The Mammoth Book of Modern Ghost Stories

“No, Miss James.”

“How extraordinary of him! What time is it? Quarter to nine? Why didn’t he go when he was warm? I must go and see him, I suppose.”

“He says he’s lame,” said the housekeeper censoriously and loudly.

“Lame! That’s extraordinary. He certainly wasn’t last night. But don’t shout. I can hear quite well.”

“Is Mr Marchbanks coming in to breakfast, Miss James?” said the housekeeper, more and more censorious.

“I couldn’t say. But I’ll come down as soon as mine is ready. I’ll be down in a minute, anyhow, to see the policeman. Extraordinary that he is still here.”

She sat down before her window, in the sun, to think a while. She could see the snow outside, the bare, purplish trees. The air all seemed rare and different. Suddenly the world had become quite different: as if some skin or integument had broken, as if the old, mouldering London sky had crackled and rolled back, like an old skin, shrivelled, leaving an absolutely new blue heaven.

“It really is extraordinary!” she said to herself. “I certainly saw that man’s face. What a wonderful face it was! I shall never forget it. Such laughter! He laughs longest who laughs last. He certainly will have the last laugh. I like him for that: he will laugh last. Must be someone really extraordinary! How very nice to be the one to laugh last. He certainly will. What a wonderful being! I suppose I must call him a being. He’s not a person exactly.

“But how wonderful of him to come back and alter all the world immediately! Isn’t that extraordinary. I wonder if he’ll have altered Marchbanks. Of course Marchbanks never saw him. But he heard him. Wouldn’t that do as well, I wonder! – I wonder!”

She went off into a muse about Marchbanks. She and he were such friends. They had been friends like that for almost two years. Never lovers. Never that at all. But friends.

And after all, she had been in love with him: in her head. This seemed now so funny to her: that she had been, in her head, so much in love with him. After all, life was too absurd.

Because now she saw herself and him as such a funny pair. He so funnily taking life terribly seriously, especially his own life. And she so ridiculously determined to save him from himself. Oh, how absurd! Determined to save him from himself, and wildly in love with him in the effort. The determination to save him from himself.

Absurd! Absurd! Absurd! Since she had seen the man laughing among the holly-bushes – such extraordinary, wonderful laughter – she had seen her own ridiculousness. Really, what fantastic silliness, saving a man from himself! Save anybody. What fantastic silliness! How much more amusing and lively to let a man go to perdition in his own way. Perdition was more amusing than salvation anyhow, and a much better place for most men to go to.

She had never been in love with any man, and only spuriously in love with Marchbanks. She saw it quite plainly now. After all, what nonsense it all was, this being-in-love business. Thank goodness she had never made the humiliating mistake.

No, the man among the holly-bushes had made her see it all so plainly: the ridiculousness of being in love, the infra dig. business of chasing a man or being chased by a man.

“Is love really so absurd and infra dig?” she said aloud to herself.

“Why, of course!” came a deep, laughing voice.

She started round, but nobody was to be seen.

“I expect it’s that man again!” she said to herself. “It really is remarkable, you know. I consider it’s a remarkable thing that I never really wanted a man, any man. And there I am over thirty. It is curious. Whether it’s something wrong with me, or right with me, I can’t say. I don’t know till I’ve proved it. But I believe, if that man kept on laughing something would happen to me.”

She smelt the curious smell of almond blossom in the room, and heard the distant laugh again.

“I do wonder why Marchbanks went with that woman last night – that Jewish-looking woman. Whatever could he want of her? – or she him? So strange, as if they both had made up their minds to something! How extraordinarily puzzling life is! So messy, it all seems.

“Why does nobody ever laugh in life like that man. He did seem so wonderful. So scornful! And so proud! And so real! With those laughing, scornful, amazing eyes, just laughing and disappearing again. I can’t imagine him chasing a Jewish-looking woman. Or chasing any woman, thank goodness. It’s all so messy. My policeman would be messy if one would let him: like a dog. I do dislike dogs, really I do. And men do seem so doggy!—”

But even while she mused, she began to laugh again to herself with a long, low chuckle. How wonderful of that man to come and laugh like that and make the sky crack and shrivel like an old skin! Wasn’t he wonderful! Wouldn’t it be wonderful if he just touched her. Even touched her. She felt, if he touched her, she herself would emerge new and tender out of an old, hard skin. She was gazing abstractedly out of the window.

“There he comes, just now,” she said abruptly. But she meant Marchbanks, not the laughing man.

There he came, his hands still shoved down in his overcoat pockets, his head still rather furtively ducked, in the bowler hat, and his legs still rather shambling. He came hurrying across the road, not looking up, deep in thought, no doubt. Thinking profoundly, with agonies of agitation, no doubt about his last night’s experience. It made her laugh.

She, watching from the window above, burst into a long laugh, and the canaries went off their heads again.

He was in the hall below. His resonant voice was calling, rather imperiously:

“James! Are you coming down?”

“No,” she called. “You come up.”

He came up two at a time, as if his feet were a bit savage with the stairs for obstructing him.

In the doorway he stood staring at her with a vacant, sardonic look, his grey eyes moving with a queer light. And she looked back at him with a curious, rather haughty carelessness.

“Don’t you want your breakfast?” she asked. It was his custom to come and take breakfast with her each morning.

“No,” he answered loudly. “I went to a tea-shop.”

“Don’t shout,” she said. “I can hear you quite well.”

He looked at her with mockery and a touch of malice.

“I believe you always could,” he said, still loudly.

“Well, anyway, I can now, so you needn’t shout,” she replied.

And again his grey eyes, with the queer, greyish phosphorescent gleam in them, lingered malignantly on her face.

“Don’t look at me,” she said calmly. “I know all about everything.”

He burst into a pouf of malicious laughter.

“Who taught you – the policeman?” he cried.

“Oh, by the way, he must be downstairs! No, he was only incidental. So, I suppose, was the woman in the shawl. Did you stay all night?”

“Not entirely. I came away before dawn. What did you do?”

“Don’t shout. I came home long before dawn.” And she seemed to hear the long, low laughter.

“Why, what’s the matter!” he said curiously. “What have you been doing?”

“I don’t quite know. Why? – are you going to call me to account?”

“Did you hear that laughing?”

“Oh, yes. And many more things. And saw things too.”

“Have you seen the paper?”

“No. Don’t shout, I can hear.”

“There’s been a great storm, blew out the windows and doors of the church outside here, and pretty well wrecked the place.”