Old Fires and Profitable Ghosts

Old Fires and Profitable Ghosts,
by A. T.

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Quiller-Couch
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Title: Old Fires and Profitable Ghosts
Author: A. T. Quiller-Couch
Release Date: October 19, 2004 [eBook #13799] [Most recently
updated October 23, 2006]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)
***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK OLD FIRES
AND PROFITABLE GHOSTS***
E-text prepared by Lionel G. Sear

OLD FIRES AND PROFITABLE GHOSTS.

A Book of Stories
A. T. QUILLER-COUCH.

PREFACE
The stories in this book are of revenants: persons who either in spirit or
in body revisit old scenes, return upon old selves or old emotions, or
relate a message from a world beyond perception. "Which?" was
suggested by a passage in Hawthorne's Note-books, where he proposes
a story or sketch the scene of which is "to be laid within the light of a
street lantern; the time, when the lamp is near going out; and the
catastrophe to be simultaneous with the last flickering gleam." "The
Lady of the Ship" is very nearly historical. "Prisoners of War" rests on
the actual adventures of two St. Ives men, Thomas Williams and John
Short, in the years 1804-1814. "Frozen Margit" and "The Seventh Man"
have--if not their originals--at least their suggestions in fact.
One of the tales, "Once Aboard the Lugger," is itself a revenant. After
writing it in the form here presented, I took advice and gave it another,
under the title of "Ia." Yet some whose opinion I value prefer the
original, and to satisfy them (though I think them wrong) it is reprinted;
not with intent to pad out the volume. But my readers are too generous
to need the assurance.
Q.

CONTENTS
I. OCEANUS.
II. THE SEVENTH MAN.
III. THE ROOM OF MIRRORS.
IV. A PAIR OF HANDS.

V. THE LADY OF THE SHIP.
VI. FROZEN MARGIT.
VII. THE SINGULAR ADVENTURE OF A SMALL
FREE-TRADER.
VIII. THE MYSTERY OF JOSEPH LAQUEDEM.
IX. PRISONERS OF WAR.
X. A TOWN'S MEMORY.
XI. THE LADY OF THE RED ADMIRALS.
XII. THE PENANCE OF JOHN EMMET.
XIII. ELISHA.
XIV. "ONCE ABOARD THE LUGGER".
XV. WHICH?

OCEANUS
I
My Dear Violet,--So you "gather from the tone of two or three recent
letters that my spirit is creeping back to light and warmth again"? Well,
after a fashion you are right. I shall never laugh again as I used to laugh
before Harry's death. The taste has gone out of that carelessness, and I
turn even from the remembrance of it. But I can be cheerful, with a
cheerfulness which has found the centre of gravity. I am myself again,
as people say. After months of agitation in what seemed to be chaos the
lost atom has dropped back to its place in the scheme of things, and
even aspires (poor mite!) to do its infinitesimal business intelligently.
So might a mote in a sunbeam feel itself at one with God!

But when you assume that my recovery has been a gradual process, you
are wrong. You will think me more than ever deranged; but I assure
you that it has been brought about, not by long strivings, but
suddenly--without preparation of mine--and by the immediate hand of
our dead brother.
Yes; you shall have the whole tale. The first effect of the news of
Harry's death in October last was simply to stun me. You may
remember how once, years ago when we were children, we rode home
together across the old Racecourse after a long day's skating, our skates
swinging at our saddle-bows; how Harry challenged us to a gallop; and
how, midway, the roan mare slipped down neck over crop on the frozen
turf and hurled me clean against the face of a stone dyke. I had been
thrown from horseback more than once before, but somehow had
always found the earth fairly elastic. So I had griefs before Harry died
and took some rebound of hope from each: but that cast repeated in a
worse degree the old shock--the springless brutal jar--of the stone dyke.
With him the sun went out of my sky.
I understand that this torpor is quite common with men and women
suddenly bereaved. I believe that a whole week passed before my brain
recovered any really vital motion; and then such feeble thought as I
could exert was wholly occupied with the desperate stupidity of the
whole affair. If God were indeed shaping the world to any end, if any
design of His underlay the activities