CHAPTER XX
IN WHICH THE HEROINE MAKES FRIENDS WITH A SPIRIT
“Nursie, do you believe in ghosts?” This question was put by Philomène as she sat at her dressing-table on the evening of the last of October, while Nurse brushed out her hair. She was almost well again now, though not quite.
“There are ghosts and ghosts, you know, Miss,” replied Nurse decidedly. “I don’t hold with modern ghosts myself, your pencils and tumblers and noises made by tables. But in the house where I first went into service there was a most undoubted ghost. He was of the good old-fashioned sort, and pulled your bedclothes right off you. There was no mistaking him.”
When Nurse had left her, Philomène stood for a moment irresolute in the middle of the room. “I will say some prayers first of all,” she reflected, “and then——”
The prayers did not take long. From the tower of a church near by came a rushing sound of bells, and Philomène went and knelt on the chair by the window. It was a wild night, and she was afraid to push up the sash lest she should catch cold, in spite of her warm red dressing-gown and slippers, but she pressed her face close to the glass, and listened with strained attention. Fitfully upon the gusts of wind the fragmentary music reached her, rising and falling with the gale. The beautiful mellow-throated chimes seemed to be sending some message through the storm, to be ringing out some good news across the mighty, toilworn, unheeding city that lay beneath them. At one time Philomène fancied that she could almost make out the words: “O ye spirits and souls of the righteous, bless ye the Lord, praise him and magnify him for ever!”
“I think if the White Létiche came now,” she thought, “I should not mind.”
Timidly she looked behind her. By her bedside there stood a small figure, bright-haired and all in white; it was leaning against the bed-post, and the little, transparent hand rested upon the burnished brass knob at the top. Philomène got down from the chair and approached it softly. The White Létiche turned, and looked at her with eyes as blue as a midsummer sea; they were not merry eyes, but there were happy lights in them, as when the sea mirrors blue heaven.
“I hope you noticed that I sang, ‘I’m sitting on the stile, Mary,’ while I undressed,” said Philomène, rather shyly, remembering that Queen Mab had told her to set the conversation going. “I once read somewhere that it was the kind thing to do on All Souls’ Eve, to sing or whistle, so that the souls who are hurrying to keep their feast need not brush up against one on their way, which is supposed to hurt them. I didn’t ask Nurse to do it too, because she can’t sing, only in church.”
“It was good of you to think of it,” said the White Létiche smiling, “though indeed many is the time you have brushed past me in this room without its hurting me.”
Philomène was now sitting on the bed, feeling quite at her ease with her strange little companion. “And do the unchristened children really live among the water-babies?” she asked curiously. “Is it nice where you come from?”
“I can’t tell you about where I come from,” said the White Létiche, “it is against rules. But I could tell you other things, things which I did not know when I slept in this room.”
“What sort of things?” asked Philomène; “stories?”
“Why, yes, some of them are stories,” said the White Létiche. “I wonder now would you care to hear the story of the very strangest christening that ever befell?”
“What made it so strange?” asked Philomène, eagerly; “and what was the baby’s name?”
“Wait a bit,” said the White Létiche.