Old Lover's Ghost Read Free

month.”
    “What you have, Mama, is a very old house, with floors that squeak and squawk and a chimney that howls when the wind is high.”
    “It is not that! She comes to the window at night.”
    “Close your curtains,” he said firmly.
    “I do close them. She opens them. And she ... she appears from the clothespress as well,” Lady Merton said with an air of embarrassment.
    Merton suppressed the phrase “mad as a hatter.” Mama had been looking peaked of late. That she had recently replaced her dresser with a full-time companion, Miss Monteith, a former upstairs maid, suggested that she was either lonesome or frightened. She had been seeing a good deal of St. John, the vicar, as well. Something was obviously bothering her. Of course she was reaching that age ... If it amused her to have a ghost hunter, there was no real harm in it. He would tip the fellow the clue that he must be rid of the ghost at top speed and give him ten guineas, and that would be the end of it.
    “When does he come?” he asked.
    “He will be arriving this evening. Around eleven.”
    “Eleven? That is a demmed uncivil hour to call.”
    “You need not be here, John. I shall greet Mr. Wainwright and his daughter and make them welcome.”
    “Good God! Does he travel with his whole family?”
    “Only one daughter.”
    “Daughter?” Lewis asked, his eyes shining.
    “Miss Wainwright is his amanuensis,” Lady Merton explained. “She keeps notes of his findings.”
    “And scribbles them up to amuse the public.” Merton scowled. All the world would read of his mama’s folly.
    “Is she pretty?” Lewis asked.
    “Lady Montagu said she is a good-natured creature.”
    The gentlemen exchanged knowing looks. “An antidote,” Merton translated. “The ugly ones are always called good-natured.”
    In theory, any lady who fell an inch short of perfection was of no interest to Lewis. In practice, he was a good deal less demanding. “Pity,” he said. “What age, Mama?”
    Merton turned a fulminating eye on him. “You are not to carry on with the chit, Lewis. That is all we need, you making an ass of yourself over that charlatan’s daughter.”
    “Demme, John, that is unfair. My interest in all this is purely literary. Look at the thundering success old Coleridge had with his ghostly wedding guest.”
    “What the devil is he talking about?” Merton asked his mama.
    “It is something about a bird, dear, an albatross, I believe, and water, water everywhere, but strangely the sailors are all dying of thirst.”
    “Ignorant as swans,” Lewis scoffed with a condemning look at his family. “It is about sin, and expiation, and ... and shrieving the soul. It is all an allegory, you see. The albatross is a symbol. I wonder if there is an allegory in Knagg. I shall speak to Mr. Wainwright. It seems to me Knagg—”
    “Do gag him, for God’s sake,” Lady Merton said with an appealing look at her elder son.
    “Put a damper on it. You are giving Mama the megrims.”
    “Very well, I shan’t bother you mental commoners with poetical things. But it will be jolly good sport hunting ghosts.”
    Merton rose. “We have work to do, Lewis. An estate of ten thousand acres does not run itself. It is time you learned the ropes. If you cannot profit from a higher education, then you must learn to farm, to be ready to take over your own place when you reach your maturity. I have enough to do with the Hall. In the spring I can use another pair of hands. Take a run over to the east meadow. Wallins is shearing the sheep today. See if he needs any of the fellows to help him. And you might see that the storage barn has been cleaned up to take the new wool. I shall be in my office.”
    Lewis assumed a pained expression and quoted, “ ‘Happy the man who ... works his ancestral acres with oxen of his own breeding,’ eh, John? I envy you your simple pleasures.”
    “You omitted the best part of Horace’s lines. ‘Free from usury.’ And as you seem