When Ghost Meets Ghost

by William De Morgan

"The old prizefighter is just like Dr. Johnson, and I thought he was going to hug Clo, he was so delighted to see her, and so affectionate. So was Aunt Maria, a good woman who has lost her looks, but who must have had some, twenty years ago. I got Dolly on my knee, and we did the hugging, Dolly telling me secrets deliciously, and tickling. She is four next birthday, a fact which Aunt Maria thought should have produced a sort of what the Maestro calls precisione. I preferred Dolly as she was, and we exchanged locks of hair.

"We had only been there a very short time when Uncle Moses suggested that Dave should fetch a letter he was writing, from 'Old Mrs. Prichard's Room' upstairs, and Dave—who is a dear little chap of six or seven or eight—rushed upstairs to get it. I forgot how much I told you about the family, but I know I said something in yesterday's letter. Anyhow, 'old Mrs. Prichard' was not new to me, and I was very curious to see her. So when more than five minutes had passed and no Dave reappeared, I proposed that Dolly and I should go up to look for him, and we went, Aunt Maria following in our wake, to cover contingencies. She went back, after introducing me to the very sweet old lady in a high-backed chair, who comes in as the explanation of the beginning of this illegible scrawl. How funny children are! I do believe Uncle Moses was right when he said that Dave, if anything, preferred his loves to be 'a bit elderly.' I am sure these babies see straight through wrinkles and decay and toothless gums to the burning soul the old shell imprisons, and love it. Do you recollect that picture in the Louvre we both had seen, and thought the same about?—the old man with the sweet face and the appalling excrescence on the nose, and the little boy's unflinching love as he looks up at him. Oh, that nose!!! However, there is nothing of that in old Mrs. Picture, as Dave called her, according to her own spelling. Her face is simply perfect.... There!—I went in to look at it again by the moonlight, and I was quite right. And as for her wonderful old white hair!... I could write for ever about her.

"I think our incursion must have frightened the old soul, because she had lived up there by herself, except for her woman-friend who is out all day, and Aunt Maria and the children now and then, since she came to the house; so that a perfect stranger rushing in lawlessly—well, can't you fancy? However, she really stood it very well, considering.

"'I have heard of you, ma'am, from Dave. He's told me all about your rings. Where is the boy?... Haven't you, Dave—told me all about the lady's rings?'

"Dave came from some absorbing interest at the window, to say:—'It wasn't her,' with a sweet, impressive candour. He went back immediately. Something was going on outside. I explained, as I was sharp enough to guess, that my mother was the lady with the rings. I got into conversation with the old lady, and we soon became friends. She was very curious about 'old Mrs. Marrable' in the country. Indeed, I believe Uncle Mo was not far wrong when he said she was as jealous as any schoolgirl. It is most amusing, the idea of these two octogenarians falling out over this small bone of contention!

"While we talked, Dave and Dolly looked out of the window, Dave constantly supplying bulletins of the something that was going on without. I could not make it out at first, and his interjections of 'Now she's took it off'—'Now she's put it on again'—made me think he was inspecting some lady who was 'trying on' in the opposite house. It appeared, however, that the thing that was taken off and put on was not a dress, but some sort of plaister or liniment applied to the face of a boy, the miscreant who had made a raid on Dave's garden that morning, and spoiled his sunflower (see ante). It was because Dave had become so engrossed in this that he had not come downstairs again with his letter.

"The old lady, I am happy to say, was most amiable, and took to me immensely. I couldn't undertake to say now exactly how we got on such good terms so quickly. We agreed about the wickedness of that boy, especially when Dave reported ingratitude on his part towards the sister, who was tending him, whom he smacked and whose hair he pulled. To think of his smacking that dear girl that played the piano so nicely all day! And pulling her back-tails so she called out when she was actually succouring his lacerated face. I gathered that her name may have been Matilda, and that she wore plaits.

"'I think her such a nice, dear girl,' said old Mrs. Picture—I like that name for her—'because she plays the piano all day long, and I sit here and listen, and think of old times.' I asked a question. 'Why, no, my dear!—I can't say she knows any tunes. But she plays her scales all day, very nicely, and makes me think of when my sister and I played scales—oh, so many years ago! But we played tunes too. I sometimes think I could teach her "The Harmonious Blacksmith," if only we was a bit nearer.' I could see in her old face that she was back in the Past, listening to a memory. How I wished I had a piano to play 'The Harmonious Blacksmith' for her again!

"I got her somehow to talk of herself and her antecedents, but rather stingily. She married young and went abroad, but she seemed not to want to talk about this. I could not press her. She had come back home—from wherever she was—many years after her husband's death, with an only son, the survivor of a family of four children. He was a man, not a boy; at least, he married a year or so after. She 'could not say that he was dead.' Otherwise, she knew of no living relative. Her means of livelihood was an annuity 'bought by my poor son before....'—before something she either forgot to tell, or fought shy of—the last, I think. 'I'm very happy up here,' she said. 'Only I might not be, if I was one of those that wanted gaiety. Mrs. Burr she lives with me, and it costs her no rent, and she sees to me. And my children—I call 'em mine—come for company, 'most every day. Don't you, Dave?'

"Dave tore himself away from the pleasing spectacle of his enemy in hospital, and came to confirm this. 'Yorce!' said he, with emphasis. 'Me and Dolly!' He recited rapidly all the days of the week, an appointment being imputed to each. But he weakened the force of his rhetoric by adding:—'Only not some of 'em always!' Mrs. Picture then said:—'But you love your old granny in the country better than you do me, don't you, Davy dear?' Whereupon Dave shouted with all his voice:—'I doesn't!' and flushed quite red, indignantly.