When Ghost Meets Ghost

by William De Morgan

"He says not. But you were not out when he went to Konigsberg."

"Oh no—I had quite a long innings after that.... Well!—it does sound like cricket, doesn't it? Go on."

"Oh—I see what you mean. What a ridiculous girl you are! What was I saying!... Oh, I recollect! That was just after he graduated at Oxford. Then he went to South America with Engelhardt. He really has been very little at home for three years—over three years—past."

"We shall see if he knows me. I won't say anything to guide him." Then he heard his sister's voice reply to the speaker with words she had used before:—"You know you must not expect too much." To which Lady Gwendolen reiterated: "Oh, you may trust me. I shall say nothing to him about it.... Oh, you darling!" This was to Achilles, manifestly. He had become restless at the sound of conversation below, and had been looking round the door-jamb to see if by any chance a dog could get out. The entry of the nurse a moment since, with a proto-stimulant on a tray, had let him out to tear down the stairs to the garden, rudely thrusting aside the noble owner of the house, out of bounds in a dressing-gown and able to defy Society.

No lack of sight can quench the image in its victim's brain of Achilles' greeting to the owners of the two voices. His sister has her fair share of it—no more!—but her friend gets an accolade of a piece with the one she received that morning by Arthur's Bridge, three weeks since. So his owner's brain-image says, confirmed by sounds from without. He is conscious of the absurdity of building so vivid and substantial a superstructure on so little foundation, and would like to protest against it.

"Good-morning, Nurse. I'm better. What is it?—beef-tea. Earls' cooks make capital beef-tea. On the whole I am in favour of Feudalism. Nothing can be sweeter or neater or completer—or more nourishing—than its beef-tea. Don't put any salt in till I tell you.... Oh no—I'm not going to spill it!" This is preliminary; the protest follows. "Who's talking to my sister under the window?... that's her voice." Of course, he knew perfectly well all the time.

The nurse listens a moment. "That's her ladyship," says she, meaning the Countess. Gwen's voice is not unlike her mother's, only fuller. "They are just going in to breakfast. The gong went a minute ago."

Now is his time to condemn the tyranny which keeps him in bed in the morning and lying down all day. "I could have got up and gone downstairs, Mrs. Bailey, you know I could."

Mrs. Bailey pointed out that had this scheme been carried out a life would have been sacrificed. She explained to a newcomer, no less a person than the Earl himself, that Mr. Torrens would kill himself in five minutes if she did not keep the eyes of a lynx on him all the blessed day. She is always telling him so without effect, he never being any the wiser, even when she talks her head off. Patients never are, being an unmanageable class at the best. A nurse with her head on ought to be a rarity, according to Mrs. Bailey.

The image of the Earl in the blind man's mind is very little helped by recollection of the few occasions, some years ago, on which he has seen him. It becomes now, after a short daily chat with him each morning since he gained strength for interviews, that of an elderly gentleman with a hesitating manner anxious to accommodate difficulties, soothing an unreasonable race with a benevolent optimism, pouring oil on the troubled waters of local religion and politics, taking no real interest in the vortices into which it has pleased God to drag him, all with one distinct object in view—that of adding to his collections undisturbed. That is the impression he has produced on Mr. Adrian Torrens in a dozen of his visits to his bedside. His lordship has made it a practice to look in at his victim—for that is the way he thinks of him, will he nill he!—as early every day as possible, and as late. He has suffered agonies from constant longings to talk about his Amatis or his Elzevirs or his Petitots, checked at every impulse by the memory of the patient's blindness. He is always beginning to say how he would like to show him this or that, and collapsing. This also is an inference of Mr. Torrens, drawn in the dark, from sudden hesitations and changes of subject.