theatrical claque, and then the same ghost bowed with a certain grace and to a persistent encore he stepped forward and began a cake walk, accompanied by a song about kissing your baby. The whole thing was so ludicrous that he nearly had a fit in trying not to laugh. He dared not give way to mirth, for they all seemed to take the matter so seriously that he was not sure as to what might happen to him. The princess was quite amused by this song and dance, and after the applause was over he asked her if she would like to dance, and she replied that none but slaves danced in her country, and they did so simply to amuse their owners. He was still under the stimulus of suppressed laughter and regarded the invitation as a good joke, but he would have changed his mind if she had not said sweetly:

“Of course you could not know it, but princesses could not so demean themselves.”

“I beg your most noble highness to pardon my ignorance. I will not offend again.” Then to change the subject he said hastily: “I saw some Egyptians dance at Chicago, at the exposition, and also at Buffalo, and I suppose the slaves danced much like that in your day. They say that customs change little in those old places—that is—ah—in regard to such pastimes—” stammered the young man suddenly conscious that her painted eyes were flashing fire. She said haughtily:

“Do you refer to the dance called couchee-couchee? If you do, I will say that any slave that tried that on us of the old times would be short on heads so soon that she would not know what had happened to her.” Then in a tone of disgust, she continued as if to herself:

“Now wouldn't that rock you to sleep?”

The manner in which this was said left no doubt in the mind of the young man that he had made a mistake, and he tried to pull himself together and said lamely:

“How did your illustrious highness learn to speak English so well? Why, you even seem to have learned our idioms.”

“I have not lain in that museum so long for nothing, and all day and everyday there are men and women sitting around and snooping into things that do not concern them in the least. I cannot help hearing them, and their English is more remarkable for force than elegance, as you doubtless know. Now, in my time there was no difference between the language of the people and the slaves. We had a shorter vocabulary, and its very simplicity has made it possible for those who like to study into these things to read it.

“We were satisfied with what we had, but it seems to me that you are always seeking after new expressions, and I must say that I think our way was best. Yet, I find myself contaminated by the ungrammatical conversation of the throngs who frequent the place where I must stay. But unpleasant as that is, it is as nothing beside the conversation of the people who think they know it all, and their ignorance about things only six or seven thousand years ago is awful. To hear them flounder along and try to learn from what they see is bad enough, but nothing beside hearing those who think they know it all try to enlighten others. We can excuse one who is really ignorant and makes no secret of it, but the glib fellows who go on and talk of dynasties and Pharaohs—why they don’t know the difference between a Pharaoh and a Sardanapalus. And, they, like everybody else, think that Cleopatra was the only queen in Egypt, and she was, as I said, so painfully modern. It is now too late to talk much and so I will say good-bye until next year. And do not forget that my mummy case is in the main aisle, near the archway leading to the second room. You cannot miss it, besides I will be there waiting for you. We can talk at our ease, and I do hope that some way can be devised by which I can be taken back to Egypt. Ah, dear Egypt, where rain and thunder come not and snow and ice are unknown.”

“I will certainly be there if I am alive, and—beshrew me—(this sounded like the sort of thing one ought to say to a princess)—if I don’t find some way to get you back to Egypt once more.”

Then bowing to the princess he withdrew to make place for a man who had been standing there some time waiting to approach her.

“I wonder what has become of the Sociable Ghost?” thought the young man. He looked around, and seeing so many ghosts, and no sign of his friend, he suddenly felt himself grow very uneasy. What if he could not find his way out of this place? But his heart beat a little more regularly as the floor manager shouted loudly:

“Ladies and Gentlemen: We are about to be specially favored by hearing a song composed and sung by our friend, Capt. ———. He assures us that no one else has ever heard it, as he used to sing it only at night when at sea during storms. I have the honor—Captain ———.”

Here the floor manager bowed and retired. The Captain proved to be the ghost who had brought the young man down here, and he took his place while the invisible music burst forth with a strong rush of sound that reminded the young man of the winds and waves in a storm at sea. The ghost began in a deep bass voice:

“With a hey and a ho for the white sea horses, Plunging and tossing on ocean's crest; With a hey and a ho for the warning they give us, The sailor's heart sinks low in his breast. They fight fierce battles there in the water, Till the surface is covered white with foam, The waters toss and are churned to lather That touches the edge of heaven's dome. Deep in the depths the shadows thicken, As gather the sharks from down below, And high in the heavens the storm clouds hover, As prancing fiercely the white horses go. Then in the black darkness we hark to the breakers, Dashing upon the bleak rocks their foam, Beaten to froth by the white sea horses, And none of the sailors reaches his home.”

As this song was finished there was a regular salvo of applause, and in more ways than one, for the clapping of the fleshless hands was like the cracking of musketry. The ghost seemed to be pleased by the evident appreciation of his efforts, and sauntered over to the young man who expressed his pleasure so warmly that even an opera singer would have felt satisfied with such approbation and he requested permission to copy down the song, for sung in a grand and sonorous basso it had seemed to be a fine one.

When the last few desultory claps of applause at this song had died away the floor manager called out:

“Take your partners for a quadrille.”

In a minute there was such a bustle that the newspaper man could scarcely hear himself think, but soon the sets were formed, and the whole immense place was filled with dancers, all in sets for quadrille. The music changed at the right moment, and the floor manager called out in stentorian tones:

“Salute your partners.” And they all bowed in the regulation manner. Considering the almost universal poverty of wearing apparel, the ghosts danced and made a graceful appearance. There was scarcely enough cloth in good condition to have made a dress, but that fact did not seem to strike them as worth consideration. The manager cried:

“First two forward and back, cross over, balance to your partner, back to your place, all promenade.” Continuing he led them through all the mazes of what he called allemand right, allemand left, all sashay, and so on until the whole was finished.

All the ghosts appeared to enjoy the free movement of the dance and to them it mattered little if the usual attire for such functions was conspicuous by its absence. The young man thought that as they had ghostly food and drink, furniture and decorations, perhaps they imagined their clothes as well. Then he suddenly remembered those tables. It struck him as curious that they had come and disappeared like things in some fairy tale.

As he watched the dancers, who were now waltzing, he thought of a curious experience that had happened to him a year ago. He had a ticket to go to Albany on the day boat, and he thought it would be a pleasant trip and a rest, for he had been working unusually hard for a fortnight. He had never made this trip and thought he would enjoy the beauties of the scenery, and incidentally, repose his mind.

The night before he was to make this trip he had a most vivid dream. He thought he was in a primeval forest and saw huge misshapen monsters, great prehistoric creatures, whose bones only now tell of their existence. Among them he saw a monstrous elephant covered with hair, and with immense tusks curved like those found among the eternal glaciers in far off lands. There were other strange animals and giants. As he went along he heard in one place a swishing like that of silks swirling in the dance, and a soft rhythmic sound, but nothing could he see until he suddenly turned a corner, and there was a room with hundreds of men and women dancing, but they all seemed to him to be dead. He turned to find some one who could explain this strange thing, but no one was near, and when he turned to look at them again they had all disappeared and an enormous gorilla stood in the place where they had been.

Then he awoke, and attended to his business of getting ready, and at the last moment hurried down to the boat. After the manner of busy men he reached there just as the bell was ringing, and when he went to hand in his ticket, he remembered that he had left it on the bureau, safely folded in a clean handkerchief. He said a word or two in appreciation of the situation, and then said to himself that since he could not go to Albany he would go to Rockaway. He had never been there, though it was so near by. The boat was just ready to start and the price for a round trip ticket but fifty cents.

The sail down was uneventful, and as it was a week day and near the close of the season, he found very little to interest him there, so when he came to a museum, such as flourish at places like that, he decided to enter there to while away the time until the boat was ready to sail. As he entered the door, he saw the primeval forest of his dream, and every monster he found in just the same position. He thought he was living in the days long before man had entered into the history of the world. Wondering at this dream which had so curiously “come out,” he suddenly found himself at the same place of which he had dreamed, where he had seen the dead folks dancing. He heard the same soft swish of silk, and the same subdued murmur and there were marionettes, hundreds of them all strung on invisible wires, and all dancing around in a mad revel that had something uncanny about it, particularly when taken in with the singular dream as a background.

Now he was down under Trinity Church looking at a revel far stranger, and he began to wonder if he were not a medium in spite of what the ghosts told him. He knew that the first experience was true, and he did not doubt that this one was equally so, and he thought that from now on he would take up the study of the unknowable and make an exhaustive research into all things relative to ghosts. Once before he had had a serious intention of writing a book on the subject of ghosts, authentic ones, but when he tried to get the matter together he found that the nearest he could come to what he wished to find was, that no one person not an avowed spiritualist, would admit having seen a real ghost, but nearly all knew of some one whose aunt or grandmother had heard of some one whose friends had thought they did see one. So he gave up that plan, but now he thought he might get notes enough to make a book on the subject, but then he might be injuring his plans regarding the princess. He compromised with himself by saying that if his plan for her deliverance failed he could then give the necessary time to the book. He regretted that he had not got his kodak along. What a chance it would have been to get that line of ghosts as they marched by, and what would he not have given for a snap shot at that “coon dance.”

After the waltz the company broke up into groups and talked or promenaded around in couples, and it was a sight to remember forever to see the young lady ghosts as they walked or hung their heads and tried to look conscious at some tender compliment. The ghosts really had something of the semblance of life about them, for though they had no features left, nor eyes, there was some kind of inner light and a radiance which took the place of flesh. It was as though the soul had shed a soft light of its own over the fleshless skull and lent it something of its former appearance, and the thought came to him that perhaps these ghosts only saw the spiritual part of each other and just as he decided that such must be the case, as nothing else would account for so much that was otherwise unaccountable, there happened something to put all such ideas to flight, for the three ghosts who had looked upon the wine when it was red, seemed to have awakened under the impression that they were being neglected, and started a row, and began hitting out at any one in reach, be it man or woman, and so unexpected was the assault that the skeletons went down in heaps and lay there like so much new mown wheat.

The whole thing was so ludicrous that the newspaper man thought he must laugh or die. But he had been schooled not to laugh at the foolishness of others. That training stood him in good stead now, and he did keep his face straight by promising himself the luxury of a laugh the next day.

This control over his risibilities saved him from disaster when interviewing a great society woman one day. She told him that she could never bear to have any publicity, and really felt that the privacy of her home was sacred to her, and nothing about it ought ever to be put into any paper, while at that very moment he had her letter to his chief in his pocket, asking that a reporter should be sent to write a description of her house, which was one of the finest on Fifth Avenue. Her very virtuous indignation under the circumstances was so refreshing that the young man had found it a great and severe task to control his amusement, and ever since that experience he had been practicing self-control. If there is one thing more than another calculated to afford abundant practice in this line it is being a society reporter.

So now he even refrained from clapping his hands when the Sociable Ghost appeared with a bound, in spite of his sore toe, which the young man noticed was held up rigidly, notwithstanding the activity of the rest of the bony body. He laid the three flat with three well directed blows, and set the beholder to wondering what he could have done had he not been hampered by his troublesome foot.

When the three lay flat in a heap, he pushed them over into a corner with his well foot and told them to lie there and not to dare to move again until he gave them leave. One of them had lost one of his legs in the fracas, and began to howl that he was all broken up. He begged some one to pull him out and get his leg for him. The Sociable Ghost said, as he rubbed his bony hands together:

“Say, oh, I say! This is fine! I have not had so much fun since I died. It brings back old times, and for one ineffable moment I thought I was back on my ship again and fighting out with a belaying pin at the mutineers. Oh, yes; I had a mutiny to deal with about every six months. It was fun. Danger? No, for the Captain always holds all the trump cards, and I was always ready to play them. By George, I was! And this brings it all back to me. Oh, I say; I must show you something a little out of the usual order. It is my wife’s second husband. He is among the ghosts invited here from Derby, and I think it was a little cheeky for him to come here, don’t you?”

“What are you going to do to him?” asked the young man with some natural curiosity.

“I am going to do just nothing to him. The poor chap has had troubles of his own with her—enough to balance any ill will I might have had. Now, my wife was, or rather is, for she is not dead yet, the kind of woman that what she wants goes, whether you want it to go or not. I was captain on board my ship, but she was the captain at home, and I was crew and cabin boy combined. Maybe I was a bit breezy toward my men when I got to sea again after a month or so on shore. Well: my wife had a portrait of me, and about every half hour she used to hale my successor up before it and tell the poor devil to look at it and see a man and, what one looked like. She dinned my virtues into his ears so much that at last the poor wretch died in self-defense.”

“And where is the lady now?” asked the young man with interest.

“Somewhere in Boston, I believe. The last I heard of her she was giving my money away to the missionaries. I never had any use for missionaries, dead or alive. They come on board your ship, and the best you have is not too good for them, and they want to hold service every Sunday. I know a missionary as soon as I hear him speak. They always say Sabbath for Sunday, and babe for baby. There's lots of them down here.”

For once the newspaper man forgot his tact, and said:

“I should think that you would have been glad to have them hold service for the sailors. I have heard that they are mostly amenable to religious instruction and guidance.”

“Yah! Just stow that. The sailors don't want any of their salvation any more than the Chinamen, and it don’t do any more good. You can't make a silk purse out of a pig’s ear, and sailors are nothing more than living machines when they are on board ship. They are all right aboard ship, but they are no good on land, and whoever wants to do a good turn to a sailor wants to see that he gets a ship as soon as the voyage is done. They need knocking down every day with a marlinspike, and to get a taste of the rope’s end every ten minutes, to give them a good appetite so they won't be forever grumbling about their grub.”

The Captain might have continued indefinitely had not a polka struck up, and all the ghosts began to dance again. The dance of the marionettes came back to the young man’s mind with insistent force, but he tried to hide his amusement.

To keep out of the way of the dancers the young man drew back and walked along close to the wall, and as he did so he was suddenly struck by the sight of a man stooping down so that he could eat out of a dish on the buffet without touching it with his hands. It was such a strange sight that he could not help making a mental note of it, and he really thought that he had not let the ghost see his curiosity. But it was not so, for the ghost turned and faced him and said sadly:

“Sir, I hope you will not think that my disgusting action is done through ignorance, nor even a lack of decency. I simply cannot eat any other way and I am very hungry. Owing to my affliction I could not present myself at the table with the others, and I thought that while all the others are dancing, I could satisfy my hunger without being noticed.”

The newspaper man felt that here was another case of misery out of the ordinary, and he asked the ghost to tell him his trouble, and if it was anything that he could be of assistance in he would be glad to do all in his power. The ghost came to his rescue in a most unexpected manner, by suddenly holding up two mutilated stumps of arms. They had evidently been splintered off between the elbows and shoulders. By no effort could the poor fellow have been able to reach his mouth with either stump had he tried.

The reporter understood at once and felt so sorry for him that his usually ready tongue refused to form a word. He thought that it was more than probable that this accident had taken place in the Revolutionary war, and then he thought that that was too far away, and doubtless he must be one of the heroes of the Civil War. But the ghost as if answering a question, said:

“No, it was not in any war that my arms were smashed like that. If you would be so good as to help me get something to eat, I will tell you about it later. You can cut up some bread and meat and I must eat them right off the dish, and drink the best I can. It is very humiliating but I must bear it.”

The young man took of the different viands and cut them into convenient pieces and then offered to hand them on a fork. If ghosts could shed tears of gratitude from their hollow eyes this one would surely have wept, so much was he touched by the action. He ate and drank with an excellent appetite, and when he had all that he desired, he said:

“Now, sir, I am at your disposal. I will tell you why it is that I am reduced to this condition and am obliged to eat like an animal. The story began in life, and it was not until I had been down here two years that this happened. I found an enemy and he it was who made me this pitiable object. The reason? Oh, I lived in New York in a handsome house of my own in Sixty-fourth Street, near the park on the East Side. I mention this, as the proximity has something to do with the story. That is, the big reservoir is there and that causes a higher pressure of water in the houses there than in almost any other part of the city. I lived there in peace and contentment, and was something of a savant. So you can see that I am not altogether to blame for what follows. You know how all the houses are built, one beside the other. On the West side of my house was that of a man—well—we will call him Dinklespiel. That was not his real name—but it is good enough for him after the way he has treated me. Yes; I will call him Dinklespiel. Well; his front door was right beside mine. You could reach into his hall way over the low stone division. The next house on the East side was the whole width of the house away. Now, if Mr. Dinklespiel had lived in that house this would not have occurred.

“It so happened that our man who attended to all these things for me was out in the country getting the place in readiness for our annual flitting, and there was no one to clean the sidewalk and we had had coal in the day before. I admit that it would have been better to hire a man as my wife suggested, but somehow I felt like doing it myself, and that is how the trouble began.”

Here the ghost appeared lost in reflection so the young man asked what would have been better left to a hired man. The ghost shook off his distraction and resumed.

“Why, I got the garden hose—well—I got the hose and washed down the sidewalk. I told you about the high pressure, and that was the cause of it all. I got the hose,—the hose—and dragged it up from the cellar, and told the girl to go down and turn the water on, when I whistled. This hose was bought to protect us from fire as well as to wash the sidewalk and water the grass in the back yard, and it had a nozzle one inch in diameter. It was a big hose, and when James took hold of it I always noticed that his face grew red as though he found it hard to hold. But I always thought that it was his ignorance that made him so afraid of it, and I was sure that I could manage it all right and I even rather prided myself on the showing I should make of the triumph of mind over matter. I had never tried to manage a hose before, and even now I should not, I think, have had any trouble if there had been no hole in the hose.

“I drew the hose up into the area way, and then whistled, and the girl turned on the water. Why, my dear sir, it nearly jerked me off my feet before I knew what had happened to me, and I held the nozzle straight up with both hands with all my strength, and pointed the stream upward so that I could get a little accustomed to it, and at the same time wash down the front of the house. Suddenly I heard a strange sound in the dining room where my little boy was looking at me, and saw that I had in some way for which I could not account nearly drowned him. I heard him run screaming up stairs to his mother, and then I thought I would go up the front steps and play on the second story windows, for it was summer and everything was dusty. Once I had learned to manipulate the hose, it was a delight. I had partially overcome my fear of it. Why, the violent stream rushed out like steam from an overheated boiler. It fairly screamed, the force was so great. Well, I played on the windows and then on the whole front of the house, and was enjoying my labor when I became aware that the servant was calling me from the area, and I bent over to hear her, keeping firm hands on the powerful nozzle that was twisting and trying to wriggle out of my hands all the time. Just as she opened her mouth—well—somehow she got very wet, and sat down in the middle of the area, and I turned around so that she should not think I was laughing at her miserable plight. Anyhow I had done enough up there and I intended to attack the dusty sidewalk, when my wife came to the front door and opened it unexpectedly just as I was in the act of turning, and somehow she received the full force of the stream right in the face and she went down like a shot. No one could blame me if in the face of this disaster I forgot and left the squirming hose to work its will and tried to raise her.

“She did not wait for me, however, but told me with a withering look to take that thing down cellar at once. I tried to explain, but she shut the door, and I started to obey her, but, sir, you could scarcely believe me, but I had lost control of the thing, and the more I tried to manage it the worse it got, and at last I found that there was a hole in the hose about a foot from the nozzle and that was running in opposition to the nozzle. I was wet to the skin, and the more I tried to get down the steps the worse it wriggled and twisted until I was at my wits’ end to know what to do.

“At last I seemed to obtain a little command of it and was in the act of turning around to come down when I became conscious that there was a hearse and two carriages drawn up in front of my next neighbor's house, and before I could move the door opened and six men came out bearing a large coffin. I was struck dumb and almost blind, and did not know what I was doing, and—well—before I came to my senses every one of those pall-bearers was wet through, and the force of the water threw the flowers in every direction, and as if this were not enough the vicious stream hit the clergyman directly between the eyes and made him fall backward, and that was the reason that a number of people who had gathered to see a funeral at that unusual hour laughed. I was actually paralyzed with the whole thing and stood there helpless, trying to hold up the nozzle, not knowing that it was pouring floods into the vestibule of the dead man’s house. Finally some one came up the steps and took the wretched thing away from me, and dragged it down to the area, and I scarcely knew enough to go after it.

“I have often thought that scientific men are not quite so well adapted to cope with the small things of daily life as those more in touch with mundane affairs. I was so distressed at my complete failure to master so simple a thing as a hose, and above all at the terrible disaster which had befallen me in the involuntary disrespect to my neighbor, that I was like a man dead.

“He had been away and died and was brought home for burial, and that was why the funeral was private and so early, for he was to be taken quite a distance for interment.

“So you can conceive of my distress, particularly as my wife did not feel willing to console me. On the contrary, she said quite a number of things which I am sure she would have left unsaid had she reflected. And I had to get her a new frock and one for the servant. After a while the neighbors stopped asking me impertinent things about my garden hose, and I was beginning to feel a little better about it when I fell ill and died.

“My funeral was marked by decorum, and everything passed off well. I was not sorry to come here for I had studied a little of everything else, and this being the unknowable held certain charms for me. I am of a philosophic nature, and very adaptable, and soon became quite content here, for if there are some drawbacks, there are some compensations too.”

“What are they?” asked the reporter hastily, and not remembering that he was departing from his usual custom.

“Well, the greatest is—speaking generally, you know—that you can do no more wrong, and that you must progress, for nothing in nature can retrograde. We feel that we may advance in the scale of the great plan, and that our powers of evil are null, so we can hope. We do not know what we can hope for, but we are not hindered from hoping that there is something to hope for. But, the old desires, old frailties die hard and slow. But, all that is not the story of my misery. I came down here, and for a long time had no special trouble, and met in convention twice. I tried to study out all I saw, until one night I saw my neighbor whose funeral I had so unintentionally desecrated. He had been removed to another cemetery nearer and so was here as a guest.

“As soon as he saw me he acted as if he had been suddenly restored to all the vigor of life, and its animosity, for he followed me around all the evening until he found me in a corner studying the sculpture on one of the pillars. He knocked me down and jumped on me and kicked me until it is a wonder how I have a whole bone left. I could have tied any other bones on, but how could I tie without hands? I am sure that if he had given me the opportunity to explain how this unhappy affair had come about he would feel sorry that he was so rough. But he wouldn't listen and so he will never know.”

“Yes, he will,” said a voice right behind them, and as the reporter and the armless ghost turned together they saw another ghost, and he continued his unexpected conversation.

“I have heard your story, sir; and regret that I was so violent. I was exasperated beyond measure, as I was always a great stickler for strict decorum, and I was not to blame if I thought you did that on purpose.”

The armless ghost was so affected that he would have fallen had not the other put his arms around him, and the chances for a complete reconciliation were so good that the reporter felt himself de trop and silently slipped away.