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From room to room they went, hand in hand, lifting here, opening there, making sure—a ghostly couple. “Here we left it,” she said. And he added, “Oh, but here too!” “It’s upstairs,” she murmured. “And in the garden,” he whispered. “Quietly,” they said, “or we shall wake them.”
From the time the story first introduces the ghostly couple, readers can see that they are in love. They move about holding hands as a couple. Readers know they are a woman and a man because of the narrator’s use of the pronouns she and he. The ghosts are searching throughout the house, looking for an unnamed “it.” Whatever “it” is, they left it in many locations, “here” and “here,” “upstairs,” and “in the garden.” The ghosts kindly murmur and whisper, not wanting to wake the living couple. Their gentleness and concern for the living, as well as the nature of their search, indicate that their natures and functions differ from those of the ghosts with which readers might be familiar.
Death was the glass; death was between us, coming to the woman first, hundreds of years ago, leaving the house, sealing all the windows; the rooms were darkened. He left it, left her, went North, went East, saw the stars turned in the Southern sky; sought the house, found it dropped beneath the Downs.
Death once separated the ghostly couple, and the wife died before her husband. He leaves the house and her to travel the world. The idea that he “saw the stars turned in the Southern sky,” with its capital S, emphasizes the breadth of his travels, showing that he traveled as far as the Southern Hemisphere. He seems lost without her and finds himself compelled to seek the protective house, not knowing where it—and she—might be. His quest, according to the narrator, is a matter of renewing his affections, long after death separated the pair.
