Tales of the Wonder Club, Volume II

by M. Y. Halidom

The pamphlet made some stir at the time, and poor Claribel, my bashful and retiring friend, found herself made the lion of the season, and pestered past all endurance by anxious inquiries and impertinent visits from strangers, who came from far, hoping to have their curiosity gratified by a re-appearance of the spectre. If such was their object in calling, and it undoubtedly was, they one and all of them went away terribly disappointed, for not in one single case did the apparition vouchsafe to manifest itself.

Nevertheless, these continued visits from strangers to one so shy and retired as my friend, made her excessively nervous, and were beginning to undermine her health, which, the doctor perceiving, he gave instant orders that she should receive no visits but those of her most intimate friends.

Visitors still continued to call for some little time afterwards, but were refused admittance on the plea of my friend's delicate health, and their visits grew fewer and farther between, till at length they ceased altogether, and Claribel's health began to improve.

As everything has an end, even the gossip of a little village, so in time people grew tired, both of hearing or retailing what they had heard and retailed so often before, till at length nobody believed a word about the apparition; and because they could not explain the cause of the phenomenon, hushed their minds to sleep by calling it imposture, delusion, ignorant credulity, and the like.

The ghost had never appeared to them or to those who had taken so much trouble as to come from afar on purpose to see it, and the deduction was that as the spirit had refused to manifest itself to such respectable people as these, it was not likely that it had ever vouchsafed to make its appearance to anyone, so the affair was settled.

Time rolled on, and both my friend and I were promoted from pupils to teachers in our school. The gossip of the village had long ceased; in fact, Claribel's spiritual tormentor had discontinued its visits now for so long that she began to hope that they had ceased for ever.

Claribel was now fast ripening into womanhood, and found herself no longer shunned and whispered about as a person guilty of some horrible crime which had called down the just vengeance of Heaven upon her, but passed by like any other, without allusion to the past; nay, more, she began to be courted by people in general, being known as a young woman of most excellent character. Being of an extremely prepossessing appearance, it was natural that she should be made a mark for all the young men of the village to discharge their amorous glances at, and she soon found herself surrounded by a crowd of swains who talked soft nonsense to her, and who would fain make her believe that they were dying with love for her.

Claribel, however, turned a deaf ear to them all. She was not a girl to be wooed by soft nonsense; indeed, you would have said she was a girl not likely to marry at all, she was so retired and showed such indifference to the conversation of young men, and took no pains whatever to set herself off to advantage in their eyes. Nevertheless this did not deter admirers from flocking around her. In fact, I rather think her coldness and apparent negligence of dress and general personal appearance rather incited them the more. I have called her indifferent to personal appearance; not that she was not scrupulously clean and neat; no one could be more so. But there she was content to remain.

She cared not to deck herself out with bows and ribbons, by the wearing of trumpery jewellery, or by any exaggerated fashion of wearing her hair. It is just this simplicity in woman which attracts most men, and it is natural enough that it should do so, as it argues a certain forgetfulness of self, a modest and unselfish nature, which is the basis of every womanly virtue, and therefore to be sought after in a wife. Foolish women imagine that men are to be caught by being run after. They therefore spare no expense in their toilet, study arts and graces, and omit nothing which they think ought to captivate the opposite sex; but as they too often over-step the bounds of modesty, their flimsy designs are seen through, and they find themselves laughed at by those they had hoped to make their prey.

Claribel had known such women in her time, and pitied rather than despised them, for there was nothing harsh in her nature. She was often quizzed in her turn by many a jimp-waisted hoyden for being a dowdy, but she would pass by their remarks with a good-humoured smile, and say little, for she was of few words.