Tom Ossington's Ghost

Without in the stillness, there could be plainly heard the fumbling of the latchkey, as if some one, with unaccustomed hands, was attempting to insert it in the door. Presently, the aperture being found, and the key turned, the door was opened. Some one entered the house; and, being in, the door was shut-with a bang which seemed to ring threateningly through the little house, causing the listeners to start. Some one moved, with uncertain steps, along the passage. A grasp was laid from without on the handle of the sitting-room door. They saw it turn. The door opened-while those within, with one accord, held their breath. And there entered as strange and pitiful a figure as was ever seen.

It was the "ghost's wife," the woman who had so troubled Madge, who had done her best that afternoon to keep her outside the house. She was the saddest sight in her parti-coloured rags, the dreadful relics of gaudy fripperies.

When they saw it was her, there was a simultaneous half-movement, which never became a whole movement, for it was stopped at its initiatory stage-stopped by something which was in the woman's face, and by the doubt if she was alone.

On her face-her poor, dirty, degraded, wrinkled face-which was so pitifully thin there was nothing left of it but skin and bone, there was a look which held them dumb. It was a look like nothing which any of them had ever seen before. It was not only that it was a look of death-for it was plain that the outstretched fingers of the angel already touched her brow; but it was the look of one who seemed to see beyond the grave-such a look as we might fancy on the face of the dead in that sudden shock of vision which, as some tell us, comes in the moment after death.

She was gazing straight in front of her, as if at some one who was there; and she said, in the queerest, shakiest voice:

"So, Tom, you've brought me home at last. I'm glad to be at home again. Oh, Tom!" This last with the strangest catching in her throat. She looked about her with eyes that did not see. "It seems a long time since I was at home. I thought I never should come back-never! After all, there's nothing to a woman like her home-nothing, Tom." Again there was that strange catching. "You've brought me a long way-a long, long way. To think that you should see me in the Borough-after all these years-and should bring me right straight home, I wondered, if ever you did see me, if you'd bring me home-Tom. Only I wish-I wish you'd seen me before. I'm-a little tired now."

She put her hand up to her face with a gesture which suggested weariness which was more than mortal, and which only eternal rest could soothe-her hand in what was once a glove. When she removed it there was something in her eyes which showed that she had suddenly attained to at least a partial consciousness of her surroundings. She looked at the two girls and the two men grasped together on her right, with, at any rate, a perception that they were there.

"Who-who are these people? Whoever you are, I'm glad to see you; this is a great night with me. I've seen my husband for the first time for years and years, and he's brought me home with him again-after all that time. This is my husband-Tom."

She held out her hand, as if designating with it some one who was in front of her. They, on their part, were silent, spellbound, uncertain whether the person to whom and of whom she spoke with so much confidence might not be present, though by them unseen.

"It's a strange homecoming, is it not? And though I'm tired-oh, so tired! – I'm glad I'm home again. To this house he brought me when we were married-didn't you, Tom? In this house my baby was born-wasn't it, Tom? And here it died." There came a look into her face which, for the moment, made it beautiful; to such an extent is beauty a matter of expression. "My dear little baby! It seems only the other day when I held it in my arms. It's as if the house were full of ghosts-isn't it, Tom?"

Her eyes wandered round the room, as if in search of some one or of something, and presently they lighted upon Mr. Ballingall. As they did so, the whole expression of her countenance was changed; it assumed a look of unspeakable horror.

"Charles Ballingall!" she gasped. "Tom-Tom, what is he doing here?"

She stretched out her hands, seeming to seek for protection from the some one who was in front of her-repeating the other's name as if involuntarily, as though it were a thing accursed.

"Charles Ballingall!"

Slowly, inch by inch, her glance passed from the shrinking vagabond, until it stayed, seeming to search with an eager longing the face of the one who was before her in the apparently vacant air.

"Tom! – what's he doing here? Tom! Tom! don't look at me like that! Don't, Tom-for God's sake, don't look at me like that!" She broke into sudden volubility, every word a cry of pain. "Tom, I'm-I'm your wife! You-you brought me home! Just now! – from the Borough! – all the way! – all the long, long way-home! Tom!"

The utterance of the name was like a scream of a wounded animal in its mortal agony.

The four onlookers witnessed an extraordinary spectacle. They saw this tattered, drabbled remnant of what was once a woman, whose whole appearance spoke of one who tottered on the very borders of the grave, struggling with the frenzy of an hysterical despair with the visitant from the world of shades who, it was plain to her, if not to others, was her companion-the husband whom, with such malignant cruelty and such persistent ingratitude, she had wronged so long ago. She had held out her hands, her treacherous hands, seeking to shelter them in his; and it seemed as if, for a moment, he had suffered them to stay, and that now, since she had realised the presence of her associate in sin, unwilling to retain them any more in his, he sought to thrust them from him; while she, perceiving that what she had supposed to be the realisation of hopes which she had not even dared to cherish was proving but a chimera, and the fruit which she was already pressing to her lips but an Apple of Sodom, strained every nerve to retain the hold of the hands whose touch had meant to her almost an equivalent to an open door to Paradise. With little broken cries and gasping supplications, she writhed and twisted as she strove to keep her grasp.

"Tom! Tom! Tom!" she exclaimed, over and over again. "You brought me home! you brought me home! Don't put me from you! Tom! Tom! Tom!"

It seemed that the struggle ended in her discomfiture, and that the hands which she had hoped would draw her forward had been used to thrust her back; for, staggering backwards as if she had been pushed, she put her palms up to her breasts and panted, staring like one distraught.

By degrees, regaining something of her composure, she turned and looked at Ballingall, with a look before which he cowered, actually raising his arm as if warding off a blow. And, when she had breath enough, she spoke to him, in a whisper, as if her strength was gone.

"What are you doing here?"

Ballingall hesitated, looking about him this way and that as if seeking for some road of retreat. Finding none, making a pitiful effort to gather himself together, he replied to her question in a voice which was at once tremulous and sullen.

"Tom asked me to come. You know, Tom, you asked me to come."

He stretched out his arm with a gesture which was startling, as if to him also the woman's companion was a reality. There was silence. He repeated his assertion, still with his outstretched arm.

"You know, Tom, you asked me to come."

Then there happened the most startling thing of all. Some one laughed. It was a man's laugh-low, soft, and musical. But there was about it this peculiar quality-it was not the merriment of one who laughs with, but of one who laughs at; as though the laugher was enjoying thoroughly, with all his heart, a jest at another's expense. Before it the man and woman cowered, as if beneath a rain of blows.

After it ceased they were still. It was plain that the woman was ashamed, disillusioned, conscious that she had been made a butt of; and that, in spite of all appearances to the contrary, she was still among the hopeless, the outcast, the condemned. She glanced furtively towards the companion of her shame; then more quickly still away from him, as if realising only too well that, in that quarter, there was no promise of hope rekindled. And she said, with choking utterance:

"Tom, I never thought-you'd laugh at me. Did you bring-me home-for this?"

She put up her hands, in their dreadful gloves, to her raddled, shrunken face, and stood, for a moment, still. Then her frame began to quiver, and she cried; and as she cried there came that laugh again.

The note of mockery that was in it served to sting Ballingall into an assertion of such manhood as was in him. He clenched his fists, drew himself straighter, and, throwing back his head, faced towards where the laughter seemed to stand.

"Tom," he said, "I've used you ill. We've both of us used you ill, both she and I-she's been as false a wife to you as I've been friend. Our sins have been many-black as ink, bitter as gall. We know it, both of us. We've had reason to know it well. But, Tom, consider what our punishment has been. Look at us-at her, at me. Think of what we were, and what we are. Remember what it means to have come to this from that. Every form of suffering I do believe we've known-of mind and of body too-she in her way, and I in mine. We've been sinking lower and lower and lower, through every form of degradation, privation, misery, until at last we're in the ditch-amidst the slime of the outer ditch. We've lost all that there is worth having, so far as life's concerned, for ever. The only hope that is left us is the hour in which it is appointed that we shall die. For my part, my hope is that for me that hour is not far off. And, as I'm a living man, I believe that for her it has already come; that the scythe is raised to reap; that she's dying where she stands. Have you no bowels of compassion, Tom-none? You used to have. Are they all dried and withered? There's forgiveness for sinners, Tom, with God; is there none with you? You used to be of those who forgive till seventy times seven; are you now so unforgiving? You may spurn me, you may trample on me, you may press my head down into the very slime of the ditch; you know that these many months you've torn and racked me with all the engines of the torture chambers: but she's your wife, Tom-she was your wife! you loved her once! She bore to you a little child-a little baby, Tom, a little baby! It's dead-with God, Tom, with God! She's going to it now-now, now! While she's passing into the very presence chamber, where her baby is, don't abase her, Tom. Don't, Tom, don't!"

He threw out his arms with a gesture of such frenzied entreaty, and his whole figure was so transformed by the earnestness, and passion, and pathos, and even anguish with which he pressed his theme, that at least the spectators were cut to the heart.

"I know not," he cried, "whether you are dead or living, or whether I myself am mad or sane-for, indeed, to me of late the world has seemed all upside down. But this I know, that I see you and that you see me, and if, as I suppose, you come from communion with the Eternal, you must know that, in that Presence, there is mercy for the lowest-for the chief of sinners! There is mercy, Tom, I know that there is mercy! Therefore I entreat you to consider, Tom, the case of this woman-of she who was your wife, the mother of your child. She has paid dearly for her offence against you-paid for it every moment of every hour of every day of every year since she offended. Since then she has been continually paying. Is not a quittance nearly due-from you, Tom? If blood is needed to wash out her guilt, she has wept tears of blood. If suffering-look at her and see how she has suffered. And now, even as I stand and speak to you, she dies. She bears her burden to the grave. Is she to add to it, still, the weight of your resentment? That will be the heaviest weight of all. Beneath it, how shall she stagger to the footstool of her God? All these years she has lived in hell. Don't-with your hand, Tom! – now she's dying, thrust her into hell, for ever. But put her hand in yours, and bear her up, and stay her, Tom, and lead her to the throne of God. If she can say that you've forgiven her, God will forgive her too. And then she'll find her baby, Tom."

It was a strange farrago of words which Ballingall had strung together, but the occasion was a strange one too. His earnestness, in which all was forgotten save his desire to effect his purpose, seemed to cast about them a halo as of sanctity. It was almost as if he stood there, pleading for a sinner, in the very Name of Christ-the great Pleader for all great sinners.

The woman, this latest Magdalene, did as that first Magdalene had done, she fell on her knees and wept-tears of bitterness.

"Tom! Tom!" she cried, "Tom! Tom!"

But he to whom she cried did not do as the Christ, the Impersonation of Divine Mercy, did. Christ wept with the sinners. He to whom she pleaded laughed at her. And, beneath his laughter, she crouched lower and lower, till she lay almost prostrate on the floor; and her body quivered as if he struck her with a whip.

Ballingall, as if he could scarcely credit the evidence of his own senses, started back and stared, as though divided between amazement and dismay. Under his breath, he put a singular inquiry-the words seeming to be wrung from him against his will.

"Tom! – Are you a devil?"

And it seemed as if an answer came. For he stood in the attitude of one who listens, and the muscles of his face worked as if what was being said was little to his mind. A dogged look came into his eyes, and about his mouth. He drew himself further back, as if retreating before undesired advances. Words came sullenly from between his teeth.

"No, Tom, no-I want none of that. It isn't that I ask; you know it isn't that."

It appeared as if the overtures made by the unseen presence, unwelcome though they were, were being persisted in. For Ballingall shook his head, raising his hands as if to put them from him, conveying in his bearing the whole gamut of dissent; breaking, at last, into exclamations which were at once defiant, suppliant, despairing.

"No, Tom, no! I don't want your fortune. You know I don't! All this time you've been dangling it before my eyes, and all the time it's been a will-o'-the-wisp, leading me deeper and deeper into the mire. I was unhappy enough when first you came to me and spoke of it-but I've been unhappier since, a thousand times. You might have let me have it at the beginning, if you'd chosen-but you didn't choose. You used it to make of me a mock, and a gibe-your plaything-whipping boy! To-night the lure of it has only served as a means to bring us here together-she and I! – when you know I'd rather have gone a hundred miles barefooted to hide from her my face. I don't know if there is a fortune hidden in this house or not, and I don't care if behind its walls are concealed the riches of Golconda. I'll have none of it-it's too late! too late! I've asked you for what I'd give a many fortunes, and you've laughed at me. You'll not show, by so much as a sign, that you forgive her-now, at this eleventh hour. There's nothing else of yours I'll have."

In reply, there came again that quiet laughter, with in it that curious metallic quality, which seemed to act on the quivering nerves of the two sin-stained, wayworn wretches as if it had been molten metal. At the sound of it they gave a guilty start, as if the ghosts of all their sins had risen to scourge them.

From her demeanour, the laugher, diverting his attention from Ballingall, had apparently turned to address the woman. In accents which had grown perceptibly weaker since her first entering, she essayed to speak.

"Yes, Tom, I'll get up. If you wish me, Tom, of course I will. I'm-tired, Tom-that's all."

She did get up, in a fashion which demonstrated she was tired. The process of ascension was not the work of a moment, and when she had regained her feet, she swung this way and that, like a reed in the wind. It was only by what seemed a miracle that she did not fall.

"Don't be angry-I'm tired-Tom-that's all."

In her voice there was a weariness unspeakable.