The King of Schnorrers (Collection)/A Double-Barrelled Ghost
A Double-Barrelled Ghost.
I was ruined. The bank in which I had been a sleeping- partner from my cradle smashed suddenly, and I was exempted from income tax at one fell blow. It became necessary to dispose even of the family mansion and the hereditary furniture. The shame of not contributing to my country's exchequer spurred me to earnest reflection upon how to earn an income, and, having mixed myself another lemon-squash, I threw myself back on the canvas garden- chair, and watched the white, scented wreaths of my cigar- smoke hanging in the drowsy air, and provoking inexperienced bees to settle upon them. It was the sort of summer after- noon on which to eat lotus, and to sip the dew from the lips of Amaryllises ; but although I had an affianced Amaryllis (whose Christian name was Jenny Grant), I had not the heart to dally with her in view of my sunk fortunes. She loved me for myself, no doubt, but then I was not myself since the catastrophe ; and although she had hastened to assure me of her unchanged regard, I was not at all certain whether I should be able to support a wife in addition to all my other misfortunes. So that I was not so comfortable that afternoon as I appeared to my perspiring valet : no rose in the garden had a pricklier thorn than I. The thought of my poverty weighed me down ; and when the setting sun began flinging bars of gold among the clouds, the reminder of my past extravagance made my heart heavier still, and I broke down utterly. A DOUBLE-BARRELLED GHOST. 321
Swearing at the manufacturers of such collapsible garden- chairs, I was struggling to rise when I perceived my rings of smoke comporting themselves strangely. They were widen- ing and curving and flowing into definite outlines, as though the finger of the wind were shaping them into a rough sketch of the human figure. Sprawling amid the ruins of my chair, I watched the nebulous contours grow clearer and clearer, till at last the agitation subsided, and a misty old gentleman, clad in vapour of an eighteenth-century cut, stood plainly revealed upon the sun-flecked grass.
"Good afternoon, John," said the old gentleman, cour- teously removing his cocked hat.
" Good afternoon ! " I gasped. " How do you know my name?"
" Because I have not forgotten my own," he replied. " I am John Halliwell, your great-grandfather. Don't you re- member me? "
A flood of light burst upon my brain. Of course ! I ought to have recognised him at once from the portrait by Sir Joshua Reynolds, just about to be sold by auction. The artist had gone to full length in painting him, and here he was complete, from his white wig, beautifully frizzled by the smoke, to his buckled shoes, from his knee-breeches to the frills at his wrists.
" Oh ! pray pardon my not having recognised you," I cried remorsefully ; " I have such a bad memory for faces. Won't you take a chair? "
"Sir, I have not sat down for a century and a half," he said simply. " Pray be seated yourself."
Thus reminded of my undignified position, I gathered myself up, and readjusting the complex apparatus, confided myself again to its canvas caresses. Then, grown conscious
of my shirt-sleeves, I murmured, — 
" Excuse my deshabille. I did not expect to see you."
" I am aware the season is inopportune," he said apolo- getically. " But I did not care to put off my visit till Christmas. You see, with us Christmas is a kind of Bank Holiday ; and when there is a general excursion, a refined spirit prefers its own fireside. Moreover, I am not, as you may see, very robust, and I scarce like to risk exposing myself to such an extreme change of temperature. Your English Christmas is so cold. With the pyrometer at three hundred and fifty, it is hardly prudent to pass to thirty. On a sultry day like this the contrast is less marked."
" I understand," I said sympathetically.
" But I should hardly have ventured," he went on, " to trespass upon you at this untimely season merely out of deference to my own valetudinarian instincts. The fact is, I am a litterateur."
" Oh, indeed," I said vaguely ; " I was not aware of it."
" Nobody was aware of it," he replied sadly ; " but my calling at this professional hour will, perhaps, go to substan- tiate my statement."
I looked at him blankly. Was he quite sane? All the apparitions I had ever heard of spoke with some approach to coherence, however imbecile their behaviour. The sta- tistics of insanity in the spiritual world have never been published, but I suspect the percentage of madness is high. Mere harmless idiocy is doubtless the prevalent form of dementia, judging by the way the poor unhappy spirits set about compassing their ends ; but some of their actions can only be explained by the more violent species of mania. My great-grandfather seemed to read the suspicion in my eye, for he hastily continued : —
" Of course it is only the outside public who imagine that the spirits of literature really appear at Christmas. It is the 324 A DOUBLE-BARRELLED GHOST.
annuals that appear at Christmas. The real season at which we are active on earth is summer, as every journalist knows. By Christmas the authors of our being have completely for- gotten our existence. As a writer myself, and calling in connection with a literary matter, I thought it more profes- sional to pay my visit during the dog days, especially as your being in trouble supplied me with an excuse for asking permission to go beyond bounds."
" You knew I was in trouble ? " I murmured, touched by this sympathy from an unexpected quarter.
" Certainly. And from a selfish point of view I am not sorry. You have always been so inconsiderately happy that I could never find a seemly pretext to get out to see you."
" Is it only when your descendants are in trouble that you are allowed to visit them?" I enquired.
" Even so," he answered. " Of course spirits whose births were tragic, who were murdered into existence, are allowed to supplement the inefficient police departments of the upper globe, and a similar charter is usually extended to those who have hidden treasures on their conscience ; but it is obvious that if all spirits were accorded what furloughs they pleased, eschatology would become a farce. Sir, you have no idea of the number of bogus criminal romances ten- dered daily by those wishing to enjoy the roving license of avenging spirits, for the ex-assassinated are the most enviable of immortals, and cases of personation are of frequent occur- rence. Our actresses, too, are always pretending to have lost jewels ; there is no end to the excuses. The Christmas Bank Holiday is naturally inadequate to our needs. Sir, I should have been far happier if my descendants had gone wrong ; but in spite of the large fortune I had accumulated, both your father and your grandfather were of exemplary respectability and unruffled cheerfulness. The solitary A DOUBLE-BARRELLED GHOST. 325
outing I had was when your father attended a seance, and I was knocked up in the middle of the night. But I did not enjoy my holiday in the least ; the indignity of having to move the furniture made the blood boil in my veins as in a spirit-lamp, and exposed me to the malicious badinage of my circle on my return. I protested that I did not care a rap, but I was mightily rejoiced when I learnt that your father had denounced the proceedings as a swindle, and was resolved never to invite me to his table again. When you were born I thought you were born to trouble, as the sparks fly upwards from our dwelling-place ; but I was mistaken. Up till now your life has been a long summer afternoon."
" Yes, but now the shades are falling," I said grimly. "It looks as if my life he nee forwards will be a long holiday — for you."
He shook his wig mournfully.
" No, I am only out on parole. I have had to give my word of honour to try to set you on your legs again as soon as possible."
"You couldn't have come at a more opportune moment," I cried, remembering how he had found me. "You are a good as well as a great-grandfather, and I am proud of my descent. Won't you have a cigar? "
"Thank you, I never smoke — on earth," said the spirit hurriedly, with a flavour of bitter in his accents. " Let us to the point. You have been reduced to the painful neces- sity of earning your living."
I nodded silently, and took a sip of lemon-squash. A strange sense of salvation lulled my soul.
" How do you propose to do it?" asked my great-grand- father.
"Oh, I leave that to you," I said confidingly.
" Well, what do you say to a literary career? " 326 A DOUBLE-BARRELLED GHOST.
"Eh? What?" I gasped.
"A literary career," he repeated. "What makes you so astonished ? "
" Well, for one thing it's exactly what Tom Addlestone, the leader-writer of the Hurrygraph, was recommending to me this morning. He said : ' John, my boy, if I had had your advantages ten years ago, I should have been spared many a headache and supplied with many a dinner. It may turn out a lucky thing yet that you gravitated so to literary society, and that so many press men had free passes to your suppers. Consider the number of men of letters you have mixed drinks with ! Why, man, you can succeed in any branch of literature you please.' "
My great-grandfather's face was radiant. Perhaps it was only the setting sun that touched it.
"A chip of the old block," he murmured. "That was I in my young days. Johnson, Goldsmith, Sheridan, Burke, Hume, I knew them all — gay dogs, gay dogs ! Except that great hulking brute of a Johnson," he added, with a sudden savage snarl that showed his white teeth.
" I told Addlestone that I had no literary ability whatever, and he scoffed at me for my simplicity. All the same, I think he was only poking fun at me. My friends might puff me out to bull-size ; but I am only a frog, and I should very soon burst. The public might be cajoled into buying one book ; they could not be duped a second time. Don't you think I was right? I haven't any literary ability, have I?"
" Certainly not, certainly not," replied my great-grand- father with an alacrity and emphasis that would have seemed suspicious in a mere mortal. " But it does seem a shame to waste so great an opportunity. The ball that Addlestone waited years for is at your foot, and it is grievous to think A DOUBLE-BARRELLED GHOST. 327
that there it must remain merely because you do not know how to kick it."
" Well, but what's a man to do? "
" What's a man to do?" repeated my great-grandfather contemptuously. " Get a ghost, of course."
" By Jove ! ' I cried with a whistle. " That's a good idea ! Addlestone has a ghost to do his leaders for him when he's lazy. I've seen the young fellow myself. Tom pays him six guineas a dozen, and gets three guineas apiece himself. But of course Tom has to live in much better style, and that makes it fair all round. You mean that I am to take advantage of my influence to get some other fellow work, and take a commission for the use of my name? That seems feasible enough. But where am I to find a ghost with the requisite talents? "
" Here," said my great-grandfather.
"What! You?"
" Yes, I," he replied calmly.
" But you couldn't write — "
" Not now, certainly not. All I wrote now would be burnt."
'•' Then how the devil — ? " I began.
" Hush ! " he interrupted nervously. " Listen, and I will a tale unfold. It is called The Learned Pig. I wrote it in my forty-fifth year, and it is full of sketches from the life of all the more notable personages of my time, from Lord Chesterfield to Mrs. Thrale, from Peg Woffington to Adam Smith and the ingenious Mr. Dibdin. I have painted the portrait of Sir Joshua quite as faithfully as he has painted mine. Of course much of the dialogue is real, taken from conversations preserved in my note-book. It is, I believe, a complete picture of the period, and being the only book I ever wrote or intended to write, I put my whole self into it, as well as all my friends." 328 A DOUBLE-BARRELLED GHOST.
" It must be, indeed, your masterpiece," I cried enthusi- astically. " But why is it called The Learned Pig, and how has it escaped publication?"
" You shall hear. The learned pig is Dr. Johnson. He refused to take wine with me. I afterwards learnt that he had given up strong liqueurs altogether, and I went to see him again, but he received me with epigrams. He is the pivot of my book, all the other characters revolving about him. Naturally, I did not care to publish during his life- time ; not entirely, I admit, out of consideration to his feel- ings, but because foolish admirers had placed him on such a pedestal that he could damn any book he did not relish. I made sure of surviving him, so many and diverse were his distempers ; whereas my manuscript survived me. In the moment of death I strove to tell your grandfather of the hiding-place in which I had bestowed it ; but I could only make signs to which he had not the clue. You can imagine how it has embittered my spirit to have missed the aim of my life and my due niche in the pantheon of letters. In vain I strove to be registered among the ' hidden treasure ' spirits, with the preambulatory privileges pertaining to the class. I was told that to recognise manuscripts under the head of ' treasures ' would be to open a fresh door to abuse, there being few but had scribbled in their time and had a good conceit of their compositions to boot. I could offer no proofs of the value of my work, not even printers' proofs, and even the fact that the manuscript was concealed behind a sliding panel availed not to bring it into the coveted cate- gory. Moreover, not only did I have no other pretext to call on my descendants, but both my son and grandson were too respectable to be willingly connected with letters and too flourishing to be enticed by the prospects of profit. To you, however, this book will prove the avenue to fresh fortune." A DOUBLE-BARRELLED GHOST. 329
" Do you mean I am to publish it under your name? "
" No, under yours."
"But, then, where does the satisfaction come in?"
"Your name is the same as mine."
"I see; but still, why not tell the truth about it? In a preface, for instance."
"Who would believe it? In my own day I could not credit that Macpherson spoke truly about the way Ossian came into his possession, nor to judge from gossip I have had with the younger ghosts did anyone attach credence to Sir Walter Scott's introductions."
"True," I said musingly. "It is a played-out dodge. But I am not certain whether an attack on Dr. Johnson would go down nowadays. We are aware that the man had porcine traits, but we have almost canonised him."
"The very reason why the book will be a success," he replied eagerly. " I understand that in these days of yours the best way of attracting attention is to fly in the face of all received opinion, and so in the realm of history to white- wash the villains and tar and feather the saints. The sliding panel of which I spoke is just behind the picture of me. Lose no time. Go at once, even as I must."
The shadowy contours of his form waved agitatedly in the wind.
"But how do you know anyone will bring it out?" I said doubtfully. "Am I to haunt the publishers' offices till — "
"No, no, I will do that," he interrupted in excitement. " Promise me you will help me."
"But I don't feel at all sure it stands a ghost of a chance," I said, growing colder in proportion as he grew more en- thusiastic.
" It is the only chance of a ghost," he pleaded. " Come, give me your word. Any of your literary friends will get 330 A DOUBLE-BARRELLED GHOST.
you a publisher, and where could you get a more promising ghost?"
" Oh, nonsense!" I said quietly, unconsciously quoting Ibsen. "There must be ghosts all the country over, as thick as the sand of the sea."
I was determined to put the matter on its proper footing, for I saw that under pretence of restoring my fortunes he was really trying to get me to pull his chestnuts out of the fire, and I resented the deceptive spirit that could put for- ward such tasks as favours. It was evident that he cherished a post-mortem grudge against the great lexicographer, as well as a posthumous craving for fame, and wished to use me as the instrument of his reputation and his revenge. But I was a man of the world, and I was not going to be rushed by a mere phantom.
" I don't deny there are plenty of ghosts about," he answered with insinuative deference. " Only will any of the others work for nothing?"
He saw he had scored a point, and his eyes twinkled.
"Yes, but I don't know that I approve of black-legs," I answered sternly. "You are taking the bread and butter out of some honest ghost's mouth."
The corners of his own mouth drooped ; his eyes grew misty ; he looked fading away. " Most true," he faltered ; " but be pitiful. Have you no great-grand-filial feelings? "
" No, I lost everything in the crash," I answered coldly. "Suppose the book's a frost? "
" I shan't mind," he said eagerly.
" No, I don't suppose you would mind a frost," I retorted witheringly. " But look at the chaff you'd be letting me in for. Hadn't you better put off publication for a century or two?"
No, no," he cried wildly; " our mansion will pass into
u A DOUBLE-BARRELLED GHOST. 331
strange hands. I shall not have the right of calling on the new proprietors."
" Phew ! " I whistled ; " perhaps that's why you timed your visit now, you artful old codger. I have always heard appearances are deceptive. However, I have ever been a patron of letters ; and although I cannot approve of post- mundane malice, and think the dead past should be let bury its dead, still, if you are set upon it, I will try and use my influence to get your book published."
" Bless you ! " he cried tremulously, with all the effusive- ness natural to an author about to see himself in print, and trembled so violently that he dissipated himself away.
I stood staring a moment at the spot where he had stood, pleased at having out-manoeuvred him ; then my chair gave way with another crash, and I picked myself up painfully, together with the dead stump of my cigar, and brushed the ash off my trousers, and rubbed my eyes and wondered if I had been dreaming. But no ! when I ran into the cheer- less dining-room, with its pervading sense of imminent auction, I found the sliding panel behind the portrait by Reynolds, which seemed to beam kindly encouragement upon me, and, lo ! The Learned Pig was there in a mass of musty manuscript.
As everybody knows, the book made a hit. The Acadceum was unusually generous in its praise : " A lively picture of the century of farthingales and stomachers, marred only by numerous anachronisms and that stilted air of faked-up archaeological knowledge which is, we suppose, inevitable in historical novels. The conversations are particularly artificial. Still, we can forgive Mr. Halliwell a good deal of inaccuracy and inacquaintance with the period, in view of the graphic picture of the literary dictator from the novel point of view of a contemporary who was not among the 332 A DOUBLE-BARRELLED GHOST.
worshippers. It is curious how the honest, sterling character of the man is brought out all the more clearly from the incapacity of the narrator to comprehend its greatness — to show this was a task that called for no little skill and subtlety. If it were only for this one ingenious idea, Mr. Halliwell's book would stand out from the mass of abortive attempts to resuscitate the past. He has failed to picture the times, but he has done what is better — he has given us human beings who are alive, instead of the futile shadows that flit through the Walhalla of the average historical novel."
All the leading critics were at one as to the cleverness with which the great soul of Dr. Johnson was made to stand out on the background of detraction, and the public was universally agreed that this was the only readable historical novel published for many years, and that the anachronisms didn't matter a pin. I don't know what I had done to Tom Addlestone ; but when everybody was talking about me, he went about saying that I kept a ghost. I was annoyed, for I did not keep one in any sense, and I openly defied the world to produce him. Why, I never saw him again myself — I believe he was too disgusted with the fillip he had given Dr. Johnson's reputation, and did not even take advantage of the Christmas Bank Holiday. But Addlestone's libel got to Jenny Grant's ears, and she came to me indignantly, and said : " I won't have it. You must either give up me or the ghost."
"To give up you would be to give up the ghost, darling," I answered soothingly. "But you, and you alone, have a right to the truth. It is not my ghost at all, it is my great- grandfather's."
" Do you mean to say he bequeathed him to you? ' ;
" It came to that." A DOUBLE-BARRELLED GHOST. 333
I then told her the truth, and showed how in any case the profits of my ancestor's book rightfully reverted back- wards to me. So we were married on them, and Jenny, fired by my success, tried her hand on a novel, and published it, truthfully enough, under the name of J. Halliwell. She has written all my stories ever since, including this one ; which, if it be necessarily false in the letter, is true in the spirit.