Read The Ghost and Mrs. Muir for Free Online Page B

us alone?” asked Lucy.
    “No, I will not go right away,” said the captain. “Why should I?”
    “Because I couldn’t possibly bring the children here if you stay,” replied Lucy. “Quite apart from the fear they might feel at being haunted, think of the bad language they’d learn, and the bad morals.”
    “Damn it, my language is most controlled, madam,” said Captain Gregg stiffly, “and as for my morals, I can assure you that no woman has ever been the worse in body or pocket for knowing me, and I’d like to know how many mealy-mouthed psalm-singers can say the same. I’ve lived a man’s life and I’m not ashamed of it, but I’ve always tried to tell the truth and shame the devil.”
    “All the same,” said Lucy, “I should find you too difficult to explain to Cyril and Anna, who at twelve and eleven are at the enquiring age and must have everything explained. Still, it was good of you to give in and say we might come. I shall never find another house to suit me so well—did you build it yourself?”
    “Yes, I did,” said Captain Gregg crossly.
    “That was very clever of you,” said Lucy. “My husband studied architecture for years, but he never made such a satisfactory little house as this—though I believe he was very clever at prisons and post-offices,” she added loyally, since loyalty to a late husband was only becoming in a widow still wearing such complete mourning.
    “What do you wear all that black crape and stuff for,” asked Captain Gregg, breaking right into her thoughts, “when you really didn’t care a black-edged handkerchief for your husband?”
    “Oh!” said Lucy, “I did—I did!”
    “You needn’t waste time lying to me,” said Captain Gregg. “In the state I’m in now, thoughts and words come out together like the bass and treble in a piano piece. And with some of us it makes some fairly crashing discords I can tell you. No, my dear, you were fond of your husband, but you didn’t love him.”
    “I shall not listen to you any longer,” said Lucy with dignity, rising from the chair. She struck another match and this time lighted the gas with no interference. She moved the kettle over the flame and seated herself again to await the heating of the water.
    A brooding silence fell over the kitchen, broken only by the busy hissing of the gas under the kettle. Lucy sat quietly on the hard wooden chair. She looked very young and pretty sitting there, her cheeks becomingly flushed with her efforts, and her white hands, already a little roughened by the day’s work, folded patiently on her knee … too tired to think … too tired to feel … content now to let destiny alone with her future.
    “Which is the right way to live,” said Captain Gregg after a long pause. “If you give fate a chance it will always work itself out, but men are such fools, rushing round in circles with their eyes shut, interfering with each other, smashing everything up through their own blind stupidity, and then when they’re hopelessly lost, sitting down and cursing God for not answering them when they never stopped to listen.
    “I like a woman who can sit still,” he went on after another pause. “If I’d ever met a woman who could hold her tongue and not fidget, I might have married—that water’s hot enough,” he broke off, “can’t you see the steam coming out of the spout? If you wait till it’s actually boiling you’ll rotthe rubber of the bottle, besides wasting the gas. Damn it, madam, you must be practical.”
    “Yes,” said Lucy, rising meekly and filling her bottle, “I suppose I must.”
    “And you ought to have a funnel,” said the captain, grumbling, “you’ll scald your hands sooner or later pouring hot water in like that. Get a funnel to-morrow.”
    “Very well, I will.” Lucy yawned as she finished screwing up the top of the bottle. “I don’t know if it’s the right thing to wish a ghost a good night,” she said, moving towards the door,