Out of the Air

by Inez Haynes Gillmore

A little girl.

I say—a little girl. She wasn’t, you understand, a real little girl. Nor was she a dead little girl. Instantly I knew that—just as instantly as I had known that Lutetia was dead. I mean, and I hope this phraseology is technically correct, that Lutetia, as I saw her, was the ghost of someone who had once lived. This little girl was an apparition; an appearance projected through space of some one who now lives. That or—oh, how difficult this is, Spink—a sloughed-off, astral self left in this old place; or—but I won’t go into that.

I stood there, as I said, shading my candle. The little girl closed her door with a meticulous care. Did I hear the ghost of a click? Perhaps my ear supplied that. By one hand she was dragging a big doll—one of those rag-dolls children have. I couldn’t tell you anything about Lutetia—except that she was lovely—ineffably lovely. But I can tell you all about this little girl. She was pigtailed and freckled. The pigtails were short, very thick, so tight that their ends snapped upwards, like hundreds of little-girl pigtails that I have seen. There was a row of tangled little ringlets on her forehead. She didn’t look at me. She didn’t know that I was there. She proceeded straight across the hall, busily stub-toeing her way like any freckled, pigtailed little girl, the doll dragging on the floor behind her, until she reached the garret stairs. She opened the garret door, closed it with the same meticulous care. The last I got was a little white glimpse of her down-dropped face, as she pulled the rag-doll’s leg away from the shutting door.

I waited there a long time—until my candle guttered to nothing. She did not return. I did not see her or anybody else again that night.

I went back to bed and fell immediately into a perfectly quiet, dreamless sleep. The next morning early, I went over to Hyde’s brother—his name is Corning—and bought this house. Perhaps you can tell me why I did it. I don’t exactly know myself; for of course I couldn’t afford it. I realized only that I could not—I simply and absolutely could not—let anybody else buy Lutetia.

You think, of course, that I’ve finished now, Spink. But that isn’t all. Not by a million Persian parasangs—all. She has come again. I mean Lutetia. For that matter, they both have come again. But I’ll try to tell my story categorically.

It was a night or two later; another dewy, placid large-starred night— Strange how this beautiful weather keeps up! I had been reading as usual; but my mind was as vacant as a glass bell from which you have exhausted the air. I was rereading, I remember, Lutetia’s The Sport of the Goddesses. Spink, how that woman could write! And.... Again I became aware that I wasn’t alone. Just as definitely, I knew that it was not Lutetia this time; nor even Little Pigtails. This time, and perhaps it’s because I’m getting used to this sort of thing, I had a sense of—not fear—but only of what I’ll call a spiritual diffidence.

Yet instantly I looked up.

He—it was a he this time—was standing in the doorway, which leads from this big living-room into the front hall. We were vis-à-vis—tête-à-tête one might say. He was looking straight at me and I—I assure you, Spink—I looked straight at him.