Authors -- Fiction; Ghosts -- Fiction; Love stories; World War, 1914-1918 -- Veterans -- Fiction
"Mr. Lindsay--that time you fainted when you first saw me, setting out
there on the door-stone, you remember--?"
Lindsay nodded.
"Well, who was you expecting to see?"
Lindsay, alert now as a wire spring, turned on her, not his eyes alone,
nor his head; but his whole body. Mrs. Spash was looking straight at
him. Their glances met midway. The old eyes pierced the young eyes with
an intent scrutiny. The young eyes stabbed the old eyes with an intense
interrogation. Lindsay did not answer her question directly. Instead he
laughed.
"I guess I don't have to answer you," he declared. "I had seen her often
then.... I had seen the others too.... I don't know why _you_ should
have frightened me when _they_ didn't.... I think it was that I wasn't
expecting anything human.... I've seen them since.... They never
frighten me."
Mrs. Spash's reply was simple enough. "I see them all the time." She
added, with a delicate lilt of triumph, "I've seen them for years--"
Lindsay continued to look at her--and now his gaze was somber; even a
little despairing. "What do they want? What does _she_ want?"
Mrs. Spash's reply came instantly, although there were pauses in her
words. "I don't know. I've tried.... I can't make out." She accompanied
these simple statements with a reinforcing decisive nod of her little
head.
"I can't guess either--I can't conjecture-- There's something she wants
me to do. She can't tell me. And they're trying to help her tell me. All
except the little girl--"
"Do you see the little girl?" Mrs. Spash demanded. "Well, I declare!
That's very queer, I must say. I never see Cherry."
"I wish I saw her oftener," Lindsay laughed ruefully. "_She_ doesn't ask
anything of me. She's just herself. But the others--Gale--Monroe-- My
God! It's killing me!" He laughed again, and this time with a real
amusement.
Mrs. Spash interrupted his laughter. "Do you see Mr. Monroe?" she asked
in a pleased tone. "Well, I declare! Aren't you the fortunate creature.
I never see _him_!"
"All the time," Lindsay answered shortly. "If I could only get it. I
feel so stupid, so incredibly gross and lumbering and heavy. I'd do
anything--"
He arose and walked over to the picture of Lutetia Murray which still
hung above the fireplace. He stared at her hard. "I'd do anything for
her, if I could only find out what it was."
"Yes," Mrs. Spash admitted dispassionately, "that's the thing everybody
felt about her, they'd do anything for her. Not that she ever asked them
to do anything--"
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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