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THE BODILESS.
In the drawing-room after dinner, some of the ladies gathered about him,
and begged the story of his own adventure. He smiled queerly.
"Very well, you shall have it!" he answered.
They seated themselves, and the company came from all parts of the
room--among the rest, Lufa and Walter.
"It was three days, if I remember," began Sefton, "after my military
friend left, when one night I found myself alone in the drawing-room,
just waked from a brown study. No one had said good-night to me. I
looked at my watch; it was half past eleven. I rose and went. My bedroom
was on the first-floor.
"The stairs were peculiar--a construction later than much of the house,
but by no means modern. When you reached the landing of the first-floor
and looked up, you could see above you the second-floor, descended by a
balustrade between arches. There were no carpets on stairs or landings,
which were all of oak.
"I can not certainly say what made me look up; but I think, indeed I am
almost sure, I had heard a noise like that the ghost was said to make,
as of one walking in shoes too large: I saw a lady looking down over the
balusters on the second-floor. I thought some one was playing me a
trick, and imitating the ghost, for the ladies had been chaffing me a
good deal that night; they often do. She wore an old-fashioned, browny,
silky looking dress. I rushed up to see who was taking the rise out of
me. I looked up at her as I ran, and she kept looking down, but
apparently not at me. Her face was that of a middle-aged woman,
beginning, indeed, to be old, and had an intent, rather troubled look, I
should say; but I did not consider it closely.
"I was at the top in a moment, on the level where she stood leaning over
the handrail. Turning, I approached her. Apparently, she neither saw nor
heard me. 'Well acted!' I said to myself--but even then I was beginning
to be afraid, without knowing why. Every man's impulse, I fancy, is to
go right up to anything that frightens him--at least, I have always
found it so. I walked close up to the woman. She moved her head and
turned in my direction, but only as if about to go away. Whether she
looked at me I can not tell, but I saw her eyes plain enough. By this
time, I suppose, the idea of a ghost must have been uppermost, for,
being now quite close to her, I put out my hand as if to touch her. My
hand went through her--through her head and body! I am not joking in
the least; I mean you to believe, if you can, exactly what I say. What
then she did, or whether she took any notice of my movement, I can not
tell; I only know what I did, or rather what I did not do. For, had I
been capable, I should have uttered a shriek that would have filled the
house with ghastliest terror; but there was a load of iron on my chest,
and the hand of a giant at my throat. I could not help opening my mouth,
for something drew all the muscles of my jaws and throat, but I could
not utter a sound. The horror I was in, was entirely new to me, and no
more under my control than a fever. I only wonder it did not paralyze
me, that I was able to turn and run down the stair! I ran as if all the
cardinal sins were at my heels. I flew, never seeming to touch the
stairs as I went. I darted along the passage, burst into my room, shut
and locked the door, lighted my candles, fell into a chair, shuddered,
and began to breathe again."
He ceased, not without present signs of the agitation he described.
"But that's not all!"
"And what else?"
"Did anything happen?"
"Do tell us more."
"I have nothing more to tell," answered Sefton. "But I haven't done
wondering what could have put me in such an awful funk! You can't have a
notion what it was like!"
"I know I should have been in a worse!"
"Perhaps--but why? Why should any one have been terrified? The poor
thing had lost her body, it is true, but there she was
notwithstanding--all the same! It might be nicer or not so nice to her,
but why should it so affect me? that's what I want to know! Am I not, as
Hamlet says, 'a thing immortal as itself?' I don't see the sense of it!
Sure I am that one meets constantly--sits down with, eats and drinks
with, hears sing, and play, and remark on the weather, and the fate of
the nation--"
He paused, his eyes fixed on Walter.
"What are you driving at?" said Lufa.
"I was thinking of a much more fearful kind of creature," he answered.
"What kind of a creature?" she asked.
"A creature," he said, slowly, "that has a body, but no soul to it. All
body, with brain enough for its affairs, it has no soul. Such will
never wander about after they are dead! there will be nothing to wander!
Good-night, ladies! Were I to tell you the history of a woman whose
acquaintance I made some years ago at Baden, you would understand the
sort Good-night!"
There was silence for a moment or two. Had his sister not been present,
something other than complimentary to Sefton might have crept about the
drawing-room--to judge from the expression of two or three faces. Walter
felt the man worth knowing, but felt also something about him that
repelled him.
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