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Archy Malin, a young sailor just off the sea, rambled into a tavern one summer evening with a bundle under his arm. There was hearty company, and sawdust on the floor, but he was looking for a night’s lodging and they could not do with him there, so they sent him along to the widow Silvertough who keeps a button and bull’s-eye shop down by the shore. (You would know her again: she’s a mulatto, with a restive eye.) And could she give him a night’s lodging? He would be off by the first train in the morning—would ’a’ gone tonight only the last train had beat it—just a bed? She could; so he threw down his bundle, bought a packet of butterscotch, and went off back to the tavern, the Cherry Tree. Outside it was a swing-sign showing about forty painted cherries as fat as tomatoes on a few twigs with no more than a leaf apiece. Inside there was singing, and hearty company, and sawdust on the floor.

“Happy days!” said the sailor, drinking and doing as others do.

Well, this fair young stranger, you must know, was not just a common seaman; he wore a dressy uniform with badges on his arm and looked a dandy. He could swop tales with any of them there, and he sang a song in a pleasant country voice, but at times his face was sad and his eyes mournful. Been to Sitka, so he said, but said in such a way that nobody liked to ask him where that was, or where he was bound for now. They thought, indeed, that maybe some of his family had grief or misfortune come upon them, and no one wanted to go blundering into the sort of private matters that put a man down; but when someone spoke about the numbers of people dying in the neighbourhood just then, the sailor became rather contentious.

“Baw! Plenty of people die every hour, but you don’t know any of them. There’s thousands die every day, but devil a one of them all is known to you or to me. I don’t know them, and you do not know them, and if you don’t know them it’s all the same, death or life. Of course, when a big one falls—like President Roosevelt, it might be, or old Charley the linendraper over at Crofters—you hear about that; but else you don’t know them, so what does it matter to you—if you ain’t acquainted with them? I tell you what, it is very curious how few of the people you do know ever seem to die; but it’s true—they don’t. I knew my own father, of course, as died; and a friend or two that died was well known to me; but I don’t know any of these other corpses, nor what becomes of them I do not care. And that’s as true as the dust on the road.”

“Young feller,” an oldish man, drinking rum, said, “you are young yet. When you get to my age you will find your friends a-tumbling off like tiles from a roof.”

“And what becomes of them?”

“They’ll get their true sleep.”

“That all there is to it, then?”

“Oh, there’s goodly mercy everywhere. Accorden to your goings-on before, so it is. Whatsoever you does here must be paid for there.”

“Ay,” said the sailor, with a general wink, “even up yonder money talks, I suppose?”

“God help you! To be thinking of that!” the old man cried.

“Money talks, ’tis true; but there’s only two ways it gives you any satisfaction: one is earning it, the other spending it.”

“There’s many though,” the sailor said, “as spends a lot they don’t earn.”

“Ah, that’s their own look-out,” said the other, with his glass of rum in his hand. “And you can take your mighty oath it’s the sacramental truth. You can’t thread a camel through a needle’s eye. Dust to dust, you know; ashes to ashes.”

“Here!” growled the landlord. “Tip us a lively song, someone. I feels like I was going to be haunted.”

So they persuaded the young sailor to sing his song.

“What’s become of all the lassies used to smile up on a hearty?
Luck my lay, luck my laddie, heave and ho!

“What’s the news of Jane and Katy with their mi-ra-fah-so-lah-ty?
I dunno, Archy Malin, I dunno.

“Where’s the lass as swore she’d wed me when I shipped again this way?
Luck my lay, luck my laddie, heave and ho!

“Was it booze, or was it blarney? Was it just my bit of pay?
I dunno, Archy Malin, I dunno.

“Oh, young men are fond of pleasure, but the girls are full of vice.
Luck my lay, luck my laddie, heave and ho!

“Is there ne’er a pretty creature who’s as simple as she’s nice?
I dunno, Archy Malin, I dunno.”

They gave him a hearty clap for singing it, though it wasn’t very lively.

“I never heard that ballad before,” the old rum man said.

“You wouldn’t,” replied the sailor.

“And I thought I knew most every song as ever was, most of ’em!”

“You wouldn’t know that one,” the sailor said, “because I made it myself.”

“Ah!” the other gleefully cried, “I knew; I knew there was some craft about it.”

“And it’s true,” added the singer, “true as the dust in the road.”

With that he got up, pushed his drink back on the table, and away he went.

With a bit of a lurch now and then he strode moodily along the sea wall of the little harbour. Most of the shops were closed, and a calm midsummer dusk was nestling on street and sea. At the end of a rocky mole protruding seawards he was quite alone and leaned on a parapet. The moon rose drowsily over the bay, whose silent waters only moved when near the shore; the waves frilled pettishly on grey rocks veined with silica. A ship passed over the sad evening sea, its lamps faintly glowing, and a few houses on shore beamed with lights as well. The mountains around were black already, though the sky behind them was pearly. Somewhere a bell was ringing.

He wished himself gone out of the dull little town, but he was bound to stay until morning, and so after sighing away a half-hour or more he turned at ten o’clock to ramble back to his lodging, but on the border of the town he took a turn up on to a little rampart of the hills, a place newly laid out on its banks in municipal fashion with shrubs and young birch trees and seats on winding paths. Up there he lounged down on one of the seats under the slim birches, between whose branches he saw the now risen moon over a darker bay, the harbour with its red and green lights, one or two funnels, a few masts and spars. And he could hear, though he could not see, a motor passing below and the clatter of a trolley. Half full of beer and melancholy, he began to drowse, until someone passed quietly by him like a shadow. The night was come, and despite the moon’s rays he only took in the impression of a lady, richly dressed and walking with a grand air. There was a waft of curious perfume.

Now, the handsome sailor had a romantic nature, he was inclined to gallantry, but the lady was gone before he could collect his hazy senses. He had not seen her face, but she seemed to be wearing a dark cloak that might have been of velvet. He stared until he could no longer see her. “Smells like an actress,” he mused, and yawned. Leaning back on the seat again, he soon fell into a light slumber, until roused once more by a feeling that someone had just gone past. The path was empty, up and down, but though he could see no one, or hear anything, that strange perfume hung in the air. Then he caught sight of a little thing on the seat beside him. In the chequered moonlight it looked white, but it was not white. The stranger knew it was unlucky to pick up a strange handkerchief, but he did pick it up. He found it was charged with that elegant smell he had imputed to actresses.

The moon glittered on his buttons, the patterns of slim boughs and leaves lay across him. I dunno, Archy Malin, I dunno! he hummed, and stuffing the scented handkerchief into his breast pocket he sat blinking in the direction he had seen the mysterious lady take. It was late, she had gone up the hill; she ought to be coming down again soon.

“That’s a nice smell, so help me,” he observed, and pulled the handkerchief from his pocket again. “I bet it’s hers.” While twiddling it musingly in his fingers, he maintained an expectant gaze along the upward path. “Couldn’t have been any handkerchief there when I sat down, or I’d have seen it.” As he replaced it in his pocket he concluded: “I bet a crown she dropped it here on purpose. Well, you done it, Jane; you done it.” Leaning with his arm along the back of the seat, he sat so that he would be facing her when she came down the hill again. And he waited for her.

It was in his mind that he ought to have followed her—she might be waiting for him somewhere up there. But she would be coming back—they always did!—and he felt a little unwilling to move now. Time passed very slowly. In the gloss of the moon his brass buttons shone like tiny stars; the patterns of leaves and branches were draped solemnly across his body and seemed to cling to his knees. He held his breath and strained his ears to catch a sound of her returning footsteps. As still as death it was. And then the shock came; the sudden feeling that there, round about him, just behind, some malignant thing was watching, was about to pounce and rend him, and he shrank at once like a touched nerve, waiting for some certainty of horror—or relief. And it gave him a breathless tremble when his eyes swivelled round and he did see something there, sitting on the seat behind him. But it was all right—it was her!

Calmly he said: “Hello! How did you get here?” (God Almighty, his brain had been on the point of bursting!)

She did not reply. She sat gracefully, but still and silent, in a black velvet cloak, one knee linked over the other. Whether she had a hat or not he could not tell, there was a dark veil covering her head and face. But none the less he could tell she was a handsome woman all right. Her arms were folded under the cloak, where her fingers must have been clinging to hold it tight around her.

“I saw you go by,” began the young sailor, “but I didn’t hear you come back.”

Well, she did not answer him then, she did not utter a word, but she certainly did pay a lot of attention to what he said to her, and her eyes gleamed quite friendly under her veil. So Archy kept on chaffing her, because he was sure she had not dumped herself down there beside him in that lonely spot, at that time of night, for nothing; and of course he felt quite gay. She nodded a lot at the things he said to her, but it was quite some time before she opened her mouth to him, and then he was rather surprised. Because she was a fine well-built girl, with a lovely bosom and all that, but her voice really did surprise him.

“I have never been here before,” was what she said, but her voice was thin and reedy, as if she had asthma or something. “I happened to see you—so I came along.”

“Oh, that’s dandy,” said Archy, and he hauled up to her and was for putting his arm around her straight away.

“No! You must not do that!”

And although she did not move or shrink away she spoke so sadly that somehow that jaunty sailor was baffled; she was a perfect lady! He sat up and behaved himself.

The girl stared through the trees at the lights down in the harbour, and you could not hear a whisper down there, or anywhere else in the world.

She said: “I was lonely.”

“I bet you was!” was his uncouth reply, and he kept his own arms folded. This was the queerest piece he had met for a long time.

“Please don’t be angry,” she said, turning to him.

“No. Sure,” he answered heartily. “I’d like to know your name, though. Mine’s Archy Malin. I’m a sailor.”

“My name?” She gave a sigh. “It was Freda Listowell.”

“Well, ain’t it now?” he quizzed her.

She shook her head.

“Married?” pursued the sailor.

“No.” The question seemed faintly to amuse her.

“You lost it, then?”

“Yes,” was the grave reply.

The young man was beginning to enjoy these exchanges. That sort of chit-chat was part of the fun of making up to girls like Jane and Katy. This one was a lady—you could not doubt that—and so it surprised him a bit. But all the same, he liked it.

“Freda Listowell! That’s a nice name, too good to lose.”

She shivered, the moonlight had grown cold.

“Shall have to help you find it again,” he continued.

“You could not do that.”

“Could I not! Are you staying in this burgh for long?”

“I am not stopping anywhere at all. I must go back soon.”

“You can’t get far tonight—it’s late. Where are you stopping, then?”

“You would not believe me if I told you.”

“Me! Not! I’d believe you if you said you was an angel from heaven. Unless you’ve got a car?”

She slowly shook her head.

He began to feel he was not getting on very well with her, after all. Somehow they were making a poor show together. But he could tell she was an actress; it was not the things she said so much as the way she spoke them. Taking a cigarette from a packet, he lit it.

“I’ve never seen anything like him in my wanderings!” He held the packet towards her, indicating the picture of a fathead seaman with whiskers and the word HERO on his hat. “Have one?” he asked her, but she declined. So he leaned his elbows on his knees and puffed smoke at the ground between his boots. And she had very elegant shoes on, and silk stockings on her fine legs—he couldn’t take his eyes off them. But what was she trying to put across? Where did she live, then? Without turning, he spoke towards the ground at his feet.

“Are you all right?”

“No,” she replied, and there was despair in her voice that woke an instant sympathy in him. He sat up and faced her.

“What’s wrong, Miss Freda? Can I butt in at all?”

For the first time she seemed to relax her grave airs, and echoed: “Can—you—butt—in!” It almost amused her. “Oh no. Thank you, thank you, thank you; but no!”

The refusal was so definite that he could not hope to prevail against it; he could only murmur half-apologetically:

“Well, if you wanted my help, I’d do my best. You know—say the word.”

“Ah, I was sure of that!” was the almost caressing rejoinder. “My dear, dear friend—but you—” In agitation she sat up, her hands, clasped together, slipping out from her cloak. He saw them for the first time, they were gloved. Then she parted her hands and almost hissed: “What do you think I am?”

It startled him; there was certainly something the matter with her.

“You’d better let me see you home. Serious, Miss Freda.”

“But I have nowhere to go,” she cried.

“What are you going to do, then?”

“Nothing.”

“But you must do something.”

Raising her veiled face, she gestured with one hand towards the moon and said:

“I am going to vanish.”

“Oh, ho!” In a flash of a second the sailor perceived that he was not dealing with an actress at all: she was dotty! She was going to commit suicide! That was what had baffled him—she was a lunatic! A pretty fine lot to drop in for!

“You see, I am what you call a ghost!” she solemnly said.

Well, that clinched it; the poor things generally got worse at the time of the moon. He was keeping a wary eye on her; he liked women, got very fond of them, especially nice young women on moonlight nights, but he did not like them mad.

“You don’t believe that?” she asked.

He tried to humour her. “It’s a funny thing that I was having an argument about ghosts with a fellow once before tonight. And now here you are, the second one that’s trying to persuade me. As a matter of fact, take it or leave it, just as you like, I wouldn’t believe in ghosts not even if I saw one!”

Very calmly she said: “What do you think I am doing here?”

Archy fidgeted for a moment or two before replying:

“Quite honest, then, I never thought you were a ghost. First I thought you were—you know—a nice girl out for a bit of a lark.”

He paused for her comment on this. It was a very cold one.

“Go on,” she said.

“Ah well. Then I thought you were an actress.”

“I’m not.” There was a flash of petulance.

“But then I saw you must be in a bit of trouble of some sort.”

With hesitation she agreed: “Yes, I am.”

“You know—lost your memory, or—”

“No,” she sharply interposed. “I’ve lost my life.”

“Well, something like that,” he said pacifyingly. “Do you come from—or—from down there?” He nodded towards the town.

Quietly she answered: “I come from heaven.”

The poor fellow was almost suffering with bewilderment; a sailor lacks subtlety, and he was adrift, so he almost leaped at his little bit of a joke:

“Ah! That’s it! You’re an angel—I guessed that.”

“There are no angels in heaven,” cried the girl.

“Ain’t!” said he.

“No. I have never seen one there.”

Archy mumbled that that would be a great disappointment to him later on.

“What do you think heaven is?” the lady asked.

He was obliged to admit that he had not up to that moment been able to give very much thought to the matter.

“I can tell you,” she said gravely.

“Do.” She was so patient that somehow he was giving up that notion of her being just mad—and anyway he did not know how to deal with a lunatic.

“When I died about three years ago—” she began.

“You know”—the sailor turned, laughing towards her—“you would make a blooming good actress!”

Wearily she stirred. “Listen!”

“What were you before you died?” he jeered; he was not going to let her mesmerize him like that.

“I was young and rich and foolish then. I had only one thought or passion in my life. I doted on clothes, fine clothes. I suppose I must have been mad. Nothing else ever really interested me, though I pretended it did. I lived simply to dress myself in quantities of beautiful garments. I think I was beautiful, too—perhaps you would have thought so. . . .”

“Let me see!” Archy made a snatch at her veil.

“No!” There was such a tone in her denial that his marauding arm shrank back on him, and it seemed as if the echo of her cry fluttered for a moment up among the faint stars.

“Take care!” Her gravity quelled him. “That was my life, that and nothing else: day by day, even hour by hour, to array myself in the richest gowns I could procure. What vanity! And I believed that I was thus honouring my body and delighting my soul. What madness! In everything I did my only thought was of the clothes I might wear, what scope the occasion would give me thus to shine. That was all my joy. Life seemed to have no other care, meaning, or end; no other desire, no other bliss. I poured out fortunes on silk, satin, and brocades, and imagined that by doing so I was a benefactor to all.”

“Oh, but damn it!” interjected Archy. She stopped him with a gesture and then sank back in the corner of the seat, wholly wrapped in her velvet cloak. The sailor leaned with his arm on the back of the seat and surveyed her very wearily, thinking that if she did not go very soon he would have to clear himself off and leave her to her trouble. He felt like yawning, but somehow he did not dare. As far as he could make out she was the picture of misery, and he was veering once more to the belief that she was crazy. Harmless enough, but what could he do with a daft woman?

“Then I died, suddenly,” she went on. “Imagine my disgust when I realized, as I soon did, that I was buried in a stupid ugly gown of cheap cotton, much too big for me! Ugh!” The lady shuddered. “For a long time I seemed to be hanging in a void, like a cloud of matter motionless in some chemical solution, alone and utterly unapproachable. My sight was keen, but I could see nothing. All was dim and featureless as though I was staring at a sky dingy with a half-dead moon.

“Then my thoughts began to swirl around and come back to me, my worldly thoughts; and though I knew I was dead, a waif of infinity, my thoughts were only of what I had prized in life itself—my wonderful clothes. And while I thought of them, they too began to drift around me, the comforting ghosts of them all—gowns, petticoats, stockings, shoes.”

The sailor sighed and lit another cigarette. The lady waited until he composed himself again.

“But there they were, as real as I was, real to me. Ah, what joy that was! I tore off my hideous cotton shroud and dressed myself in one of those darling frocks. But I soon tired of it. When I took it off, it disappeared, and never came back again. I remembered other things I had enjoyed in life, but none of those ever came to me—only the clothes. They had been my ideal, they became my only heaven; in them I resumed the old illusions.”

“Christ!” muttered the sailor. “I shall! I shall have to clout her in a minute.”

“Pardon?” cried the lady.

“I said: Time’s getting on, late, you know,” he replied.

In the ensuing silence he could almost feel her hurt surprise, so he turned to her quite jocularly:

“Well, you are giving me a sermon, Miss Freda. What I’d like to know is how you dropped on me like this!”

“They all disappeared after I had worn them once; one by one they left again. I did not realize that for a long while, and in my joy at getting them back I wore them and changed and wore others, just as I had done in life; but at last all had departed except these you see me in now. When these are gone, I think something strange is going to happen to me—”

“Huh!” said Archy.

“—but I cannot tell.”

When she stopped speaking the sailor wriggled his cigarette with his lips; the smoke troubled his nose and he sniffed.

“There ought to be something else, don’t you think?” she sorrowfully asked.

There was moonlight in the buckles of her shoes, the leaf patterns lay across her neat legs and graceful body.

“Sure!” he answered consolingly. “It will be all right in the morning. Have a good night’s sleep and you’ll be as gay as Conky’s kitten tomorrow.”

The lady did not speak or move for some minutes, and when the silence became too tiresome the sailor had to ask:

“Well, what are you going to do now?”

“I wish,” she sighed, “I could be buried very deep, under the floor of the sea.”

“Haw! You’ll get over that!” he heartily assured her.

Then she seemed to be summing him up, as if he only irritated her now: “But I am dead, I tell you. I am nothing but a wraith in the ghosts of my old clothes.”

Her persistence annoyed him; he could not believe she was a lunatic, and this other business was the sort of lark he did not take kindly to.

“Oh, cheese it, Freda! Where do you live? Come on. You’ve been trying to put the dreary on me all this time, but I’m not that type of jacko. I’m a sailor, I am. So suppose you give us a kiss and say night-night and toddle off home like a good girl.”

And yet—he waited for that gesture from her. It did not come.

“You do not believe me?” she asked.

“No. I’ve been doing my best, and you’re a blooming fine actress—aren’t you?—but I can’t bite in. Can’t!”

Up he stood, almost indignant. The girl sat where she was and the sailor lingered. For, to tell the truth, he still did not want to leave her; after all, she might be queer, he was still adrift; perhaps if he walked off she would follow him. He had taken but one step away when he heard her voice murmuring. With a frown he listened:

“I could prove it very easily.”

“How?” He swung round.

“By taking off my clothes,” she said.

My! Wasn’t that a good one!

“Your clothes off! Here!”

A silent nod was the answer, and it revived at once all his extravagant fancies.

“Aw, now you’re talking, Freda!”

He flung himself back on the bench beside her again. “Will you? Come on!” He knew she was going to do it, he awaited her restlessly. “What about it?” he urged, glancing up and down the paths. “It’s all right. Come on. There’s no one about.”

At last she got up, and as he moved too, she hissed: “Sit down, you fool!”

For a moment or two she stood there in the path, guarded by the bushes and little trees, fumbling with her clothes, under the cloak. And she was very cunning, because before he knew how it happened, all the clothes dropped and lay in a heap there.

And that was all.

There was no slender naked girl awaiting his embrace. Freda Listowell was gone, dissolved, vanished; he had seen nothing of her, not even her hands. Only her ghostly garments lay in the path with the moon shining on them; the cloak and the shoes, the veil, the stockings, flounces, frills, green garters, and a vanity bag with a white comb slipping out of it. So cleanly swift and yet so casual was her proof that he was frightened almost before he knew.

“She was there. She did not move!” he whispered. “I could pawn my soul on that!”

For a space the doubting sailor dared not rise from the seat; his hands clung to it as a castaway’s to a spar, as he turned his fearing eyes to right, to left, and behind him.

“I don’t believe it!” he muttered stoutly, and tearing himself away from the bench he cringed in the path.

“Ahoy there!” he whispered. “Where are you?”

Sternly he straightened himself and walked erect among the near bushes. She was not there. Nowhere. When he spun round again, her clothes had gone too. “Hoi! Stop it!” he shouted, but he knew she was not hiding—there was nothing of her to hide. With his heart threshing like a flail he breathed appalling air. What was it? He wanted to fly for his life, but could not. His nails were grinding into his palms as he braced himself to grapple with his shocked brain.

“Foo!” he gasped, twining himself round and round, not daring to stand still. “Foo!” Sweat was blinding him, and thrusting one hand to his pocket he pulled out a handkerchief. It was the perfumed wisp he had found on the seat an hour before. As he caught its scent again, he remembered. He held it out in the moonlight and stared at it, muttering: “I don’t fancy that. I don’t. . . .”

Something invisible in the air plucked it from his fingers.