Night-Pieces by Burke Thomas

Author:Burke, Thomas
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Valancourt Books
Published: 2016-01-06T16:00:00+00:00

It was not until they had gone that Lyssom remembered something. “Rather odd, Carton—they’ve appeared every evening for the last fortnight, but to-night, when we wanted ’em, they didn’t appear. I forgot about it at dinner. Forgot to look for ’em. Was it hostile presences, d’you think? Though those young people seemed quite the sympathetic sort.”

“No; it wasn’t that.”

“ ’M. Well, did your friends give you any advice how to handle it? And when are you going to make a start?”

“No. I didn’t ask ’em. No need.”

“Really? You know how to manage it, then?”

“No. No need for it now. It’s done.”

“Done? When was it done?”

“Early this evening. Before we arrived. You won’t see your young ghosts any more.”

“How was it done?”

“Well, you noticed they didn’t appear this evening at the French window. They couldn’t. They were at the table.”

“What—behind us?”

“No, with us.”

“I didn’t see ’em.”

“You did. Philip Rode and Miss Maclaren. They were your ghosts. I was expecting you’d recognize ’em, though they are both fifteen years older than their ghosts.”

“Rode and Miss Maclaren? Ghosts? But they’re alive. Ghosts are of dead people.”

“Not necessarily. Ghosts of living people can haunt a beloved spot as effectively as ghosts of the dead—if they’re a strong spiritual type and if they have reason for thinking and thinking about a certain place. That’s what was happening here. Those two spent a summer here when he was about twenty, with the Panberrys. I was a guest part of the time, and watched the start of their affair. Then there was a break of some sort; quarrel, perhaps. I don’t know. But they lost sight of each other. You can see, though, what happened later. Always they were thinking of each other and projecting themselves, in memory, to this place where they spent those rapturous hours of first love. But with such unusual force that they became visible. I recognized ’em at once as soon as their ghosts appeared at the French window the other evening. And I knew they were both still living. So I laid your ghost by asking ’em separately to meet me in town, saying I’d like to see ’em again. Then, when I’d brought ’em together early this evening, I dragged ’em along to the place where their affair began. And they laid their ghosts by their physical presence.”

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