Free The Ghost and Mrs. Muir by R. A. Dick Page A

the following night, looking at the lights of Whitecliff, curling round like a line of firefliesto meet the winking lighthouse on the point beyond. The scent of honeysuckle and roses and lavender came to her on the summer breeze, that yet held the crisp saltness of the sea, and though the feeling of unfairness rimmed her happiness with a dark border, it seemed to throw up the colour of her peace in very contrast.
    “Why do you feel mean?” asked the captain’s voice.
    “Well, Eva means so well,” said Lucy, “and I did hurt her—terribly. It must be so awful not to be necessary to anyone, and she does intend to be kind.”
    “I doubt it,” replied Captain Gregg. “She wants her own way at all costs, which is the reason that she has never been necessary to anyone. God help us! What a woman!”
    “Poor Eva!” said Lucy.
    “Now, Lucia, don’t be sentimental,” the captain commanded, “you didn’t feel ‘poor Eva’ while she was here, and it’s entirely surface and false to feel it now she’s gone.”
    “My name is Lucy,” she said.
    “After yesterday I shall call you Lucia,” replied Captain Gregg firmly. “Lucy is a name with no guts in it—Lucy would never have routed that woman as Lucia did. I was proud of you.”
    “If you hadn’t weakened her knees and her spirit I should never have been able to stand up to her,” said Lucy. “I’m afraid Cyril will miss her,” she went on, “she was very good to him.”
    “If she’d stayed much longer, she’d have turned Cyril into a spoiled little prig and Anna into a revolutionary,” said the captain. “Cyril is a damned little prig by nature, but so far he’s not spoiled.”
    “Please remember that Cyril is my son,” Lucy said.
    “Oh, no, he’s not,” answered the captain, “he’s Edwin’s son, not yours at all, and it’s no good lying to me, my dear girl, even from loyalty. Cyril bores you and you know it.”
    “He’s my son and I love him,” protested Lucy.
    “You may love him, mothers are peculiar, but you don’t like him,” argued the captain, “not as you like Anna.”
    “It’s very wrong to have favourites in a family,” Lucy said sententiously.
    “Oh, don’t be so damn silly,” said Captain Gregg. “If you’re going to talk like an old-fashioned copybook I’m off.”
    “Where to?” asked Lucy with interest. “I do think you might tell me something of your other existence.”
    “Grow up a little more and perhaps I will,” said the captain.
    “At least you can tell me if it’s a happy state,” persisted Lucy.
    “That depends on the individual,” replied Captain Gregg. “If a man has lived on earth merely for earthly desires of ambition, possessions, drink, and women, he’ll have a hell of a time at first because he’ll find no means of satisfying his lusts—but here’s something for you to think about, Lucia. Have you ever heard of a happy ghost?”
    “No,” replied Lucy.
    “No,” said the captain, “and why not? Because only the unhappy return to earth—the haunted—that’s a new idea for you. The souls that return are haunted in the next state by what has happened on earth. The average after-lifer never wants to return.”
    “But isn’t that very selfish?” asked Lucy. “I mean when they see their relations and friends weeping their hearts out for one word of reassurance and comfort, don’t you think they might come back just once to tell them all is well?”
    “Why,” asked the captain, “when all that’s wanting is their own faith? That beats me every time,” he went on, “all these psalm-singing hypocrites who spend half their lives in church, imploring God Almighty to give them wings likedoves to fly to Paradise, and when their friends get their wings, they smother themselves in black crape and refer to the departed as ‘poor’—there’s no consistency in it and no sense! As for hauling them back every few minutes to dry their tears—well, me dear, think of the confusion.