Part 6

I imagine the fact that she had once been a governess would have made it rather difficult for Lady Agatha in the house of an English family of rank. On the other hand, her inherent aristocratic feeling made it quite impossible for her to haunt any one belonging to the middle or lower classes. She could haunt us, as Americans, and not feel that the social question mattered so much, in spite of what the American ghost had hinted. We Americans are so unclassified that the English often take chances with individuals, quite regardless of what each individual's class would naturally be if he had a class. Even while they do this they make us feel very often that we are hopelessly American; but they do it, and I, for one, am grateful. Lady Agatha sympathized with our desire to become as English as possible, she could quite understand that. I find that many Englishmen approve the effort, although remaining confident that it will end in failure.

Lady Agatha helped us a great deal. We used to have lessons in the evenings in the library. For instance, the children would stand at attention in front of the bookcase, and repeat a bit of typical English slang, trying to do it in an absolutely English way. They would do it over and over and over, until finally Lady Agatha would give a rap of approval. Or I would pretend that I was an Englishman in a railway carriage, and that an American had just entered and I was afraid he would speak to me. I got rather good at this, and made two or three trips to London to try it out. I found that Americans were imposed on, and actually in one instance I made one Englishman think that I was an Englishman who thought he was an American. He was a nobody, however, and didn't really count. And then, I am afraid, I spoiled it all. We Americans so often spoil it all! I enjoyed it so that I told him. He looked startled and said, “But how American!” He was the only Englishman I ever fooled.

But Lady Agatha's night classes were of great benefit to us. We used to practise how to behave toward English servants at country houses, and how to act when presented at court, and dozens of things like that: not that we had been asked to a country house, or expected to be presented at court soon. Marian and I had agreed that the greater part of this information would be quite useless while Uncle Bainbridge was still spared to us. Even in Brooklyn Uncle Bainbridge had been something of a problem at times. But we thought it just as well to prepare ourselves for the sad certainty that Uncle Bainbridge would pass into a better world before many years.

Uncle Bainbridge, who is very wealthy indeed, affects more informality than the usual self-made man. He used to attend our evening classes with a contemptuous expression upon his face, and snort at intervals. Once he even called me “Puppy!” Then he thrust his telephone arrangement before my face and insisted that I tell him whether I was sane or not.

“Puppy!” he bellowed. “Quit apin' the English! I get along with 'em myself--without any nonsense! Treat 'em white! Always treat me white! No foolishness! Puppy!”

My wife and I soon discovered that Lady Agatha and Uncle Bainbridge were on the most friendly terms. He would sit for hours in the library, with his telephone receiver held patiently near the bookcase, shouting questions and smiling and nodding over the answers. Marian and I were afraid that Uncle Bainbridge, by his lack of polish, might offend Lady Agatha. And at first it was her custom to hover about anxiously while they were talking to each other. But Uncle Bainbridge discovered this, and resented it to such an extent that she had to be cautious indeed.

His talks with Lady Agatha became longer and longer, and more and more frequent, until finally he received more of her attention than all the rest of us put together. Indeed, we need not have worried about Uncle Bainbridge's offending Lady Agatha: the friendship grew closer and closer. We were certain finally that it was taking on a strong tinge of sentimentality. One day my wife stopped me just outside the library door and said in a whisper, indicating the general direction of Lady Agatha's bookcase with a wave of her hand:

“Henry, those two old things in there are calling each other Hiram and Agatha!”

I listened, and it was so. A week later I heard Uncle Bainbridge seated by the bookcase, bellowing out a sentimental song. He was having a great deal of difficulty with it, and in order that he might hear himself he was singing with the black disk arrangement held directly in front of his own mouth.

I cannot say that Uncle Bainbridge became etherealized by the state of his feelings toward Lady Agatha, whatever the exact state of his feeling may have been. But he did change a little, and the change was for the better. He cut out the bunches of gray hair from his ears, and he began to take care of his fingernails. Lady Agatha was having a good influence upon him.

One day, as he and I were standing by the front gate, he suddenly connected himself for speech and roared at me, with a jerk of his thumb toward the house.

“Fine woman!”

“Who?” I shouted back.

“Aggie.”

“Why, yes. I suppose she--was.”

“No nonsense!” he yelled. “Husband was a brute! Marry her myself! In a minute--if possible. Ain't possible! Shame! Bet she could make--good dumplings--apple dumplings! Huh!”

Uncle Bainbridge is very fond of apple dumplings. His final test of a woman is her ability to make good apple dumplings. Several women might have married him had they been able to pass that examination. He can pay no higher compliment to a woman than to be willing to believe her able to make good dumplings.

“Aggie, in there!” he roared again, impatient because I was slow in answering. “Dumplings! That kind of woman--could have made--good dumplings!”

I felt, somehow, that it was going a bit too far to imagine Lady Agatha at so plebeian a task as making apple dumplings.

“Uncle Bainbridge,” I shouted, “the upper classes--in England--can't make--apple dumplings!”

Even as I shouted I was aware that some bypasser, startled at our loud voices, was pausing just outside the gate. I turned to encounter for a moment the haughty glare of the most English-looking elderly woman I have ever seen. She had a large, high nose, and she was a large, high-looking handsome woman generally. She said no word to me; but as she stared her lips moved ever so slightly. I fancied that to herself she said, “Indeed!” I have never felt more utterly superfluous, more abjectly American. She turned from me with an air that denied my existence, a manner that indicated that such things as I _could not_ exist, and it would be foolish to try to make her believe they did exist. She bowed to Uncle Bainbridge, smiled as he returned her bow, and passed on. Uncle Bainbridge's eyes followed her admiringly.

“'Mother fine woman!” he thundered, so that she must have heard him. “Friend of mine! Sensible woman! No frills!”

I tried to ask him who she was, when and where he had become acquainted with her, and a dozen other questions; but Uncle Bainbridge unplugged himself, cutting off all communication with the outer world, and resolutely refused any information. That he should know the lady did not surprise me, however. It had happened several times since we had been in England that Uncle Bainbridge had become friendly with people whom we did not know. We never got from him any exact idea as to the social status of these persons, and indeed we always found that he had no really definite ideas on that subject to communicate.

Our dear Lady Agatha was almost the only English friend my wife and I had made.

My wife and I were very well contented that Uncle Bainbridge's feeling for Lady Agatha should grow stronger and stronger. We argued that while he was so intimately friendly with dear Lady Agatha he would not be so likely to fall a prey to any person who might want to marry him for his wealth. So we decided to encourage the friendship in every way possible, and would have been only too glad to have it go on indefinitely.

“I feel so at peace about Uncle Bainbridge now,” was the way my wife expressed it, “with him and dear Lady Agatha so wrapped up in each other.”

But this cheerful condition of affairs was not destined to last many weeks. One day my wife received a letter from her cousin, Miss Sophia Calderwood. Cousin Sophia was in London, and would be with us on the coming Saturday. She had spoken of the possibility of paying us a visit while we were in England, and of course we had urged her to do so; although at the time the possibility had seemed rather remote to us.

Miss Sophia was past her first youth, but still very girlish at times. Under her girlishness there was a grim determination. She had made up her mind to marry Uncle Bainbridge. My wife, as I have already said, had been inclined to favour the idea, since it would keep strangers from getting hold of Uncle Bainbridge's money. But now that Uncle Bainbridge and Lady Agatha were getting along so well together my wife had begun to hope that Uncle Bainbridge would never marry anybody. We both thought the friendship might become an ideal, but none the less overmastering, passion; one of those sacred things, you know, of the sort that keeps a man single all his life. If Uncle Bainbridge remained unmarried out of regard for Lady Agatha, we agreed, it would be much better for him at his time of life than to wed Miss Sophia.

So we both considered Miss Sophia's visit rather inopportune. Not that we felt that Uncle Bainbridge was predisposed toward her. On the contrary, he had always manifested more fear than affection for her. But, I repeat, she was a determined woman. The quality of her determination needed no better evidence than the fact that she had, to put it vulgarly, pursued her quarry across the seas. It was evident that the citadel of Uncle Bainbridge's heart was to undergo a terrible assault. As for him, when he heard she was coming, he only emitted a noncommittal snort.

Miss Sophia, when she arrived, had apparently put in the months since we had seen her in resolute attempts at rejuvenation. She was more girlish than I had known her in fifteen years. And she had set up a lisp. She greeted Uncle Bainbridge impulsively, effusively.

“You dear man,” she shrilled into his telephone, “you don't detherve it, but gueth what I've brought you all the way acroth the ocean! A new rethipe for apple dumplings!”

“How?” said Uncle Bainbridge. “What say?” And when she repeated it he said “Umph!” disconnected himself, and blew his nose loudly. He rarely said anything to her but “Umph!” walking away afterward with now and then a worried backward glance.

When we told Miss Sophia about Lady Agatha, and she finally understood the intimacy that had grown up between Lady Agatha and Uncle Bainbridge, she looked reproachfully at my wife, as if to say, “You have been a traitor to my cause!” And then she announced very primly, quite forgetting her lisp, “I am quite sure that I, for one, do not care to make the acquaintance of this person!”

“Cousin Sophia,” said my wife sharply, “what do you mean by that?”

“I think, Cousin Marian, that my meaning is sufficiently clear.”

“You forget,” rejoined my wife icily, “that dear Lady Agatha is our guest.”

Miss Sophia sniffed, and was silent.

“Besides,” continued Marian, “what can you possibly have against her?”

“Marian,” said Miss Sophia, “will you answer me one question?”

“Perhaps, Cousin Sophia.”

“Cousin Marian, where, I ask you, _where_ is Sir Arthur Pelham?”

“Why, how should I know, Cousin Sophia?” My wife was genuinely puzzled by the question, and so was I.

“Exactly!” And Miss Sophia's voice was acid. “How should you know? I imagine it is a point upon which Lady Agatha Pelham, under the circumstances, has not been very communicative.”

“But, Cousin Sophia----” I began.

She interrupted me. “Cousin Henry,” she said, “do you mean to say that you approve of these goings-on in your house? The idea of a married woman entering into a perfectly open flirtation with a man, as this Lady Agatha Pelham has done! Not that I blame Hiram Bainbridge; for men are susceptible when skillfully practised upon--especially with arts which I have never stooped to employ. It is shameless, Cousin Henry, shameless! If Cousin Marian's mother were alive, she would at least see that the children were sent back to America before they become contaminated by this atmosphere. Cousin Henry, to think that you have been so corrupted by European ways already that you acquiesce in this anomalous relationship!”

“I should hardly call it that, Cousin Sophia,” I ventured, “and for the life of me I cannot see anything wrong.”

It took me a little while to catch Miss Sophia's point of view. I am bound to say that she presented it rather convincingly. If Sir Arthur had been alive, she said, she would have seen nothing wrong in Lady Agatha forming any ties she might choose in the spirit world. Or if Sir Arthur had been in the spirit world and Lady Agatha in the earth life, she would have exonerated Lady Agatha from any indelicacy in forming a close friendship with Uncle Bainbridge. But since both Sir Arthur and Lady Agatha were in the spirit life, Lady Agatha's place was with Sir Arthur.

“Aristocrat or not,” she said, “she is indelicate, she is unladylike, she is coarse, or she would not carry on in this fashion with a man to whom she is not married.”

“I will not have dear Lady Agatha insulted!” said my wife, white with anger, rising from the chair in which she had been sitting.

“It is I who have been insulted, by being asked to a house where such a brazen and indecent affair is accepted as a matter of course,” said Cousin Sophia.

I hastily interposed. I saw that my wife was about to cast prudence to the winds and tell Miss Sophia that if she felt that way about it she might as well leave. Miss Sophia is very well-to-do herself, and my wife is her only near relation. I did not fear that the rupture would be permanent; for I had known Marian and Cousin Sophia to go quite this far many times before, and, indeed, in an hour they had both apparently got over their temper.

Miss Sophia, although certain now that she would receive no assistance from my wife in her siege of Uncle Bainbridge, did not swerve from her determination to subjugate him. I imagine it is rather difficult to give battle when your rival is a ghost: the very intangibility of the tie makes it hard to attack. Yet the person who is in the earth life has certain advantages also. I do not know whether I have mentioned it or not, but Miss Sophia could scarcely be called beautiful. One after another, all her life, she had seen men upon whom she had set her affection become the husbands of other women, and in her duel with the ghost there was a quality of desperation that made the struggle, every move of which I watched, extremely interesting. In spite of her announcement that she did not care to meet Lady Agatha, she learned the code by which she communicated with us, and did not absent herself from our gatherings in the library.

Miss Sophia must have been desperate indeed, or she would not have resorted to the trick she used. About a week after Miss Sophia's arrival Lady Agatha suddenly ceased to communicate with us. We grew alarmed, wondering what could have happened to her, as the days passed and the friendly rappings were not resumed. In the light of what happened later I am sure that Miss Sophia deliberately drove Lady Agatha away. What method she used I do not know. But if she had said to Lady Agatha directly the things that she had said to us about her, the insult would have been quite sufficient to make that proud and gentle spirit take her departure. Likely Miss Sophia got into communication with Lady Agatha and hurled at her the bitter question, “Where is Sir Arthur Pelham?” Lady Agatha was not the person to enter into any vulgar quarrel, nor yet to vouchsafe explanations concerning her personal affairs.

Several days after Lady Agatha fell silent I heard Uncle Bainbridge bellowing forth questions in the library. I was outside the house near the library window, which was open. Thinking joyously that Lady Agatha had returned to us, I stepped nearer to the window to make sure. I saw at once, as I peeped in, that the bookcase, which set very near the window, had been slightly moved. Miss Sophia, who was very thin, had managed to introduce herself into the triangular space behind it--I had mentioned that it set diagonally across one corner. She was crouched upon the floor rapping out a conversation with Uncle Bainbridge--impersonating Lady Agatha! Uncle Bainbridge, in front of the bookcase, was apparently unsuspicious; nor did Miss Sophia suspect that I saw her through the half-inch of window that commanded her hiding place.

“You must marry!” rapped Miss Sophia, in the character of Lady Agatha.

“Who?” bellowed Uncle Bainbridge.

“Miss Sophia Calderwood,” said the fake ghost.

“Aggie, I'm hanged if I do!” yelled Uncle Bainbridge. “Ask me--something--easy!”

“Hiram, listen carefully,” began the false Lady Agatha. Then she told him that this would be their last interview. Circumstances over which she had no control compelled her to depart. She was to assume another phase of existence upon another plane. She could not explain to him so that he would understand. But her interest in him would never flag. And she knew that he would be happier wedded to some good woman. It was apparent to her that Miss Sophia would make him the ideal wife. He would soon learn to love Miss Sophia. She had considerable difficulty in getting the promise; but finally Uncle Bainbridge snorted out a pledge that he would marry, and stumped away.

That night he went to London. It was a week before he returned. I did not communicate what I had seen and heard to Marion. The truth was, I felt rather sorry for Miss Sophia. To resort to such a trick she must have been desperate indeed. I tried to imagine what her life had been, and not condemn her too harshly. And besides, if she was to marry Uncle Bainbridge, which seemed settled now, I did not care to have her aware that I knew her secret.

During the absence of Uncle Bainbridge she became quietly radiant, as befits one who knows that the battle is won. She was evidently certain that he would speak definitely upon his return.

The night that he came back he gathered us all about him in the library. “Something to say! Important!” he shouted.

We all assumed attitudes of attention.

“Thinking maybe--get married!” said Uncle Bainbridge. It was just like Uncle Bainbridge to announce the matter in the lady's presence before having formally asked her; but I felt that it was a trifle hard on Miss Sophia. But a glance at her reassured me on that score. She was flushed; but it was the flush of triumph rather than the flush of embarrassment.

“Bought a brewery!” said Uncle Bainbridge. “Good brewery! Good beer! Like English beer! Like English people!”

1 felt that this was a little irrelevant, and I am sure that Miss Sophia felt the same way.

“Bought a castle!” said Uncle Bainbridge, warming to the work. “Fine castle! Like castles! Fix it up! Live in it! Settle here! Like England! Fine country.”

“A castle! Oh, how lovely!” shrilled Miss Sophia, clapping her hands girlishly. “How lovely for all of us!”

“Not invited!” roared Uncle Bainbridge, taking us all in with one sweeping gesture. “None of you!”

There was silence for a moment.

“Going to get married!” said Uncle Bainbridge, rising to his feet. “Not Sophia! Caught Sophia--behind bookcase! Knew all the time! Sneaky trick! Marry fine woman! Henry saw her--over the fence that day! Fine woman! Curate's mother here! Dumplings! Fine dumplings! Learned to make 'em for me! She don't want--to get too thick--with any my relations! She says--all of you--are too American!”

And as Uncle Bainbridge blew his nose loudly and sat down there was a sudden rattle of rapping from the bookcase: nothing so articulate as a remark in the code, but a sound more like a ripple of well-bred laughter. This was the last we ever heard from Lady Agatha, and I have sometimes wondered just what she meant by it. It is so hard, sometimes, to understand just what the English are laughing at.

THE SADDEST MAN

The bench, the barrel, and the cracker box in front of Hennery McNabb's general store held three men, all of whom seemed to be thinking. Two of them were not only thinking but chewing tobacco as well. The third, more enterprising than the other two, more active, was exerting himself prodigiously. He was thinking, chewing tobacco, and whittling all at the same time.

Two of the men were native and indigenous to Hazel-ton. They drew their sustenance from the black soil of the Illinois prairie on which the little village was perched. They were as calm and placid as the growing corn in the fields round about, as solid and self-possessed and leisurely as the bull-heads in the little creek down at the end of Main Street.

The third man was a stranger, somewhere between six and eight feet high and so slender that one might have expected the bones to pop through the skin, if one's attention had not been arrested by the skin itself. For he was covered and contained by a most peculiar skin. It was dark and rubbery-looking rather than leathery, and it seemed to be endowed with a life of its own almost independent of the rest of the man's anatomy. When a fly perched upon his cheek he did not raise his hand to brush it off. The man himself did not move at all.

But his skin moved. His skin rose up, wrinkled, twitched, rippled beneath the fly's feet, and the fly took alarm and went away from there as if an earthquake had broken loose under it. He was a sad-looking man. He looked sadder than the mummy of an Egyptian king who died brooding on what a long dry spell lay ahead of him.

It was this third man of whom the other two men were thinking, this melancholy stranger who sat and stared through the thick, humid heat of the July day at nothing at all, with grievous eyes, his ego motionless beneath the movements of his rambling skin. He had driven up the road thirty minutes before in a flivver, had bought some chewing tobacco of Hennery McNabb, and had set himself down in front of the store and chewed tobacco in silence ever since.

Finally Ben Grevis, the village grave-digger and janitor of the church, broke through the settled stillness with a question:

“Mister,” he said, “you ain't done nothing you're afraid of being arrested for, hev you?”

The stranger slowly turned his head toward Ben and made a negative sign. He did not shake his head in negation. He moved the skin of his forehead from left to right and back again three or four times. And his eyebrows moved as his skin moved. But his eyes remained fixed and melancholy.

“Sometimes,” suggested Hennery McNabb, who had almost tired himself out whittling, “a man's system needs overhaulin', same as a horse's needs drenchin'. I don't aim to push my goods on to no man, but if you was feelin' anyway sick, inside or out, I got some of Splain's Liniment for Man and Beast in there that might fix you up.”

“I ain't sick,” said the stranger, in a low and gentle voice.

“I never seen many fellers that looked as sad as you do,” volunteered Ben Grevis. “There was a mighty sad-lookin' tramp, that resembled you in the face some, was arrested here for bein' drunk eight or nine years ago, only he wasn't as tall as you an' his skin was different. After Si Emery, our city marshal, had kep' him in the lock-up over Sunday and turned him loose again, it come to light he was wanted over in I'way for killin' a feller with a piece of railroad iron.”

“I ain't killed anybody with any railroad iron over in I'way,” said the lengthy man. And he added, with a sigh: “Nor nowheres else, neither.”