The Water Ghost and Others | Page 3

John Kendrick Bangs
Harrowby Hall, and
dryness is a quality entirely beyond my wildest hope. I have been the
incumbent of this highly unpleasant office for two hundred years

to-night."
"How the deuce did you ever come to get elected?" asked the master.
"Through a suicide," replied the spectre. "I am the ghost of that fair
maiden whose picture hangs over the mantel-piece in the drawing-room.
I should have been your great-great-great-great-great-aunt if I had lived,
Henry Hartwick Oglethorpe, for I was the own sister of your
great-great-great-great-grandfather."
"But what induced you to get this house into such a predicament?"
"I was not to blame, sir," returned the lady. "It was my father's fault. He
it was who built Harrowby Hall, and the haunted chamber was to have
been mine. My father had it furnished in pink and yellow, knowing
well that blue and gray formed the only combination of color I could
tolerate. He did it merely to spite me, and, with what I deem a proper
spirit, I declined to live in the room; whereupon my father said I could
live there or on the lawn, he didn't care which. That night I ran from the
house and jumped over the cliff into the sea."
"That was rash," said the master of Harrowby.
"So I've heard," returned the ghost. "If I had known what the
consequences were to be I should not have jumped; but I really never
realized what I was doing until after I was drowned. I had been
drowned a week when a sea-nymph came to me and informed me that I
was to be one of her followers forever afterwards, adding that it should
be my doom to haunt Harrowby Hall for one hour every Christmas Eve
throughout the rest of eternity. I was to haunt that room on such
Christmas Eves as I found it inhabited; and if it should turn out not to
be inhabited, I was and am to spend the allotted hour with the head of
the house."
"I'll sell the place."
"That you cannot do, for it is also required of me that I shall appear as
the deeds are to be delivered to any purchaser, and divulge to him the
awful secret of the house."
"Do you mean to tell me that on every Christmas Eve that I don't
happen to have somebody in that guest-chamber, you are going to
haunt me wherever I may be, ruining my whiskey, taking all the curl
out of my hair, extinguishing my fire, and soaking me through to the
skin?" demanded the master.
"You have stated the case, Oglethorpe. And what is more," said the

water ghost, "it doesn't make the slightest difference where you are, if I
find that room empty, wherever you may be I shall douse you with my
spectral pres--"
Here the clock struck one, and immediately the apparition faded away.
It was perhaps more of a trickle than a fade, but as a disappearance it
was complete.
"By St. George and his Dragon!" ejaculated the master of Harrowby,
wringing his hands. "It is guineas to hot-cross buns that next Christmas
there's an occupant of the spare room, or I spend the night in a
bath-tub."
But the master of Harrowby would have lost his wager had there been
any one there to take him up, for when Christmas Eve came again he
was in his grave, never having recovered from the cold contracted that
awful night. Harrowby Hall was closed, and the heir to the estate was in
London, where to him in his chambers came the same experience that
his father had gone through, saving only that, being younger and
stronger, he survived the shock. Everything in his rooms was
ruined--his clocks were rusted in the works; a fine collection of
water-color drawings was entirely obliterated by the onslaught of the
water ghost; and what was worse, the apartments below his were
drenched with the water soaking through the floors, a damage for
which he was compelled to pay, and which resulted in his being
requested by his landlady to vacate the premises immediately.
The story of the visitation inflicted upon his family had gone abroad,
and no one could be got to invite him out to any function save
afternoon teas and receptions. Fathers of daughters declined to permit
him to remain in their houses later than eight o'clock at night, not
knowing but that some emergency might arise in the supernatural world
which would require the unexpected appearance of the water ghost in
this on nights other than Christmas Eve, and before the mystic hour
when weary churchyards, ignoring the rules which are supposed to
govern polite society, begin to yawn. Nor would the maids themselves
have aught to do with him, fearing the destruction by the sudden
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