The Water Ghost and Others by John Kendrick Bangs (good novels to read in english .txt) 📖

behind me, and appalled, on turning, to see standing with outstretched hands no less a person than my defunct chum, Hawley Hicks."

"Impossible," said I.

"Exactly my remark," returned Number 5010. "To which I added, 'Hawley Hicks, it can't be you!'

"'But it is me,' he replied.

"And then I was convinced, for Hawley never was good on his grammar. I looked at him a minute, and then I said, 'But, Hawley, I thought you were dead.'

"'I am,' he answered. 'But why should a little thing like that stand between friends?'

"'It shouldn't, Hawley,' I answered, meekly; 'but it's condemnedly unusual, you know, for a man to associate even with his best friends fifteen years after they've died and been buried.'

"'Do you mean to say, Austin, that just because I was weak enough once to succumb to a bad cold, you, the dearest friend of my youth, the closest companion of my school-days, the partner of my childish joys, intend to go back on me here in a strange city?'

"'Hawley,' I answered, huskily, 'not a bit of it. My letter of credit, my room at the hotel, my dress suit, even my ticket to Coney Island, are at your disposal; but I think the partner of your childish joys ought first to be let in on the ground-floor of this enterprise, and informed how the deuce you manage to turn up in New York fifteen years subsequent to your obsequies. Is New York the hereafter for boys of your kind, or is this some freak of my imagination?'"

"That was an eminently proper question," I put in, just to show that while the story I was hearing terrified me, I was not altogether speechless.

"It was, indeed," said 5010; "and Hawley recognized it as such, for he replied at once.

"'Neither,' said he. 'Your imagination is all right, and New York is neither heaven nor the other place. The fact is, I'm spooking, and I can tell you, Austin, it's just about the finest kind of work there is. If you could manage to shuffle off your mortal coil and get in with a lot of ghosts, the way I have, you'd be playing in great luck.'

"'Thanks for the hint, Hawley,' I said, with a grateful smile; 'but, to tell you the truth, I do not find that life is entirely bad. I get my three meals a day, keep my pocket full of coin, and sleep eight hours every night on a couch that couldn't be more desirable if it were studded with jewels and had mineral springs.'

"'That's your mortal ignorance, Austin,' he retorted. 'I lived long enough to appreciate the necessity of being ignorant, but your style of existence is really not to be mentioned in the same cycle with mine. You talk about three meals a day, as if that were an ideal; you forget that with the eating your labor is just begun; those meals have to be digested, every one of 'em, and if you could only understand it, it would appall you to see what a fearful wear and tear that act of digestion is. In my life you are feasting all the time, but with no need for digestion. You speak of money in your pockets; well, I have none, yet am I the richer of the two. I don't need money. The world is mine. If I chose to I could pour the contents of that jeweller's window into your lap in five seconds, but _cui bono_? The gems delight my eye quite as well where they are; and as for travel, Austin, of which you have always been fond, the spectral method beats all. Just watch me!'

"I watched him as well as I could for a minute," said 5010; "and then he disappeared. In another minute he was before me again.

"'Well,' I said, 'I suppose you've been around the block in that time, eh?'

"He roared with laughter. 'Around the block?' he ejaculated. 'I have done the Continent of Europe, taken a run through China, haunted the Emperor of Japan, and sailed around the Horn since I left you a minute ago.'

"He was a truthful boy in spite of his peculiarities, Hawley was," said Surrennes, quietly, "so I had to believe what he said. He abhorred lies."

"That was pretty fast travelling, though," said I. "He'd make a fine messenger-boy."

"That's so. I wish I'd suggested it to him," smiled my host. "But I can tell you, sir, I was astonished. 'Hawley,' I said, 'you always were a fast youth, but I never thought you would develop into this. I wonder you're not out of breath after such a journey.'

"'Another point, my dear Austin, in favor of my mode of existence. We spooks have no breath to begin with. Consequently, to get out of it is no deprivation. But, I say,' he added, 'whither are you bound?'

"'To Coney Island to see the sights,' I replied. 'Won't you join me?'

"'Not I,' he replied. 'Coney Island is tame. When I first joined the spectre band, it seemed to me that nothing could delight me more than an eternal round of gayety like that; but, Austin, I have changed. I have developed a good deal since you and I were parted at the grave.'

"'I should say you had,' I answered. 'I doubt if many of your old friends would know you.'

"'You seem to have had difficulty in so doing yourself, Austin,' he replied, regretfully; 'but see here, old chap, give up Coney Island, and spend the evening with me at the club. You'll have a good time, I can assure you.'

"'The club?' I said. 'You don't mean to say you visions have a club?'

"'I do indeed; the Ghost Club is the most flourishing association of choice spirits in the world. We have rooms in every city in creation; and the finest part of it is there are no dues to be paid. The membership list holds some of the finest names in history--Shakespeare, Milton, Chaucer, Napoleon Bonaparte, Caesar, George Washington, Mozart, Frederick the Great, Marc Antony--Cassius was black-balled on Caesar's account--Galileo, Confucius.'

"'You admit the Chinese, eh?' I queried.

"'Not always,' he replied. 'But Con was such a good fellow they hadn't the heart to keep him out; but you see, Austin, what a lot of fine fellows there are in it.'

"'Yes, it's a magnificent list, and I should say they made a pretty interesting set of fellows to hear talk,' I put in.

"'Well, rather,' Hawley replied. 'I wish you could have heard a debate between Shakespeare and Caesar on the resolution, "The Pen is mightier than the Sword;" it was immense.'

"'I should think it might have been,' I said. 'Which won?'

"'The sword party. They were the best fighters; though on the merits of the argument Shakespeare was 'way ahead.'

"'If I thought I'd stand a chance of seeing spooks like that, I think I'd give up Coney Island and go with you,' I said.

"'Well,' replied Hawley, 'that's just the kind of a chance you do stand. They'll all be there to-night, and as this is ladies' day, you might meet Lucretia Borgia, Cleopatra, and a few other feminine apparitions of considerable note.'

"'That settles it. I am yours for the rest of the day,' I said, and so we adjourned to the rooms of the Ghost Club.

"These rooms were in a beautiful house on Fifth Avenue; the number of the house you will find on consulting the court records. I have forgotten it. It was a large, broad, brown-stone structure, and must have been over one hundred and fifty feet in depth. Such fittings I never saw before; everything was in the height of luxury, and I am quite certain that among beings to whom money is a measure of possibility no such magnificence is attainable. The paintings on the walls were by the most famous artists of our own and other days. The rugs on the superbly polished floors were worth fortunes, not only for their exquisite beauty, but also for their extreme rarity. In keeping with these were the furniture and bric-a-brac. In short, my dear sir, I had never dreamed of anything so dazzlingly, so superbly magnificent as that apartment into which I was ushered by the ghost of my quondam friend Hawley Hicks.

"At first I was speechless with wonder, which seemed to amuse Hicks very much.

"'Pretty fine, eh?' he said, with a short laugh.

"'Well,' I replied, in a moment, 'considering that you can get along without money, and that all the resources of the world are at your disposal, it is not more than half bad. Have you a library?'

"I was always fond of books," explained 5010 in parenthesis to me, "and so was quite anxious to see what the club of ghosts could show in the way of literary treasures. Imagine my surprise when Hawley informed me that the club had no collection of the sort to appeal to the bibliophile.

"'No,' he answered, 'we have no library.'

"'Rather strange,' I said, 'that a club to which men like Shakespeare, Milton, Edgar Allan Poe, and other deceased literati belong should be deficient in that respect.'

"'Not at all,' said he. 'Why should we want books when we have the men themselves to tell their tales to us? Would you give a rap to possess a set of Shakespeare if William himself would sit down and rattle off the whole business to you any time you chose to ask him to do it? Would you follow Scott's printed narratives through their devious and tedious periods if Sir Walter in spirit would come to you on demand, and tell you all the old stories over again in a tenth part of the time it would take you to read the introduction to one of them?'

"'I fancy not,' I said. 'Are you in such luck?'

"'I am,' said Hawley; 'only personally I never send for Scott or Shakespeare. I prefer something lighter than either--Douglas Jerrold or Marryat. But best of all, I like to sit down and hear Noah swap animal stories with Davy Crockett. Noah's the brightest man of his age in the club. Adam's kind of slow.'

"'How about Solomon?' I asked, more to be flippant than with any desire for information. I was much amused to hear Hawley speak of these great spirits as if he and they were chums of long standing.

"'Solomon has resigned from the club,' he said, with a sad sigh. 'He was a good fellow, Solomon was, but he thought he knew it all until old Doctor Johnson got hold of him, and then he knuckled under. It's rather rough for a man to get firmly established in his belief that he is the wisest creature going, and then, after a couple of thousand years, have an Englishman come along and tell him things he never knew before, especially the way Sam Johnson delivers himself of his opinions. Johnson never cared whom he hurt, you know, and when he got after Solomon, he did it with all his might.'"

"I wonder if Boswell was there?" I ventured, interrupting 5010 in his extraordinary narrative for an instant.

"Yes, he was there," returned the prisoner. "I met him later in the evening; but he isn't the spook he might be. He never had much spirit anyhow, and when he died he had to leave his nose behind him, and that settled him."

"Of course," I answered. "Boswell with no nose to stick into other people's affairs would have been