The Intoxicated Ghost Part 10

"Where 's Aunt Naomi?" inquired Mrs. c.u.mmings. "It's 'most five o'clock, and she almost always comes about three."

"Oh," responded Mrs. Wright, with a laugh and her quick, bright glance, "you may depend upon it she's getting news somewhere. She'll come in before we go home, with something wonderful to tell."

As if in intentional confirmation of the words, Aunt Naomi at that moment appeared in the doorway. Her shrewd old face showed satisfaction in every wrinkle, and from beneath the unfailing veil of green barege draped from her bonnet over the upper left-hand corner of her face her eyes positively twinkled. She took a deliberate survey of the room, and then with her peculiar rocking gait moved to the group which had been discussing her absence.

"Good afternoon, Aunt Naomi," Mrs. c.u.mmings greeted her. "We were just wondering what had become of you."

"And I said," put in Mrs. Wright audaciously, "that you must be getting some wonderful piece of news."

Aunt Naomi hitched up her shawl behind with a gra.s.shopper-like motion of her elbows, and sat down with a wide grin.

"Well, this time you were right," she said. "I was hearing Old Lady Andrews tell about her trip."

"Old Lady Andrews?" echoed the ladies. "Has she got home?"

"Yes; she got here this noon."

"And n.o.body but you knew it!" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed Mrs. c.u.mmings.

They all regarded Aunt Naomi with undisguised admiration, in every look acknowledging her cleverness in discovering what had been hid from the rest of the village. She smiled broadly, and seemed to drink in the sweet odor of this surprise and their homage as an idol might snuff up grateful fumes of incense.

"Did she bring home the body?" Mrs. c.u.mmings asked after a moment, in a voice becomingly lowered.

"Yes, she did," Aunt Naomi answered, with a chuckle of levity which seemed almost indecent. "She had a dreadful time finding out anything; but she had friends at Was.h.i.+ngton--her husband had cousins there, you know--and at last she got on the track."

"Where was he buried?"

Aunt Naomi paused to wag her foot and to nibble at the corner of her green veil in a way common to her in moments of excitement. She looked around in evident enjoyment of the situation.

"He was n't buried anywhere," she said, with a grin.

"Why not?" demanded Mrs. Wright excitedly.

"Because he was n't dead."

"Was n't dead?"

"No; only taken prisoner. He was wounded, and he's been in Libby."

"How is he now?"

"Oh, he's all right now. He's coming over here to show himself, and see his friends."

The words were hardly spoken when in the doorway appeared the well-known figure of Archie Lovell. He wore the uniform of a lieutenant, he was pale and worn, but handsomer than ever. On his arm was a blus.h.i.+ng damsel in a hat with a white feather, her face all smiles and dimples. An exclamation went up from all over the room.

"Why, it's Archie Lovell!"

It was followed almost immediately by another:--

"And Nancy Turner's with him!"

"No; it's Nancy Lovell," announced Aunt Naomi, in a voice audible all over the vestry. "They were married in Boston."

The bridal couple advanced. All about the room the ladies rose, but instead of greeting the newcomers, they looked at the "three widows,"

and waited as if to give them first an opportunity of accosting their mate, thus returned as if from the very grave, and so inopportunely bringing another mate with him. Miss Burrage and Miss Foster shrank from sight behind the backs of those nearest to them; but Mattie Seaton swept impulsively forward with her hand extended cordially. Her crisp black hair curled about her temples, her eyes shone, and her teeth flashed between her red lips.

"Why, Archie, dear," she said, in her clear, resonant voice, "we thought we had lost you forever. We all supposed you were dead, and here you are only married. Let me congratulate you, though after being engaged to so many girls, it must seem queer to be married to only one!--and you, Nancy," she went on, before Archie could make other reply than to shake hands; "to think you got him after all, just because you went ahead and caught him! I congratulate you with all my heart; only look out for him.

He'll make love to every woman he sees."

She bent forward and kissed the bride before Mrs. Lovell could have known her intention, and turned quickly.

"Come, Delia," she called across the vestry; "come, Mary! There's nothing for us to do but to go home and take off our black. We may have better luck next time!"

With this ambiguous observation, which might have been construed to cast rather a sinister reflection upon the return to life of the young lieutenant, she swept out of the vestry, complete mistress of the situation; and although Archie Lovell always strenuously denied that he had ever been engaged to any woman besides the one he married, a general feeling prevailed in Tuskamuck that no girl could have carried it off with a high hand as Mattie did, if she had not had some sort of an understanding to serve her as a support.

But never again while the Civil War lasted did a girl in Tuskamuck put on black for a lover unless the engagement had been publicly recognized before his death.

A MEETING OF THE PSYCHICAL CLUB

I

The meeting of the Psychical Club had been rather dull, and it was just as the members were languidly expecting an adjournment that the only interesting moment of the evening came. The papers had been more than usually vapid, and, as one man whispered to another, not even a ghost could be convicted upon evidence so slight as that brought forward to prove the existence of disembodied visitants to certain forsaken and rat-haunted houses. At the last moment, however, the President, Dr.

Taunton, made an announcement which did arouse some attention.

"Before we go," he said, smiling with the air of one who desires it to be understood that in what he says he distinctly disclaims all personal responsibility, "it is my duty to submit to the Club a singular proposition which has been made to me. A gentleman whom I am not at liberty to name, but who is personally known to many--perhaps to most--of you, offers to give to the Club an exhibition of occult phenomena."

The members roused somewhat, but too many propositions of a nature not dissimilar had ended in entire failure and flatness for any immediate enthusiasm.

"What are his qualifications?" a member asked.

"I did not dream that he possessed any," Dr. Taunton responded, smiling more broadly. "Indeed, to me that is the interesting thing. I had never suspected that he had even the slightest knowledge or curiosity in such matters, and still less that he made any pretensions to occult powers.

The fact that he is a man of a position so good and of brains so well proved as to make it unlikely that he would gratuitously make a fool of himself is the only ground on which his proposition seems to me worth attention."

"What does he propose to do?"

"He does not say."

"He must have given some sort of idea."

"He said only that he was able to perform some tricks--experiments, I think, was his word; or no--he said demonstrations. He thought they would interest the members."

"Did he say why he offered to do them?"

"No further than to observe not over politely that he was weary of some of the nonsense the Club circulated, and that he would therefore take the trouble to teach them better."