"It is possible," she said, in a tone so cold that the poor lieutenant dared not answer her, "that the fact that you are a man prevents you from understanding how a woman feels who has thrown herself at a man"s head, as I have done, and been rejected. Take me back to the sh.o.r.e."
And he had not a word to answer.
V
To have proposed to a man, and been refused, is not a soothing experience for any woman; and although the ground upon which Arthur had based his rejection was one which Irene had before known to be the obstacle between them, the refusal remained a stubborn fact to rankle in her mind. All the evening she nursed her wounded feelings, and by the time midnight brought her once more face to face with the ghost of the major, her temper was in a state which nothing save the desire to shield a lady could induce one to call by even so mild a word as uncertain.
The spirit appeared as usual, saluting, and tossing off b.u.mpers from its shadowy wine-gla.s.s, and it had swallowed at least a dozen cups before Miss Gaspic condescended to indicate that she was aware of its presence.
"Why do you stand there drinking in that idiotic fashion?" she demanded, with more asperity than politeness. "Once is quite enough for that sort of thing."
"But I cannot speak until I have been spoken to," the ghost responded apologetically, "and I have to continue drinking until I have been requested to do something else."
"Drink, then, by all means," Irene replied coldly, turning to pick up a book. "I only hope that so much wine will not go to your head."
"But it is sure to," the ghost said, in piteous tones; "and in all my existence, even when I was only a man, I have never been overcome with wine in the presence of a lady."
It continued to swallow the wraith of red wine while it spoke, and Irene regarded it curiously.
"An inebriated ghost," she observed dispa.s.sionately, "is something which it is so seldom given to mortal to see that it would be the greatest of folly to neglect this opportunity of getting sight of that phenomenon."
"Please tell me to go away, or to sit down, or to do something," the quondam major pleaded.
"Then tell me where the McHugh diamonds are," she said.
A look of desperate obstinacy came into the ghost"s face, through which could unpleasantly be seen the bra.s.s k.n.o.bs of a tall secretary on the opposite side of the room. For some moments the pair confronted each other in silence, although the apparition continued its drinking. Irene watched the figure with unrelenting countenance, and at length made the curious discovery that it was standing upon tiptoe. In a moment more she saw that it was really rising, and that its feet from time to time left the carpet entirely. Her first thought was a fear that it was about to float away and escape, but upon looking closer she came to the conclusion that it was endeavoring to resist the tendency to rise into the air. Watching more sharply, she perceived that while with its right hand it raised its inexhaustible wine-cup, with its left it clung to the back of a chair in an evident endeavor to keep itself down.
"You seem to be standing on tiptoe," she observed. "Were you looking for anything?"
"No," the wraith responded, in evident confusion; "that is merely the levitation consequent upon this constant imbibing."
Irene laughed contemptuously. "Do you mean," she demanded unfeelingly, "that the sign of intoxication in a ghost is a tendency to rise into the air?"
"It is considered more polite in our circle to use the term employed by the occultists," the apparition answered somewhat sulkily. "We speak of it as "levitation.""
"But I do not belong to your circle," Irene returned cheerfully, "and I am not in sympathy with the occultists. Does it not occur to you," she went on, "that it is worth while to take into consideration the fact that in these progressive times you do not occupy the same place in popular or even in scientific estimation which was yours formerly? You are now merely an hallucination, you know, and there is no reason that I should regard you with anything but contempt, as a mere symptom of indigestion or of mental fatigue."
"But you can see that I am not an hallucination, can you not?" quavered the poor ghost of the major, evidently becoming dreadfully discouraged.
"Oh, that is simply a delusion of the senses," Irene made answer in a matter-of-fact way, which, even while she spoke, she felt to be basely cruel. "Any physician would tell me so, and would write out a prescription for me to prevent my seeing you again."
"But he could n"t," the ghost said, with pathetic feebleness.
"You do not know the physicians of to-day," she replied, with a smile.
"But to drop that, what I wished to say was this: does it not seem to you that this is a good opportunity to prove your reality by showing me the hiding-place of the diamonds? I give you my word that I will report the case to the Psychical Research Society, and you will then go on record and have a permanent reputation which the incredulity of the age cannot destroy."
The ghost was by this time in a state of intoxication which evidently made it able only with the utmost difficulty to keep from sailing to the ceiling. It clung to the back of a chair with a desperate clutch, while its feet paddled hopelessly and helplessly in the air, in vain attempts once more to get into touch with the floor.
"But the Psychical Research Society is not recognized in my circle," it still objected.
"Very well," Irene exclaimed in exasperation; "do as you like! But what will be the effect upon your reputation if you go floating helplessly back to your circle in your present condition? Is levitation in the presence of ladies considered respectable in this society of whose opinion you think so much?"
"Oh, to think of it!" the spirit of the bygone major wailed with a sudden shrillness of woe which made even Miss Gaspic"s blood run cold.
"Oh, the disgrace of it! I will do anything you ask."
Irene sprang to her feet in sudden excitement.
"Will you show me--" she began; but the wavering voice of the ghost interrupted her.
"You must lead me," it said. "Give me your hand. I shall float up to the ceiling if I let go my hold upon this chair."
"Your hand--that is, I--I don"t like the feeling of ghosts," Irene replied. "Here, take hold of this."
She picked up a pearl paper-knife and extended it toward the spirit. The ghost grasped it, and in this manner was led down the chamber, floating and struggling upward like a bird. Irene was surprised at the amount of force with which it pulled at the paper-knife, but she reflected that it had really swallowed an enormous quant.i.ty of its ghostly stimulant. She followed the directions of the waving hand that held the wine-gla.s.s, and in this way they came to a corner of the room where the spirit made signs that it wished to get nearer the floor. Irene pulled the figure downward, until it crouched in the corner. It laid one transparent hand upon a certain panel in the wainscoting.
"Search here," it said.
In the excitement of the moment Irene relaxed her hold upon the paper-knife. Instantly the ghost floated upward like a balloon released from its moorings, while the paper-knife dropped through its incorporeal form to the floor.
"Good-by," Irene cried after it. "Thank you so much!"
And like a blurred and dissolving cloud above her head the intoxicated ghost faded into nothingness.
VI
It was hardly to be expected that Irene, flushed with the proud delight of having triumphed over the obstinate ghost of the major, could keep her discovery to herself for so long a time as until daylight. It was already near one in the morning, but on going to her window, and looking across to the wing of the house where the lieutenant"s rooms were, she saw that his light was still burning. With a secret feeling that he was probably reflecting upon the events of the afternoon, Irene sped along the pa.s.sage to the door of f.a.n.n.y"s chamber, whom she awakened, and dispatched to bring Arthur.
f.a.n.n.y"s characteristically feminine manner of calling her brother was to dash into his room, crying:--
"Oh, Arthur, Irene has found the McHugh diamonds!"
She was too incoherent to reply to his questions, so that there was manifestly nothing for him to do but to follow to the place where Irene was awaiting them. There the young couple were deserted by f.a.n.n.y, who impulsively ran on before to the haunted chamber, leaving them to follow. As they walked along the corridor, the lieutenant, who perhaps felt that it was well not to provoke a discussion which might call up too vividly in Irene"s mind the humiliation of the afternoon, clasped her quite without warning, and drew her to his side.
"Now I can ask you to marry me," he said; "and I love you, Irene, with my whole heart."
Her first movement was an instinctive struggle to free herself; but the persuasion of his embrace was too sweet to be resisted, and she only protested by saying, "Your love seems to depend very much upon those detestable old diamonds."
"Of course," he answered. "Without them I am too poor to have any right to think of you."
"Oh," she cried out in sudden terror, "suppose that they are not there!"
The young man loosened his embrace in astonishment.
"Not there!" he repeated. "f.a.n.n.y said that you had found them."
"Not yet; only the ghost--"