The Water Ghost and Others | Page 2

morning by his
host, simply saturated with sea-water and fright, from the combined
effects of which he never recovered, dying four years later of
pneumonia and nervous prostration at the age of seventy-eight.
The next year the master of Harrowby Hall decided not to have the best
spare bedroom opened at all, thinking that perhaps the ghost's thirst for
making herself disagreeable would be satisfied by haunting the
furniture, but the plan was as unavailing as the many that had preceded
it.
The ghost appeared as usual in the room--that is, it was supposed she
did, for the hangings were dripping wet the next morning, and in the
parlor below the haunted room a great damp spot appeared on the
ceiling. Finding no one there, she immediately set out to learn the
reason why, and she chose none other to haunt than the owner of the
Harrowby himself. She found him in his own cosey room drinking
whiskey--whiskey undiluted--and felicitating himself upon having
foiled her ghostship, when all of a sudden the curl went out of his hair,
his whiskey bottle filled and overflowed, and he was himself in a
condition similar to that of a man who has fallen into a water-butt.
When he recovered from the shock, which was a painful one, he saw
before him the lady of the cavernous eyes and sea-weed fingers. The
sight was so unexpected and so terrifying that he fainted, but
immediately came to, because of the vast amount of water in his hair,
which, trickling down over his face, restored his consciousness.
Now it so happened that the master of Harrowby was a brave man, and
while he was not particularly fond of interviewing ghosts, especially
such quenching ghosts as the one before him, he was not to be daunted
by an apparition. He had paid the lady the compliment of fainting from
the effects of his first surprise, and now that he had come to he intended
to find out a few things he felt he had a right to know. He would have
liked to put on a dry suit of clothes first, but the apparition declined to
leave him for an instant until her hour was up, and he was forced to

deny himself that pleasure. Every time he would move she would
follow him, with the result that everything she came in contact with got
a ducking. In an effort to warm himself up he approached the fire, an
unfortunate move as it turned out, because it brought the ghost directly
over the fire, which immediately was extinguished. The whiskey
became utterly valueless as a comforter to his chilled system, because it
was by this time diluted to a proportion of ninety per cent of water. The
only thing he could do to ward off the evil effects of his encounter he
did, and that was to swallow ten two-grain quinine pills, which he
managed to put into his mouth before the ghost had time to interfere.
Having done this, he turned with some asperity to the ghost, and said:
"Far be it from me to be impolite to a woman, madam, but I'm hanged
if it wouldn't please me better if you'd stop these infernal visits of yours
to this house. Go sit out on the lake, if you like that sort of thing; soak
the water-butt, if you wish; but do not, I implore you, come into a
gentleman's house and saturate him and his possessions in this way. It
is damned disagreeable."
"Henry Hartwick Oglethorpe," said the ghost, in a gurgling voice, "you
don't know what you are talking about."
"Madam," returned the unhappy householder, "I wish that remark were
strictly truthful. I was talking about you. It would be shillings and
pence--nay, pounds, in my pocket, madam, if I did not know you."
"That is a bit of specious nonsense," returned the ghost, throwing a
quart of indignation into the face of the master of Harrowby. "It may
rank high as repartee, but as a comment upon my statement that you do
not know what you are talking about, it savors of irrelevant
impertinence. You do not know that I am compelled to haunt this place
year after year by inexorable fate. It is no pleasure to me to enter this
house, and ruin and mildew everything I touch. I never aspired to be a
shower-bath, but it is my doom. Do you know who I am?"
"No, I don't," returned the master of Harrowby. "I should say you were
the Lady of the Lake, or Little Sallie Waters."
"You are a witty man for your years," said the ghost.
"Well, my humor is drier than yours ever will be," returned the master.
"No doubt. I'm never dry. I am the Water Ghost of