Richard Marsh - Tom Ossington's Ghost

If her costume was strange, her face was stranger. It was the face of a woman who had once been beautiful-how long ago, no one who chanced on her haphazard could with any certainty have guessed. It might have been five, ten, fifteen, twenty years ago-and more than that-since hers had been a countenance which charmed even a casual beholder. It was the face of a woman who had been weak or wicked, and maybe both, and who in consequence had been bandied from pillar to post, till this was all that there was left of her. Her big blue eyes were deep set in careworn caverns; her mouth, which had once been small and dainty, was now blurred and pendulous, the mouth of a woman who drank; her cheeks were sunk and hollow as if she had lost every tooth in her head, the cheek-bones gleaming through the yellow skin in sharp and cruel ridges. To crown it all, her hair was dyed-a vivid yellow. Like all the rest of her, the dye was old and worn. It stood in urgent need of a renewal. The roots were grey, they demonstrated their greyness with savage ostentation. Here and there among the yellow there were grey patches too-in some queer way her attempt at juvenesence had made her look older even than she was.

This was not a pleasant face to have encountered anywhere at any time, being the sort from which good women instinctively shrink back. Just now its unpleasantness was intensified by the fact that it was lit up by some, to Madge, inscrutable emotion; inflamed by some mastering excitement. The hollow eyes gleamed as if they were lighted by inner fires; the lips twitched as if the muscles which worked them were uncontrollable. The woman spoke in short, sharp, angry gusts, as if she were stumbling on the verge of frenzied passion.

"This house is mine," she said.

"Yours?"

"It was his, and mine-and now it's mine."

Madge, persuaded that the woman must be either mad or drunk, felt that perhaps calmness might be her safest weapon.

"Do you mean that you're the landlady?"

"The landlady!" The woman laughed-unmirthfully. "There is no landlady. And the landlord-he's a ghost. He's in it now-don't you feel that he is in it?"

She spoke with such singular intensity that, in spite of herself, Madge shuddered. She was feeling more and more uncomfortable-wishing heartily that some one might come, if it was only the mysterious stranger who had previously intruded.

The woman went on-her excitement seeming to grow with every word she uttered.

"The house is full of ghosts-full! They're in every corner, every nook and cranny-and I know them every one. Come here-I'll show you some of them."

She caught the girl by the arm. Madge, yielding to her strange frenzy, suffered herself to be led into the sitting-room. Once inside, the woman loosed her hold. She looked about her. Then crossed to the fireplace, standing in the centre of the hearthrug.

"This is where I struck him." She pointed just in front of her. "He was sitting there. I had asked him for some money. He would not let me have any. He always clung to his money-always! I swear it-always!" She raised her hands, as if appealing to the ceiling to bear her witness. "He said that I was ruining him. Ruining him? bah! I knew better than that. He would let no one ruin him-he was not of that kind. I told him I must have money. He said he'd given me five pounds last week. 'Five pounds!' I cried; 'what are five pounds?' Then we quarrelled-he said things, I said things. Then I flew into a rage; my temper has been the curse of my whole life. I caught up a decanter of whisky which was on the table, and struck him with it on the head. The bottle broke, the whisky went all over him-how it smelt! Can't you smell it? – and he went tumbling down, down, on to the floor. He's lying there now-can't you see him lying there?" She turned to Madge with a gesture which seemed to make the girl's blood run colder. "Can't you see the ghost?"

She moved a little to one side.

"Just here is where I knelt down, and asked him to forgive me. That was after-I'd been carrying on with some fellow I'd met at a dance, and he had found me out. I cried and cried as if my heart would break, and at last he came and put his hand upon my head-when I set myself to do it, and stuck at it, I could twist him round my finger! – and he began to stroke my hair-I'd lovely hair then, no woman ever had lovelier, and he was always one to stroke it when I'd let him! – and he said, 'My girl, how often shall I have to forgive you?' Listen! Can't you hear him saying it now? Can't you see the ghost?"

She went to where the modest sideboard stood.

"This is where we had our sideboard too-it was a bigger one than this; all our things were good. I was standing here, leaning against it just like this, the first time he saw me drunk. He'd been out all the evening on some sort of business, and I'd been left in the house alone with the girl, and I hadn't liked it, and I'd been sulking. And at last I got to the whisky and I started to drink, drink, drink. I always had been fond of drink long before that, but I'd never let him find it out. But that time I was that sulky I didn't seem to care, and by the time I might have cared I couldn't care-I was too far gone. I had to keep on drinking. There wasn't much in the bottle; when I got to the end of it I started on another. Then I got to the sideboard, and stood leaning over it, lolly fashion, booze, booze, boozing. All of a sudden the door opened, and he came into the room. I turned to have a look at him, the bottle in one hand and the glass in the other. Directly I got clear of the sideboard I went flop on the floor, and the bottle and the glass went with me, and there I had to lie. He rushed towards me, and as soon as he had had a look at me he saw how it was. Then he fell on his knees at my side, and put his hands up to his face, and began to cry. My God, how he did cry! – not like me. His sobs seemed tearing him to pieces, and his life's blood seemed coming from him with every tear. Drunk as I was, it made me cry to hear him. Listen! Can't you hear him crying now? Can't you see the ghost?"

The woman's words and manner were so realistic, and despite-or perhaps because of-her seeming frenzy, she had such an eerie capacity of conjuring up the picture as her memory painted it, that Madge listened spellbound. She was as incapable of interrupting the other's flow of language as if the conscience haunted wretch had cast on her some strange enchantment.

The sea of visions went to the table, and, bending over it, beckoned to Madge to draw closer. As if she found the invitation irresistible, Madge approached. The woman's outstretched finger pointed to a particular place about the centre of one side of the table. Her excitement all at once subsided; her voice grew softer. Her manner became more human, more womanly.

"See! – this is where my little baby died-my little child-the only one I ever had. It was a girl; we called it Lily-my name's Lily" – she glanced up with a grin, as if conscious of how grotesquely inappropriate, in her case, such a name was now; "it was such a little thing-I didn't want it when it came. I never was fond of children, and I wasn't one to play the mother. But, when it did come, it got hold of me somehow-yes, it did! it did! I was fond of it, in my way. As for him, he worshipped it; it was baby, baby, baby! all the time. I was nowhere. It made me wild to hear him, and to see the way that he went on. We fell out because I would have it brought up by hand. He wanted me to let it have my milk-but I wouldn't have it. I wasn't going to be any baby's slave-not likely! I don't think he ever forgave me that. Then he was always at me because he said I neglected it; and that made me worse than ever: I wasn't going to have a crying brat thrust down my throat at every turn, and so I told him. 'Why isn't there a place in which they bring up babies so that they needn't worry their mothers?' I wanted to know. When I said that, how he did look at me, and how he went on! I thought he would have killed me-but I didn't care. He did his share of all the nursing that baby ever had-and perhaps a little more."