The sociable ghost Being the adventures of a reporter who was invited by the sociable ghost to a grand banquet, ball, and convention under the ground of old Trinity churchyard. A true tale of the things he saw and did not see while he was not there.
floor manager shouted loudly:
“Ladies and Gentlemen: We are about to be specially favored by hearing a
song composed and sung by our friend, Capt. ———. He assures us that no
one else has ever heard it, as he used to sing it only at night when at
sea during storms. I have the honor—Captain ———.”
Here the floor manager bowed and retired. The Captain proved to be the
ghost who had brought the young man down here, and he took his place
while the invisible music burst forth with a strong rush of sound that
reminded the young man of the winds and waves in a storm at sea. The
ghost began in a deep bass voice:
“With a hey and a ho for the white sea horses, Plunging and tossing on
ocean's crest; With a hey and a ho for the warning they give us, The
sailor's heart sinks low in his breast. They fight fierce battles there
in the water, Till the surface is covered white with foam, The waters
toss and are churned to lather That touches the edge of heaven's dome.
Deep in the depths the shadows thicken, As gather the sharks from down
below, And high in the heavens the storm clouds hover, As prancing
fiercely the white horses go. Then in the black darkness we hark to the
breakers, Dashing upon the bleak rocks their foam, Beaten to froth by
the white sea horses, And none of the sailors reaches his home.”
As this song was finished there was a regular salvo of applause, and in
more ways than one, for the clapping of the fleshless hands was like the
cracking of musketry. The ghost seemed to be pleased by the evident
appreciation of his efforts, and sauntered over to the young man who
expressed his pleasure so warmly that even an opera singer would have
felt satisfied with such approbation and he requested permission to copy
down the song, for sung in a grand and sonorous basso it had seemed to
be a fine one.
When the last few desultory claps of applause at this song had died away
the floor manager called out:
“Take your partners for a quadrille.”
In a minute there was such a bustle that the newspaper man could
scarcely hear himself think, but soon the sets were formed, and the
whole immense place was filled with dancers, all in sets for quadrille.
The music changed at the right moment, and the floor manager called out
in stentorian tones:
“Salute your partners.” And they all bowed in the regulation manner.
Considering the almost universal poverty of wearing apparel, the ghosts
danced and made a graceful appearance. There was scarcely enough cloth
in good condition to have made a dress, but that fact did not seem to
strike them as worth consideration. The manager cried:
“First two forward and back, cross over, balance to your partner, back
to your place, all promenade.” Continuing he led them through all the
mazes of what he called allemand right, allemand left, all sashay, and
so on until the whole was finished.
All the ghosts appeared to enjoy the free movement of the dance and to
them it mattered little if the usual attire for such functions was
conspicuous by its absence. The young man thought that as they had
ghostly food and drink, furniture and decorations, perhaps they imagined
their clothes as well. Then he suddenly remembered those tables. It
struck him as curious that they had come and disappeared like things in
some fairy tale.
As he watched the dancers, who were now waltzing, he thought of a
curious experience that had happened to him a year ago. He had a ticket
to go to Albany on the day boat, and he thought it would be a pleasant
trip and a rest, for he had been working unusually hard for a fortnight.
He had never made this trip and thought he would enjoy the beauties of
the scenery, and incidentally, repose his mind.
The night before he was to make this trip he had a most vivid dream. He
thought he was in a primeval forest and saw huge misshapen monsters,
great prehistoric creatures, whose bones only now tell of their
existence. Among them he saw a monstrous elephant covered with hair, and
with immense tusks curved like those found among the eternal glaciers in
far off lands. There were other strange animals and giants. As he went
along he heard in one place a swishing like that of silks swirling in
the dance, and a soft rhythmic sound, but nothing could he see until he
suddenly turned a corner, and there was a room with hundreds of men and
women dancing, but they all seemed to him to be dead. He turned to find
some one who could explain this strange thing, but no one was near, and
when he turned to look at them again they had all disappeared and an
enormous gorilla stood in the place where they had been.
Then he awoke, and attended to his business of getting ready, and at the
last moment hurried down to the boat. After the manner of busy men he
reached there just as the bell was ringing, and when he went to hand in
his ticket, he remembered that he had left it on the bureau, safely
folded in a clean handkerchief. He said a word or two in appreciation of
the situation, and then said to himself that since he could not go to
Albany he would go to Rockaway. He had never been there, though it was
so near by. The boat was just ready to start and the price for a round
trip ticket but fifty cents.
The sail down was uneventful, and as it was a week day and near the close
of the season, he found very little to interest him there, so when he
came to a museum, such as flourish at places like that, he decided to
enter there to while away the time until the boat was ready to sail. As
he entered the door, he saw the primeval forest of his dream, and every
monster he found in just the same position. He thought he was living in
the days long before man had entered into the history of the world.
Wondering at this dream which had so curiously “come out,” he suddenly
found himself at the same place of which he had dreamed, where he had
seen the dead folks dancing. He heard the same soft swish of silk, and
the same subdued murmur and there were marionettes, hundreds of them all
strung on invisible wires, and all dancing around in a mad revel that
had something uncanny about it, particularly when taken in with the
singular dream as a background.
Now he was down under Trinity Church looking at a revel far stranger,
and he began to wonder if he were not a medium in spite of what the
ghosts told him. He knew that the first experience was true, and he did
not doubt that this one was equally so, and he thought that from now on
he would take up the study of the unknowable and make an exhaustive
research into all things relative to ghosts. Once before he had had a
serious intention of writing a book on the subject of ghosts, authentic
ones, but when he tried to get the matter together he found that the
nearest he could come to what he wished to find was, that no one person
not an avowed spiritualist, would admit having seen a real ghost, but
nearly all knew of some one whose aunt or grandmother had heard of some
one whose friends had thought they did see one. So he gave up that plan,
but now he thought he might get notes enough to make a book on the
subject, but then he might be injuring his plans regarding the princess.
He compromised with himself by saying that if his plan for her
deliverance failed he could then give the necessary time to the book. He
regretted that he had not got his kodak along. What a chance it would
have been to get that line of ghosts as they marched by, and what would
he not have given for a snap shot at that “coon dance.”
After the waltz the company broke up into groups and talked or
promenaded around in couples, and it was a sight to remember forever to
see the young lady ghosts as they walked or hung their heads and tried
to look conscious at some tender compliment. The ghosts really had
something of the semblance of life about them, for though they had no
features left, nor eyes, there was some kind of inner light and a
radiance which took the place of flesh. It was as though the soul had
shed a soft light of its own over the fleshless skull and lent it
something of its former appearance, and the thought came to him that
perhaps these ghosts only saw the spiritual part of each other and just
as he decided that such must be the case, as nothing else would account
for so much that was otherwise unaccountable, there happened something
to put all such ideas to flight, for the three ghosts who had looked
upon the wine when it was red, seemed to have awakened under the
impression that they were being neglected, and started a row, and began
hitting out at any one in reach, be it man or woman, and so unexpected
was the assault that the skeletons went down in heaps and lay there like
so much new mown wheat.
The whole thing was so ludicrous that the newspaper man thought he must
laugh or die. But he had been schooled not to laugh at the foolishness
of others. That training stood him in good stead now, and he did keep
his face straight by promising himself the luxury of a laugh the next
day.
This control over his risibilities saved him from disaster when
interviewing a great society woman one day. She told him that she could
never bear to have any publicity, and really felt that the privacy of
her home was sacred to her, and nothing about it ought ever to be put
into any paper, while at that very moment he had her letter to his chief
in his pocket, asking that a reporter should be sent to write a
description of her house, which was one of the finest on Fifth Avenue.
Her very virtuous indignation under the circumstances was so refreshing
that the young man had found it a great and severe task to control his
amusement, and ever since that experience he had been practicing
self-control. If there is one thing more than another calculated to
afford abundant practice in this line it is being a society reporter.
So now he even refrained from clapping his hands when the Sociable Ghost
appeared with a bound, in spite of his sore toe, which the young man
noticed was held up rigidly, notwithstanding the activity of the rest of
the bony body. He laid the three flat with three well directed blows,
and set the beholder to wondering what he could have done had he not
been hampered by his troublesome foot.
When the three lay flat in a heap, he pushed them over into a corner
with his well foot and told them to lie there and not to dare to move
again until he gave them leave. One of them had lost one of his legs in
the fracas, and began to howl that he was all broken up. He begged some
one to pull him out and get his leg for him. The Sociable Ghost said, as
he rubbed his bony hands together:
“Say, oh, I say! This is fine! I have not had so much fun since I died.
It brings back old times, and for one ineffable moment I thought I was
back on my ship again and fighting out with a belaying pin at the
mutineers. Oh, yes; I had a mutiny to deal with about every six months.
It was fun. Danger? No, for the Captain always holds all the trump
cards, and I was always ready to play them. By George, I was! And this
brings it all back to me. Oh, I say; I must show you something a little
out of the usual order. It is my wife’s second husband. He is among the
ghosts invited here from Derby, and I think it was a little cheeky for
him to come here, don’t you?”
“What are you going to do to him?” asked the young man with some natural
curiosity.
“I am going to do just nothing to him. The poor chap has had troubles of
his own with her—enough to balance any ill will I might have had. Now,
my wife was, or rather is, for she is not dead yet, the kind of woman
that what she wants goes, whether you want it to go or not. I was
captain on board my ship, but she was the captain at home, and I was
crew and cabin boy combined. Maybe I was a bit breezy toward my men when