The Ghost and Mrs. Muir by R. A. Dick Read Free Book Online

“but if it is, I wish you a very good one.”
    “Stop a minute,” said Captain Gregg swiftly, “there’s something I want to say. I’ve thought of a solution to all our problems. I like you, and you’re quite right, the house would be better for being lived in, so you shall come and live in it, and if you’ll promise to leave my bedroom as it is, I’ll promise never to go into any other room in the house, so your children need never know anything about me. That’s your problem solved. Now for mine, you will buy the house——”
    “But I haven’t the money,” said Lucy.
    “Wait,” said Captain Gregg peremptorily, “you will buy the house with my money. I’ve some gold hidden on the premises that no one knows about. You will take that and buy the house from my blasted next-of-kin, and
you
will make a will leaving it as a home for sea captains.”
    “Impossible,” said Lucy. “In the first place it would be stealing if I took the money, and in the second, if you are keeping the best bedroom in the house, where should I sleep?”
    “In the best bedroom,” said Captain Gregg.
    “But——”
    “In heaven’s name, why not?” demanded Captain Gregg.“God bless my soul, madam, I haven’t got a body, and after twelve years of having no body, I have no fleshly desires. Damn it, madam, surely you’ve read the Scriptures—‘in heaven there is neither marrying nor giving in marriage.’ ”
    “The trouble is that you are not in heaven,” said Lucy.
    “It’s too difficult to explain now when you’re only half awake in any case,” said Captain Gregg, “and indeed I may never be able to explain it in earthly words. But for the present you must just take my word for it when I say that I wouldn’t dream of hurting a hair of your head, nor of blotting a word of your reputation. So that’s all settled and we’ll see about the money in the morning. Good night.”
    “But it isn’t settled,” said Lucy. “Wait—wait——”
    But though she cried to him again and yet again, there was no answer but the sighing of the wind from the sea, and the wash of the waves dragging at the pebbles on the beach below.

PART TWO

I
    It caused a minor sensation in Whitecliff when it was known that Gull Cottage had not merely been sold but was being lived in, apparently permanently by a widow and two children. After a few weeks the novelty of seeing the house occupied wore away, and people, having called, pronounced Mrs. Muir a nice little thing, and forgot that the house had ever been empty and the reputed haunting ground of Captain Gregg’s ghost.
    Only Lucy remembered. And how could she forget when he visited her every evening, after the children were in bed, to talk over the events of the day? But the fact that she had taken gold from its secret hiding-place under a stone in the cellar, and had bought a house for herself to live in, and had made a will leaving it as a home for retired sea captains, haunted her far more than the ghost, upon whom she began to look as a friend, even if an interfering one. He argued with her for weeks on the subject of the money, but it remained a grievous matter to her conscience, though Captain Gregg assured her that his next-of-kin was a wealthy merchant, who did not need the money and to which he was not entitled in any case since he was the last man on earth to whomthe money would have been willed if Captain Gregg had been given time to die in comfort.
    “I don’t care,” said Lucy obstinately one evening, and for the fiftieth time, “I feel like a thief. Sometimes I begin to wonder if you are a real ghost. I mean—I’ve never seen you except in a dream, and why are you still here? Why haunt, when there is no longer any reason for your haunting?”
    “I said I’d stay here till my house was a home for seamen, and I’m a man of my word and you’re not so much as a ship’s boy,” retorted Captain Gregg. “God bless my soul, I’ve a perfect right to stay in my own