Ghosts I Have Met and Some Others

The sense of relief that swept over me when the great anchor of the Digestic came up from the unstrained quality of the Mersey, and I thought of the fact that shortly a vast ocean would roll between me and that fearful spook, was one of the most delightful emotions that it has ever been my good fortune to experience.  Now all seemed serene, and I sought my cabin belowstairs, whistling gayly; but, alas! how fleeting is happiness, even to a whistler!

As I drew near to the room which I had fondly supposed was to be my own exclusively I heard profane remarks issuing therefrom.  There was condemnation of the soap; there was perdition for the lighting apparatus; there were maledictions upon the location of the port, and the bedding was excommunicate.

“This is strange,” said I to the steward.  “I have engaged this room for the passage.  I hear somebody in there.”

“Not at all, sir,” said he, opening the door; “it is empty.”  And to him it undoubtedly appeared to be so.

“But,” I cried, “didn’t you hear anything?”

“Yes, I did,” he said, candidly; “but I supposed you was a ventriloquist, sir, and was a-puttin’ up of a game on me.”

Here the steward smiled, and I was too angry to retort.  And then—­ Well, you have guessed it. He turned up—­and more vulgar than ever.

“Hullo!” he said, nonchalantly, fooling with a suit-case.  “Going over?”

“Oh no!” I replied, sarcastic.  “Just out for a swim.  When we get off the Banks I’m going to jump overboard and swim to the Azores on a wager.”

“How much?” he asked.

“Five bob,” said I, feeling that he could not grasp a larger amount.

“Humph!” he ejaculated.  “I’d rather drive a cab—­as I used to.”

“Ah?” said I.  “That’s what you were, eh?  A cab-driver.  Takes a mighty mind to be that, eh?  Splendid intellectual effort to drive a cab from the Reform Club to the Bank, eh?”

I had hoped to wither him.

“Oh, I don’t know,” he answered, suavely.  “I’ll tell you this, though:  I’d rather go from the Club to the Bank on my hansom with me holding the reins than try to do it with Mr. Gladstone or the Prince o’ Wiles on the box.”

“Prince o’ Wiles?” I said, with a withering manner.

“That’s what I said,” he retorted.  “You would call him Prince of Whales, I suppose—­like a Yank, a blooming Yank—­because you think Britannia rules the waves.”

I had to laugh; and then a plan of conciliation suggested itself.  I would jolly him, as my political friends have it.

“Have a drink?” I asked.

“No, thanks; I don’t indulge,” he replied.  “Let me offer you a cigar.”

I accepted, and he extracted a very fair-looking weed from his box, which he handed me.  I tried to bite off the end, succeeding only in biting my tongue, whereat the presence roared with laughter.

“What’s the joke now?” I queried, irritated.

“You,” he answered.  “The idea of any one’s being fool enough to try to bite off the end of a spook cigar strikes me as funny.”

From that moment all thought of conciliation vanished, and I resorted to abuse.

“You are a low-born thing!” I shouted.  “And if you don’t get out of here right away I’ll break every bone in your body.”

“Very well,” he answered, coolly, scribbling on a pad close at hand.  “There’s the address.”

“What address?” I asked.

“Of the cemetery where those bones you are going to break are to be found.  You go in by the side gate, and ask any of the grave-diggers where—­”

“You infernal scoundrel!” I shrieked, “this is my room.  I have bought and paid for it, and I intend to have it.  Do you hear?”

His response was merely the clapping of his hands together, and in a stage-whisper, leaning towards me, he said: 

“Bravo!  Bravo!  You are great.  I think you could do Lear.  Say those last words again, will you?”

His calmness was too much for me, and I lost all control of myself.  Picking up the water-bottle, I hurled it at him with all the force at my command.  It crashed through him and struck the mirror over the wash-stand, and as the shattered glass fell with a loud noise to the floor the door to my state-room opened, and the captain of the ship, flanked by the room steward and the doctor, stood at the opening.

“What’s all this about?” said the captain, addressing me.

“I have engaged this room for myself alone,” I said, trembling in my rage, “and I object to that person’s presence.”  Here I pointed at the intruder.

“What person’s presence?” demanded the captain, looking at the spot where the haunting thing sat grinning indecently.

“What person?” I roared, forgetting the situation for the moment.  “Why, him—­it—­whatever you choose to call it.  He’s settled down here, and has been black-guarding me for twenty minutes, and, damn it, captain, I won’t stand it!”

“It’s a clear case,” said the captain, with a sigh, turning and addressing the doctor.  “Have you a strait-jacket?”

“Thank you, captain,” said I, calming down.  “It’s what he ought to have, but it won’t do any good.  You see, he’s not a material thing.  He’s buried in Kensal Green Cemetery, and so the strait-jacket won’t help us.”

Here the doctor stepped into the room and took me gently by the arm.  “Take off your clothes,” he said, “and lie down.  You need quiet.”

“I?” I demanded, not as yet realizing my position.  “Not by a long shot.  Fire him out.  That’s all I ask.”

“Take off your clothes and get into that bed,” repeated the doctor, peremptorily.  Then he turned to the captain and asked him to detail two of his sailors to help him.  “He’s going to be troublesome,” he added, in a whisper.  “Mad as a hatter.”

I hesitate, in fact decline, to go through the agony of what followed again by writing of it in detail.  Suffice it to say that the doctor persisted in his order that I should undress and go to bed, and I, conscious of the righteousness of my position, fought this determination, until, with the assistance of the steward and the two able-bodied seamen detailed by the captain at the doctor’s request, I was forcibly unclad and thrown into the lower berth and strapped down.  My wrath knew no bounds, and I spoke my mind as plainly as I knew how.  It is a terrible thing to be sane, healthy, fond of deck-walking, full of life, and withal unjustly strapped to a lower berth below the water-line on a hot day because of a little beast of a cockney ghost, and I fairly howled my sentiments.

[Illustration:  “I WAS FORCIBLY UNCLAD”]

On the second day from Liverpool two maiden ladies in the room next mine made representations to the captain which resulted in my removal to the steerage.  They couldn’t consent, they said, to listen to the shrieks of the maniac in the adjoining room.

And then, when I found myself lying on a cot in the steerage, still strapped down, who should appear but my little spectre.

“Well,” he said, sitting on the edge of the cot, “what do you think of it now, eh?  Ain’t I a shover from Shoverville on the Push?”

“It’s all right,” I said, contemptuously.  “But I’ll tell you one thing, Mr. Spook:  when I die and have a ghost of my own, that ghost will seek you out, and, by thunder, if it doesn’t thrash the life out of you, I’ll disown it!”

It seemed to me that he paled a bit at this, but I was too tired to gloat over a little thing like that, so I closed my eyes and went to sleep.  A few days later I was so calm and rational that the doctor released me, and for the remainder of my voyage I was as free as any other person on board, except that I found myself constantly under surveillance, and was of course much irritated by the notion that my spacious stateroom was not only out of my reach, but probably in the undisputed possession of the cockney ghost.

After seven days of ocean travel New York was reached, and I was allowed to step ashore without molestation.  But my infernal friend turned up on the pier, and added injury to insult by declaring in my behalf certain dutiable articles in my trunks, thereby costing me some dollars which I should much rather have saved.  Still, after the incidents of the voyage, I thought it well to say nothing, and accepted the hardships of the experience in the hope that in the far distant future my spook would meet his and thrash the very death out of him.

Well, things went on.  The cockney spook left me to my own devices until November, when I had occasion to lecture at a certain college in the Northwest.  I travelled from my home to the distant platform, went upon it, was introduced by the proper functionary, and began my lecture.  In the middle of the talk, who should appear in a vacant chair well down towards the stage but the cockney ghost, with a guffaw at a strong and not humorous point, which disconcerted me!  I broke down and left the platform, and in the small room at the side encountered him.

“Shove the fourth!” he cried, and vanished.

It was then that I consulted Peters as to how best to be rid of him.

“There is no use of talking about it,” I said to Peters, “the man is ruining me.  Socially with the Travises I am an outcast, and I have no doubt they will tell about it, and my ostracism will extend.  On the Digestic my sanity is seriously questioned, and now for the first time in my life, before some two thousand people, I break down in a public lecture which I have delivered dozens of times hitherto without a tremor.  The thing cannot go on.”

“I should say not,” Peters answered.  “Maybe I can help you to get rid of him, but I’m not positive about it; my new scheme isn’t as yet perfected.  Have you tried the fire-extinguisher treatment?”

I will say here, that Peters upon two occasions has completely annihilated unpleasant spectres by turning upon them the colorless and odorless liquids whose chemical action is such that fire cannot live in their presence.

“Fire, the vital spark, is the essential element of all these chaps,” said he, “and if you can turn the nozzle of your extinguisher on that spook your ghost simply goes out.”

“No, I haven’t,” I replied; “but I will the first chance I get.”  And I left him, hopeful if not confident of a successful exorcism.

On my return home I got out two of the extinguishers which were left in my back hall for use in case of an emergency, and tested one of them on the lawn.  I merely wished to ascertain if it would work with spirit, and it did; it went off like a sodawater fountain loaded with dynamite, and I felt truly happy for the first time in many days.

“The vulgar little beast would better keep away from me now,” I laughed.  But my mirth was short-lived.  Whether or not the obnoxious little chap had overheard, or from some hidden coign had watched my test of the fire-extinguisher I don’t know, but when he came to my den that night he was amply protected against the annihilating effects of the liquid by a flaring plaid mackintosh, with a toque for his head, and the minute I started the thing squirting he turned his back and received the charge harmless on his shoulders.  The only effect of the experiment was the drenching and consequent ruin of a pile of MSS.  I had been at work on all day, which gave me another grudge against him.  When the extinguisher had exhausted itself, the spectre turned about and fairly raised the ceiling with his guffaws, and when he saw my ruined pages upon the desk his mirth became convulsive.

“De-lightful!” he cried.  “For an impromptu shove wherein I turn over the shoving to you in my own behalf, I never saw it equalled.  Wouldn’t be a bad thing if all writers would wet down their MSS. the same way, now would it?”

But I was too indignant to reply, and too chagrined over my failure to remain within-doors, so I rushed out and paced the fields for two hours.  When I returned, he had gone.