Out of the Air

by Inez Haynes Gillmore

Spink, you have never heard of a jovial ghost, have you? I’m sure I haven’t. But this was or could have been a jovial ghost. He was big—not fat but ample—middle-aged, more than middle-aged. He wore an enormous beard cut square like the men in Assyrian mural tablets. Hair a little long. I assure you he was the handsomest old beggar that I have ever seen. He looked like a portrait by Titian. I got—it’s like holding a photographic negative up to the light and trying to get the figures on it—that he wore a sort of flowing gown; it made him stately. And one of those little round caps that conceal or protect baldness. I can’t describe him. How the devil can you describe a ghost? I mean an apparition. For he isn’t dead either—any more than the little girls is. He’s alive somewhere.

Well, our steady exchange of looks went on and on and on. If I could have said anything it would have been: “What do you want of me, you handsome old beggar?” What he would have said to me I don’t know; although he was trying with all his ghostly strength to put some message over. How he was trying! It was that effort that kept him from being what he was—is—jovial. God, how that gaze burned—tore—ate. It grew insupportable after a while—it was melting me to nothingness. I dropped my eyes. Suddenly I could lift them, for I knew he was gone. Somehow I had the feeling that a monstrous bomb had noiselessly exploded in the room. His going troubled me no more than his coming. I remember I said aloud: “I’m sorry I couldn’t get you, old top! Better luck next time!”

I got up from my chair after a few minutes to take my usual before-going-to-bed walk. I walked about the room; absent-mindedly putting things to rights—the way women do. My mind—and I suspect my eyes too—were still so full of him that when, on stepping outside, I came across another—I was conscious of some shock. Again not of fear, but of a terrific surprise.

Are you getting all this, Spink? Oh, of course you’re not, because you don’t believe it. But try to believe it. Put yourself in my place! Try to get the wonder, the magic, the terror, the touch now and then of horror, but above all the fierce thrill—of living with a family of ghosts?

This one—the fourth—was a man too. About thirty, I should say. And awfully charming. Yes, you spaniel-eyed fish, you, one man is saying this of another man. He was awfully charming. Short, dark. He wore—again it is like holding a negative up to the light—he wore white ducks or flannels. He stood very easily, his weight—listen to me, his weight—mainly on one foot and one hand curved against his hip. In the other hand, he carried his pipe. He looked at me—God, how he looked at me! How, for that matter, they all look at me! They want something, Spink. Of me. They’re trying to tell me. I can’t get it, though. But, believe me, I’m trying. This was worse than the old fellow. For this one, like Lutetia, was dead. And he, like her, was trying to put his message across a world, whereas the old fellow had only to pierce a dimension. How he looked at me; held me; bored into me. It was like sustaining visual vitriol.... How he looked at me! It became horrible.... Pretty soon I realized I wasn’t going to be able to stand it....

Yet I stayed with it as long as he did, and of course we continued to glare at each other. I don’t exactly know what the etiquette of these meetings is; but I seem to feel vaguely that it’s up to me to stay with them as long as they’re here. This time, it must have been all of five minutes, although it seemed longer ... much longer ... and I, all the time, trying to hold on. Then suddenly something happened. I don’t know what it was, but one instant he was there, and another he wasn’t. Don’t ask me how he went away. I don’t know. He simply ceased to be; and yet so swifter-than-instantly, so exquisitely, so subtly that my only question was—even though my mind was still stinging from his gaze—had he been there at all. It was as though the tree back of him had instantaneously absorbed him. It was a shock too—that disappearance.

Well, again I went out for a hike. I walked anywhere—everywhere. How far I don’t know. But half the night. Again it was as though I marched through the stars....

I haven’t seen the old painter again—I call him painter simply because he wore that long robe. And I haven’t seen the young guy again. But I see Lutetia all the time. She comes and goes. Sometimes when I enter the living-room, I find her already there.... Sometimes when I leave it, I know she enters by another door.... We spend long evenings together.... I can’t write when she’s about; but curiously enough I can sometimes read; that is to say, I can read Lutetia. I try to read because moments come when I realize that she prefers me not to look at her. It’s when she’s exhausted from trying to give me her message. Or when she’s girding herself up for another go. At those moments, the room is full of a frightful struggle; a gigantic spiritual concentration. It seems to me I could not look even if she wanted me. Oh, how she tries, Spink! It wrings my heart. She’s so helpless, so hopeless—so gentle, so tender, so lovely! It’s all my own stupidity. The iron-wall stupidity of flesh and blood. Perhaps, if I were to kill myself—and I think I could do that for her.... Only she doesn’t want me to do that.... But what does she want me to do? If I could only....

Lindsay had written steadily the whole evening; written at a violent speed and with a fierce intensity. Now his speed died down. His hands dropped from the typewriter. That mental intensity evaporated. He became aware....