Humorous Ghost Stories Part 20

"Hus.h.!.+" she said. "Dad's a good sort. But you can't measure him by other people's standards. And yet--oh, it's maddening, this life! Day after day--loneliness. Nothing but stone walls and rusty armor and books.

We're rich, but what do we get out of it? I have n.o.body of my own age to talk to. How the years are pa.s.sing! After a while--I'll be--an old maid. I'm twenty-one now!" I heard a sob. Her pretty head was bowed in her hands.

Desperately I seized the bars of the window and miraculously they parted. I leaned across the sill and drew her hands gently down.

"Listen to me," I said. "If I break in and steal you away from this, will you go?"

"Go?" she said. "Where?"

"My aunt lives at Seven Oaks, less than an hour from here by train. You can stay there till your father comes to his reason."

"It's quite like father _never_ to come to his reason," she reflected.

"Then I should have to be self-supporting. Of course, I should appreciate employment in a candy shop--I think I know all the princ.i.p.al kinds."

"Will you go?" I asked.

"Yes," she replied simply, "I'll go. But how can I get away from here?"

"To-night," I said, "is Christmas Eve, when Pierrepont the Ghost is supposed to walk along the wall--right under this window. You don't believe that fairy story, do you?"

"No."

"Neither do I. But can't you see? The haunted wall begins at my window on one end of the castle and ends at your window on the other. The bars of your cell, I see, are nearly all loose."

"Yes," she laughed, "I pried them out with a pair of scissors."

I could hear Hobson's voice across the court giving orders to servants.

"Your father's coming. Remember to-night," I whispered.

"Midnight," she said softly, smiling out at me. I could have faced flocks and flocks of dragons for her at that moment. The old man was coming nearer. I swung to the ground and escaped into a ruined court.

Well, the hours that followed were anxious and busy for me. I worked in the glamour of romance like a soldier about to do some particularly brave and foolish thing. From the window of my room I looked down on the narrow, giddy wall below. It _was_ a brave and foolish thing. Among the rubbish in an old armory I found a coil of stout rope, forty or fifty feet of it. This I smuggled away. From a remote hall I borrowed a Crusader's helmet and spent the balance of the afternoon in my room practicing with a sheet across my shoulders, shroud-fas.h.i.+on.

We dined grandly at eight, the old man and I. He drank thirstily and chatted about the ghost, as you might discuss the chances in a coming athletic event. After what seemed an age he looked at his watch and cried: "Whillikens! Eleven o'clock already! Well, I'll be going up to watch from the haunted room. I think, Jeff, that you'll bring me luck to-night."

"I am sure I shall!" I answered sardonically, as he departed.

Three quarters of an hour later, wearing the Crusader's helmet and swathed in a bedsheet, I let myself down from the window to the haunted wall below. It was moonlight, bitter cold as I crouched on the wall, waiting for the stroke of twelve, when I should act the spook and walk along that precarious ledge to rescue Anita.

The "haunted wall," I observed from where I stood, was shaped like an irregular crescent, being in plain view of Hobson's "haunted room" at the middle, but not so at its north and south ends, where my chamber and Anita's tower were respectively situated. I pulled out my watch from under my winding-sheet. Three minutes of twelve. I drew down the vizor of my helmet and gathered up my cerements preparatory to walking the hundred feet of wall which would bring me in sight of the haunted room where old Hobson kept his vigil. Two minutes, one minute I waited, when--I suddenly realized I was not alone.

A man wearing a long cloak and a feather in his cap was coming toward me along the moonlit masonry. Aha! So I was not the only masquerading swain calling on the captive princess in the prison tower. A jealous pang shot through me as I realized this.

The man was within twenty feet of me, when I noticed something. He was not walking on the wall. _He was walking on air, three or four feet above the wall._ Nearer and nearer came the man--the Thing--now into the light of the moon, whose beams seemed to strike through his misty tissue like the thrust of a sword. I was horribly scared. My knees loosened under me, and I clutched the vines at my back to save me from falling into the moat below. Now I could see his face, and somehow fear seemed to leave me. His expression was so young and human.

"Ghost of the Pierrepont," I thought, "whether you walk in shadow or in light, you lived among a race of Men!"

His n.o.ble, pallid face seemed to burn with its own pale light, but his eyes were in darkness. He was now within two yards of me. I could see the dagger at his belt. I could see the gory cut on his forehead. I attempted to speak, but my voice creaked like a rusty hinge. He neither heeded nor saw me; and when he came to the spot where I stood, he did not turn out for me. He walked _through_ me! And when next I saw him he was a few feet beyond me, standing in mid-air over the moat and gazing up at the high towers like one revisiting old scenes. Again he floated toward me and poised on the wall four feet from where I stood.

"What do you here to-night?" suddenly spoke, or seemed to speak, a voice that was like the echo of a silence.

No answer came from my frozen tongue. Yet I would gladly have spoken, because somehow I felt a great sympathy for this boyish spirit.

"It has been many earth-years," he said, "since I have walked these towers. And ah, cousin, it has been many miles that I have been called to-night to answer the summons of my race. And this fortress--what power has moved it overseas to this mad kingdom? Magic!"

His eyes seemed suddenly to blaze through the shadows.

"Cousin," he again spoke, "it is to you that I come from my far-off English tomb. It was your need called me. It is no pious deed brings you to this wall to-night. You are planning to pillage these towers unworthily, even as I did yesterday. Death was my portion, and broken hearts to the father I wronged and the girl I sought."

"But it is the father wrongs the girl here," I heard myself saying.

"He who rules these towers to-day is of stern mind but loving heart,"

said the ghost. "Patience. By the Star that redeems the world, love should not be won _to-night_ by stealth, but by--love."

He raised his hands toward the tower, his countenance radiant with an undying pa.s.sion.

"_She_ called to me and died," he said, "and her little ghost comes not to earth again for any winter moon or any summer wind."

"But you--you come often?" my voice was saying.

"No," said the ghost, "only on Christmas Eve. Yule is the tide of specters; for then the thoughts of the world are so beautiful that they enter our dreams and call us back."

He turned to go, and a boyish, friendly smile rested a moment on his pale face.

"Farewell, Sir Geoffray de Pierrepont," he called to me.

Into the misty moonlight the ghost floated to that portion of the wall directly opposite the haunted room. From where I stood I could not see this chamber. After a moment I shook my numb senses to life. My first instinct was one of strong human curiosity, which impelled me to follow far enough to see the effect of the apparition on old Hobson, who must be watching at the window.

I tiptoed a hundred feet along the wall and peered around a turret up to a room above, where Hobson's head could easily be seen in a patch of light. The ghost, at that moment, was walking just below, and the effect on the old man, appalling though it was, was ludicrous as well. He was leaning far out of the window, his mouth wide open; and the entire disk of his fat, hairless head was as pallid as the moon itself. The specter, who was now rounding the curve of the wall near the tower, swerved suddenly, and as suddenly seemed to totter headlong into the abyss below. As he dropped, a wild laugh broke through the frosty air. It wasn't from the ghost. It came from above--yes, it emanated from Thaddeus Hobson, who had, apparently, fallen back, leaving the window empty. Lights began breaking out all over the castle. In another moment I should be caught in my foolish disguise. With the courage of a coward, I turned and ran full tilt along the dizzy ledge and back to my window, where I lost no seconds scrambling up the rope that led to my room.

With all possible haste I threw aside my sheet and helmet and started downstairs. I had just wrestled with a ghost; I would now have it out with the old man. The castle seemed ablaze below. I saw the flash of a light skirt in the picture gallery, and Anita, pale as the vision I had so lately beheld, came running toward me.

"Father--saw it!" she panted. "He had some sort of sinking spell--he's better now--isn't it awful!" She clung to me, sobbing hysterically.

Before I realized what I had done, I was holding her close in my arms.

"Don't!" I cried. "It was a good ghost--he had a finer spirit than mine.

He came to-night for you, dear, and for me. It was a foolish thing we planned."

"Yes, but I wanted, I wanted to go!" she sobbed now crying frankly on my shoulder.

"You _are_ going with me," I said fiercely, raising her head. "But not over any ghost-ridden breakneck wall. We're going this time through the big front door of this old castle, American fas.h.i.+on, and there'll be an automobile waiting outside and a parson at the other end of the line."

We found Thaddeus Hobson alone, in the vast hall looking blankly at the fire.

"Jeff," he said solemnly, "you sure brought me luck to-night if you can call it such being scared into a human icicle. Br-r-r! Shall I ever get the cold out of my backbone? But somehow, somehow that foggy feller outside sort of changed my look on things. It made me feel _kinder_ toward living folks. Ain't it strange!"

"Mr. Hobson," I said, "I think the ghost has made us _all_ see things differently. In a word, sir, I have a confession to make--if you don't mind."