A Book of Ghosts: 6
Author: Various authors
Date: 1883-12-31T15:00:00+00:00
Keywords: Ghost Stories; Supernatural Fiction; Weird Fiction; Horror
Description: A collection of ten stories of the supernatural and the macabre by various authors, compiled by ECM.
Publisher: MobileRead.com
Rights: Public domain where copyright is “Life+70” or less, and in the USA

A BOOK OF GHOSTS
– 6 –

THINGS THAT GO BUMP
IN THE NIGHT

MobileRead Edition
2021

A collection of ten stories of the supernatural and the macabre by various authors, compiled by ECM.

Contents were originally published 1884 ~ 1917. This book is in the public domain where copyright is “Life+70” or less, and in the USA.

CONTENTS:

- The Rival Ghosts
by Brander Matthews
(1852–1929)

- Dog or Demon?
by Theo Gift
(1847–1923)

- The Picture on the Wall
by Katharine Tynan
(1859–1931)

- A Pair of Hands
by Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch
(1863–1944)

- Was It a Dream?
by Guy de Maupassant
(1850–1893)

- The Southwest Chamber
by Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
(1852–1930)

- The Spectre in the Cart
by Thomas Nelson Page
(1853–1922)

- Mrs. Davenport’s Ghost
by Frederick P. Schrader
(1857–1943)

- The Toll-House
by W. W. Jacobs
(1863–1943)

- Old Fags
by Stacy Aumonier
(1877–1928)

THE RIVAL GHOSTS

Brander Matthews

1884

The good ship sped on her way across the calm Atlantic. It was an outward passage, according to the little charts which the company had charily distributed, but most of the passengers were homeward bound, after a summer of rest and recreation, and they were counting the days before they might hope to see Fire Island Light. On the lee side of the boat, comfortably sheltered from the wind, and just by the door of the captain’s room (which was theirs during the day), sat a little group of returning Americans. The Duchess (she was down on the purser’s list as Mrs. Martin, but her friends and familiars called her the Duchess of Washington Square) and Baby Van Rensselaer (she was quite old enough to vote, had her sex been entitled to that duty, but as the younger of two sisters she was still the baby of the family) – the Duchess and Baby Van Rensselaer were discussing the pleasant English voice and the not unpleasant English accent of a manly young lordling who was going to America for sport. Uncle Larry and Dear Jones were enticing each other into a bet on the ship’s run of the morrow.

“I’ll give you two to one she don’t make 420,” said Dear Jones.

“I’ll take it,” answered Uncle Larry. “We made 427 the fifth day last year.” It was Uncle Larry’s seventeenth visit to Europe, and this was therefore his thirty-fourth voyage.

“And when did you get in?” asked Baby Van Rensselaer. “I don’t care a bit about the run, so long as we get in soon.”

“We crossed the bar Sunday night, just seven days after we left Queenstown, and we dropped anchor off Quarantine at three o’clock on Monday morning.”

“I hope we shan’t do that this time. I can’t seem to sleep any when the boat stops.”

“I can; but I didn’t,” continued Uncle Larry; “because my stateroom was the most for’ard in the boat, and the donkey-engine that let down the anchor was right over my head.”

“So you got up and saw the sunrise over the bay,” said Dear Jones, “with the electric lights of the city twinkling in the distance, and the first faint flush of the dawn in the east just over Fort Lafayette, and the rosy tinge which spread softly upward, and—”

“Did you both come back together?” asked the Duchess.

“Because he has crossed thirty-four times you must not suppose that he has a monopoly in sunrises,” retorted Dear Jones. “No, this was my own sunrise; and a mighty pretty one it was, too.”

“I’m not matching sunrises with you,” remarked Uncle Larry, calmly; “but I’m willing to back a merry jest called forth by my sunrise against any two merry jests called forth by yours.”

“I confess reluctantly that my sunrise evoked no merry jest at all.” Dear Jones was an honest man, and would scorn to invent a merry jest on the spur of the moment.

“That’s where my sunrise has the call,” said Uncle Larry, complacently.

“What was the merry jest?” was Baby Van Rensselaer’s inquiry, the natural result of a feminine curiosity thus artistically excited.

“Well, here it is. I was standing aft, near a patriotic American and a wandering Irishman, and the patriotic American rashly declared that you couldn’t see a sunrise like that anywhere in Europe, and this gave the Irishman his chance, and he said, ‘Sure ye don’t have ’em here till we’re through with ’em over there.’”

“It is true,” said Dear Jones, thoughtfully, “that they do have some things over there better than we do; for instance, umbrellas.”

“And gowns,” added the Duchess.

“And antiquities,” – this was Uncle Larry’s contribution.

“And we do have some things so much better in America!” protested Baby Van Rensselaer, as yet uncorrupted by any worship of the effete monarchies of despotic Europe. “We make lots of things a great deal nicer than you can get them in Europe – especially ice-cream.”

“And pretty girls,” added Dear Jones; but he did not look at her.

“And spooks,” remarked Uncle Larry casually.

“Spooks?” queried the Duchess.

“Spooks. I maintain the word. Ghosts, if you like that better, or specters. We turn out the best quality of spook—”

“You forget the lovely ghost stories about the Rhine, and the Black Forest,” interrupted Miss Van Rensselaer, with feminine inconsistency.

“I remember the Rhine and the Black Forest and all the other haunts of elves and fairies and hobgoblins; but for good honest spooks there is no place like home. And what differentiates our spook – Spiritus Americanus – from the ordinary ghost of literature is that it responds to the American sense of humor. Take Irving’s stories for example. The Headless Horseman, that’s a comic ghost story. And Rip Van Winkle – consider what humor, and what good-humor, there is in the telling of his meeting with the goblin crew of Hendrik Hudson’s men! A still better example of this American way of dealing with legend and mystery is the marvelous tale of the rival ghosts.”

“The rival ghosts?” queried the Duchess and Baby Van Rensselaer together. “Who were they?”

“Didn’t I ever tell you about them?” answered Uncle Larry, a gleam of approaching joy flashing from his eye.

“Since he is bound to tell us sooner or later, we’d better be resigned and hear it now,” said Dear Jones.

“If you are not more eager, I won’t tell it at all.”

“Oh, do, Uncle Larry; you know I just dote on ghost stories,” pleaded Baby Van Rensselaer.

“Once upon a time,” began Uncle Larry – “in fact, a very few years ago – there lived in the thriving town of New York a young American called Duncan – Eliphalet Duncan. Like his name, he was half Yankee and half Scotch, and naturally he was a lawyer, and had come to New York to make his way. His father was a Scotchman, who had come over and settled in Boston, and married a Salem girl. When Eliphalet Duncan was about twenty he lost both of his parents. His father left him with enough money to give him a start, and a strong feeling of pride in his Scotch birth; you see there was a title in the family in Scotland, and although Eliphalet’s father was the younger son of a younger son, yet he always remembered, and always bade his only son to remember, that his ancestry was noble. His mother left him her full share of Yankee grit, and a little house in Salem which has belonged to her family for more than two hundred years. She was a Hitchcock, and the Hitchcocks had been settled in Salem since the year 1. It was a great-great-grandfather of Mr. Eliphalet Hitchcock who was foremost in the time of the Salem witchcraft craze. And this little old house which she left to my friend Eliphalet Duncan was haunted.”

“By the ghost of one of the witches, of course,” interrupted Dear Jones.

“Now how could it be the ghost of a witch, since the witches were all burned at the stake? You never heard of anybody who was burned having a ghost, did you?”

“That’s an argument in favor of cremation, at any rate,” replied Jones, evading the direct question.

“It is, if you don’t like ghosts; I do,” said Baby Van Rensselaer.

“And so do I,” added Uncle Larry. “I love a ghost as dearly as an Englishman loves a lord.”

“Go on with your story,” said the Duchess, majestically overruling all extraneous discussion.

“This little old house at Salem was haunted,” resumed Uncle Larry. “And by a very distinguished ghost – or at least by a ghost with very remarkable attributes.”

“What was he like?” asked Baby Van Rensselaer, with a premonitory shiver of anticipatory delight.

“It had a lot of peculiarities. In the first place, it never appeared to the master of the house. Mostly it confined its visitations to unwelcome guests. In the course of the last hundred years it had frightened away four successive mothers-in-law, while never intruding on the head of the household.”

“I guess that ghost had been one of the boys when he was alive and in the flesh.” This was Dear Jones’s contribution to the telling of the tale.

“In the second place,” continued Uncle Larry, “it never frightened anybody the first time it appeared. Only on the second visit were the ghost-seers scared; but then they were scared enough for twice, and they rarely mustered up courage enough to risk a third interview. One of the most curious characteristics of this well-meaning spook was that it had no face – or at least that nobody ever saw its face.”

“Perhaps he kept his countenance veiled?” queried the Duchess, who was beginning to remember that she never did like ghost stories.

“That was what I was never able to find out. I have asked several people who saw the ghost, and none of them could tell me anything about its face, and yet while in its presence they never noticed its features, and never remarked on their absence or concealment. It was only afterward when they tried to recall calmly all the circumstances of meeting with the mysterious stranger, that they became aware that they had not seen its face. And they could not say whether the features were covered, or whether they were wanting, or what the trouble was. They knew only that the face was never seen. And no matter how often they might see it, they never fathomed this mystery. To this day nobody knows whether the ghost which used to haunt the little old house in Salem had a face, or what manner of face it had.”

“How awfully weird!” said Baby Van Rensselaer. “And why did the ghost go away?”

“I haven’t said it went away,” answered Uncle Larry, with much dignity.

“But you said it used to haunt the little old house at Salem, so I supposed it had moved. Didn’t it?”

“You shall be told in due time. Eliphalet Duncan used to spend most of his summer vacations at Salem, and the ghost never bothered him at all, for he was the master of the house – much to his disgust, too, because he wanted to see for himself the mysterious tenant at will of his property. But he never saw it, never. He arranged with friends to call him whenever it might appear, and he slept in the next room with the door open; and yet when their frightened cries waked him the ghost was gone, and his only reward was to hear reproachful sighs as soon as he went back to bed. You see, the ghost thought it was not fair of Eliphalet to seek an introduction which was plainly unwelcome.”

Dear Jones interrupted the story-teller by getting up and tucking a heavy rug snugly around Baby Van Rensselaer’s feet, for the sky was now overcast and gray, and the air was damp and penetrating.

“One fine spring morning,” pursued Uncle Larry, “Eliphalet Duncan received great news. I told you that there was a title in the family in Scotland, and that Eliphalet’s father was the younger son of a younger son. Well, it happened that all Eliphalet’s father’s brothers and uncles had died off without male issue except the eldest son of the eldest, and he, of course, bore the title, and was Baron Duncan of Duncan. Now the great news that Eliphalet Duncan received in New York one fine spring morning was that Baron Duncan and his only son had been yachting in the Hebrides, and they had been caught in a black squall, and they were both dead. So my friend Eliphalet Duncan inherited the title and the estates.”

“How romantic!” said the Duchess. “So he was a baron!”

“Well,” answered Uncle Larry, “he was a baron if he chose. But he didn’t choose.”

“More fool he,” said Dear Jones sententiously.

“Well,” answered Uncle Larry, “I’m not so sure of that. You see, Eliphalet Duncan was half Scotch and half Yankee, and he had two eyes to the main chance. He held his tongue about his windfall of luck until he could find out whether the Scotch estates were enough to keep up the Scotch title. He soon discovered that they were not, and that the late Lord Duncan, having married money, kept up such state as he could out of the revenues of the dowry of Lady Duncan. And Eliphalet, he decided that he would rather be a well-fed lawyer in New York, living comfortably on his practice, than a starving lord in Scotland, living scantily on his title.”

“But he kept his title?” asked the Duchess.

“Well,” answered Uncle Larry, “he kept it quiet. I knew it, and a friend or two more. But Eliphalet was a sight too smart to put Baron Duncan of Duncan, Attorney and Counselor at Law, on his shingle.”

“What has all this got to do with your ghost?” asked Dear Jones pertinently.

“Nothing with that ghost, but a good deal with another ghost. Eliphalet was very learned in spirit lore – perhaps because he owned the haunted house at Salem, perhaps because he was a Scotchman by descent. At all events, he had made a special study of the wraiths and white ladies and banshees and bogies of all kinds whose sayings and doings and warnings are recorded in the annals of the Scottish nobility. In fact, he was acquainted with the habits of every reputable spook in the Scotch peerage. And he knew that there was a Duncan ghost attached to the person of the holder of the title of Baron Duncan of Duncan.”

“So, besides being the owner of a haunted house in Salem, he was also a haunted man in Scotland?” asked Baby Van Rensselaer.

“Just so. But the Scotch ghost was not unpleasant, like the Salem ghost, although it had one peculiarity in common with its trans-Atlantic fellow-spook. It never appeared to the holder of the title, just as the other never was visible to the owner of the house. In fact, the Duncan ghost was never seen at all. It was a guardian angel only. Its sole duty was to be in personal attendance on Baron Duncan of Duncan, and to warn him of impending evil. The traditions of the house told that the Barons of Duncan had again and again felt a premonition of ill fortune. Some of them had yielded and withdrawn from the venture they had undertaken, and it had failed dismally. Some had been obstinate, and had hardened their hearts, and had gone on reckless of defeat and to death. In no case had a Lord Duncan been exposed to peril without fair warning.”

“Then how came it that the father and son were lost in the yacht off the Hebrides?” asked Dear Jones.

“Because they were too enlightened to yield to superstition. There is extant now a letter of Lord Duncan, written to his wife a few minutes before he and his son set sail, in which he tells her how hard he has had to struggle with an almost overmastering desire to give up the trip. Had he obeyed the friendly warning of the family ghost, the latter would have been spared a journey across the Atlantic.”

“Did the ghost leave Scotland for America as soon as the old baron died?” asked Baby Van Rensselaer, with much interest.

“How did he come over,” queried Dear Jones – “in the steerage, or as a cabin passenger?”

“I don’t know,” answered Uncle Larry calmly, “and Eliphalet, he didn’t know. For as he was in no danger, and stood in no need of warning, he couldn’t tell whether the ghost was on duty or not. Of course he was on the watch for it all the time. But he never got any proof of its presence until he went down to the little old house of Salem, just before the Fourth of July. He took a friend down with him – a young fellow who had been in the regular army since the day Fort Sumter was fired on, and who thought that after four years of the little unpleasantness down South, including six months in Libby, and after ten years of fighting the bad Indians on the plains, he wasn’t likely to be much frightened by a ghost. Well, Eliphalet and the officer sat out on the porch all the evening smoking and talking over points in military law. A little after twelve o’clock, just as they began to think it was about time to turn in, they heard the most ghastly noise in the house. It wasn’t a shriek, or a howl, or a yell, or anything they could put a name to. It was an undeterminate, inexplicable shiver and shudder of sound, which went wailing out of the window. The officer had been at Cold Harbor, but he felt himself getting colder this time. Eliphalet knew it was the ghost who haunted the house. As this weird sound died away, it was followed by another, sharp, short, blood-curdling in its intensity. Something in this cry seemed familiar to Eliphalet, and he felt sure that it proceeded from the family ghost, the warning wraith of the Duncans.”

“Do I understand you to intimate that both ghosts were there together?” inquired the Duchess anxiously.

“Both of them were there,” answered Uncle Larry. “You see, one of them belonged to the house, and had to be there all the time, and the other was attached to the person of Baron Duncan, and had to follow him there; wherever he was there was the ghost also. But Eliphalet, he had scarcely time to think this out when he heard both sounds again, not one after another, but both together, and something told him – some sort of an instinct he had – that those two ghosts didn’t agree, didn’t get on together, didn’t exactly hit it off; in fact, that they were quarreling.”

“Quarreling ghosts! Well, I never!” was Baby Van Rensselaer’s remark.

“It is a blessed thing to see ghosts dwell together in unity,” said Dear Jones.

And the Duchess added, “It would certainly be setting a better example.”

“You know,” resumed Uncle Larry, “that two waves of light or of sound may interfere and produce darkness or silence. So it was with these rival spooks. They interfered, but they did not produce silence or darkness. On the contrary, as soon as Eliphalet and the officer went into the house, there began at once a series of spiritualistic manifestations, a regular dark séance. A tambourine was played upon, a bell was rung, and a flaming banjo went singing around the room.”

“Where did they get the banjo?” asked Dear Jones skeptically.

“I don’t know. Materialized it, maybe, just as they did the tambourine. You don’t suppose a quiet New York lawyer kept a stock of musical instruments large enough to fit out a strolling minstrel troupe just on the chance of a pair of ghosts coming to give him a surprise party, do you? Every spook has its own instrument of torture. Angels play on harps, I’m informed, and spirits delight in banjos and tambourines. These spooks of Eliphalet Duncan’s were ghosts with all the modern improvements, and I guess they were capable of providing their own musical weapons. At all events, they had them there in the little old house at Salem the night Eliphalet and his friend came down. And they played on them, and they rang the bell, and they rapped here, there, and everywhere. And they kept it up all night.”

“All night?” asked the awestricken Duchess.

“All night long,” said Uncle Larry solemnly; “and the next night, too. Eliphalet did not get a wink of sleep, neither did his friend. On the second night the house ghost was seen by the officer; on the third night it showed itself again; and the next morning the officer packed his grip-sack and took the first train to Boston. He was a New Yorker, but he said he’d sooner go to Boston than see that ghost again. Eliphalet, he wasn’t scared at all, partly because he never saw either the domiciliary or the titular spook, and partly because he felt himself on friendly terms with the spirit world, and didn’t scare easily. But after losing three nights’ sleep and the society of his friend, he began to be a little impatient, and to think that the thing had gone far enough. You see, while in a way he was fond of ghosts, yet he liked them best one at a time. Two ghosts were one too many. He wasn’t bent on making a collection of spooks. He and one ghost were company, but he and two ghosts were a crowd.”

“What did he do?” asked Baby Van Rensselaer.

“Well, he couldn’t do anything. He waited awhile, hoping they would get tired; but he got tired out first. You see, it comes natural to a spook to sleep in the daytime, but a man wants to sleep nights, and they wouldn’t let him sleep nights. They kept on wrangling and quarreling incessantly; they manifested and they dark-séanced as regularly as the old clock on the stairs struck twelve; they rapped and they rang bells and they banged the tambourine and they threw the flaming banjo about the house, and worse than all, they swore.”

“I did not know that spirits were addicted to bad language,” said the Duchess.

“How did he know they were swearing? Could he hear them?” asked Dear Jones.

“That was just it,” responded Uncle Larry; “he could not hear them – at least not distinctly. There were inarticulate murmurs and stifled rumblings. But the impression produced on him was that they were swearing. If they had only sworn right out, he would not have minded it so much, because he would have known the worst. But the feeling that the air was full of suppressed profanity was very wearing and after standing it for a week, he gave up in disgust and went to the White Mountains.”

“Leaving them to fight it out, I suppose,” interjected Baby Van Rensselaer.

“Not at all,” explained Uncle Larry. “They could not quarrel unless he was present. You see, he could not leave the titular ghost behind him, and the domiciliary ghost could not leave the house. When he went away he took the family ghost with him, leaving the house ghost behind. Now spooks can’t quarrel when they are a hundred miles apart any more than men can.”

“And what happened afterward?” asked Baby Van Rensselaer, with a pretty impatience.

“A most marvelous thing happened. Eliphalet Duncan went to the White Mountains, and in the car of the railroad that runs to the top of Mount Washington he met a classmate whom he had not seen for years, and this classmate introduced Duncan to his sister, and this sister was a remarkably pretty girl, and Duncan fell in love with her at first sight, and by the time he got to the top of Mount Washington he was so deep in love that he began to consider his own unworthiness, and to wonder whether she might ever be induced to care for him a little – ever so little.”

“I don’t think that is so marvelous a thing,” said Dear Jones glancing at Baby Van Rensselaer.

“Who was she?” asked the Duchess, who had once lived in Philadelphia.

“She was Miss Kitty Sutton, of San Francisco, and she was a daughter of old Judge Sutton, of the firm of Pixley and Sutton.”

“A very respectable family,” assented the Duchess.

“I hope she wasn’t a daughter of that loud and vulgar old Mrs. Sutton whom I met at Saratoga, one summer, four or five years ago?” said Dear Jones.

“Probably she was.”

“She was a horrid old woman. The boys used to call her Mother Gorgon.”

“The pretty Kitty Sutton with whom Eliphalet Duncan had fallen in love was the daughter of Mother Gorgon. But he never saw the mother, who was in ’Frisco, or Los Angeles, or Santa Fe, or somewhere out West, and he saw a great deal of the daughter, who was up in the White Mountains. She was traveling with her brother and his wife, and as they journeyed from hotel to hotel, Duncan went with them, and filled out the quartette. Before the end of the summer he began to think about proposing. Of course he had lots of chances, going on excursions as they were every day. He made up his mind to seize the first opportunity, and that very evening he took her out for a moonlight row on Lake Winnipiseogee. As he handed her into the boat he resolved to do it, and he had a glimmer of a suspicion that she knew he was going to do it, too.”

“Girls,” said Dear Jones, “never go out in a rowboat at night with a young man unless you mean to accept him.”

“Sometimes it’s best to refuse him, and get it over once for all,” said Baby Van Rensselaer.

“As Eliphalet took the oars he felt a sudden chill. He tried to shake it off, but in vain. He began to have a growing consciousness of impending evil. Before he had taken ten strokes – and he was a swift oarsman – he was aware of a mysterious presence between him and Miss Sutton.”

“Was it the guardian-angel ghost warning him off the match?” interrupted Dear Jones.

“That’s just what it was,” said Uncle Larry. “And he yielded to it, and kept his peace, and rowed Miss Sutton back to the hotel with his proposal unspoken.”

“More fool he,” said Dear Jones. “It will take more than one ghost to keep me from proposing when my mind is made up.” And he looked at Baby Van Rensselaer.

“The next morning,” continued Uncle Larry, “Eliphalet overslept himself, and when he went down to a late breakfast he found that the Suttons had gone to New York by the morning train. He wanted to follow them at once, and again he felt the mysterious presence overpowering his will. He struggled two days, and at last he roused himself to do what he wanted in spite of the spook. When he arrived in New York it was late in the evening. He dressed himself hastily and went to the hotel where the Suttons put up, in the hope of seeing at least her brother. The guardian angel fought every inch of the walk with him, until he began to wonder whether, if Miss Sutton were to take him, the spook would forbid the banns. At the hotel he saw no one that night, and he went home determined to call as early as he could the next afternoon, and make an end of it. When he left his office about two o’clock the next day to learn his fate, he had not walked five blocks before he discovered that the wraith of the Duncans had withdrawn his opposition to the suit. There was no feeling of impending evil, no resistance, no struggle, no consciousness of an opposing presence. Eliphalet was greatly encouraged. He walked briskly to the hotel; he found Miss Sutton alone. He asked her the question, and got his answer.”

“She accepted him, of course,” said Baby Van Rensselaer.

“Of course,” said Uncle Larry. “And while they were in the first flush of joy, swapping confidences and confessions, her brother came into the parlor with an expression of pain on his face and a telegram in his hand. The former was caused by the latter, which was from ’Frisco, and which announced the sudden death of Mrs. Sutton, their mother.”

“And that was why the ghost no longer opposed the match?” questioned Dear Jones.

“Exactly. You see, the family ghost knew that Mother Gorgon was an awful obstacle to Duncan’s happiness, so it warned him. But the moment the obstacle was removed, it gave its consent at once.”

The fog was lowering its thick damp curtain, and it was beginning to be difficult to see from one end of the boat to the other. Dear Jones tightened the rug which enwrapped Baby Van Rensselaer, and then withdrew again into his own substantial coverings.

Uncle Larry paused in his story long enough to light another of the tiny cigars he always smoked.

“I infer that Lord Duncan” – the Duchess was scrupulous in the bestowal of titles – “saw no more of the ghosts after he was married.”

“He never saw them at all, at any time, either before or since. But they came very near breaking off the match, and thus breaking two young hearts.”

“You don’t mean to say that they knew any just cause or impediment why they should not forever after hold their peace?” asked Dear Jones.

“How could a ghost, or even two ghosts, keep a girl from marrying the man she loved?” This was Baby Van Rensselaer’s question.

“It seems curious, doesn’t it?” and Uncle Larry tried to warm himself by two or three sharp pulls at his fiery little cigar. “And the circumstances are quite as curious as the fact itself. You see, Miss Sutton wouldn’t be married for a year after her mother’s death, so she and Duncan had lots of time to tell each other all they knew. Eliphalet, he got to know a good deal about the girls she went to school with, and Kitty, she learned all about his family. He didn’t tell her about the title for a long time, as he wasn’t one to brag. But he described to her the little old house at Salem. And one evening toward the end of the summer, the wedding-day having been appointed for early in September, she told him that she didn’t want to bridal tour at all; she just wanted to go down to the little old house at Salem to spend her honeymoon in peace and quiet, with nothing to do and nobody to bother them. Well, Eliphalet jumped at the suggestion. It suited him down to the ground. All of a sudden he remembered the spooks, and it knocked him all of a heap. He had told her about the Duncan Banshee, and the idea of having an ancestral ghost in personal attendance on her husband tickled her immensely. But he had never said anything about the ghost which haunted the little old house at Salem. He knew she would be frightened out of her wits if the house ghost revealed itself to her, and he saw at once that it would be impossible to go to Salem on their wedding trip. So he told her all about it, and how whenever he went to Salem the two ghosts interfered, and gave dark séances and manifested and materialized and made the place absolutely impossible. Kitty, she listened in silence, and Eliphalet, he thought she had changed her mind. But she hadn’t done anything of the kind.”

“Just like a man – to think she was going to,” remarked Baby Van Rensselaer.

“She just told him she could not bear ghosts herself, but she would not marry a man who was afraid of them.”

“Just like a girl – to be so inconsistent,” remarked Dear Jones.

Uncle Larry’s tiny cigar had long been extinct. He lighted a new one, and continued: “Eliphalet protested in vain. Kitty said her mind was made up. She was determined to pass her honeymoon in the little old house at Salem, and she was equally determined not to go there as long as there were any ghosts there. Until he could assure her that the spectral tenants had received notice to quit, and that there was no danger of manifestations and materializing, she refused to be married at all. She did not intend to have her honeymoon interrupted by two wrangling ghosts, and the wedding could be postponed until he had made ready the house for her.”

“She was an unreasonable young woman,” said the Duchess.

“Well, that’s what Eliphalet thought, much as he was in love with her. And he believed he could talk her out of her determination. But he couldn’t. She was set. And when a girl is set, there’s nothing to do but yield to the inevitable. And that’s just what Eliphalet did. He saw he would either have to give her up or to get the ghosts out; and as he loved her and did not care for the ghosts, he resolved to tackle the ghosts. He had clear grit, Eliphalet had – he was half Scotch and half Yankee, and neither breed turns tail in a hurry. So he made his plans and he went down to Salem. As he said goodbye to Kitty he had an impression that she was sorry she had made him go, but she kept up bravely, and put a bold face on it, and saw him off, and went home and cried for an hour, and was perfectly miserable until he came back the next day.”

“Did he succeed in driving the ghosts away?” asked Baby Van Rensselaer, with great interest.

“That’s just what I’m coming to,” said Uncle Larry, pausing at the critical moment, in the manner of the trained story teller. “You see, Eliphalet had got a rather tough job, and he would gladly have had an extension of time on the contract, but he had to choose between the girl and the ghosts, and he wanted the girl. He tried to invent or remember some short and easy way with ghosts, but he couldn’t. He wished that somebody had invented a specific for spooks – something that would make the ghosts come out of the house and die in the yard. He wondered if he could not tempt the ghosts to run in debt, so that he might get the sheriff to help him. He wondered also whether the ghosts could not be overcome with strong drink – a dissipated spook, a spook with delirium tremens, might be committed to the inebriate asylum. But none of these things seemed feasible.”

“What did he do?” interrupted Dear Jones. “The learned counsel will please speak to the point.”

“You will regret this unseemly haste,” said Uncle Larry, gravely, “when you know what really happened.”

“What was it, Uncle Larry?” asked Baby Van Rensselaer. “I’m all impatience.”

And Uncle Larry proceeded:

“Eliphalet went down to the little old house at Salem, and as soon as the clock struck twelve the rival ghosts began wrangling as before. Raps here, there, and everywhere, ringing bells, banging tambourines, strumming banjos sailing about the room, and all the other manifestations and materializations followed one another just as they had the summer before. The only difference Eliphalet could detect was a stronger flavor in the spectral profanity; and this, of course, was only a vague impression, for he did not actually hear a single word. He waited awhile in patience, listening and watching. Of course he never saw either of the ghosts, because neither of them could appear to him. At last he got his dander up, and he thought it was about time to interfere, so he rapped on the table, and asked for silence. As soon as he felt that the spooks were listening to him he explained the situation to them. He told them he was in love, and that he could not marry unless they vacated the house. He appealed to them as old friends, and he laid claim to their gratitude. The titular ghost had been sheltered by the Duncan family for hundreds of years, and the domiciliary ghost had had free lodging in the little old house at Salem for nearly two centuries. He implored them to settle their differences, and to get him out of his difficulty at once. He suggested they’d better fight it out then and there, and see who was master. He had brought down with him all needful weapons. And he pulled out his valise, and spread on the table a pair of navy revolvers, a pair of shotguns, a pair of dueling swords, and a couple of bowie-knives. He offered to serve as second for both parties, and to give the word when to begin. He also took out of his valise a pack of cards and a bottle of poison, telling them that if they wished to avoid carnage they might cut the cards to see which one should take the poison. Then he waited anxiously for their reply. For a little space there was silence. Then he became conscious of a tremulous shivering in one corner of the room, and he remembered that he had heard from that direction what sounded like a frightened sigh when he made the first suggestion of the duel. Something told him that this was the domiciliary ghost, and that it was badly scared. Then he was impressed by a certain movement in the opposite corner of the room, as though the titular ghost were drawing himself up with offended dignity. Eliphalet couldn’t exactly see these things, because he never saw the ghosts, but he felt them. After a silence of nearly a minute a voice came from the corner where the family ghost stood – a voice strong and full, but trembling slightly with suppressed passion. And this voice told Eliphalet it was plain enough that he had not long been the head of the Duncans, and that he had never properly considered the characteristics of his race if now he supposed that one of his blood could draw his sword against a woman. Eliphalet said he had never suggested that the Duncan ghost should raise his hand against a woman and all he wanted was that the Duncan ghost should fight the other ghost. And then the voice told Eliphalet that the other ghost was a woman.”

“What?” said Dear Jones, sitting up suddenly. “You don’t mean to tell me that the ghost which haunted the house was a woman?”

“Those were the very words Eliphalet Duncan used,” said Uncle Larry; “but he did not need to wait for the answer. All at once he recalled the traditions about the domiciliary ghost, and he knew that what the titular ghost said was the fact. He had never thought of the sex of a spook, but there was no doubt whatever that the house ghost was a woman. No sooner was this firmly fixed in Eliphalet’s mind than he saw his way out of the difficulty. The ghosts must be married! – for then there would be no more interference, no more quarreling, no more manifestations and materializations, no more dark séances, with their raps and bells and tambourines and banjos. At first the ghosts would not hear of it. The voice in the corner declared that the Duncan wraith had never thought of matrimony. But Eliphalet argued with them, and pleaded and persuaded and coaxed, and dwelt on the advantages of matrimony. He had to confess, of course, that he did not know how to get a clergyman to marry them; but the voice from the corner gravely told him that there need be no difficulty in regard to that, as there was no lack of spiritual chaplains. Then, for the first time, the house ghost spoke, in a low, clear, gentle voice, and with a quaint, old-fashioned New England accent, which contrasted sharply with the broad Scotch speech of the family ghost. She said that Eliphalet Duncan seemed to have forgotten that she was married. But this did not upset Eliphalet at all; he remembered the whole case clearly, and he told her she was not a married ghost, but a widow, since her husband had been hung for murdering her. Then the Duncan ghost drew attention to the great disparity of their ages, saying that he was nearly four hundred and fifty years old, while she was barely two hundred. But Eliphalet had not talked to juries for nothing; he just buckled to, and coaxed those ghosts into matrimony. Afterward he came to the conclusion that they were willing to be coaxed, but at the time he thought he had pretty hard work to convince them of the advantages of the plan.”

“Did he succeed?” asked Baby Van Rensselaer, with a young lady’s interest in matrimony.

“He did,” said Uncle Larry. “He talked the wraith of the Duncans and the specter of the little old house at Salem into a matrimonial engagement. And from the time they were engaged he had no more trouble with them. They were rival ghosts no longer. They were married by their spiritual chaplain the very same day that Eliphalet Duncan met Kitty Sutton in front of the railing of Grace Church. The ghostly bride and bridegroom went away at once on their bridal tour, and Lord and Lady Duncan went down to the little old house at Salem to pass their honeymoon.”

Uncle Larry stopped. His tiny cigar was out again. The tale of the rival ghosts was told. A solemn silence fell on the little party on the deck of the ocean steamer, broken harshly by the hoarse roar of the fog-horn.

DOG OR DEMON?

Theo Gift

1889

The following pages came into my hands shortly after the writer’s death. He was a brother officer of my own, had served under me with distinction in the last Afghan campaign, and was a young man of great spirit and promise. He left the army on the occasion of his marriage with a very beautiful girl, the daughter of a Leicestershire baronet; and I partially lost sight of him for some little time afterwards. I can, however, vouch for the accuracy of the principal facts herein narrated, and of the story generally; the sad fate of the family having made a profound impression, not only in the district in Ireland where the tragedy occurred, but throughout the country.

(signed) William J. Porlock,
Lieut.-Col. – Regt.

The Curragh, Co. Kildare

•   •   •   •   •

At last she is dead!

It came to an end today: all that long agony, those heart-rending cries and moans, the terrified shuddering of that poor wasted body, the fixed and maddening glare, more awful for its very unconsciousness. Only this very day they faded out and died one by one, as death crept at last up the tortured and emaciated limbs, and I stood over my wife’s body, and tried to thank God for both our sakes that it was all over.

And yet it was I who had done it. I who killed her – not meaningly or of intent (I will swear that), not even so that the laws of this earth can punish me; but truly, willfully all the same; of my own brutal, thoughtless selfishness. I put it all down in my diary at the time. I tear out the pages that refer to it now, and insert them here, that when those few friends who still care for me hear of the end they may know how it came about.

–   –   –

June 10th, 1878. Castle Kilmoyle, Kerry – Arrived here today with Kilmoyle after a hard battle to get away from Lily, who couldn’t bear me going, and tried all manner of arguments to keep me from leaving her.

“What have you to do with Lord Kilmoyle’s tenants?” she would keep on asking. “They owe no rent to you. Oh, Harry, do let them alone and stay here. If you go with him you’ll be sure to come in for some of the ill-feeling that already exists against himself; and I shall be so miserably anxious all the time. Pray don’t go.”

I told her, however, that I must; first, because I had promised, and men don’t like going back from their word without any cause; and secondly, because Kilmoyle would be desperately offended with me if I did. The fact is, I hadn’t seen him for three years till we met at that tennis-party at the FitzHerbert’s last week; and when he asked me if I would like to run over for a week’s fishing at his place in Ireland, and help him to enforce the eviction of a tenant who declined either to pay for the house he lived in or leave it, I accepted with effusion. It would be a spree. I had nothing to do, and I really wanted a little change and waking up. As for Lily, her condition naturally makes me rather nervous and fanciful at present, and to have me dancing attendance on her does her more harm than good. I told her so, and asked her, with half a dozen kisses, if she’d like to tie me to her apron-string altogether. She burst out crying, and said she would! There is no use in reasoning with the dear little girl at present. She is better with her sisters.

–   –   –

June 12th – We have begun the campaign by giving the tenant twenty-four hours’ notice to quit or pay. Kilmoyle and I rode down with the bailiff to the cottage, a well-built stone one in the loveliest glen ever dreamt of out of fairyland, to see it served ourselves. The door was shut and barred, and as no answer save a fierce barking from within responded to our knocks, we were beginning to think that the tenant had saved us the trouble of evicting him by decamping of his own accord, when, on crossing round the side of the house where there was a small unglazed window, we came in full view of him, seated as coolly as possible beside a bare hearthstone, with a pipe in his mouth and a big brown dog between his knees. His hair, which was snow-white, hung over his shoulders, and his face was browned to the colour of mahogany by exposure to sun and wind; but he might have been carved out of mahogany too for all the sign of attention that he gave while the bailiff repeated his messages, until Kilmoyle, losing patience, tossed a written copy of the notice into him through the open window, with a threat that, unless he complied with it, he would be smoked out of the place like a rat; after which we rode off, followed by a perfect pandemonium of barks and howls from the dog, a lean and hideous mongrel, who seemed to be only held by force from flying at our throats.

We had a jolly canter over the hills afterwards, selected the bit of river that seemed most suitable for our fishing on the morrow; and wound up the day with a couple of bottles of champagne at dinner, after which Kilmoyle was warmed up into making me an offer which I accepted on the spot – i.e., to let me have the identical cottage we had been visiting rent free, with right of shooting and fishing, for two years, on condition only of my putting and keeping it in order for that time. I wonder what Lily will say to the idea. She hates Ireland almost as much as Kilmoyle’s tenants are supposed to hate him, but really it would cost mighty little to make a most picturesque little place of the cabin in question, and I believe we should both find it highly enjoyable to run down here for a couple of months’ change in the autumn, after a certain and much-looked-forward-to event is well over.

–   –   –

June 19th – The job is done, and the man out; and Kilmoyle and I shook hands laughingly today over our victory as he handed me the key in token of my new tenantship. It has been rather an exciting bit of work, however; for the fellow – an ill-conditioned old villain, who hasn’t paid a stiver of rent for the last twelve months, and only a modicum for the three previous years – wouldn’t quit; set all threats, persuasions, and warnings at defiance, and simply sat within his door with a loaded gun in his hand, and kept it pointed at anyone who tried to approach him. In the end, and to avoid bloodshed, we had to smoke him out. There was nothing else for it, for though we took care that none of the neighbours should come near the house with food, he was evidently prepared to starve where he was rather than budge an inch; and on the third day, Donovan, the bailiff, told Kilmoyle that if he didn’t want it to come to that, he must have in the help either of the “peelers” or a bit of smoke.

Kilmoyle vowed he wouldn’t have the peelers anyhow. He had said he’d put the man out himself, and he’d do it; and the end of it was, we first had the windows shuttered up from outside, a sod put in the chimney, and then the door taken off its hinges while the tenant’s attention was momentarily distracted by the former operations. Next, a good big fire of damp weeds which had been piled up outside was set alight, and after that there was nothing to do but wait.

It didn’t take long. The wind was blowing strongly in the direction of the house, and the dense volume of thick, acrid smoke would have driven me out in about five minutes. As for the tenant, he was probably more hardened on the subject of atmosphere generally, for he managed to stand it for nearly half an hour, and until Kilmoyle and I were almost afraid to keep it up lest he should let himself be smothered out of sheer obstinacy. Just as I was debating, however, whether I wouldn’t brave his gun, and make a rush for him at all costs, nature or vindictiveness got the better of his perversity; a dark figure staggered through the stifling vapour to the door, fired wildly in the direction of Kilmoyle (without hitting him, thank God!), and then dropped, a miserable object, purple with suffocation and black with smoke, upon the threshold, whence some of the keepers dragged him out into the fresh air and poured a glass of whisky down his throat, just too late to prevent his fainting away.

Five minutes later the fire was out, the windows opened, and two stalwart Scotch keepers put in charge of the dwelling, while Kilmoyle and I went home to dinner, and the wretched old man, who had given us so much trouble for nothing, was conveyed in a handcart to the village by some of his neighbours, who had been looking on from a distance, and beguiling the time by hooting and groaning at us.

“Who wants the police in these cases?” said Kilmoyle triumphantly. “To my mind, Glennie, it’s more cowardice to send for those poor fellows to enforce orders we ought to be able to carry out for ourselves, and so get them into odium with the whole neighbourhood. We managed this capitally by ourselves” – and, upon my word, I couldn’t help agreeing heartily with him. Indeed, the whole affair had gone off with only one trifling accident, and that was no one’s fault but the tenant’s.

It seems that for the last two days his abominable dog had been tied up in a miserable little pigsty a few yards from the house, Donovan having threatened him that if the brute flew at or bit anyone it would be shot instantly. Nobody was aware of this, however, and unfortunately, when the bonfire was at its height, a blazing twig fell on the roof of this little shelter and set it alight; the clouds of smoke which were blowing that way hiding what had happened until the wretched animal inside was past rescue; while even its howls attracted no attention, from the simple fact that not only it, but a score of other curs belonging to the neighbours round had been making as much noise as they could from the commencement of the affair.

Now, of course, we hear that the evicted tenant goes about swearing that we deliberately and out of malice burnt his only friend alive, and calling down curses on our heads in consequence. I don’t think we are much affected by them, however. Why didn’t he untie the poor brute himself?…

–   –   –

June 22nd – A letter from Lady FitzHerbert, Lily’s eldest sister, telling me she thinks I had better come back at once! L. not at all well, nervous about me, and made more, instead of less so, by my account of our successful raid. What a fool I was to write it! I thought she would be amused; but the only thing now is to get back as quickly as possible, and I started this morning, Kilmoyle driving me to the station. We were bowling along pretty fast, when, as we turned a bend in the road, the horse swerved suddenly to one side, and the off-wheel of the trap went over something with that sickening sort of jolt, the meaning of which some of us know, by experience, and which made Kilmoyle exclaim:

“Good heavens, we’ve run over something!”

Fortunately nothing to hurt! Nothing but the carcass of a dead dog, whose charred and blackened condition would have sufficiently identified it with the victim of Tuesday’s bonfire, even if we had not now perceived its late owner seated among the heather near the roadside, and occupied in pouring forth a string of wailing sounds, which might have been either prayers or curses for aught we could tell; the while he waved his shaggy white head and brown claw-like hands to and fro in unison. I yelled at him to know why he had left his brute of a dog there to upset travelers, but he paid no attention, and did not seem to hear, and as we were in a hurry to catch the train we could not afford to waste words on him, but drove on.

–   –   –

June 26th – Holly Lodge, West Kensington – This day sees me the proud father of a son and heir, now just five hours old, and, though rather too red for beauty, a very sturdy youngster, with a fine pair of lungs of his own. Lily says she is too happy to live, and as the dread of losing her has been the one thought of the last twenty-four hours, it is a comfort to know from the doctor that this means she has got through it capitally, and is doing as well as can be expected. Thank God for all His mercies!

–   –   –

July 17th – Lily has had a nasty fright this evening, for which I hope she won’t be any the worse. She was lying on a couch out in the veranda for the first time since her convalescence, and I had been reading to her till she fell asleep, when I closed the book, and leaving the bell beside her in case she should want anything, went into my study to write letters. I hadn’t been there for half an hour, however, when I was startled by a cry from Lily’s voice and a sharp ringing of the bell, which made me fling open the study window and dart round to the veranda at the back of the house. It was empty, but in the drawing-room within, Lily was standing upright, trembling with terror and clinging to her maid, while she tried to explain to her that there was someone hidden in the veranda or close by, though so incoherently, owing to the state of agitation she was in, that it was not until I and the manservant had searched the veranda, garden, and outbuildings, and found nothing, that I was even able to understand what had frightened her.

It appeared then that she had suddenly been awakened from sleep by the pressure of a heavy hand on her shoulder, and a hot breath – so close, it seemed as if someone were about to whisper in her ear – upon her cheek. She started up, crying out, “Who’s that? What is it?” but was only answered by a hasty withdrawal of the pressure, and the pit-pat of heavy but shoeless feet retreating through the dusk to the further end of the veranda. In a sudden access of ungovernable terror she screamed out, sprang to her feet, ringing the bell as she did so, and rushed into the drawing-room, where she was fortunately joined by her maid, who had been passing through the hall when the bell rang.

Well, as I said, we searched high and low, and not a trace of any intruder could we find; nay, not even a stray cat or dog, and we have none of our own. The garden isn’t large, and there is neither tree nor shrub in it big enough to conceal a boy. The gate leading into the road was fastened inside, and the wall is too high for easy climbing; while the maid having been in the hall, could certify that no one had passed out through the drawing-room. Finally I came to the conclusion that the whole affair was the outcome of one of those very vivid dreams which sometimes come to us in the semiconscious moment between sleep and waking; and though Lily, of course, wouldn’t hear of such an idea, for a long while, I think even she began to give into it after the doctor had been sent for, and had pronounced it the only rational one, and given her a composing draught before sending her off to bed. At present she is sleeping soundly, but it has been a disturbing evening, and I’m glad it’s over.

–   –   –

September 20th – Have seen Dr C – today, and he agrees with me – that there is nothing for it but change and bracing air. He declares that the fright Lily had in July must have been much more serious than we imagined, and that she has never got over it. She seemed to do so. She was out and about after her confinement as soon as other people; but I remember now her nerves seemed gone from the first. She was always starting, listening, and trembling without any cause, except that she appeared in constant alarm lest something should happen to the baby; and as I took that to be a common weakness with young mothers over their first child, I’m afraid I paid no attention to it. We’ve a very nice nurse for the boy, a young Irishwoman named Bridget McBean (not that she’s ever seen Ireland herself, but her parents came from there, driven by poverty to earn their living elsewhere, and after faithfully sending over every farthing they could screw out of their own necessities to “the ould folks at home”, died in the same poverty here). Bridget is devoted to the child, and as long as he is in her care Lily generally seems easy and peaceful. Otherwise (and some strange instinct seems to tell her when this is the case) she gets nervous at once, and is always restless and uneasy.

Once she awoke with a scream in the middle of the night, declaring, “Something was wrong with the baby. Nurse had gone away and left it; she was sure of it!” To pacify her I threw on my dressing-gown and ran up to the nursery to see; and, true enough, though the boy was all right and sound asleep, Nurse was absent, having gone up to the cook’s room to get something for her toothache. She came back the next moment and I returned to satisfy Lily, but she would scarcely listen to me.

“Is it gone?” she asked. “Was the nursery door open? Oh, if it had been! Thank God, you were in time to drive the thing down. But how – how could it have got into the house?”

“It? What?” I repeated, staring.

“The dog you passed on the stairs. I saw it as it ran past the door – a big black dog!”

“My dear, you’re dreaming. I passed no dog; nothing at all.”

“Oh, Harry, didn’t you see it then? I did, though it went by so quietly. Oh, is it in the house still?”

I seized the candle, went up and down the stairs and searched the whole house thoroughly; but again found nothing. The fancied dog must have been a shadow on the wall only, and I told her so pretty sharply; yet on two subsequent occasions when, for some reason or another, she had the child’s cot put beside her own bed at night, I was awoken by finding her sitting up and shaking with fright, while she assured me that something – some animal – had been trying to get into the room. She could hear its breathing distinctly as it scratched at the door to open it! Dr C is right. Her nerves are clearly all wrong, and a thorough change is the only thing for her. How glad I am that the builder writes me my Kerry shooting-box is finished! We’ll run over there next week…

–   –   –

September 26th, The Cabin, Kilmoyle Castle, Kerry – Certainly this place is Paradise after London, and never did I imagine that by raising the roof so as to transform a garret into a large, bright attic, quite big enough for a nursery, throwing out a couple of bay windows into the two rooms below, and turning an adjoining barn into a kitchen and servants’ room, this cottage could ever have been made into such a jolly little box. As for Lily, she’s delighted with it, and looks ever so much better already. Am getting my guns in order for tomorrow, anticipating a pleasant day’s shooting.

–   –   –

September 27th – Here’s an awful bother! Bridget has given warning and declares she will leave today! It seems she knew her mother came from Kerry, and this morning she has found out that the old man who lived in this very cottage was her own grandfather, and that he died of a broken heart within a week of his eviction, having first called down a solemn curse on Kilmoyle and me, and all belonging to us, in this world and the next. They also say that he managed to scoop out a grave for his dog, and bury it right in front of the cabin door; and now Bridget is alternately tearing her hair for ever having served under her “grandfather’s murtherer”, and weeping over the murderer’s baby the while she packs her box for departure. That wouldn’t matter too much, though it’s awfully unpleasant; for the housekeeper at the Castle will send us someone to mind the boy till we get another nurse; but the disclosure seems to have driven Lily as frantic as Bridget. She entreated me with tears and sobs to give up the cabin, and take her and baby back to England before “the curse could fall upon us”, and wept like one brokenhearted when I told her she must be mad even to suggest such a thing after all the expense I had been to. All the same, it’s a horrid nuisance. She has been crying all day, and if this fancy grows on her the change will do her no good, and I shan’t know what to do. I’m sorry I was cross to her, poor child, but I was rather out of sorts myself, having been kept awake all night by the ceaseless mournful howling of some unseen cur. Besides, I’m bothered about Kilmoyle. He arranged long ago to be here this week; but the bailiff says he has been ill and is travelling, and speaks in a mysterious way as if the illness were D.T. I hope not! I had no idea before that my old chum was even addicted to drink. Anyhow, I won’t be baulked of a few days shooting, at all events, and perhaps by that time Lily will have calmed down.

–   –   –

October 19th, The Castle – It is weeks since I opened this, and I only do so now before closing it forever. I shall never dare to look at it again after writing down what I must today. I did go out for my shooting on the morning after my last entry, and my wife, with the babe in her arms, stood at the cabin door to see me off. The sunlight shone full on them – on the tear-stains still dark under her sweet blue eyes, and the downy head and tiny face of the infant on her breast. But she smiled as I kissed my hand to her. I shall never forget that – the last smile that ever… The woman we had brought with us as servant told me the rest. She said her mistress went on playing with the child in the sunshine till it fell asleep and then laid it in its cot inside, and sat beside it rocking it. By-and-by, however, the maid went in and asked her to come and look at something that was wrong with the new kitchen arrangements, and Lily came out with her. They were in the kitchen about ten minutes, when they heard a wail from the cabin, and both ran out. Lily was first, and cried out:

“Oh, Heaven! Look! What’s that – that great dog, all black and burnt-looking, coming out of the house? Oh, my baby! My baby!”

The maid saw no dog, and stopped for an instant to look round for it, letting her mistress run on. Then she heard one wild shriek from within – such a shriek as she had never heard in all her life before – and followed. She found Lily lying senseless on the floor, and in the cradle the child – stone dead! Its throat had been tom open by some strange savage animal, and on the bedclothes and the fresh white matting covering the floor were the bloodstained imprints of a dog’s feet!

–   –   –

That was three weeks ago. It was evening when I came back; came back to hear my wife’s delirious shrieks piercing the autumn twilight – those shrieks which, from the moment of her being roused from the merciful insensibility which held her for the first hours of her loss, she has never ceased to utter. We have moved her to the Castle since then; but I can hear them now. She has never regained consciousness once. The doctors fear she never will.

–   –   –

And she never did! That last entry in my diary was written two years ago. For two years my young wife, the pretty girl who loved me so dearly, and whom I took from such a happy home, has been a raving lunatic – obliged to be guarded, held down, and confined behind high walls. They have been my own walls, and I have been her keeper. The doctors wanted me to send her to an asylum; said it would be for her good, and on that I consented; but she grew so much worse there, her frantic struggles and shrieks for me to come to her, to “save her from the dog, to keep it off”, were so incessant and heart-rending that they sent for me; and I have never left her again. God only knows what that means; what the horror and agony of those two years, those ceaseless, piteous cries for her child, our child, those agonized entreaties to me “not to go with Kilmoyle; to take her away, away”; those – oh! how have I ever borne it!…

Today it is over. She is dead; and I scarce dare leave her even yet! Never once in all this time have I been tempted to share the horrible delusion which, beginning in a weak state of health, and confirmed by the awful coincidence of our baby’s death, upset my darling’s brain; and yet now – now that it is over, I feel as if the madness which slew her were coming on me also. As she lay dying last night, and I watched by her alone, I seemed to hear a sound of snuffing and scratching at the door outside, as though some animal were there. Once, indeed, I strode to it and threw it open, but there was nothing – nothing but a dark, fleeting shadow seen for one moment, and the sound of soft, unshod feet going pit, pat, pit, pat, upon the stairs as they retreated downwards. It was but fancy; my own heartbeats, as I knew; and yet – yet if the women who turned me out an hour ago should have left her alone – if that sound now—

•   •   •   •   •

Here the writing came to an abrupt end, the pen lying in a blot across it. At the inquest held subsequently the footman deposed that he heard his master fling open the study door, and rush violently upstairs to the death-chamber above. A loud exclamation, and the report of a pistol-shot followed almost immediately; and on running to the rescue he found Captain Glennie standing inside the door, his face livid with horror, and the revolver in his outstretched hand still pointed at a corner of the room on the other side of the bier, the white covering on which had in one place been dragged off and torn. Before the man could speak, however, his master turned round to him, and exclaiming:

“Williams, I have seen it! It was there! On her! Better this than a madhouse! There is no other escape,” put the revolver to his head, and fired. He was dead ere even the servant could catch him.

THE PICTURE ON THE WALL

Katharine Tynan

1895

“Upon my word, Millicent” – with an impatient laugh – “there are times I could swear your heart wasn’t in it; times when, for all your childlike transparency, I could almost believe there was another man somewhere to whom you had given all that ought to be mine.”

“Oh, hush, hush,” answered a soft voice; “don’t say such things, my darling; they are treason against our love.”

“Poor little woman,” said the man repentantly. “I oughtn’t to have said that, for I know it is not true. But you are cold-blooded, little girl – deucedly cold-blooded. Here have I been talking about out honeymoon – our honeymoon that you seem so determined to postpone – and cheating myself by talking of it into a half-belief that it had arrived, and yet, when I look in those milky eyes of yours to see if I have put a spark of fire into them, I find only a wandering look of alarm. Is it any wonder you baffle and distress me?”

The girl lifted up the eyes he had called milky. The unusual epithet was the right one in her case. The wide, innocent-looking eyes were of a curious pale blue, nearer the colour of spilt milk than anything else one could think of. There was a slightly scared expression about them, and the sensitive lines of the mouth, the fineness of the silky hair, the frequent movements of the slender hands, all spoke of a highly-strung, nervous organization.

“I am afraid,” she said, “with me love means fear. You are so strong and confident. While I, since I have known and loved you, I have realized with anguish the thousand and one chances that may snatch us away from each other forever.”

“The more reason for hastening our marriage. If I had your shadowy fears, Millicent – as I have not, for you are healthy, my white rose, despite your too active imagination – I should scarcely breathe till we belonged to each other. After that the deluge.”

The girl trembled violently within his arms, murmuring his name half inaudibly.

“‘Geoffrey, Geoffrey,’” he repeated after her. “But what have I said to frighten you, my sweetheart? Nothing can separate us. It is only your timidity that delays our heaven. Why, Millicent, why? Do you know sometimes I could crush you to bend your will to mine? What a will, little girl, though you look so soft and yielding!”

“I will yield everything once we are married, Geoffrey.”

“Yes, darling,” said the man, suddenly mollified; “but when is that to be?”

“Let us forget about it, Geoffrey, for a little while. Let us be lovers. Marriage so often means the end of love, or, at l east, the end of romance.”

“It shall not with us, you foolish child. I promise you that, if that is all you fear.”

She gave a little tired sigh as of one who gives in out of weariness.

“Poor Geoffrey,” she said, stroking his cheek. “It is hard that you should be worried with my inexplicable whims. Wait a little longer patiently. When you come to Dormer Court next month, I promise you that then I will fix the date – if you still desire it.”

The man laughed.

“If I still desire it, sweetheart! Well, thanks for so much grace. I have had visions of your perpetual unwillingness that should land us somewhere into old age unmarried.”

The girl crept close to him and they were silent – the silence of lovers that means so much satisfaction. After a time, they stood up and sauntered easily down the garden path. It was September, and the late roses were out in bloom, and now and again a bird trilled sweetly, a little song very different from the full rapture of early summer.

“The latest of late warblers sings as one, that trolls at random when the feast is over,” quoted Millicent Gray.

The homely red house came into sight, with its verandah, and the many garden paths diverging from it into winding walk and shrubbery. There was a lady in the verandah, comfortably seated in a rocking-chair, her eyes bent on the novel in her hand, and a pretty tea equipage drawn within reach of her. She looked up as the Lovers approached.

“Dear people,” she said gaily, “I am glad you have thought at last of me and the tea. I have had some difficulty in restraining Jones’s impatience. Though, indeed, if I had taken my tea a quarter of an hour ago, and given you the tannin, I don’t suppose you would be a whit the wiser.”

She tinkled a little bell at her elbow, and in a minute or two the spruce Jones arrived with the teapot. Mrs. Evelyn drew herself up from her languid position and poured out the tea. She was an exceedingly pretty woman, nut-brown and with flashing white teeth, this cousin of Geoffrey Annesley and school-friend of his betrothed.

“Well, Helen,” said Annesley, “we haven’t been idle. Millicent has at least named a time for naming the time for our marriage. Most men mightn’t think it a tremendous concession, but I am grateful for small favours.”

“She’s a shy bird, Geoffrey,” Mrs.

Evelyn answered, getting up to kiss her friend. “So I think you have gained a concession. And Millicent is well worth waiting for. But here comes my great boy!” she cried, as the house door was opened by a smiling nurse, and a delightful brown-faced youngster toddled on to the verandah and ran to his mother.

“Thank you, Nurse,” she said. “Now you go to your tea while I take care of Master John.”

The boy trotted from his mother to Millicent, and stood by her knee, leaning his chubby arms upon her dress. Presently, the two went down on the lawn for a romp – a delightful romp – with a ball and a puppy, which was accompanied by peals of laughter.

“She will make an exquisite mother someday,” said Mrs. Evelyn, translating into words something of the look in the man’s eyes.

He gave her a swift glance which had a shy gratitude in it.

“I am nearly tired waiting, Helen,” he said. “She is in no great hurry to give me my happiness.”

“But she has promised something now?”

“She has promised to fix a date when I go down next month to their place. Have you ever been there, Helen?”

“Never. For all our staunch friendship, Millicent has always had her reserves with me. I know little about her family except that they are poor and proud.”

“The father’s letter to me was stiff enough. I suppose they live in a kind of feudal atmosphere in their Northumbrian woods. I might have resented the tone of it, only I feel so unworthy of my girl. After all, if the old fellow writes as if he were of the blood royal, I, Millicent’s lover, should be the last to complain.”

“You have the ideal temper for a lover.”

“It has been sorely tried, Helen, I assure you. You women wear well through an indefinite engagement. For some incredible reason you make your heyday of it; while with us it is a time that stirs the sleeping savage in us more than any other set of circumstances in which we could be placed.”

“Poor Geoffrey! But here comes your pretty lady-love. And my young savage has pulled down all the gold-silver of her hair. How delightful she looks dishevelled!”

It was indeed a charming face that looked at them as Millicent came towards them, vainly endeavouring to twist up the coil the child had pulled about her shoulders.

September passed goldenly, and the trees were in full pomp when there ca me in wild weather with the October new moon. The storms very soon made havoc of garden and woodland, and every day brought tidings of destruction by land and sea. It was on one of those wild days that Geoffrey Annesley and Millicent Gray left King’s Cross for the long journey northwards. It was murky in the great station, and without in the yellow streets there was a fog of rain, and a sodden plashing under foot where the miserable ranks of pedestrians trudged stolidly.

The lovers were undismayed by the weather. Millicent for once seemed to have pitched care to the winds, and her eyes had a brighter light, her cheeks a rosier flush than usual.

When the train steamed out, and they were rushing through grey sheets of Water, past ghosts of warehouses and ranges of dingy dwellings, dimly seen through the mist, Geoffrey leaned forward and took the two little hands warm from the muff. They were alone in the compartment.

“This might be our honeymoon, little woman,” he said, fondling the slim fingers.

“In this weather?” she asked.

“Yes; why not? I should have no eyes for the weather.”

“Nor I,” she said, softly audacious.

“No, sweet?” he cried delightedly. “So you wish for the dreaded time, after all?”

“Wish for it! Ah, that is a poor way of putting it.”

He had not often seen her in this mood, and was enchanted.

“You are making up to me now for being so cold sometimes. You have starved me, Millicent. You women don’t know what it is never to meet with an answering ardour.”

“I have never felt cold even when I seemed so. I have been afraid to show you all I felt. Believe this, my dear. But today I am done with fear. No matter what comes you must believe in the fullness of my love for you.”

The rain lasted all day till late evening, when the lights of a little wayside station shone blurred through the mist.

They drove to Dormer Court through a heavily wooded country. The place looked ancient, and did, indeed, date back some hundreds of years. The dining-hall was panelled with fine old oak, and the fireplaces on each side massively carved. A gallery ran round it, from which corridors diverged each side to the sleeping apartments. There was a good deal of armour in shadowy corners, and on the high dresser there was a show of heavy silver plate, the sale of which might have turned the poverty of the Gray family to affluence. But Sir Roland Gray would as soon have thought of selling one of his daughters, perhaps sooner, as of reducing the heritage that had come to him by turning the slightest portion of it into hard cash.

He was a frosty old gentleman, with a haughty air which Annesley did not find reassuring.

Dormer Court seemed to him a rather chilly place, and, glancing at Millicent as they entered, he thought she looked suddenly nervous and depressed. Those great fireplaces would have needed roaring cressets of wood in them to make the place human, but they showed only polished brass dogs, evidently quite innocent of use – for some time, at least.

Annesley noticed these things as he passed through the hall on his way to the drawing-room, an apartment as stately as the dining-hall, and more chilly. There, Millicent’s sister and his hostess awaited them. She was a rather unhappy-looking woman, past her first youth and delicate-looking.

His room, to which he followed a manservant carrying his portmanteau, was gloomy. The bed had huge testers hung with heavy curtains; the shuttered windows were also heavily draped; the dark mahogany furniture was of the most massive build. But as soon as the servant had left the room, and Annesley had an opportunity to notice these things, he observed a portrait above the fireplace which seemed to dominate the room, and which drew his own gaze to it with a curious sense of fascination.

The portrait was that of a handsome man, dressed according to the period of the second Charles. His skin had the peculiarly warm ruddy tinge we associate with Vandyck’s portraits, and out of this setting his eyes looked startlingly blue. His love-locks straying over a steel corselet were golden brown, and altogether he looked a most gallant cavalier. But the painting of the eyes was the painter’s great achievement. As Annesley stood looking at the picture with a candle lighted the better to see it, he could have sworn the eyes looked back at him like those o f a living man. He turned to the dressing-table with a half-uneasy laugh at his own delusion. He had laughed out unconsciously, and as he did so he thought the laugh was faintly echoed within the room. He looked around him sharply. No, the room looked harmless enough, and it was not likely to be anything but imagination. Yet the eyes of the portrait seemed to gaze towards him, and he fancied now that they had a saturnine gleam in them.

“Nerves, my friend,” he muttered to himself. “This is a new development. You’ll be looking under the bed and prodding the window-curtains for burglars next, like any hysterical woman.”

But he could not shake off the sense of being watched. He made a resolution not to yield to his folly by looking at the portrait, but as he went to and fro he felt assured that the eyes were following him.

“Confound you, sir,” he said at last, half jocosely, “I wish you’d keep your eyes out of my back.”

He could have sworn again that he heard the faint, malicious laugh.

“Well,” he said as he finished his toilet, “if Dormer Court possesses such a thing as a haunted room, I’m in it. It would make a nice little case for the Psychical Society.”

At dinner, the conversation somewhat flagged. Annesley did his best valiantly to keep it going, but reflected within himself that certainly Dormer Court was not cheerful. Millicent had become very quiet since she entered her home, and Sir Roland, though he treated his guest with very punctilious courtesy, had apparently little to say; the elder Miss Gray scarcely spoke, and once when Annesley addressed her directly started violently.

“Poor little Millicent!” said the lover to himself. “No wonder she is a little strange sometimes. She will be different in a happier atmosphere.”

Presently, in the search for a subject of conversation, he remembered the portrait.

“That is a very fine portrait over the fireplace in my bedroom. A genuine Vandyck, is it not, Sir Roland?”

The baronet bent his frosty brows upon him.

“It is not a Vandyck,” he said coldly.

Millicent had turned quite pale when the picture was mentioned. She now leaned forward, and said in a shocked voice: “You have not put him in that room, father?”

“Why not?” said the old man sharply. “Guests of honour have slept in that room many a time.”

The girl sank back in her seat very pale. Annesley had no opportunity later of asking the meaning of this odd little scene. He guessed, indeed, that the room had some ill name, but was not perturbed. The man in the portrait was a decent looking fellow, he thought, and if he chose to walk, why, one might have worse company. He was not at all likely to be afraid of a ghost; indeed, to see one was an experience he rather coveted, for he had had most other adventures that can fall to a civilized man.

The evening was no improvement on the dinner. Millicent sat silent and scared-looking. Her sister played melancholy music at the grand piano, and Sir Roland, having detained the young man inordinately long in the dining-room, discussing some dry aspect of politics which happened to interest him, continued the discussion till ten o’clock, at which hour everyone was expected to retire. By ten o’clock, Annesley was indeed in rather a bad temper. He didn’t like his future father-in-law, with his bushy eyebrows, his pursed, opinionated mouth, and his light eyes, with their suggestion of evil temper.

“Once I carry off my girl,” he said to himself, “’tis precious little Dormer Court will see of us.”

He had nothing but a handshake of her at parting for the night. Into that, however, he managed to infuse as much loving reassurance as he could under her father’s discouraging glance. When he went up to his room, he again examined the portrait. The life-likeness of the eyes was so pronounced that he reached up to feel the painted canvas, and so make sure. He was reminded of a story he had once read, in which someone had been spied upon by living eyes gazing through the holes where the painted eyes of the portrait had been.

“Only harmless canvas!” he said to himself; “but the painter of those eyes, if he wasn’t Vandyck, must have had an uncanny sort of genius of his own.”

He determined to look no more at the portrait, but blew out his candle and jumped into bed. He was soon sleeping soundly, in spite of the rain that beat against the windows, and the blast that howled in the chimney.

He could not have told how long he had slept when he was awakened by a cold breath on his forehead. He opened his eyes in thick darkness, and thrust out his hands; they met only the air, though that struck strangely chill. Then from the dark into which he gazed a face shaped itself: an evil face, swollen, distorted, malignant; the eyes, with a red gleam in them, looked furiously into his. Annesley was a brave man, but the hair of his head stood up, and the sweat came in drops on his forehead. He pushed both hands against the face, and felt nothing, but it seemed to recede a little into the darkness. Then, still watching it, he felt for the box of matches which had stood beside his bed. He scarcely knew how he was able to see the face, because he felt the darkness of the room to be intense; the light seemed to come in some strange way from the apparition itself, and to illumine only that.

He struck a match sharply, and the flame sputtered a little, and then stood up steadily. The face was gone now. He jumped out of bed and lit the candles on his dressing-table. Then he peered about him into the dark corners. There was nothing. He opened the great wardrobe, looked behind curtains, lifted the valance of the bed. There was nothing anywhere. He sat down on the side of his bed and wiped his face.

“By Jove!” he said; “that was a nasty experience!”

He lifted his eyes to the portrait. The eyes were still watching him, and he had the delusion that their expression had changed. They looked like the eyes of an enemy. The eyes of the apparition – he shuddered recalling them – had the expression of a tiger before he springs.

Annesley felt with a sick horror that another minute of darkness, and the creature would have grappled with him.

He was struck now by a certain likeness between the eyes of the portrait and those tiger-eyes.

And the face – yes, there had been a shadowy likeness. If the handsome face there on the wall had been battered, bruised, beaten out of human likeness, it might be something like that face in the dark.

Annesley looked at his watch: one o’clock. The room was very cold, and smelt damp. He was determined not to lie down again in the canopied bed, where he had seemed so horribly at the mercy of the evil thing. He looked around for materials to make a fire. There were none. A fire would have been companion able in his vigil. He looked at his two candles. They were tall and solid, and would last till daylight. He wished he had had a book to keep him company, for he was determined not to sleep again; but the most diligent search in the room brought him nothing, and he remembered, with an impatient exclamation, that he had left his big parcel of newspapers in the hall as he entered.

He dressed himself fully, and then threw himself in an armchair to get through the hours as best he could. He had deliberately turned the chair so that he should not see the portrait. How he wished for some companionship in his dreary vigil; if only he had Jim, his bulldog, whom he had left forlorn behind him in London! He gazed at the candles steadily while the slow minutes passed. When he thought half an hour had gone, he looked at his watch. It was only ten minutes past one. If he had been more at home in the house he would have left that unpleasant room and betaken himself anywhere, out in the storm even. But he had the English dislike of doing anything out of the ordinary, and when he contemplated an escape from the house he imagined a midnight alarm, and all the consequent rum pus.

He must have dozed in his chair, for he awoke in a cold sweat suddenly, with that clammy breath lifting the hair on his forehead, and an ice-cold hand on his throat. When he sprang into wakefulness, the hand slowly relaxed its grasp. There was nothing to be seen except that the candles were guttering in the wind from the chimney.

He flung back the window shutters and opened the windows. He thought now of the room as of a grave. The fresh air rushing in seemed to steady him. His heart was beating fast, and he could not rid himself of a conviction that those fingers had meant to strangle him. The rest of the night and during the grey dawn he walked up and down his room.

The morning brought relief, and also anger. He was in no state of mind to unravel the things that had happened to him, but he was furious at the house and the people. That old devil, as he mentally called Sir Roland, must have known what guests that infernal room of his harboured, and yet had put him there to sleep. And Millicent – she had let him sleep there.

His anger became cold, but none the less steady, at the thought of her.

But the bitter things, he could have said in his first brief anger froze on his lips when they met.

He was early in the breakfast-room, and had packed his portmanteau for his departure before coming downstairs. But she was waiting for him. A great rush of pity flowed into his heart as he saw her. She looked so pale, so forlorn, so utterly hopeless and wretched. And he had been thinking of her as sleeping well!

He went towards her with a half-articulate expression of tenderness.

“No,” she said, waving him back, “not now. Come this way, we shall be disturbed here, and I must speak to you.”

She led the way to a little room that opened off the hall.

“This is my own room, where no one comes unless I ask them,” she said. “We are safe here. Now tell me, my dear, how did the night go?” Her voice was full of tenderness, but it was a tenderness that repelled rather than attracted. He felt that she wanted no lover-like demonstrations, and that the few feet of space between them might have been as wide as the sea, so effectually did she seem to set him apart.

“You know,” he said awkwardly by way of answer, “I did not sleep well.”

“You saw it?” she asked, her eyes dilating.

“I certainly fancied I saw something very unpleasant.”

“Don’t try to describe it,” she said. “Go back to the room. Lift the picture over the fireplace and look at the reverse side. Then come back here and tell me if that is what you saw.”

He obeyed dumbly. The portrait was a heavy one to lift, but his arms were strong, and he swung it around on its cord. When it turned into the light, he almost cried out. On the back of the portrait was painted the face he had seen in the night.

He hurried from the room with a shudder. He felt that he never wanted to enter it again, and his repugnance to the house was so strong that he could hardly breathe within its four walls. He returned to where he had left her.

“Well?” she said.

“I don’t know what devilry is at the root of it, but the face on the back of the portrait is the face that came to me in the night.”

For a minute, she hid her eyes. Then she spoke in a voice which pain had made apathetic.

“It is the end of our love.”

He would have uttered a fierce protest, but she silenced him with a commanding gesture.

“It is the end, and nothing you can ever say or do will make it otherwise. The man on the wall, whose evil spirit still haunts that room, was an ancestor – Sir Anthony Gray. He was a bad man, and after a wicked life he died raving mad. Whether the second portrait of him in his madness was painted cynically or seriously none of us know. Its existence is only known to ourselves.

“Unhappily, Sir Anthony left us his madness. Now and then it skips a generation; my father escaped, but our only brother is a dangerous madman, and at any time the curse may seize upon Alison or me. I was wicked when I thought I could marry you and keep this from you, but not wicked enough to do it with a light heart. You will someday be grateful for the night of terror that saved you from a worse thing. I shall never marry now, and I only hope that you will be able to forgive me, because I loved you and was sorely tempted.”

“I will not give you up,” said the man with an oath.

“You will,” she said sadly. “You will be sad for a little while, but presently you will realize what an escape you have had, and be glad.”

“Millicent, Millicent, are you in earnest? Am I really to go away out of your life, and you out of mine?”

There was despair in his cry, but there was also acquiescence, and she caught the sound. She looked at his imploring face with a maternal pity.

“It must be, my dear,” she said.

“I will wait for you,” he cried. “I shall never marry, and I shall always be ready to come to you. Oh, Millicent, Millicent, is there no help?”

But even as he said it, he knew there was none. The reeling shock of the thing, corning upon him after his night of terror, had scarcely left him the power of thinking clearly, but somewhere at the back of his mind he was conscious that what she had told him was irrevocable. However, his wounded passion cried out for her, he felt that her most unhappy doom had set her as far beyond man’s love as though she were already dead.

“Goodbye,” she said mournfully; but she did not offer to kiss him or to touch his hand. “The carriage will be round for you presently, and you will wait here till it comes. I shall explain to my father, for you will not care to see him.”

She left him standing there, dumb, and glided like a ghost from the room. A few minutes later the servant brought him his coffee on a tray, with a message that the carriage was ready. He drank the coffee half-consciously, thinking to himself that she had not been so lost in her bitter trouble as to forget his material wants. Millicent had always been kind; he remembered that her kindness was one of the qualities he had loved in her.

A minute later, the carriage had swept him into the depths of the forest. Millicent Gray, unseen herself, watched it depart, and noticed that his head was bowed and his shoulders drooped. It was her last sight of him. As the forest took him, she turned away to accept the burden of her lonely life, and the terrible possibilities it held.

A PAIR OF HANDS

Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch

1898

It happened when I lived down in Cornwall. Tresillack was the name of the house, which stood quite alone at the head of a coombe, within sound of the sea but without sight of it; for though the coombe led down to a wide open beach, it wound and twisted on its way, and its overlapping sides closed the view from the house, which was advertised as “secluded”. I was very poor in those days, but I was young enough to be romantic and wise enough to like independence, and the word “secluded” took my fancy.

The misfortune was that it had taken the fancy of several previous tenants. You know, I dare say, the kind of person who rents a secluded house in the country? “Shady” is the word, is it not? Well, the previous tenants of Tresillack had been shady with a vengeance.

I knew nothing of this when I first made application to the landlord, who lived in a farm at the foot of the coombe, on a cliff overlooking the beach.

To him I presented myself fearlessly as a spinster of decent family and small but assured income, intending a rural life of seemliness and economy. He met my advances politely, but with an air of suspicion. I began by disliking him for it; afterward I set it down as an unpleasant feature in the local character. I was doubly mistaken. Farmer Hosking was slow-witted, but as honest a man as ever stood Up against hard times; and a more open and hospitable race than the people on that coast I never wish to meet. It was the caution of a child who had burnt his fingers, not once but many times. Had I known what I afterward learned of Farmer Hosking’s tribulations as landlord of a “secluded country residence.” I should have faltered as I undertook to prove the bright exception in a long line of painful experiences. He had bought the Tresillack estate twenty years before because the land adjoined his own, but the house was a nuisance and had been so from the beginning.

“Well, miss,” he said, “you’re welcome to look over it; a pretty enough place, inside and out. There’s no trouble about keys, because I’ve put in a housekeeper, a widow-woman, and she’ll show you ’round. With your leave I’ll step up the coombe so far with you and put you in your way.” As I thanked him, he paused and rubbed his chin. “There’s one thing I must tell you, though. Whoever takes the house must take Mrs. Carkeek along with it.”

“Mrs. Carkeek?” I echoed dolefully. “Is that the housekeeper?”

“Yes. I’m sorry, miss,” he added, my face telling him no doubt what sort of woman I expected Mrs. Carkeek to be; “but I had to make it a rule after – after some things had happened. And I dare say you won’t find her so bad. Mary Carkeek’s a sensible, comfortable woman, and knows the place. She was in service there to Squire Kendall when he sold up and went: her first place it was.”

“I may as well see the house, anyhow,” said I dejectedly. So we started to walk up the coombe. The path, which ran beside a little chattering stream, was narrow for the most part, and Farmer Hosking, with an apology, strode on ahead to beat aside the brambles. But whenever its width allowed us to walk side by side, I caught him from time to time stealing a shy, inquisitive glance under his rough eyebrows. It was clear that he could not sum me up to his satisfaction.

I don’t know what foolish fancy prompted it, but about halfway up the coombe, I stopped short and asked:

“There are no ghosts, I suppose?”

It struck me, a moment after I had uttered it, as a supremely silly question; but he took it quite seriously. “No: I never heard tell of any ghosts.” He laid a queer sort of stress on the word. “There’s always been trouble with servants, and maids’ tongues will be runnin’. But Mary Carkeek lives up there alone, and she seems comfortable enough.”

We walked on. By and by, he pointed with his stick. “It don’t look like a place for ghosts, now, do it?”

Certainly it did not. Above an untrimmed orchard rose a terrace of turf scattered with thorn bushes, and above this a terrace of stone, upon which stood the prettiest cottage I had ever seen. It was long and low and thatched; a deep veranda ran from end to end. Clematis, banksia roses, and honeysuckle climbed the posts of this veranda and clustered along its roof, beneath the lattices of the bedroom windows. The house was small enough to be called a cottage, and rare enough in features and in situation to confer distinction on any tenant. It suggested what in those days we should have called “elegant” living. And I could have clapped my hands for joy.

My spirits mounted still higher when Mrs. Carkeek opened the door. A healthy, middle-aged woman with a thoughtful, but contented, face, and a smile, she was comfortable; and while we walked through the rooms together (for Mr. Hosking waited outside), I “took to” Mrs. Carkeek. Her speech was direct and practical; the rooms, in spite of their faded furniture, were bright and exquisitely clean; and somehow the very atmosphere of the house gave me a sense of feeling at home and cared for; yes, of being loved. Don’t laugh, my dears; for when I’ve done you may not think this fancy altogether foolish.

I stepped out onto the veranda, and Farmer Hosking pocketed the pruning-knife which he had been using on a bush of jasmine.

“This is better than anything I had dreamed of,” said I.

“Well, miss, that’s not a wise way of beginning a bargain, if you’ll excuse me.”

He took no advantage, however, and we struck the bargain as we returned down the coombe to his farm. I had meant to engage a maid of my own, but now it occurred to me that I might do very well with Mrs. Carkeek. Within the week, I had moved into my new home.

I can hardly describe to you the happiness of my first month at Tresillack, because if I take the reasons which I had for being happy, one by one, there remains over something which I cannot account for. I was young, healthy; I felt myself independent and adventurous; the season was high summer, the weather glorious, the garden in all the pomp of June, yet sufficiently unkempt to keep me busy, give me a sharp appetite for meals, and send me to bed in that drowsy stupor which comes of the odors of earth. I spent the most of my time out-of-doors, winding up the days work with a walk down the cool valley, along the beach, and back.

I soon found that all housework could be safely left to Mrs. Carkeek. She did not talk much; indeed, her only fault (a rare one in housekeepers) was that she talked too little, and even when I addressed her seemed at times unable to give me her attention. It was as though her mind strayed off to some small job she had forgotten, and her eyes wore a listening look, as though she waited for the neglected task to speak and remind her. But, as a matter of fact, she forgot nothing. Indeed, my dears, I was never so well attended to in my life.

Well, that is what I’m coming to. That is just it. The woman not only had the rooms swept and dusted and my meals prepared to the moment.

In a hundred odd little ways, this orderliness, these preparations, seemed to read my desires. Did I wish the roses renewed in a bowl upon the dining-table, sure enough at the next meal they would be replaced by fresh ones. And how on earth had she guessed the very roses, the very shapes and colors I had lightly wished for? Every day, and from morning to night, I happened on others, each slight, but all bearing witness to a ministering intelligence as subtle as it was untiring.

I am a light sleeper, with an uncomfortable knack of waking with the sun and roaming early. No matter how early I rose at Tresillack, Mrs. Carkeek seemed to have preceded me. Finally I had to conclude that she arose and dusted and tidied as soon as she judged me safely a-bed. For once, finding the living room (where I had been sitting late) “redded up” at four in the morning, and no trace of a plate of raspberries which I had carried thither after dinner and left overnight, I determined to test her and walked through to the kitchen, calling her by name.

I found the kitchen as clean as a pin, and the fire laid, but no trace of Mrs. Carkeek. I walked upstairs and knocked at her door. At the second knock, a sleepy voice cried out, and presently the good woman stood before me in her nightgown, looking (I thought) very badly scared.

“No,” I said, “it’s not a burglar. But I’ve found out what I wanted, that you do your morning’s work overnight. And now go back to your bed like a good soul, while I take a run down to the beach.”

She stood blinking in the dawn. Her face was still white. “Oh, miss,” she gasped, “I was so sure you must have seen something!” “And so I have,” I answered, “but it was neither burglars nor ghosts.”

“Thank God!” I heard her say as she turned her back to me in her gray bedroom – which faced the north. And I took this for a carelessly pious expression and ran downstairs thinking no more of it.

A few days later, I began to understand.

The plan of Tresillack house (I must explain) was simplicity itself. To the left of the hall as you entered was the dining room; to the right the living room . The foot of the stairs faced the front door, and beside it, passing a glazed inner door, you found two others right and left, the left opening on the kitchen, the right on a passage which ran under the stairs to a neat pantry with the usual shelves and linen chest, and under the window a porcelain basin and brass faucet. On the first morning of my tenancy, I had visited this pantry and turned the faucet, but no water ran. I supposed this to be accidental. Mrs. Carkeek had to wash up, and no doubt Mrs. Carkeek would complain of any failure in the water supply.

But the day after, I had picked a basketful of roses and carried them into the pantry as a handy place to arrange them. I chose a china bowl and went to fill it at the faucet. Again the water would not run.

I called Mrs. Carkeek. “What is wrong with this faucet?” I asked. “The rest of the house is well enough supplied.”

“I don’t know, miss. I never use it.”

“But there must be a reason; and you must find it a great nuisance washing the plates and glasses in the kitchen. Come around to the back with me, and we’ll have a look at the cisterns.”

“The cistems’ll be all right, miss. I assure you I don’t find it a trouble.”

But I was not to be put off. The back of the house stood but ten feet from a wall which was really but a stone face built against the cliff. Above the cliff rose the vegetable garden, and from its lower path, we looked over the wall’s parapet upon the cisterns. There were two – a very large one, supplying the kitchen and the bathroom above the kitchen; and a small one, fed by the other, obviously leading by a pipe which I could trace, to the pantry. Now the big cistern stood almost full, and yet the small one, though on a lower level, was empty.

“It’s as plain as daylight,” said I. “The pipe between the two is choked.” And I clambered onto the parapet.

“I wouldn’t, miss. The pantry faucet is only cold water, and no use to me. From the kitchen boiler I get it hot, you see.”

“But I want the pantry water for my flowers.” I bent over and groped. “I thought as much!” said I, as I wrenched out a thick plug of cork, and immediately the water began to flow. I turned triumphantly on Mrs. Carkeek, who had grown suddenly red in the face. Her eyes were fixed on the cork in my hand. To keep it more firmly wedged in its place, somebody had wrapped it round with a rag of calico print; and discolored though the rag was, I seemed to recall the pattern (a lilac sprig). Then, as our eyes met, it occurred to me that only two mornings before Mrs. Carkeek had worn a print dress of that same sprigged pattern.

I had the presence of mind to hide this very small discovery, and presently Mrs. Carkeek regained her composure. But I felt disappointed in her. She had deliberately acted a fib before me; and why? Merely because she preferred the kitchen to the pantry faucet. It was childish. “But servants are all the same,” I told myself. “I must take Mrs. Carkeek as she is; and, after all, she is a treasure.”

On the second night after this, I was lying in bed and reading myself sleepy over a novel, when a small sound disturbed me. I listened. The sound was clearly that of water trickling. A shower (I told myself) had filled the water-pipes which drained the roof. Somehow I could not locate the sound. I rose and drew up the shade.

To my astonishment, no rain was falling; no rain had fallen. There was no wind, no cloud; only a still moon high over the eastern slope of the coombe, the distant splash of waves, and the fragrance of many roses. I went back to bed and listened again. Yes, the trickling sound continued, quite distinct in the silence of the house, not to be confused for a moment with the dull murmur of the beach. After a while, it began to grate on my nerves. I caught up my candle, flung my bathrobe about me, and stole softly downstairs.

Then it was simple. I traced the sound to the pantry. “Mrs. Carkeek has left the faucet running,” said I: and, sure I found it so – a thin trickle steadily running to waste in the porcelain basin. I turned off the knob, went contentedly back to my bed, and slept—

– for some hours. I opened my eyes in darkness and at once knew what had awakened me. The faucet was running again. Now, it had shut easily in my hand, but not so easily that 1 could believe it had slipped open again of its own accord. “This is Mrs. Carkeek’s doing,” said I; and I am afraid 1 added “Drat Mrs. Carkeek!”

Well, there was no help for it: so I struck a match, looked at my watch, saw that the hour was just three o’clock, and I descended the stairs again. At the pantry door I paused. I was not afraid – not one little bit. In fact, the notion that anything might be wrong had never crossed my mind. But I remember thinking, with my hand on the door, that if Mrs. Carkeek were in the pantry, I might happen to give her a severe fright.

I pushed the door open briskly. Mrs. Carkeek was not there. But something was there, by the porcelain basin. My heart seemed to stand still – so still! And in the stillness I remember setting down the brass candlestick on a tall chest of drawers beside me.

Over the porcelain basin and beneath the water trickling from the faucet, I saw two hands.

That was all – two small hands, a child’s hands. I cannot tell how they ended.

No; they were not cut off. I saw them quite distinctly; just a pair of small hands and the wrists, and after that – nothing. They were moving briskly – washing themselves clean. I saw the water trickle and splash over them – not through them – but just as it would on real hands. They were the hands of a little girl, too. Oh, yes, I was sure of that at once. Boys and girls wash their hands differently. I can’t just tell you what the difference is, but if s unmistakable.

I saw all this before my candle slipped and fell with a crash. I had set it down without looking – for my eyes were fixed on the basin – and had balanced it on the edge of the chest of drawers. After the crash, in the darkness there, with the water running, I suffered some bad moments.

Oddly enough, the thought uppermost with me was that I must shut off that faucet before escaping. I had to. And after a while, I picked up all my courage, and with a little sob thrust out my hand and did it. Then I fled.

The dawn was close upon me: and as soon as the sky reddened, I took my bath, dressed, and went downstairs. And there at the pantry door I found Mrs. Carkeek, also dressed, with my candlestick in her hand.

“Ah,” said I, “you picked it up.”

Our eyes met. Clearly Mrs. Carkeek wished me to begin, and I determined at once to have it out with her.

“And you knew all about it. That’s what accounts for your plugging up the cistern.”

“You saw…?” she began.

“Yes, yes. And you must tell me all about it – never mind how bad. Is – is it – murder?”

“Law bless you, miss, whatever put such horrors in your head?”

“She was washing her hands.”

“Ah, so she does, poor dear! But – murder! And dear little Miss Margaret, that wouldn’t hurt a fly!”

“Miss Margaret?”

“Eh, she died at seven. Squire Kendall’s only daughter; and that’s over twenty years ago. I was her nurse, miss, and I know – diphtheria it was; she took it down in the village.”

“But how do you know it is Margaret?”

“Those hands – why, how could I mistake, that used to be her nurse?”

“But why does she wash them?”

“Well, miss, being always a dainty child – and the housework, you see—”

I took a long breath. “Do you mean to tell me that all this cleaning and dusting—” I broke off. “Is it she who has been taking this care of me?”

Mrs. Carkeek met my look steadily.

“Who else, miss?”

“Poor little soul!”

“Well, now” – Mrs. Carkeek rubbed my candlestick with the edge of her apron – “I’m so glad you take it like this. For there isn’t really nothing to be afraid of – is there?” She eyed me wistfully. “It’s my belief she loves you, miss. But only to think what a time she must have had with the others!”

“Were they bad?”

“They was awful. Didn’t Farmer Hosking tell you? They carried on fearful – one after another, and each one worse than the last.”

“What was the matter with them? Drink?”

“Drink, miss, with some of ”em. There was the Major – he used to go mad with it and run about the coombe in his nightshirt. Oh, scandalous! And his wife drank, too – that is, if she ever was his wife. Just think of that tender child washing up after their nasty doings!

“But that wasn’t the worst, miss – not by a long way. There was a pair here with two children, a boy and gel, the eldest scarce six. Poor mites!

“They beat those children, miss – your blood would boil! And starved, and tortured ”em, it’s my belief. You could hear their screams, I’ve been told, away back in the highroad, and that’s the best part of half a mile.

“Sometimes they was locked up without food for days together. But it’s my belief that little Miss Margaret managed to feed them somehow. Oh, I can see her creeping to the door and comforting!”

“But perhaps she never showed herself when these awful people were here, but took to flight until they left.”

“You didn’t never know her, miss. How brave she was! She’d have stood up to lions. She’ve been here all the while: and only to think what her innocent eyes and ears must have took in! There was another couple—” Mrs Carkeek sunk her voice.

“Oh, hush!” said I, “if I’m to have any peace of mind in this house!”

“But you won’t go, miss? She loves you, I know she do. And think what you might be leaving her to – what sort of tenant might come next. For she can’t go. She’ve been here ever since her father sold the place. He died soon after. You mustn’t go!”

Now I had resolved to go, but all of a sudden I felt how mean this resolution was.

“After all,” said I, “there’s nothing to be afraid of.”

“That’s it, miss; nothing at all. I don’t even believe if s so very uncommon. Why, I’ve heard my mother tell of farmhouses where the rooms were swept every night as regular as clockwork, and the floors sanded, and the pots and pans scoured, and all while the maids slept. They put it down to the piskies; but we know better, miss, and now we’ve got the secret between us we can lie easy in our beds, and if we hear anything, say, $God bless the child!% and go to sleep.”

I spent three years at Tresillack, and all that while Mrs. Carkeek lived with me and shared the secret. Few women, I dare to say, were ever so completely wrapped around with love as we were during those three years.

It ran through my waking life like a song: it smoothed my pillow, touched and made my table comely, in summer lifted the heads of the flowers as I passed, and in winter watched the fire with me and kept it bright.

“Why did I ever leave Tresillack?” Because one day, at the end of five years. Farmer Hosking brought me word that he had sold the house. There was no avoiding it, at any rate; the purchaser being a Colonel Kendall, a brother of the old Squire.

“A married man?” I asked.

“Yes, miss; with a family of eight. As pretty children as ever you see, and the mother a good lady. It’s the old home to Colonel Kendall.”

“I see. And that is why you feel bound to sell.”

“It’s a good price, too, that he offers. You mustn’t think but I’m sorry enough—”

“To turn me out? I thank you, Mr. Hosking; but you are doing the right thing. She – Margaret – will be happy,” I said; “with her cousins, you know.”

“Oh, yes, miss, she will be happy, sure enough,” Mrs. Carkeek agreed.

So when the time came I packed up my boxes and tried to be cheerful. But on the last morning, when they stood in the hall, I sent Mrs. Carkeek upstairs upon some poor excuse and stepped alone into the pantry.

“Margaret!” I whispered.

There was no answer at all. I had scarcely dared to hope for one. Yet I tried again, and, shutting my eyes this time, stretched out both hands and whispered:

“Margaret!”

And I will swear to my dying day that two little hands stole and rested – for a moment only – in mine.

WAS IT A DREAM?

Guy De Maupassant

1903

I had loved her madly!

Yesterday I returned to Paris, and when I saw my room again – our room, our bed, our furniture, everything that remains of the life of a human being after death – I was seized by such a violent attack of fresh grief that I felt like opening the window and throwing myself out into the street. I could not remain between these walls which had sheltered her, which retained a thousand atoms of her, of her skin and of her breath. I took up my hat to make my escape, and just as I reached the door I passed the large mirror in the hall, which she had put there so that she might look at herself every day from head to foot as she went out, from her little boots to her bonnet.

I stopped short in front of that looking glass in which she had so often been reflected – so often, so often, that it must have retained her reflection. I was standing there trembling, with my eyes fixed on the glass – on that flat, profound, empty glass – which had contained her entirely and had possessed her as much as I. I felt as if I loved that glass. I touched it; it was cold. Sorrowful mirror, burning mirror, horrible mirror, to make men suffer such torments! Happy is the man whose heart forgets everything that it has contained.

I went out without knowing it toward the cemetery. I found her simple grave, a white marble cross, with these few words:

She loved, was loved, and died.

She is there below. I sobbed with my forehead on the ground, and I stopped there for a long time. Then I saw it was getting dark, and a strange, mad wish, the wish of a despairing lover, seized me. I wished to pass the night in weeping on her grave. But I should be seen and driven out. How was I to manage? I was cunning and got up and began to roam that city of the dead. I walked and walked. How small this city is in comparison with the city in which we live. And yet how much more numerous the dead are than the living. We need high houses, wide streets, and much room. And for all the generations of the dead, there is scarcely anything. The earth takes them back. Adieu!

At the end of the cemetery, I was in its oldest part, where the crosses themselves are decayed. It is full of untended roses, of strong and dark cypress trees – a sad and beautiful garden. I was perfectly alone. So I crouched under a green tree and hid myself amid the thick and somber branches.

When it was quite dark, I left my refuge and began to walk softly. I wandered about for a long time, but could not find her tomb again. I went on with extended arms, knocking against the tombs with my hands, my feet, my knees, my chest, even with my head, without being able to find her. I groped about like a blind man; I felt the stones, the crosses, the iron railings, and the wreaths of faded flowers. I read the names with my fingers. I could not find her again!

There was no moon. What a night! I was horribly frightened in those narrow paths between two rows of graves. I sat down on one of them, for I could not walk any longer; my knees were so weak. I could hear my heart beat! And I heard something else as well. What? A confused, nameless noise. Was the noise in my head, in the impenetrable night, or beneath the mysterious earth? I looked all around me: I was paralyzed with terror, cold with fright, ready to shout out, ready to die.

Suddenly it seemed to me that the slab of marble on which I was sitting was moving. As if it were being raised. With a bound I sprang onto the neighboring tomb, and I distinctly saw the stone which I had just quitted rise upright. Then the dead person appeared, pushing the stone back with its bent back. I saw it quite clearly, although the night was so dark. On the cross I could read:

Here lies Jacques Olivant,
who died at the age of fifty-one.
He loved his family,
was kind and honorable,
and died in the grace of the Lord.

The dead man also read what was inscribed on the tombstone; then he picked up a stone off the path, a little, pointed stone, and began to scrape the letters carefully. He slowly effaced them, and with the hollows of his eyes he looked at the place where they had been engraved. Then, with the tip of the bone that had been his forefinger, he wrote in luminous letters:

Here reposes Jacques Olivant,
who died at the age of fifty-one.
He hastened his father’s death by his unkindness, as he wished to inherit his fortune;
he tortured his wife,
tormented his children,
deceived his neighbors,
robbed everyone he could,
and died wretched.

When he had finished writing, the dead man stood motionless, looking at his work. On turning around, I saw that all the graves were open, that all the dead had emerged, and that all had effaced the lines inscribed on their gravestones by their relations, substituting the truth instead. And I saw that all had been tormentors of their neighbors – malicious, dishonest, hypocrites, liars, rogues; that they had stolen, deceived, performed every disgraceful, every abominable action, these good fathers, these faithhil wives, these devoted sons, these chaste daughters, these honest tradesmen. They were all writing at the same time, on the threshold of their eternal abode, the truth, the terrible and the holy truth, of which everybody was ignorant, or pretended to be ignorant while they were alive. I thought that she also must have written something on her tombstone; and now, running without any fear, I went toward her, sure that I should find her immediately. I recognized her at once without seeing her face, and on the marble cross where shortly before I had read:

She loved, was loved, and died.

I now saw:

Having gone out in the rain one day
in order to deceive her lover,
she caught cold and died.

It appears they found me at daybreak, lying on the grave, unconscious.

THE SOUTHWEST CHAMBER

Mary E. Wilkins Freeman

1903

That schoolteacher from Acton is coming today,” said the elder Miss Gill, Sophia.

“So she is,” assented the younger Miss Gill, Amanda.

“I have decided to put her in the southwest chamber,” said Sophia.

Amanda looked at her sister with an expression of mingled doubt and terror. “You don’t suppose she would—” she began hesitatingly.

“Would what?” demanded Sophia, sharply. She was more incisive than her sister. Both were below the medium height, and stout, but Sophia was firm where Amanda was flabby. Amanda wore a baggy old muslin (it was a hot day), and Sophia was uncompromisingly hooked up in a starched and boned cambric over her high shelving figure.

“I didn’t know but she would object to sleeping in that room, as long as Aunt Harriet died there such a little time ago,” faltered Amanda.

“Well!” said Sophia, “of all the silly notions! If you are going to pick out rooms in this house where nobody has died, for the boarders, you’ll have your hands full. Grandfather Ackley had seven children; four of them died here to my certain knowledge, besides grandfather and grandmother. I think Great-grandmother Ackley, grandfather’s mother, died here, too; she must have; and Great-grandfather Ackley, and grandfather’s unmarried sister, Great-aunt Fanny Ackley. I don’t believe there’s a room nor a bed in this house that somebody hasn’t passed away in.”

“Well, I suppose I am silly to think of it, and she had better go in there,” said Amanda.

“I know she had. The northeast room is small and hot, and she’s stout and likely to feel the heat, and she’s saved money and is able to board out summers, and maybe she’ll come here another year if she’s well accommodated,” said Sophia. “Now I guess you’d better go in there and see if any dust has settled on anything since it was cleaned, and open the west windows and let the sun in, while I see to that cake.”

Amanda went to her task in the southwest chamber while her sister stepped heavily down the back stairs on her way to the kitchen.

“It seems to me you had better open the bed while you air and dust, then make it up again,” she called back.

“Yes, sister,” Amanda answered, shudderingly.

Nobody knew how this elderly woman with the untrammeled imagination of a child dreaded to enter the southwest chamber, and yet she could not have told why she had the dread. She had entered and occupied rooms which had been once tenanted by persons now dead. The room which had been hers in the little house in which she and her sister had lived before coming here had been her dead mother’s. She had never reflected upon the fact with anything but loving awe and reverence. There had never been any fear. But this was different. She entered and her heart beat thickly in her ears. Her hands were cold. The room was a very large one. The four windows, two facing south, two west, were closed, the blinds also. The room was in a film of green gloom. The furniture loomed out vaguely. The gilt frame of a blurred old engraving on the wall caught a little light. The white counterpane on the bed showed like a blank page.

Amanda crossed the room, opened with a straining motion of her thin back and shoulders one of the west windows, and threw back the blind. Then the room revealed itself an apartment full of an aged and worn but no less valid state. Pieces of old mahogany swelled forth; a peacock-patterned chintz draped the bedstead. This chintz also covered a great easy chair which had been the favourite seat of the former occupant of the room. The closet door stood ajar. Amanda noticed that with wonder. There was a glimpse of purple drapery floating from a peg inside the closet. Amanda went across and took down the garment hanging there. She wondered how her sister had happened to leave it when she cleaned the room. It was an old loose gown which had belonged to her aunt. She took it down, shuddering, and closed the closet door after a fearful glance into its dark depths. It was a long closet with a strong odour of lovage. The Aunt Harriet had had a habit of eating lovage and had carried it constantly in her pocket. There was very likely some of the pleasant root in the pocket of the musty purple gown which Amanda threw over the easy chair.

Amanda perceived the odour with a start as if before an actual presence. Odour seems in a sense a vital part of a personality. It can survive the flesh to which it has clung like a persistent shadow, seeming to have in itself something of the substance of that to which it pertained. Amanda was always conscious of this fragrance of lovage as she tidied the room. She dusted the heavy mahogany pieces punctiliously after she had opened the bed as her sister had directed. She spread fresh towels over the washstand and the bureau; she made the bed. Then she thought to take the purple gown from the easy chair and carry it to the garret and put it in the trunk with the other articles of the dead woman’s wardrobe which had been packed away there; BUT THE PURPLE GOWN WAS NOT ON THE CHAIR!

Amanda Gill was not a woman of strong convictions even as to her own actions. She directly thought that possibly she had been mistaken and had not removed it from the closet. She glanced at the closet door and saw with surprise that it was open, and she had thought she had closed it, but she instantly was not sure of that. So she entered the closet and looked for the purple gown. IT WAS NOT THERE!

Amanda Gill went feebly out of the closet and looked at the easy chair again. The purple gown was not there! She looked wildly around the room. She went down on her trembling knees and peered under the bed, she opened the bureau drawers, she looked again in the closet. Then she stood in the middle of the floor and fairly wrung her hands.

“What does it mean?” she said in a shocked whisper.

She had certainly seen that loose purple gown of her dead Aunt Harriet’s.

There is a limit at which self-refutation must stop in any sane person. Amanda Gill had reached it. She knew that she had seen that purple gown in that closet; she knew that she had removed it and put it on the easy chair. She also knew that she had not taken it out of the room. She felt a curious sense of being inverted mentally. It was as if all her traditions and laws of life were on their heads. Never in her simple record had any garment not remained where she had placed it unless removed by some palpable human agency.

Then the thought occurred to her that possibly her sister Sophia might have entered the room unobserved while her back was turned and removed the dress. A sensation of relief came over her. Her blood seemed to flow back into its usual channels; the tension of her nerves relaxed.

“How silly I am,” she said aloud.

She hurried out and downstairs into the kitchen where Sophia was making cake, stirring with splendid circular sweeps of a wooden spoon a creamy yellow mass. She looked up as her sister entered.

“Have you got it done?” said she.

“Yes,” replied Amanda. Then she hesitated. A sudden terror overcame her. It did not seem as if it were at all probable that Sophia had left that foamy cake mixture a second to go to Aunt Harriet’s chamber and remove that purple gown.

“Well,” said Sophia, “if you have got that done I wish you would take hold and string those beans. The first thing we know there won’t be time to boil them for dinner.”

Amanda moved toward the pan of beans on the table, then she looked at her sister.

“Did you come up in Aunt Harriet’s room while I was there?” she asked weakly.

She knew while she asked what the answer would be.

“Up in Aunt Harriet’s room? Of course I didn’t. I couldn’t leave this cake without having it fall. You know that well enough. Why?”

“Nothing,” replied Amanda.

Suddenly she realized that she could not tell her sister what had happened, for before the utter absurdity of the whole thing her belief in her own reason quailed. She knew what Sophia would say if she told her. She could hear her.

“Amanda Gill, have you gone stark staring mad?”

She resolved that she would never tell Sophia. She dropped into a chair and begun shelling the beans with nerveless fingers. Sophia looked at her curiously.

“Amanda Gill, what on earth ails you?” she asked.

“Nothing,” replied Amanda. She bent her head very low over the green pods.

“Yes, there is, too! You are as white as a sheet, and your hands are shaking so you can hardly string those beans. I did think you had more sense, Amanda Gill.”

“I don’t know what you mean, Sophia.”

“Yes, you do know what I mean, too; you needn’t pretend you don’t. Why did you ask me if I had been in that room, and why do you act so queer?”

Amanda hesitated. She had been trained to truth. Then she lied.

“I wondered if you’d noticed how it had leaked in on the paper over by the bureau, that last rain,” said she.

“What makes you look so pale then?”

“I don’t know. I guess the heat sort of overcame me.”

“I shouldn’t think it could have been very hot in that room when it had been shut up so long,” said Sophia.

She was evidently not satisfied, but then the grocer came to the door and the matter dropped.

For the next hour the two women were very busy. They kept no servant. When they had come into possession of this fine old place by the death of their aunt it had seemed a doubtful blessing. There was not a cent with which to pay for repairs and taxes and insurance, except the twelve hundred dollars which they had obtained from the sale of the little house in which they had been born and lived all their lives. There had been a division in the old Ackley family years before. One of the daughters had married against her mother’s wish and had been disinherited. She had married a poor man by the name of Gill, and shared his humble lot in sight of her former home and her sister and mother living in prosperity, until she had borne three daughters; then she died, worn out with overwork and worry.

The mother and the elder sister had been pitiless to the last. Neither had ever spoken to her since she left her home the night of her marriage. They were hard women.

The three daughters of the disinherited sister had lived quiet and poor, but not actually needy lives. Jane, the middle daughter, had married, and died in less than a year. Amanda and Sophia had taken the girl baby she left when the father married again. Sophia had taught a primary school for many years; she had saved enough to buy the little house in which they lived. Amanda had crocheted lace, and embroidered flannel, and made tidies and pincushions, and had earned enough for her clothes and the child’s, little Flora Scott.

Their father, William Gill, had died before they were thirty, and now in their late middle life had come the death of the aunt to whom they had never spoken, although they had often seen her, who had lived in solitary state in the old Ackley mansion until she was more than eighty. There had been no will, and they were the only heirs with the exception of young Flora Scott, the daughter of the dead sister.

Sophia and Amanda thought directly of Flora when they knew of the inheritance.

“It will be a splendid thing for her; she will have enough to live on when we are gone,” Sophia said.

She had promptly decided what was to be done. The small house was to be sold, and they were to move into the old Ackley house and take boarders to pay for its keeping. She scouted the idea of selling it. She had an enormous family pride. She had always held her head high when she had walked past that fine old mansion, the cradle of her race, which she was forbidden to enter. She was unmoved when the lawyer who was advising her disclosed to her the fact that Harriet Ackley had used every cent of the Ackley money.

“I realize that we have to work,” said she, “but my sister and I have determined to keep the place.”

That was the end of the discussion. Sophia and Amanda Gill had been living in the old Ackley house a fortnight, and they had three boarders: an elderly widow with a comfortable income, a young congregationalist clergyman, and the middle-aged single woman who had charge of the village library. Now the schoolteacher from Acton, Miss Louisa Stark, was expected for the summer, and would make four.

Sophia considered that they were comfortably provided for. Her wants and her sister’s were very few, and even the niece, although a young girl, had small expenses, since her wardrobe was supplied for years to come from that of the deceased aunt. There were stored away in the garret of the Ackley house enough voluminous black silks and satins and bombazines to keep her clad in somber richness for years to come.

Flora was a very gentle girl, with large, serious blue eyes, a seldom-smiling, pretty mouth, and smooth flaxen hair. She was delicate and very young – sixteen on her next birthday.

She came home soon now with her parcels of sugar and tea from the grocer’s. She entered the kitchen gravely and deposited them on the table by which her Aunt Amanda was seated stringing beans. Flora wore an obsolete turban-shaped hat of black straw which had belonged to the dead aunt; it set high like a crown, revealing her forehead. Her dress was an ancient purple-and-white print, too long and too large except over the chest, where it held her like a straight waistcoat.

“You had better take off your hat, Flora,” said Sophia. She turned suddenly to Amanda. “Did you fill the water-pitcher in that chamber for the schoolteacher?” she asked severely. She was quite sure that Amanda had not filled the water-pitcher.

Amanda blushed and started guiltily. “I declare, I don’t believe I did,” said she.

“I didn’t think you had,” said her sister with sarcastic emphasis.

“Flora, you go up to the room that was your Great-aunt Harriet’s, and take the water-pitcher off the washstand and fill it with water. Be real careful, and don’t break the pitcher, and don’t spill the water.”

“In THAT chamber?” asked Flora. She spoke very quietly, but her face changed a little.

“Yes, in that chamber,” returned her Aunt Sophia sharply. “Go right along.”

Flora went, and her light footstep was heard on the stairs. Very soon she returned with the blue-and-white water-pitcher and filled it carefully at the kitchen sink.

“Now be careful and not spill it,” said Sophia as she went out of the room carrying it gingerly.

Amanda gave a timidly curious glance at her; she wondered if she had seen the purple gown.

Then she started, for the village stagecoach was seen driving around to the front of the house. The house stood on a corner.

“Here, Amanda, you look better than I do; you go and meet her,” said Sophia. “I’ll just put the cake in the pan and get it in the oven and I’ll come. Show her right up to her room.”

Amanda removed her apron hastily and obeyed. Sophia hurried with her cake, pouring it into the baking-tins. She had just put it in the oven, when the door opened and Flora entered carrying the blue water-pitcher.

“What are you bringing down that pitcher again for?” asked Sophia.

“She wants some water, and Aunt Amanda sent me,” replied Flora.

Her pretty pale face had a bewildered expression.

“For the land sake, she hasn’t used all that great pitcherful of water so quick?”

“There wasn’t any water in it,” replied Flora.

Her high, childish forehead was contracted slightly with a puzzled frown as she looked at her aunt.

“Wasn’t any water in it?”

“No, ma’am.”

“Didn’t I see you filling the pitcher with water not ten minutes ago, I want to know?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“What did you do with that water?”

“Nothing.”

“Did you carry that pitcherful of water up to that room and set it on the washstand?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Didn’t you spill it?”

“No, ma’am.”

“Now, Flora Scott, I want the truth! Did you fill that pitcher with water and carry it up there, and wasn’t there any there when she came to use it?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Let me see that pitcher.” Sophia examined the pitcher. It was not only perfectly dry from top to bottom, but even a little dusty. She turned severely on the young girl. “That shows,” said she, “you did not fill the pitcher at all. You let the water run at the side because you didn’t want to carry it upstairs. I am ashamed of you. It’s bad enough to be so lazy, but when it comes to not telling the truth—”

The young girl’s face broke up suddenly into piteous confusion, and her blue eyes became filmy with tears.

“I did fill the pitcher, honest,” she faltered, “I did, Aunt Sophia. You ask Aunt Amanda.”

“I’ll ask nobody. This pitcher is proof enough. Water don’t go off and leave the pitcher dusty on the inside if it was put in ten minutes ago. Now you fill that pitcher full quick, and you carry it upstairs, and if you spill a drop there’ll be something besides talk.”

Flora filled the pitcher, with the tears falling over her cheeks. She sniveled softly as she went out, balancing it carefully against her slender hip. Sophia followed her.

“Stop crying,” said she sharply; “you ought to be ashamed of yourself. What do you suppose Miss Louisa Stark will think. No water in her pitcher in the first place, and then you come back crying as if you didn’t want to get it.”

In spite of herself, Sophia’s voice was soothing. She was very fond of the girl. She followed her up the stairs to the chamber where Miss Louisa Stark was waiting for the water to remove the soil of travel. She had removed her bonnet, and its tuft of red geraniums lightened the obscurity of the mahogany dresser. She had placed her little beaded cape carefully on the bed. She was replying to a tremulous remark of Amanda’s, who was nearly fainting from the new mystery of the water-pitcher, that it was warm and she suffered a good deal in warm weather.

Louisa Stark was stout and solidly built. She was much larger than either of the Gill sisters. She was a masterly woman inured to command from years of school-teaching. She carried her swelling bulk with majesty; even her face, moist and red with the heat, lost nothing of its dignity of expression.

She was standing in the middle of the floor with an air which gave the effect of her standing upon an elevation. She turned when Sophia and Flora, carrying the water-pitcher, entered.

“This is my sister Sophia,” said Amanda tremulously.

Sophia advanced, shook hands with Miss Louisa Stark and bade her welcome and hoped she would like her room. Then she moved toward the closet. “There is a nice large closet in this room – the best closet in the house. You might have your trunk—” she said, then she stopped short.

The closet door was ajar, and a purple garment seemed suddenly to swing into view as if impelled by some wind.

“Why, here is something left in this closet,” Sophia said in a mortified tone. “I thought all those things had been taken away.”

She pulled down the garment with a jerk, and as she did so Amanda passed her in a weak rush for the door.

“I am afraid your sister is not well,” said the schoolteacher from Acton. “She looked very pale when you took that dress down. I noticed it at once. Hadn’t you better go and see what the matter is? She may be going to faint.”

“She is not subject to fainting spells,” replied Sophia, but she followed Amanda.

She found her in the room which they occupied together, lying on the bed, very pale and gasping. She leaned over her.

“Amanda, what is the matter; don’t you feel well?” she asked.

“I feel a little faint.”

Sophia got a camphor bottle and began rubbing her sister’s forehead.

“Do you feel better?” she said.

Amanda nodded.

“I guess it was that green apple pie you ate this noon,” said Sophia. “I declare, what did I do with that dress of Aunt Harriet’s? I guess if you feel better I’ll just run and get it and take it up garret. I’ll stop in here again when I come down. You’d better lay still. Flora can bring you up a cup of tea. I wouldn’t try to eat any supper.”

Sophia’s tone as she left the room was full of loving concern. Presently she returned; she looked disturbed, but angrily so. There was not the slightest hint of any fear in her expression.

“I want to know,” said she, looking sharply and quickly around, “if I brought that purple dress in here, after all?”

“I didn’t see you,” replied Amanda.

“I must have. It isn’t in that chamber, nor the closet. You aren’t lying on it, are you?”

“I lay down before you came in,” replied Amanda.

“So you did. Well, I’ll go and look again.”

Presently Amanda heard her sister’s heavy step on the garret stairs. Then she returned with a queer defiant expression on her face.

“I carried it up garret, after all, and put it in the trunk,” said, she. “I declare, I forgot it. I suppose your being faint sort of put it out of my head. There it was, folded up just as nice, right where I put it.”

Sophia’s mouth was set; her eyes upon her sister’s scared, agitated face were full of hard challenge.

“Yes,” murmured Amanda.

“I must go right down and see to that cake,” said Sophia, going out of the room. “If you don’t feel well, you pound on the floor with the umbrella.”

Amanda looked after her. She knew that Sophia had not put that purple dress of her dead Aunt Harriet in the trunk in the garret.

Meantime Miss Louisa Stark was settling herself in the southwest chamber. She unpacked her trunk and hung her dresses carefully in the closet. She filled the bureau drawers’ with nicely folded linen and small articles of dress. She was a very punctilious woman. She put on a black India silk dress with purple flowers. She combed her grayish-blond hair in smooth ridges back from her broad forehead. She pinned her lace at her throat with a brooch, very handsome, although somewhat obsolete – a bunch of pearl grapes on black onyx, set in gold filigree. She had purchased it several years ago with a considerable portion of the stipend from her spring term of school-teaching.

As she surveyed herself in the little swing mirror surmounting the old-fashioned mahogany bureau she suddenly bent forward and looked closely at the brooch. It seemed to her that something was wrong with it. As she looked she became sure. Instead of the familiar bunch of pearl grapes on the black onyx, she saw a knot of blonde and black hair under glass surrounded by a border of twisted gold. She felt a thrill of horror, though she could not tell why. She unpinned the brooch, and it was her own familiar one, the pearl grapes and the onyx. “How very foolish I am,” she thought. She thrust the pin in the laces at her throat and again looked at herself in the glass, and there it was again – the knot of blond and black hair and the twisted gold.

Louisa Stark looked at her own large, firm face above the brooch and it was full of terror and dismay which were new to it. She straightway began to wonder if there could be anything wrong with her mind. She remembered that an aunt of her mother’s had been insane. A sort of fury with herself possessed her. She stared at the brooch in the glass with eyes at once angry and terrified. Then she removed it again and there was her own old brooch. Finally she thrust the gold pin through the lace again, fastened it and turning a defiant back on the glass, went down to supper.

At the supper table she met the other boarders – the elderly widow, the young clergyman and the middle-aged librarian. She viewed the elderly widow with reserve, the clergyman with respect, the middle-aged librarian with suspicion. The latter wore a very youthful shirtwaist, and her hair in a girlish fashion which the schoolteacher, who twisted hers severely from the straining roots at the nape of her neck to the small, smooth coil at the top, condemned as straining after effects no longer hers by right.

The librarian, who had a quick acridness of manner, addressed her, asking what room she had, and asked the second time in spite of the schoolteacher’s evident reluctance to hear her. She even, since she sat next to her, nudged her familiarly in her rigid black silk side.

“What room are you in, Miss Stark?” said she.

“I am at a loss how to designate the room,” replied Miss Stark stiffly.

“Is it the big southwest room?”

“It evidently faces in that direction,” said Miss Stark.

The librarian, whose name was Eliza Lippincott, turned abruptly to Miss Amanda Gill, over whose delicate face a curious colour compounded of flush and pallour was stealing.

“What room did your aunt die in, Miss Amanda?” asked she abruptly.

Amanda cast a terrified glance at her sister, who was serving a second plate of pudding for the minister.

“That room,” she replied feebly.

“That’s what I thought,” said the librarian with a certain triumph. “I calculated that must be the room she died in, for it’s the best room in the house, and you haven’t put anybody in it before. Somehow the room that anybody has died in lately is generally the last room that anybody is put in. I suppose you are so strong-minded you don’t object to sleeping in a room where anybody died a few weeks ago?” she inquired of Louisa Stark with sharp eyes on her face.

“No, I do not,” replied Miss stark with emphasis.

“Nor in the same bed?” persisted Eliza Lippincott with a kittenish reflection.

The young minister looked up from his pudding. He was very spiritual, but he had had poor pickings in his previous boarding place, and he could not help a certain abstract enjoyment over Miss Gill’s cooking.

“You would certainly not be afraid, Miss Lippincott?” he remarked, with his gentle, almost caressing inflection of tone. “You do not for a minute believe that a higher power would allow any manifestation on the part of a disembodied spirit – who we trust is in her heavenly home – to harm one of His servants?”

“Oh, Mr. Dunn, of course not,” replied Eliza Lippincott with a blush. “Of course not. I never meant to imply—”

“I could not believe you did,” said the minister gently. He was very young, but he already had a wrinkle of permanent anxiety between his eyes and a smile of permanent ingratiation on his lips. The lines of the smile were as deeply marked as the wrinkle.

“Of course dear Miss Harriet Gill was a professing Christian,” remarked the widow, “and I don’t suppose a professing Christian would come back and scare folks if she could. I wouldn’t be a mite afraid to sleep in that room; I’d rather have it than the one I’ve got. If I was afraid to sleep in a room where a good woman died, I wouldn’t tell of it. If I saw things or heard things I’d think the fault must be with my own guilty conscience.” Then she turned to Miss Stark. “Any time you feel timid in that room I’m ready and willing to change with you,” said she.

“Thank you; I have no desire to change. I am perfectly satisfied with my room,” replied Miss Stark with freezing dignity, which was thrown away upon the widow.

“Well,” said she, “any time, if you should feel timid, you know what to do. I’ve got a real nice room; it faces east and gets the morning sun, but it isn’t so nice as yours, according to my way of thinking. I’d rather take my chances any day in a room anybody had died in than in one that was hot in summer. I’m more afraid of a sunstroke than of spooks, for my part.”

Miss Sophia Gill, who had not spoken one word, but whose mouth had become more and more rigidly compressed, suddenly rose from the table, forcing the minister to leave a little pudding, at which he glanced regretfully.

Miss Louisa Stark did not sit down in the parlour with the other boarders. She went straight to her room. She felt tired after her journey, and meditated a loose wrapper and writing a few letters quietly before she went to bed. Then, too, she was conscious of a feeling that if she delayed, the going there at all might assume more terrifying proportions. She was full of defiance against herself and her own lurking weakness.

So she went resolutely and entered the southwest chamber. There was through the room a soft twilight. She could dimly discern everything, the white satin scroll-work on the wall paper and the white counterpane on the bed being most evident. Consequently both arrested her attention first. She saw against the wallpaper directly facing the door the waist of her best black satin dress hung over a picture.

“That is very strange,” she said to herself, and again a thrill of vague horror came over her.

She knew, or thought she knew, that she had put that black satin dress waist away nicely folded between towels in her trunk. She was very choice of her black satin dress.

She took down the black waist and laid it on the bed preparatory to folding it, but when she attempted to do so she discovered that the two sleeves were firmly sewed together. Louisa Stark stared at the sewed sleeves. “What does this mean?” she asked herself. She examined the sewing carefully; the stitches were small, and even, and firm, of black silk.

She looked around the room. On the stand beside the bed was something which she had not noticed before: a little old-fashioned work-box with a picture of a little boy in a pinafore on the top. Beside this work-box lay, as if just laid down by the user, a spool of black silk, a pair of scissors, and a large steel thimble with a hole in the top, after an old style. Louisa stared at these, then at the sleeves of her dress. She moved toward the door. For a moment she thought that this was something legitimate about which she might demand information; then she became doubtful. Suppose that work-box had been there all the time; suppose she had forgotten; suppose she herself had done this absurd thing, or suppose that she had not, what was to hinder the others from thinking so; what was to hinder a doubt being cast upon her own memory and reasoning powers?

Louisa Stark had been on the verge of a nervous breakdown in spite of her iron constitution and her great will power. No woman can teach school for forty years with absolute impunity. She was more credulous as to her own possible failings than she had ever been in her whole life. She was cold with horror and terror, and yet not so much horror and terror of the supernatural as of her own self. The weakness of belief in the supernatural was nearly impossible for this strong nature. She could more easily believe in her own failing powers.

“I don’t know but I’m going to be like Aunt Marcia,” she said to herself, and her fat face took on a long rigidity of fear.

She started toward the mirror to unfasten her dress, then she remembered the strange circumstance of the brooch and stopped short. Then she straightened herself defiantly and marched up to the bureau and looked in the glass. She saw reflected therein, fastening the lace at her throat, the old-fashioned thing of a large oval, a knot of fair and black hair under glass, set in a rim of twisted gold. She unfastened it with trembling fingers and looked at it. It was her own brooch, the cluster of pearl grapes on black onyx. Louisa Stark placed the trinket in its little box on the nest of pink cotton and put it away in the bureau drawer. Only death could disturb her habit of order.

Her fingers were so cold they felt fairly numb as she unfastened her dress; she staggered when she slipped it over her head. She went to the closet to hang it up and recoiled. A strong smell of lovage came in her nostrils; a purple gown near the door swung softly against her face as if impelled by some wind from within. All the pegs were filled with garments not her own, mostly of somber black, but there were some strange-patterned silk things and satins.

Suddenly Louisa Stark recovered her nerve. This, she told herself, was something distinctly tangible. Somebody had been taking liberties with her wardrobe. Somebody had been hanging someone else’s clothes in her closet. She hastily slipped on her dress again and marched straight down to the parlour. The people were seated there; the widow and the minister were playing backgammon. The librarian was watching them. Miss Amanda Gill was mending beside the large lamp on the centre table. They all looked up with amazement as Louisa Stark entered. There was something strange in her expression. She noticed none of them except Amanda.

“Where is your sister?” she asked peremptorily of her.

“She’s in the kitchen mixing up bread,” Amanda quavered; “is there anything—” But the schoolteacher was gone.

She found Sophia Gill standing by the kitchen table kneading dough with dignity. The young girl Flora was bringing some flour from the pantry. She stopped and stared at Miss Stark, and her pretty, delicate young face took on an expression of alarm.

Miss Stark opened at once upon the subject in her mind.

“Miss Gill,” said she, with her utmost schoolteacher manner, “I wish to inquire why you have had my own clothes removed from the closet in my room and others substituted?”

Sophia Gill stood with her hands fast in the dough, regarding her. Her own face paled slowly and reluctantly, her mouth stiffened.

“What? I don’t quite understand what you mean, Miss Stark,” said she.

“My clothes are not in the closet in my room and it is full of things which do not belong to me,” said Louisa Stark.

“Bring me that flour,” said Sophia sharply to the young girl, who obeyed, casting timid, startled glances at Miss Stark as she passed her. Sophia Gill began rubbing her hands clear of the dough. “I am sure I know nothing about it,” she said with a certain tempered asperity. “Do you know anything about it, Flora?”

Then Sophia turned to Miss Stark. “I’ll go upstairs with you, Miss Stark,” said she, “and see what the trouble is. There must be some mistake.” She spoke stiffly with constrained civility.

“Very well,” said Miss Stark with dignity. Then she and Miss Sophia went upstairs. Flora stood staring after them.

Sophia and Louisa Stark went up to the southwest chamber. The closet door was shut. Sophia threw it open, then she looked at Miss Stark. On the pegs hung the schoolteacher’s own garments in ordinary array.

“I can’t see that there is anything wrong,” remarked Sophia grimly.

Miss Stark strove to speak but she could not. She sank down on the nearest chair. She did not even attempt to defend herself. She saw her own clothes in the closet. She knew there had been no time for any human being to remove those which she thought she had seen and put hers in their places. She knew it was impossible. Again the awful horror of herself overwhelmed her.

“You must have been mistaken,” she heard Sophia say.

She muttered something, she scarcely knew what. Sophia then went out of the room. Presently she undressed and went to bed. In the morning she did not go down to breakfast, and when Sophia came to inquire, requested that the stage be ordered for the noon train. She said that she was sorry, but was ill, and feared lest she might be worse, and she felt that she must return home at once. She looked ill, and could not take even the toast and tea which Sophia had prepared for her. Sophia felt a certain pity for her, but it was largely mixed with indignation. She felt that she knew the true reason for the schoolteacher’s illness and sudden departure, and it incensed her.

“If folks are going to act like fools we shall never be able to keep this house,” she said to Amanda after Miss Stark had gone; and Amanda knew what she meant.

Directly the widow, Mrs. Elvira Simmons, knew that the schoolteacher had gone and the southwest room was vacant, she begged to have it in exchange for her own. Sophia hesitated a moment; she eyed the widow sharply. There was something about the large, roseate face worn in firm lines of humour and decision which reassured her.

“I have no objection, Mrs. Simmons,” said she, “if—”

“If what?” asked the widow.

“If you have common sense enough not to keep fussing because the room happens to be the one my aunt died in,” said Sophia bluntly.

“Fiddlesticks!” said the widow, Mrs. Elvira Simmons.

That very afternoon she moved into the southwest chamber. The young girl Flora assisted her, though much against her will.

“Now I want you to carry Mrs. Simmons’ dresses into the closet in that room and hang them up nicely, and see that she has everything she wants,” said Sophia Gill. “And you can change the bed and put on fresh sheets. What are you looking at me that way for?”

“Oh, Aunt Sophia, can’t I do something else?”

“What do you want to do something else for?”

“I am afraid.”

“Afraid of what? I should think you’d hang your head. No; you go right in there and do what I tell you.”

Pretty soon Flora came running into the sitting-room where Sophia was, as pale as death, and in her hand she held a queer, old-fashioned frilled nightcap.

“What’s that?” demanded Sophia.

“I found it under the pillow.”

“What pillow?”

“In the southwest room.”

Sophia took it and looked at it sternly.

“It’s Great-aunt Harriet’s,” said Flora faintly.

“You run down street and do that errand at the grocer’s for me and I’ll see that room,” said Sophia with dignity. She carried the nightcap away and put it in the trunk in the garret where she had supposed it stored with the rest of the dead woman’s belongings. Then she went into the southwest chamber and made the bed and assisted Mrs. Simmons to move, and there was no further incident.

The widow was openly triumphant over her new room. She talked a deal about it at the dinner-table.

“It is the best room in the house, and I expect you all to be envious of me,” said she.

“And you are sure you don’t feel afraid of ghosts?” said the librarian.

“Ghosts!” repeated the widow with scorn. “If a ghost comes I’ll send her over to you. You are just across the hall from the southwest room.”

“You needn’t,” returned Eliza Lippincott with a shudder. “I wouldn’t sleep in that room, after—” she checked herself with an eye on the minister.

“After what?” asked the widow.

“Nothing,” replied Eliza Lippincott in an embarrassed fashion.

“I trust Miss Lippincott has too good sense and too great faith to believe in anything of that sort,” said the minister.

“I trust so, too,” replied Eliza hurriedly.

“You did see or hear something – now what was it, I want to know?” said the widow that evening when they were alone in the parlour. The minister had gone to make a call.

Eliza hesitated.

“What was it?” insisted the widow.

“Well,” said Eliza hesitatingly, “if you’ll promise not to tell.”

“Yes, I promise; what was it?”

“Well, one day last week, just before the schoolteacher came, I went in that room to see if there were any clouds. I wanted to wear my gray dress, and I was afraid it was going to rain, so I wanted to look at the sky at all points, so I went in there, and—”

“And what?”

“Well, you know that chintz over the bed, and the valance, and the easy chair; what pattern should you say it was?”

“Why, peacocks on a blue ground. Good land, I shouldn’t think anyone who had ever seen that would forget it.”

“Peacocks on a blue ground, you are sure?”

“Of course I am. Why?”

“Only when I went in there that afternoon it was not peacocks on a blue ground; it was great red roses on a yellow ground.”

“Why, what do you mean?”

“What I say.”

“Did Miss Sophia have it changed?”

“No. I went in there again an hour later and the peacocks were there.”

“You didn’t see straight the first time.”

“I expected you would say that.”

“The peacocks are there now; I saw them just now.”

“Yes, I suppose so; I suppose they flew back.”

“But they couldn’t.”

“Looks as if they did.”

“Why, how could such a thing be? It couldn’t be.”

“Well, all I know is those peacocks were gone for an hour that afternoon and the red roses on the yellow ground were there instead.”

The widow stared at her a moment, then she began to laugh rather hysterically.

“Well,” said she, “I guess I shan’t give up my nice room for any such tomfoolery as that. I guess I would just as soon have red roses on a yellow ground as peacocks on a blue; but there’s no use talking, you couldn’t have seen straight. How could such a thing have happened?”

“I don’t know,” said Eliza Lippincott; “but I know I wouldn’t sleep in that room if you’d give me a thousand dollars.”

“Well, I would,” said the widow, “and I’m going to.”

When Mrs. Simmons went to the southwest chamber that night she cast a glance at the bed-hanging and the easy chair. There were the peacocks on the blue ground. She gave a contemptuous thought to Eliza Lippincott.

“I don’t believe but she’s getting nervous,” she thought. “I wonder if any of her family have been out at all.”

But just before Mrs. Simmons was ready to get into bed she looked again at the hangings and the easy chair, and there were the red roses on the yellow ground instead of the peacocks on the blue. She looked long and sharply. Then she shut her eyes, and then opened them and looked. She still saw the red roses. Then she crossed the room, turned her back to the bed, and looked out at the night from the south window. It was clear and the full moon was shining. She watched it a moment sailing over the dark blue in its nimbus of gold. Then she looked around at the bed hangings. She still saw the red roses on the yellow ground.

Mrs. Simmons was struck in her most venerable point. This apparent contradiction of the reasonable as manifested in such a commonplace thing as chintz of a bed-hanging affected this ordinarily unimaginative woman as no ghostly appearance could have done. Those red roses on the yellow ground were to her much more ghostly than any strange figure clad in the white robes of the grave entering the room.

She took a step toward the door, then she turned with a resolute air. “As for going downstairs and owning up I’m scared and having that Lippincott girl crowing over me, I won’t for any red roses instead of peacocks. I guess they can’t hurt me, and as long as we’ve both of us seen ’em I guess we can’t both be getting loony,” she said.

Mrs. Elvira Simmons blew out her light and got into bed and lay staring out between the chintz hangings at the moonlit room. She said her prayers in bed always as being more comfortable, and presumably just as acceptable in the case of a faithful servant with a stout habit of body. Then after a little she fell asleep; she was of too practical a nature to be kept long awake by anything which had no power of actual bodily effect upon her. No stress of the spirit had ever disturbed her slumbers. So she slumbered between the red roses, or the peacocks, she did not know which.

But she was awakened about midnight by a strange sensation in her throat. She had dreamed that someone with long white fingers was strangling her, and she saw bending over her the face of an old woman in a white cap. When she waked there was no old woman, the room was almost as light as day in the full moonlight, and looked very peaceful; but the strangling sensation at her throat continued, and besides that, her face and ears felt muffled. She put up her hand and felt that her head was covered with a ruffled nightcap tied under her chin so tightly that it was exceedingly uncomfortable. A great qualm of horror shot over her. She tore the thing off frantically and flung it from her with a convulsive effort as if it had been a spider. She gave, as she did so, a quick, short scream of terror. She sprang out of bed and was going toward the door, when she stopped.

It had suddenly occurred to her that Eliza Lippincott might have entered the room and tied on the cap while she was asleep. She had not locked her door. She looked in the closet, under the bed; there was no one there. Then she tried to open the door, but to her astonishment found that it was locked – bolted on the inside. “I must have locked it, after all,” she reflected with wonder, for she never locked her door. Then she could scarcely conceal from herself that there was something out of the usual about it all. Certainly no one could have entered the room and departed locking the door on the inside. She could not control the long shiver of horror that crept over her, but she was still resolute. She resolved that she would throw the cap out of the window. “I’ll see if I have tricks like that played on me, I don’t care who does it,” said she quite aloud. She was still unable to believe wholly in the supernatural. The idea of some human agency was still in her mind, filling her with anger.

She went toward the spot where she had thrown the cap – she had stepped over it on her way to the door – but it was not there. She searched the whole room, lighting her lamp, but she could not find the cap. Finally she gave it up. She extinguished her lamp and went back to bed. She fell asleep again, to be again awakened in the same fashion. That time she tore off the cap as before, but she did not fling it on the floor as before. Instead she held to it with a fierce grip. Her blood was up.

Holding fast to the white flimsy thing, she sprang out of bed, ran to the window which was open, slipped the screen, and flung it out; but a sudden gust of wind, though the night was calm, arose and it floated back in her face. She brushed it aside like a cobweb and she clutched at it. She was actually furious. It eluded her clutching fingers. Then she did not see it at all. She examined the floor, she lighted her lamp again and searched, but there was no sign of it.

Mrs. Simmons was then in such a rage that all terror had disappeared for the time. She did not know with what she was angry, but she had a sense of some mocking presence which was silently proving too strong against her weakness, and she was aroused to the utmost power of resistance. To be baffled like this and resisted by something which was as nothing to her straining senses filled her with intensest resentment.

Finally she got back into bed again; she did not go to sleep. She felt strangely drowsy, but she fought against it. She was wide awake, staring at the moonlight, when she suddenly felt the soft white strings of the thing tighten around her throat and realized that her enemy was again upon her. She seized the strings, untied them, twitched off the cap, ran with it to the table where her scissors lay and furiously cut it into small bits. She cut and tore, feeling an insane fury of gratification.

“There!” said she quite aloud. “I guess I shan’t have any more trouble with this old cap.”

She tossed the bits of muslin into a basket and went back to bed. Almost immediately she felt the soft strings tighten around her throat. Then at last she yielded, vanquished. This new refutal of all laws of reason by which she had learned, as it were, to spell her theory of life, was too much for her equilibrium. She pulled off the clinging strings feebly, drew the thing from her head, slid weakly out of bed, caught up her wrapper and hastened out of the room. She went noiselessly along the hall to her own old room: she entered, got into her familiar bed, and lay there the rest of the night shuddering and listening, and if she dozed, waking with a start at the feeling of the pressure upon her throat to find that it was not there, yet still to be unable to shake off entirely the horror.

When daylight came she crept back to the southwest chamber and hurriedly got some clothes in which to dress herself. It took all her resolution to enter the room, but nothing unusual happened while she was there. She hastened back to her old chamber, dressed herself and went down to breakfast with an imperturbable face. Her colour had not faded. When asked by Eliza Lippincott how she had slept, she replied with an appearance of calmness which was bewildering that she had not slept very well. She never did sleep very well in a new bed, and she thought she would go back to her old room.

Eliza Lippincott was not deceived, however, neither were the Gill sisters, nor the young girl, Flora. Eliza Lippineott spoke out bluntly.

“You needn’t talk to me about sleeping well,” said she. “I know something queer happened in that room last night by the way you act.”

They all looked at Mrs. Simmons, inquiringly – the librarian with malicious curiosity and triumph, the minister with sad incredulity, Sophia Gill with fear and indignation, Amanda and the young girl with unmixed terror. The widow bore herself with dignity.

“I saw nothing nor heard nothing which I trust could not have been accounted for in some rational manner,” said she.

“What was it?” persisted Eliza Lippincott.

“I do not wish to discuss the matter any further,” replied Mrs. Simmons shortly. Then she passed her plate for more creamed potato. She felt that she would die before she confessed to the ghastly absurdity of that nightcap, or to having been disturbed by the flight of peacocks off a blue field of chintz after she had scoffed at the possibility of such a thing. She left the whole matter so vague that in a fashion she came off the mistress of the situation. She at all events impressed everybody by her coolness in the face of no one knew what nightly terror.

After breakfast, with the assistance of Amanda and Flora, she moved back into her old room. Scarcely a word was spoken during the process of moving, but they all worked with trembling haste and looked guilty when they met one another’s eyes, as if conscious of betraying a common fear.

That afternoon the young minister, John Dunn, went to Sophia Gill and requested permission to occupy the southwest chamber that night.

“I don’t ask to have my effects moved there,” said he, “for I could scarcely afford a room so much superior to the one I now occupy, but I would like, if you please, to sleep there tonight for the purpose of refuting in my own person any unfortunate superstition which may have obtained root here.”

Sophia Gill thanked the minister gratefully and eagerly accepted his offer.

“How anybody with common sense can believe for a minute in any such nonsense passes my comprehension,” said she.

“It certainly passes mine how anybody with Christian faith can believe in ghosts,” said the minister gently, and Sophia Gill felt a certain feminine contentment in hearing him. The minister was a child to her; she regarded him with no tincture of sentiment, and yet she loved to hear two other women covertly condemned by him and she herself thereby exalted.

That night about twelve o’clock the Reverend John Dunn essayed to go to his nightly slumber in the southwest chamber. He had been sitting up until that hour preparing his sermon.

He traversed the hall with a little night-lamp in his hand, opened the door of the southwest chamber, and essayed to enter. He might as well have essayed to enter the solid side of a house. He could not believe his senses. The door was certainly open; he could look into the room full of soft lights and shadows under the moonlight which streamed into the windows. He could see the bed in which he had expected to pass the night, but he could not enter. Whenever he strove to do so he had a curious sensation as if he were trying to press against an invisible person who met him with a force of opposition impossible to overcome. The minister was not an athletic man, yet he had considerable strength. He squared his elbows, set his mouth hard, and strove to push his way through into the room. The opposition which he met was as sternly and mutely terrible as the rocky fastness of a mountain in his way.

For a half hour John Dunn, doubting, raging, overwhelmed with spiritual agony as to the state of his own soul rather than fear, strove to enter that southwest chamber. He was simply powerless against this uncanny obstacle. Finally a great horror as of evil itself came over him. He was a nervous man and very young. He fairly fled to his own chamber and locked himself in like a terror-stricken girl.

The next morning he went to Miss Gill and told her frankly what had happened, and begged her to say nothing about it lest he should have injured the cause by the betrayal of such weakness, for he actually had come to believe that there was something wrong with the room.

“What it is I know not, Miss Sophia,” said he, “but I firmly believe, against my will, that there is in that room some accursed evil power at work, of which modern faith and modern science know nothing.”

Miss Sophia Gill listened with grimly lowering face. She had an inborn respect for the clergy, but she was bound to hold that southwest chamber in the dearly beloved old house of her fathers free of blame.

“I think I will sleep in that room myself tonight,” she said, when the minister had finished.

He looked at her in doubt and dismay.

“I have great admiration for your faith and courage, Miss Sophia,” he said, “but are you wise?”

“I am fully resolved to sleep in that room tonight,” said she conclusively. There were occasions when Miss Sophia Gill could put on a manner of majesty, and she did now.

It was ten o’clock that night when Sophia Gill entered the southwest chamber. She had told her sister what she intended doing and had been proof against her tearful entreaties. Amanda was charged not to tell the young girl, Flora.

“There is no use in frightening that child over nothing,” said Sophia.

Sophia, when she entered the southwest chamber, set the lamp which she carried on the bureau, and began moving about the rooms pulling down the curtains, taking off the nice white counterpane of the bed, and preparing generally for the night.

As she did so, moving with great coolness and deliberation, she became conscious that she was thinking some thoughts that were foreign to her. She began remembering what she could not have remembered, since she was not then born: the trouble over her mother’s marriage, the bitter opposition, the shutting the door upon her, the ostracizing her from heart and home. She became aware of a most singular sensation as of bitter resentment herself, and not against the mother and sister who had so treated her own mother, but against her own mother, and then she became aware of a like bitterness extended to her own self. She felt malignant toward her mother as a young girl whom she remembered, though she could not have remembered, and she felt malignant toward her own self, and her sister Amanda, and Flora. Evil suggestions surged in her brain – suggestions which turned her heart to stone and which still fascinated her. And all the time by a sort of double consciousness she knew that what she thought was strange and not due to her own volition. She knew that she was thinking the thoughts of some other person, and she knew who. She felt herself possessed.

But there was tremendous strength in the woman’s nature. She had inherited strength for good and righteous self-assertion, from the evil strength of her ancestors. They had turned their own weapons against themselves. She made an effort which seemed almost mortal, but was conscious that the hideous thing was gone from her. She thought her own thoughts. Then she scouted to herself the idea of anything supernatural about the terrific experience. “I am imagining everything,” she told herself. She went on with her preparations; she went to the bureau to take down her hair. She looked in the glass and saw, instead of her softly parted waves of hair, harsh lines of iron-gray under the black borders of an old-fashioned head-dress. She saw instead of her smooth, broad forehead, a high one wrinkled with the intensest concentration of selfish reflections of a long life; she saw instead of her steady blue eyes, black ones with depths of malignant reserve, behind a broad meaning of ill will; she saw instead of her firm, benevolent mouth one with a hard, thin line, a network of melancholic wrinkles. She saw instead of her own face, middle-aged and good to see, the expression of a life of honesty and good will to others and patience under trials, the face of a very old woman scowling forever with unceasing hatred and misery at herself and all others, at life, and death, at that which had been and that which was to come. She saw instead of her own face in the glass, the face of her dead Aunt Harriet, topping her own shoulders in her own well-known dress!

Sophia Gill left the room. She went into the one which she shared with her sister Amanda. Amanda looked up and saw her standing there. She had set the lamp on a table, and she stood holding a handkerchief over her face. Amanda looked at her with terror.

“What is it? What is it, Sophia?” she gasped.

Sophia still stood with the handkerchief pressed to her face.

“Oh, Sophia, let me call somebody. Is your face hurt? Sophia, what is the matter with your face?” fairly shrieked Amanda.

Suddenly Sophia took the handkerchief from her face.

“Look at me, Amanda Gill,” she said in an awful voice.

Amanda looked, shrinking.

“What is it? Oh, what is it? You don’t look hurt. What is it, Sophia?”

“What do you see?”

“Why, I see you.”

“Me?”

“Yes, you. What did you think I would see?”

Sophia Gill looked at her sister. “Never as long as I live will I tell you what I thought you would see, and you must never ask me,” said she.

“Well, I never will, Sophia,” replied Amanda, half weeping with terror.

“You won’t try to sleep in that room again, Sophia?”

“No,” said Sophia; “and I am going to sell this house.”

THE SPECTRE IN THE CART

Thomas Nelson Page

1904

I had not seen my friend Stokeman since we were at college together, and now naturally we fell to talking of old times. I remembered him as a hard-headed man without a particle of superstition, if such a thing be possible in a land where we are brought up on superstition, from the bottle. He was at that time full of life and of enjoyment of whatever it brought. I found now that his wild and almost reckless spirits had been tempered by the years which had passed as I should not have believed possible, and that gravity had taken place of the gaiety for which he was then noted.

He used to maintain, I remember, that there was no apparition or supernatural manifestation, or series of circumstances pointing to such a manifestation, however strongly substantiated they appeared to be, that could not be explained on purely natural grounds.

During our stay at college, a somewhat notable instance of what was by many supposed to be a supernatural manifestation occurred in a deserted house on a remote plantation in an adjoining county.

It baffled all investigation, and got into the newspapers, recalling the Cock Lane ghost, and many more less celebrated apparitions. Parties were organized to investigate it, but were baffled. Stokeman, on a bet of a box of cigars, volunteered to go out alone and explode the fraud; and did so, not only putting the restless spirit to flight, but capturing it and dragging it into town as the physical and indisputable witness both of the truth of his theory and of his personal courage. The exploit gave him immense notoriety in our little world.

I was, therefore, no little surprised to hear him say seriously now that he had come to understand how people saw apparitions.

“I have seen them myself,” he added, gravely.

“You do not mean it!” I sat bolt upright in my chair in my astonishment. I had myself, largely through his influence, become a sceptic in matters relating to the supernatural.

“Yes, I have seen ghosts. They not only have appeared to me, but were as real to my ocular vision as any other external physical object which I saw with my eyes.”

“Of course, it was an hallucination. Tell me; I can explain it.”

“I explained it myself,” he said, dryly. “But it left me with a little less conceit and a little more sympathy with the hallucinations of others not so gifted.”

It was a fair hit.

•   •   •   •   •

In the year – – , he went on, after a brief period of reflection, I was the State’s Attorney for my native county, to which office I had been elected a few years after I left college, and the year we emancipated ourselves from carpet-bag rule, and I so remained until I was appointed to the bench. I had a personal acquaintance, pleasant or otherwise, with every man in the county. The district was a close one, and I could almost have given the census of the population. I knew every man who was for me and almost everyone who was against me. There were few neutrals. In those times much hung on the elections. There was no borderland. Men were either warmly for you or hotly against you.

We thought we were getting into smooth water, where the sailing was clear, when the storm suddenly appeared about to rise again. In the canvass of that year the election was closer than ever and the contest hotter.

Among those who went over when the lines were thus sharply drawn was an old darky named Joel Turnell, who had been a slave of one of my nearest neighbors, Mr. Eaton, and whom I had known all my life as an easygoing, palavering old fellow with not much principle, but with kindly manners and a likable way. He had always claimed to be a supporter of mine, being one of the two or three negroes in the county who professed to vote with the whites.

He had a besetting vice of pilfering, and I had once or twice defended him for stealing and gotten him off, and he appeared to be grateful to me. I always doubted him a little; for I believed he did not have force of character enough to stand up against his people, and he was a chronic liar. Still, he was always friendly with me, and used to claim the emoluments and privileges of such a relation. Now, however, on a sudden, in this campaign he became one of my bitterest opponents. I attributed it to the influence of a son of his, named Absalom, who had gone off from the county during the war when he was only a youth, and had stayed away for many years without anything being known of him, and had now returned unexpectedly. He threw himself into the fight. He claimed to have been in the army, and he appeared to have a deep-seated animosity against the whites, particularly against all those whom he had known in boyhood. He was a vicious-looking fellow, broad-shouldered and bow-legged, with a swagger in his gait. He had an ugly scar on the side of his throat, evidently made by a knife, though he told the negroes, I understood, that he had got it in the war, and was ready to fight again if he but got the chance. He had not been back long before he was in several rows, and as he was of brutal strength, he began to be much feared by the negroes. Whenever I heard of him it was in connection with some fight among his own people, or some effort to excite race animosity. When the canvass began he flung himself into it with fury, and I must say with marked effect.

His hostility appeared to be particularly directed against myself, and I heard of him in all parts of the district declaiming against me. The negroes who, for one or two elections, had appeared to have quieted down and become indifferent as to politics were suddenly revivified. It looked as if the old scenes of the Reconstruction period, when the two sides were like hostile armies, might be witnessed again. Night meetings, or “camp-fires,” were held all through the district, and from many of them came the report of Absalom Turnell’s violent speeches stirring up the blacks and arraying them against the whites. Our side was equally aroused and the whole section was in a ferment. Our effort was to prevent any outbreak and tide over the crisis.

Among my friends was a farmer named John Halloway, one of the best men in my county, and a neighbor and friend of mine from my boyhood. His farm, a snug little homestead of fifty or sixty acres, adjoined our plantation on one side; and on the other, that of the Eatons, to whom Joel Turnell and his son Absalom had belonged, and I remember that as a boy it was my greatest privilege and reward to go over on a Saturday and be allowed by John Halloway to help him plough, or cut his hay. He was a big, ruddy-faced, jolly boy, and even then used to tell me about being in love with Fanny Peel, who was the daughter of another farmer in the neighborhood, and a Sunday-school scholar of my mother’s. I thought him the greatest man in the world. He had a fight once with Absalom Turnell when they were both youngsters, and, though Turnell was rather older and much the heavier, whipped him completely. Halloway was a good soldier and a good son, and when he came back from the war and won his wife, who was a belle among the young farmers, and settled down with her on his little place, which he proceeded to make a bower of roses and fruit-trees, there was not a man in the neighborhood who did not rejoice in his prosperity and wish him well. The Halloways had no children and, as is often the case in such instances, they appeared to be more to each other than are most husbands and wives. He always spoke of his wife as if the sun rose and set in her. No matter where he might be in the county, when night came he always rode home, saying that his wife would be expecting him. “Don’t keer whether she’s asleep or not,” he used to say to those who bantered him, “she knows I’m a-comin’, and she always hears my click on the gate-latch, and is waitin’ for me.”

It came to be well understood throughout the county.

“I believe you are henpecked,” said a man to him one night.

“I believe I am, George,” laughed Halloway, “and by Jings! I like it, too.”

It was impossible to take offence at him, he was so good-natured. He would get out of his bed in the middle of the night, hitch up his horse and pull his bitterest enemy out of the mud. He had on an occasion ridden all night through a blizzard to get a doctor for the wife of a negro neighbor in a cabin near by who was suddenly taken ill. When someone expressed admiration for it, especially as it was known that the man had not long before been abusing Halloway to the provost-marshal, who at that time was in supreme command, he said:

“Well, what’s that got to do with it? Wa’n’t the man’s wife sick? I don’t deserve no credit, though; if I hadn’t gone, my wife wouldn’ ’a’ let me come in her house.”

He was an outspoken man, too, not afraid of the devil, and when he believed a thing he spoke it, no matter whom it hit. In this way John had been in trouble several times while we were under “gun-rule”; and this, together with his personal character, had given him great influence in the county, and made him a power. He was one of my most ardent friends and supporters, and to him, perhaps, more than to any other two men in the county, I owed my position.

Absalom Turnell’s rancorous speeches had stirred all the county, and the apprehension of the outbreak his violence was in danger of bringing might have caused trouble but for John Halloway’s coolness and level-headedness. John offered to go around and follow Absalom up at his meetings. He could “spike his guns,” he said.

Some of his friends wanted to go with him. “You’d better not try that,” they argued. “That fellow, Ab. Turnell’s got it in for you.” But he said no. The only condition on which he would go was that he should go alone.

“They ain’t any of ’em going to trouble me. I know ’em all and I git along with ’em first rate. I don’t know as I know this fellow Ab.; he’s sort o’ grown out o’ my recollection; but I want to see. He knows me, I know. I got my hand on him once when he was a boy – about my age, and he ain’t forgot that, I know. He was a blusterer; but he didn’t have real grit. He won’t say nothin’ to my face. But I must go alone. You all are too flighty.”

So Halloway went alone and followed Ab. up at his “camp-fires,” and if report was true his mere presence served to curb Ab.’s fury, and take the fire out of his harangues. Even the negroes got to laughing and talking about it. “Ab. was jest like a dog when a man faced him,” they said; “he couldn’ look him in the eye.”

The night before the election there was a meeting at one of the worst places in the county, a country store at a point known as Burley’s Fork, and Halloway went there, alone – and for the first time in the canvass thought it necessary to interfere. Absalom, stung by the taunts of some of his friends, and having stimulated himself with mean whiskey, launched out in a furious tirade against the whites generally, and me in particular; and called on the negroes to go to the polls next day prepared to “wade in blood to their lips.” For himself, he said, he had “drunk blood” before, both of white men and women, and he meant to drink it again. He whipped out and flourished a pistol in one hand and a knife in the other.

His language exceeded belief, and the negroes, excited by his violence, were showing the effect on their emotions of his wild declamation, and were beginning to respond with shouts and cries when Halloway rose and walked forward. Absalom turned and started to meet him, yelling his fury and threats, and the audience were rising to their feet when they were stopped. It was described to me afterward.

Halloway was in the midst of a powder magazine, absolutely alone, a single spark would have blown him to atoms and might have caused a catastrophe which would have brought untold evil. But he was as calm as a May morning. He walked through them, the man who told me said, as if he did not know there was a soul in a hundred miles of him, and as if Absalom were only something to be swept aside.

“He wa’n’t exac’ly laughin’, or even smilin’,” said my informant, “but he jest looked easy in his mine.”

They were all waiting, he said, expecting Absalom to tear him to pieces on the spot; but as Halloway advanced, Absalom faltered and stopped. He could not stand his calm eye.

“It was jest like a dog givin’ way before a man who ain’t afraid of him,” my man said. “He breshed Absalom aside as if he had been a fly, and began to talk to us, and I never heard such a speech.”

I got there just after it happened; for some report of what Absalom intended to do had reached me that night and I rode over hastily, fearing that I might arrive too late. When, however, I arrived at the place everything was quiet, Absalom had disappeared. Unable to face his downfall, he had gone off, taking old Joel with him. The tide of excitement had changed and the negroes, relieved at the relaxing of the tension, were laughing among themselves at their champion’s defeat and disavowing any sympathy with his violence. They were all friendly with Halloway.

“Dat man wa’n’ nothin’ but a outside nigger, nohow,” they said. “And he always was more mouth then anything else,” etc.

“Good Lord! He say he want to drink blood!” declared one man to another, evidently for us to hear, as we mounted our horses.

“Drink whiskey!” replied the other, dryly, and there was a laugh of derision.

I rode home with Halloway.

I shall never forget his serenity. As we passed along, the negroes were lining the roads on their way homeward, and were shouting and laughing among themselves; and the greetings they gave us as we passed were as civil and good-humored as if no unpleasantness had ever existed. A little after we set out, one man, who had been walking very fast just ahead of us, and had been keeping in advance all the time, came close to Halloway’s stirrup and said something to him in an undertone. All I caught was, “layin’ up something against him.”

“That’s all right, Dick; let him lay it up, and keep it laid up,” Halloway laughed.

“Dat’s a bad feller!” the negro insisted, uneasily, his voice kept in an undertone. “You got to watch him. I’se knowed him from a boy.”

He added something else in a whisper which I did not catch.

“All right; certainly not! Much obliged to you, Dick. I’ll keep my eyes open. Goodnight.”

“Good-night, gent’men”; and the negro fell back and began to talk with the nearest of his companions effusively.

“Who is that?” I asked, for the man had kept his hat over his eyes.

“That’s Dick Winchester. You remember that old fellow ’t used to belong to old Mr. Eaton – lived down in the pines back o’ me, on the creek ’t runs near my place. His wife died the year of the big snow.”

It was not necessary for him to explain further. I remembered the negro for whom Halloway had ridden through the storm that night.

I asked Halloway somewhat irrelevantly, if he carried a pistol. He said no, he had never done so.

“Fact is, I’m afraid of killin’ somebody. And I don’t want to do that, I know. Never could bear to shoot my gun even durin’ o’ the war, though I shot her ’bout as often as any of ’em, I reckon – always used to shut my eyes right tight whenever I pulled the trigger. I reckon I was a mighty pore soldier,” he laughed. I had heard that he was one of the best in the army.

“Besides, I always feel sort o’ cowardly if I’ve got a pistol on. Looks like I was afraid of somebody – an’ I ain’t. I’ve noticed if two fellows have pistols on and git to fightin’, mighty apt to one git hurt, maybe both. Sort o’ like two dogs growling – long as don’t but one of ’em growl it’s all right. If don’t but one have a pistol, t’ other feller always has the advantage and sort o’ comes out top, while the man with the pistol looks mean.”

I remember how he looked in the dim moonlight as he drawled his quaint philosophy.

“I’m a man o’ peace, Mr. Johnny, and I learnt that from your mother – I learnt a heap o’ things from her,” he added, presently, after a little period of reflection. “She was the lady as used always to have a kind word for me when I was a boy. That’s a heap to a boy. I used to think she was an angel. You think it’s you I’m a fightin’ for in this canvass? ’Tain’t. I like you well enough, but I ain’t never forgot your mother, and her kindness to my old people durin’ the war when I was away. She give me this handkerchief for a weddin’ present when I was married after the war – said ’twas all she had to give, and my wife thinks the world and all of it; won’t let me have it ’cept as a favor; but this mornin’ she told me to take it – said ’twould bring me luck.” He took a big bandana out of his pocket and held it up in the moonlight. I remembered it as one of my father’s.

“She’ll make me give it up tomorrow night when I git home,” he chuckled.

We had turned into a road through the plantations, and had just come to the fork where Halloway’s road turned off toward his place.

“I lays a heap to your mother’s door – purty much all this, I reckon.” His eye swept the moon-bathed scene before him. “But for her I mightn’t ’a got her. And ain’t a man in the world got a happier home, or as good a wife.” He waved his hand toward the little homestead that was sleeping in the moonlight on the slope the other side of the stream, a picture of peace.

His path went down a little slope, and mine kept along the side of the hill until it entered the woods. A great sycamore tree grew right in the fork, with its long, hoary arms extending over both roads, making a broad mass of shadow in the white moonlight.

The next day was the day of election. Halloway was at one poll and I was at another; so I did not see him that day. But he sent me word that evening that he had carried his poll, and I rode home knowing that we should have peace.

I was awakened next morning by the news that both Halloway and his wife had been murdered the night before. I at once galloped over to his place, and was one of the first to get there. It was a horrible sight. Halloway had evidently been waylaid and killed by a blow of an axe just as he was entering his yard gate, and then the door of the house had been broken open and his wife had been killed, after which Halloway’s body had been dragged into the house, and the house had been fired with the intention of making it appear that the house had burned by accident. But by one of those inscrutable fatalities, the fire, after burning half of two walls, had gone out.

It was a terrible sight, and the room looked like a shambles. Halloway had plainly been caught unawares while leaning over his gate. The back of his head had been crushed in with the eye of an axe, and he had died instantly. The pleasant thought which was in his mind at the instant – perhaps, of the greeting that always awaited him on the click of his latch; perhaps, of his success that day; perhaps, of my mother’s kindness to him when he was a boy – was yet on his face, stamped there indelibly by the blow that killed him. There he lay, face upward, as the murderer had thrown him after bringing him in, stretched out his full length on the floor, with his quiet face upturned! looking in that throng of excited, awestricken men, just what he had said he was: a man of peace. His wife, on the other hand, wore a terrified look on her face. There had been a terrible struggle. She had lived to taste the bitterness of death, before it took her.

–   –   –

Stokeman, with a little shiver, put his hand over his eyes as though to shut out the vision that recurred to him. After a long breath he began again.

–   –   –

In a short time there was a great crowd there, white and black. The general mind flew at once to Absalom Turnell. The negroes present were as earnest in their denunciation as the whites; perhaps, more so, for the whites were past threatening. I knew from the grimness that trouble was brewing, and I felt that if Absalom were caught and any evidence were found on him, no power on earth could save him. A party rode off in search of him, and went to old Joel’s house. Neither Absalom nor Joel were there; they had not been home since the election, one of the women said.

As a law officer of the county I was to a certain extent in charge at Halloway’s and in looking around for all the clews to be found, I came on a splinter of “light-wood” not as large or as long as one’s little finger, stuck in a crack in the floor near the bed: a piece of a stick of “fat-pine,” such as negroes often carry about, and use as tapers. One end had been burned; but the other end was clean and was jagged just as it had been broken off. There was a small scorched place on the planks on either side, and it was evident that this was one of the splinters that had been used in firing the house. I called a couple of the coolest, most level-headed men present and quietly showed them the spot, and they took the splinter out and I put it in my pocket.

By one of those fortuitous chances which so often happen in every lawyer’s experience, and appear inexplicable, Old Joel Turnell walked up to the house just as we came out. He was as sympathetic as possible, appeared outraged at the crime, professed the highest regard for Halloway, and the deepest sorrow at his death. The sentiment of the crowd was rather one of sympathy with him, that he should have such a son as Absalom.

I took the old man aside to have a talk with him, to find out where his son was and where he had been the night before. He was equally vehement in his declarations of his son’s innocence, and of professions of regard for Halloway. And suddenly to my astonishment he declared that his son had spent the night with him and had gone away after sunrise.

Then happened one of those fatuous things that have led to the detection of so many negroes and can almost be counted on in their prosecution. Joel took a handkerchief out of his pocket and wiped his face, and as he did so I recognized the very handkerchief Halloway had shown me the night before. With the handkerchief, Joel drew out several splinters of light-wood, one of which had been broken off from a longer piece. I picked it up and it fitted exactly into the piece that had been stuck in the crack in the floor. At first, I could scarcely believe my own senses. Of course, it became my duty to have Joel arrested immediately. But I was afraid to have it done there, the crowd was so deeply incensed. So I called the two men to whom I had shown the light-wood splinter, told them the story, and they promised to get him away and arrest him quietly and take him safely to jail, which they did.

Even then we did not exactly believe that the old man had any active complicity in the crime, and I was blamed for arresting the innocent old father and letting the guilty son escape. The son, however, was arrested shortly afterward.

The circumstances from which the crime arose gave the case something of a political aspect, and the prisoners had the best counsel to be procured, both at our local bar and in the capital. The evidence was almost entirely circumstantial, and when I came to work it up I found, as often occurs, that although the case was plain enough on the outside, there were many difficulties in the way of fitting all the circumstances to prove the guilt of the accused and to make out every link in the chain. Particularly was this so in the prosecution of the young man, who was supposed to be the chief criminal, and in whose case there was a strong effort to prove an alibi.

As I worked, I found to my surprise that the guilt of the old man, though based wholly on circumstantial evidence, was established more clearly than that of his son – not indeed, as to the murders, but as to the arson, which served just as well to convict on. The handkerchief, which Joel had not been able to resist the temptation to steal, and the splinter of light-wood in his pocket, which fitted exactly into that found in the house, together with other circumstances, proved his guilt conclusively. But although there was an equal moral certainty of the guilt of the young man, it was not so easy to establish it by law.

Old Dick Winchester was found dead one morning and the alibi was almost completely proved, and only failed by the incredibility of the witnesses for the defence. Old Joel persistently declared that Absalom was innocent, and but for a confession by Absalom of certain facts intended to shift the suspicion from himself to his father, I do not know how his case might have turned out.

I believed him to be the instigator as well as the perpetrator of the crime.

I threw myself into the contest, and prosecuted with all the vigor I was capable of. And I finally secured the conviction of both men. But it was after a hard fight. They were the only instances in which, representing the Commonwealth, I was ever conscious of strong personal feeling, and of a sense of personal triumph. The memory of my last ride with Halloway, and of the things he had said to me; the circumstances under which he and his wife were killed; the knowledge that in some sort it was on my account; and the bitter attacks made on me personally;(for in some quarters I was depicted as a bloodthirsty ruffian, and it was charged that I was for political reasons prosecuting men whom I personally knew to be innocent), all combined to spur me to my utmost effort. And when the verdicts were rendered, I was conscious of a sense of personal triumph so fierce as to shock me.

Not that I did not absolutely believe in the guilt of both prisoners; for I considered that I had demonstrated it, and so did the jurors who tried them.

The day of execution was set. An appeal was at once taken in both cases and a stay was granted, and I had to sustain the verdicts in the upper court. The fact that the evidence was entirely circumstantial had aroused great interest, and every lawyer in the State had his theory. The upper court affirmed in both cases and appeals were taken to the highest court, and again stay of execution was granted.

The prisoners’ counsel had moved to have the prisoners transferred to another county, which I opposed. I was sure that the people of my county would observe the law. They had resisted the first fierce impulse, and were now waiting patiently for justice to take its course. Months passed, and the stay of execution had to be renewed. The road to Halloway’s grew up and I understood that the house had fallen in, though I never went that way again. Still the court hung fire as to its conclusion.

The day set for the execution approached for the third time without the court having rendered its decision.

On the day before that set for the execution, the court gave its decision. It refused to interfere in the case of old Joel, but reversed and set aside the verdict in that of the younger man. Of a series of over one hundred bills of exception taken by his counsel as a “drag-net,” one held; and owing to the admission of a single question by a juror, the judgment was set aside in Absalom’s case and a new trial was ordered.

Being anxious lest the excitement might increase, I felt it my duty to stay at the county-seat that night, and as I could not sleep I spent the time going over the records of the two cases; which, like most causes, developed new points every time they were read.

Everything was perfectly quiet all night, though the village was filling up with people from the country to see the execution, which at that time was still public. I determined next morning to go to my home in the country and get a good rest, of which I began to feel the need. I was detained, however, and it was well along in the forenoon before I mounted my horse and rode slowly out of town through a back street. The lane kept away from the main road except at one point just outside of town, where it crossed it at right angles.

It was a beautiful spring day – a day in which it is a pleasure merely to live, and as I rode along through the quiet lane under the leafy trees I could not help my mind wandering and dwelling on the things that were happening. I am not sure, indeed, that I was not dozing; for I reached the highway without knowing just where I was.

I was recalled to myself by a rush of boys up the street before me, with a crowd streaming along behind them. It was the head of the procession. The sheriff and his men were riding, with set faces, in front and on both sides of a slowly moving vehicle; a common horse-cart in which in the midst of his guards, and dressed in his Sunday clothes, with a clean white shirt on, seated on his pine coffin, was old Joel. I unconsciously gazed at him, and at the instant he looked up and saw me. Our eyes met as naturally as if he had expected to find me there, and he gave me as natural and as friendly a bow – not a particle reproachful; but a little timid, as though he did not quite know whether I would speak to him.

It gave me a tremendous shock. I had a sudden sinking of the heart, and nearly fell from my horse.

I turned and rode away; but I could not shake off the feeling. I tried to reassure myself with the reflection that he had committed a terrible crime. It did not compose me. What insisted on coming to my mind was the eagerness with which I had prosecuted him and the joy I had felt at my success.

Of course, I know now it was simply that I was overworked and needed rest; but at that time the trouble was serious.

It haunted me all day, and that night I could not sleep. For many days afterwards, it clung to me, and I found myself unable to forget it, or to sleep as I had been used to do.

The new trial of Absalom came on in time, and the fight was had all over again. It was longer than before, as every man in our county had an opinion, and a jury had to be brought from another county. But again the verdict was the same. And again an appeal was taken; was refused by the next higher court; and allowed by the highest; this time because a talesman had said he had expressed an opinion, but had not formed one. In time the appeal was heard once more, and after much delay, due to the number of cases on the docket and the immense labor of studying carefully so huge a record, it was decided. It was again reversed, on the technicality mentioned, and a new trial was ordered.

That same day the court adjourned for the term.

Having a bedroom adjoining my office, I spent that night in town. I did not go to sleep until late, and had not been asleep long when I was awakened by the continual repetition of a monotonous sound. At first I thought I was dreaming, but as I aroused it came to me distinctly: the sound of blows in the distance struck regularly. I awaked fully. The noise was in the direction of the jail. I dressed hastily and went down on the street. I stepped into the arms of a half-dozen masked men who quietly laid me on my back, blindfolded me and bound me so that I could not move. I threatened and struggled; but to no purpose, and finally gave it up and tried expostulation. They told me that they intended no harm to me; but that I was their prisoner and they meant to keep me. They had come for their man, they said, and they meant to have him. They were perfectly quiet and acted with the precision of old soldiers.

All the time I could hear the blows at the jail as the mob pounded the iron door with sledges, and now and then a shout or cry from within.

The blows were on the inner door, for the mob had quickly gained access to the outer corridor. They had come prepared and, stout as the door was, it could not resist long. Then one great roar went up and the blows ceased suddenly, and then one cry.

In a little while I heard the regular tramp of men, and in a few minutes the column came up the street, marching like soldiers. There must have been five hundred of them. The prisoner was in the midst, bare-headed and walking between two mounted men, and was moaning and pleading and cursing by turns.

I asked my captors if I might speak, and they gave me ten minutes. I stood up on the top step of the house, and for a few minutes I made what I consider to have been the best speech I ever made or shall make. I told them in closing that I should use all my powers to find out who they were, and if I could do so I should prosecute them, everyone, and try and have them hanged for murder.

They heard me patiently, but without a word, and when I was through, one of the leaders made a short reply. They agreed with me about the law; but they felt that the way it was being used was such as to cause a failure of justice. They had waited patiently, and were apparently no nearer seeing justice executed than in the beginning. So they proposed to take the law into their own hands. The remedy was, to do away with all but proper defences and execute the law without unreasonable delay.

It was the first mob I had ever seen, and I experienced a sensation of utter powerlessness and insignificance; just as in a storm at sea, a hurricane, or a conflagration. The individual disappeared before the irresistible force.

An order was given and the column moved on silently.

A question arose among my guards as to what should be done with me.

They wished to pledge me to return to my rooms and take no steps until morning, but I would give no pledges. So they took me along with them.

From the time they started there was not a word except the orders of the leader and his lieutenants and the occasional outcry of the prisoner, who prayed and cursed by turns.

They passed out of the village and turned in at Halloway’s place.

Here the prisoner made his last struggle. The idea of being taken to Halloway’s place appeared to terrify him to desperation. He might as well have struggled against the powers of the Infinite. He said he would confess everything if they would not take him there. They said they did not want his confession. He gave up, and from this time was quiet; and he soon began to croon a sort of hymn.

The procession stopped at the big sycamore under which I had last parted from Halloway.

I asked leave to speak again; but they said no. They asked the prisoner if he wanted to say anything. He said he wanted something to eat. The leader said he should have it; that it should never be said that any man – even he – had asked in vain for food in that county.

Out of a haversack food was produced in plenty, and while the crowd waited, amidst profound silence the prisoner squatted down and ate up the entire plateful.

Then the leader said he had just five minutes more to live and he had better pray.

He began a sort of wild incoherent ramble; confessed that he had murdered Halloway and his wife, but laid the chief blame on his father, and begged them to tell his friends to meet him in heaven.

I asked leave to go, and it was given me on condition that I would not return for twenty minutes. This I agreed to.

I went to my home and aroused someone, and we returned. It was not much more than a half-hour since I had left, but the place was deserted. It was all as silent as the grave. There was no living creature there. Only under the great sycamore, from one of its long, pale branches that stretched across the road, hung that dead thing with the toes turned a little in, just out of our reach, turning and swaying a little in the night wind.

We had to climb to the limb to cut the body down.

The outside newspapers made a good deal of the affair. I was charged with indifference, with cowardice, with venality. Some journals even declared that I had instigated the lynching and participated in it, and said that I ought to be hanged.

I did not mind this much. It buoyed me up, and I went on with my work without stopping for a rest, as I had intended to do.

I kept my word and ransacked the county for evidence against the lynchers. Many knew nothing about the matter; others pleaded their privilege and refused to testify on the ground of self-incrimination.

The election came on again, and almost before I knew it I was in the midst of the canvass.

I held that election would be an indorsement of me, and defeat would be a censure. After all, it is the indorsement of those about our own home that we desire.

The night before the election I spoke to a crowd at Burley’s Fork. The place had changed since Halloway checked Absalom Turnell there. A large crowd was in attendance. I paid Halloway my personal tribute that night, and it met with a deep response. I denounced the lynching. There was a dead silence. I was sure that in my audience were many of the men who had been in the mob that night.

When I rode home quite a company started with me.

The moon, which was on the wane, was, I remember, just rising as we set out It was a soft night, rather cloudy, but not dark, for the sad moon shone a little now and then, looking wasted and red. The other men dropped off from time to time as we came to the several roads that led to their homes and at last I was riding alone. I was dead tired and after I was left by my companions sat loungingly on my horse. My mind ran on the last canvass and the strange tragedy that had ended it, with its train of consequences. I was not aware when my horse turned off from the main road into the by-lane that led through the Halloway place to my own home. My horse was the same I had ridden that night. I awoke suddenly to a realization of where I was, and regretted for a second that I had come by that road. The next moment I put the thought away as a piece of cowardice and rode on, my mind perfectly easy. My horse presently broke into a canter and I took a train of thought distinctly pleasant. I mention this to account for my inability to explain what followed. I was thinking of old times and of a holiday I had once spent at Halloway’s when old Joel came through on his way to his wife’s house. It was the first time I remembered ever seeing Joel. I was suddenly conscious of something white moving on the road before me. At the same second my horse suddenly wheeled with such violence as to break my stirrup-leather and almost throw me over his neck. I pulled him up and turned him back, and there before me, coming along the unused road up the hill from Hallo way’s, was old Joel, sitting in a cart, looking at me, and bowing to me politely just as he had done that morning on his way to the gallows; while dangling from the white limb of the sycamore, swaying softly in the wind, hung the corpse of Absalom. At first I thought it was an illusion and I rubbed my eyes. But there they were. Then I thought it was a delusion; and I reined in my horse and reasoned about it. But it was not; for I saw both men as plainly as I saw my stirrup-leather lying there in the middle of the road, and in the same way. My horse saw them too, and was so terrified that I could not keep him headed to them. Again and again I pulled him around and looked at the men and tried to reason about them; but every time I looked there they were, and my horse snorted and wheeled in terror. I could see the clothes they wore: the clean, white shirt and neat Sunday suit old Joel had on, and the striped, hickory shirt, torn on the shoulders, and the gray trousers that the lynched man wore – I could see the white rope wrapped around the limb and hanging down, and the knot at his throat; I remembered them perfectly. I could not get near the cart, for the road down to Halloway’s, on which it moved steadily without ever approaching, was stopped up. But I rode right under the limb on which the other man hung, and there he was just above my head. I reasoned with myself, but in vain. There he still hung silent and limp, swinging gently in the night wind and turning a little back and forth at the end of the white rope.

In sheer determination to fight it through I got off my horse and picked up my stirrup. He was trembling like a leaf. I remounted and rode back to the spot and looked again, confident that the spectres would now have disappeared. But there they were, old Joel, sitting in his cart, bowing to me civilly with timid, sad, friendly eyes, as much alive as I was, and the dead man, with his limp head and arms and his toes turned in, hanging in midair.

I rode up under the dangling body and cut at it with my switch. At the motion my horse bolted. He ran fully a mile before I could pursue him in.

The next morning I went to my stable to get my horse to ride to the polls. The man a the stable said:

“He ain’t fit to take out, sir. You must ’a gi’n him a mighty hard ride last night – he won’t tetch a moufful; he’s been in a cold sweats all night.”

Sure enough, he looked it.

I took another horse and rode out by Halloway’s to see the place by daylight.

It was quiet enough now. The sycamore shaded the grass-grown track, and a branch, twisted and broken by some storm, hung by a strip of bark from the big bough that stretched across the road above my head, swaying, with limp leaves, a little in the wind; a dense dogwood bush in full bloom among the young pines, filled a fence-corner down the disused road where old Joel had bowed to me from his phantom cart the night before. But it was hard to believe that these were the things which had created such impressions on my mind – as hard to believe as that the quiet cottage peering out from amid the mass of peach-bloom on the other slope was one hour the home of such happiness, and the next the scene of such a tragedy.

•   •   •   •   •

Once more he put his hand suddenly before his face as though to shut out something from his vision. “Yes, I have seen apparitions,” he said, thoughtfully, “but I have seen what was worse.”

MRS. DAVENPORT’S GHOST

Frederick P. Schrader

1904

Dear readers, do you agree with Hamlet? Do you believe that there is more between heaven and earth than we dream of in our philosophy? Does it seem possible to you that Eliphas Levy conjured up the shade of Apollonius of Tyana, the prophet of the Magii, in a London hotel, and that the great sage, William Crookes, drank his tea at breakfast several days a week, for months in succession, in the society of the materialized spirit of a young lady, attired in white linen, with a feather turban on her head?

Do not laugh! Panic would seize you in the presence even of a turbaned spirit, and the grotesque spectacle would but intensify your terror. As for me, I did not laugh last night on reading an account in a New York newspaper of a criminal trial that will probably terminate in the death penalty of the accused.

It is a sad case. I shudder as I transcribe the records of the trial from the testimony of the hotel waiter, who heard the conversation of the two confederates through a keyhole, and of forty thoroughly credible witnesses, who testified to the same facts. What would be my feelings if I had seen the beautiful victim with the gaping wound in her breast, into which she dipped her finger to mark the brow of her murderer?

I.

About three o’clock on the afternoon of February 3, Professor Davenport and Miss Ida Soutchotte, a very pale and delicate young girl, who had submitted to the tests of Professor Davenport for a number of years, were finishing their dinner in their room in the second story of a New York hotel. Professor Benjamin Davenport was a celebrity, but it was said that he owed his fame to somewhat questionable means. The leading spiritualists did not repose the confidence in him that manifestly marked their regard for William Crookes or Daniel Douglas Home.

“Greedy and unscrupulous mediums,” the author of Spiritualism in America thinks, “are to blame for the most bitter attacks to which our cause has been exposed. When the materializations do not take place as quickly as circumstances require, they resort to trickery and fraud to extricate themselves from a dilemma.”

Professor Benjamin Davenport belonged to these “versatile” mediums. Aside from this, queer stories were afloat about him. He was secretly accused of highway robbery in South America, cheating at cards in the gambling houses of San Francisco, and the overhasty use of firearms toward persons who had never offended him. It was said almost openly, that the professor’s wife had died from abuse and grief at his infidelity. But in spite of these annoying rumors, Mr. Davenport, by virtue of his skill as a fraud and fakir, continued to exercise a great deal of influence upon certain plain and simple-minded folks, whom it was impossible to convince that they had not touched the materialized spirits of their brothers, mothers, or sisters through the agency of his wonderful power. His professional success received material accession from his swarthy, Mephisto-like countenance, his deep, fiery eyes, his large curved nose, the cynical expression of his mouth, and the lofty, almost prophetic tone of his words.

When the waiter had made his last visit – he did not go far – the following conversation took place in the room:

“There is to be a seance this evening at the residence of Mrs. Harding,” began the medium. “Quite a number of influential people will be there, and two or three millionaires. Conceal under your skirt the blonde woman’s wig and the white material in which the spirits usually make their appearance.”

“Very well,” replied Ida Soutchotte, in a resigned tone.

The waiter heard her pace the room. After a pause, she asked:

“Whose spirit are you going to control this evening, Benjamin?”

The waiter heard a loud, brutal laugh and the chair groaning beneath the weight of the demonstrative professor.

“Guess.”

“How should I know?” she asked.

“I am going to conjure up the spirit of my dead wife.”

And another burst of laughter issued from the room, full of sinister levity. A cry of terror burst from Ida’s lips. A muffled sound indicated to the eavesdropper at the door that she was dragging herself to the feet of the professor.

“Benjamin, Benjamin! don’t do it,” she sobbed.

“Why not? They say I broke Mrs. Davenport’s heart. The story is damaging my reputation, but it will be forgotten if her spirit should address me in terms of endearment from the other shore in the presence of numerous witnesses. For you will speak to me tenderly, will you not, Ida?”

“No, no. You shall not do it; you shall not think of it. Listen to me, for God’s sake. During the four years that I have been with you I have obeyed you faithfully and suffered patiently. I have lied and deceived, like you; I learned to imitate the sleep and symptoms of clairvoyants. Tell me, did I ever refuse to serve you, or utter a word of complaint, even when my shoulders bent with the weight of my burden, when you pierced the flesh of my arms with knitting needles? Worse than all this, I imitated distant voices behind curtains, and made mothers and wives believe that their sons and husbands had come from a better world to communicate with them. How often have I performed the most dangerous feats in parlors with the lamps turned low? Clothed in a shroud or white muslin I essayed to represent supernatural forms, whom tear-dimmed eyes recognized as those of departed dear ones. You do not know what I suffered at this unhallowed work. You scoff at the mysteries of eternity. I suffer the torments of an impending retribution. My God! if sometime the dead whom I counterfeit should rise up before me with uplifted arms and dreadful imprecations! This constant terror has injured my heart – it will kill me. I am consumed by fever. Look how emaciated, how worn-out and downcast I am. But I am under your control. Do as you like with me; I am in your power, and I want it to be so. Have I ever complained? But do not force me to do this thing, Benjamin. Have pity on me for what I have done for you in the past, for what I am suffering. Do not attempt this mummery; do not compel me to play the role of your dead wife, who was so tender and beautiful. Oh, what put that thought into your mind? Spare me, Benjamin, I implore you!”

The professor did not laugh again. Amid the confusion of upturned articles of furniture the eavesdropper distinguished the sound of a skull striking the floor. He concluded that Professor Davenport had knocked Miss Ida down with a blow of his fist, or had kicked her as she approached him. But the waiter did not enter the room, as no one rang for him.

II.

That evening forty persons were assembled in Mrs. Joanne Harding’s parlor, staring at the curtain where a spirit form was in process of materializing. One dark lantern in a corner of the room contributed the light that emphasized the darkness rather than relieved it. The room was pervaded by profound silence, save the quickened, suppressed breathing of the spectators. The fire in the grate cast mysterious rays of light, resembling fugitive spirits, upon the objects around, almost indistinguishable in the semi-gloom.

Professor Davenport was at his best this evening. The spirit world obeyed him without hesitation, like their lawful master. He was the mighty prince of souls. Hands that had no arms were seen picking flowers from the vases; the touch of an invisible spirit conjured sweet melodies from the keys of the piano; the furniture responded by intelligent rappings to the most unanticipated questions. The professor himself elevated his form in symbolical distortions from the floor to an altitude of three feet, indicated by Mrs. Harding, and remained suspended in the air for a quarter of an hour, holding live coals in his hands.

III.

But the most interesting, as well as the most conclusive, test was to be the materialization of the spirit of Mrs. Arabella Davenport, which the professor had promised at the beginning of the seance.

“The hour has come,” exclaimed the medium.

And while the hearts of all throbbed with anxious suspense, and their eyes distended with painful expectancy of the promised materialization, Benjamin Davenport stood before the curtain. In the twilight the tall man with the disheveled hair and demon look, was really terrible and handsome.

“Appear, Arabella!” he exclaimed, in a commanding voice, with gestures of the Nazarene at the sepulcher of Lazarus.

All are waiting—

Suddenly a cry burst from behind the curtain – a piercing, shuddering, horrible shriek, the shriek of an expiring soul.

The spectators trembled. Mrs. Harding almost fainted. The medium himself appeared surprised.

But Benjamin recovered his composure on seeing the curtain move and admit the spirit.

The apparition was that of a young woman with long blonde tresses; she was beautiful and pale, clad in some light, whitish material. Her breast was bare, and on the left side appeared a bleeding wound, in which trembled a knife.

The spectators arose and retreated, pushing their chairs to the wall. Those who chanced to look at the medium noticed that a deathly pallor had overspread his face, and that he was cowering and trembling.

But the young woman, Mrs. Arabella, the real one, whom he so well remembered, she had come in response to his summons, and advanced in a direct line toward Benjamin, who in terror covered his eyes to shut out the ghastly sight, and with a cry fled behind the furniture. But she dipped the finger of her thin hand into the blood from her wound and traced it across the brow of the unconscious medium, the while repeating, in a slow, monotonous tone that sounded like the echo of a wail, again and again:

“You are my murderer! You are my murderer!”

And while he was rolling and tossing in deadly terror on the floor they turned up the lights.

The spirit had vanished. But in the communicating room, behind the curtain, they found the body of poor Miss Ida Soutchotte with horribly distorted features. A physician who was present pronounced it heart stroke.

And that is the reason that Prof. Benjamin Davenport appeared alone in a New York courtroom to answer to the charge of having murdered his wife four years ago in San Francisco.

THE TOLL-HOUSE

W.W. Jacobs

1907

“It’s all nonsense,” said Jack Barnes. “Of course people have died in the house; people die in every house. As for the noises – wind in the chimney and rats in the wainscot are very convincing to a nervous man. Give me another cup of tea, Meagle.”

“Lester and White are first,” said Meagle, who was presiding at the tea-table of the Three Feathers Inn. “You’ve had two.”

Lester and White finished their cups with irritating slowness, pausing between sips to sniff the aroma, and to discover the sex and dates of arrival of the “strangers” which floated in some numbers in the beverage. Mr. Meagle served them to the brim, and then, turning to the grimly expectant Mr. Barnes, blandly requested him to ring for hot water.

“We’ll try and keep your nerves in their present healthy condition,” he remarked. “For my part I have a sort of half-and-half belief in the supernatural.”

“All sensible people have,” said Lester. “An aunt of mine saw a ghost once.”

White nodded.

“I had an uncle that saw one,” he said.

“It always is somebody else that sees them,” said Barnes.

“Well, there is a house,” said Meagle, “a large house at an absurdly low rent, and nobody will take it. It has taken toll of at least one life of every family that has lived there – however short the time – and since it has stood empty, caretaker after caretaker has died there. The last caretaker died fifteen years ago.”

“Exactly,” said Barnes. “Long enough ago for legends to accumulate.”

“I’ll bet you a sovereign you won’t spend the night there alone, for all your talk,” said White, suddenly.

“And I,” said Lester.

“No,” said Barnes slowly. “I don’t believe in ghosts nor in any supernatural things whatever; all the same I admit that I should not care to pass a night there alone.”

“But why not?” inquired White.

“Wind in the chimney,” said Meagle with a grin.

“Rats in the wainscot,” chimed in Lester. “As you like,” said Barnes coloring.

“Suppose we all go,” said Meagle. “Start after supper, and get there about eleven. We have been walking for ten days now without an adventure – except Barnes’s discovery that ditchwater smells longest. It will be a novelty, at any rate, and, if we break the spell by all surviving, the grateful owner ought to come down handsome.”

“Let’s see what the landlord has to say about it first,” said Lester. “There is no fun in passing a night in an ordinary empty house. Let us make sure that it is haunted.”

He rang the bell, and, sending for the landlord, appealed to him in the name of our common humanity not to let them waste a night watching in a house in which spectres and hobgoblins had no part. The reply was more than reassuring, and the landlord, after describing with considerable art the exact appearance of a head which had been seen hanging out of a window in the moonlight, wound up with a polite but urgent request that they would settle his bill before they went.

“It’s all very well for you young gentlemen to have your fun,” he said indulgently; “but supposing as how you are all found dead in the morning, what about me? It ain’t called the Toll-House for nothing, you know.”

“Who died there last?” inquired Barnes, with an air of polite derision.

“A tramp,” was the reply. “He went there for the sake of half a crown, and they found him next morning hanging from the balusters, dead.”

“Suicide,” said Barnes. “Unsound mind.”

The landlord nodded. “That’s what the jury brought it in,” he said slowly; “but his mind was sound enough when he went in there. I’d known him, off and on, for years. I’m a poor man, but I wouldn’t spend the night in that house for a hundred pounds.”

He repeated this remark as they started on their expedition a few hours later. They left as the inn was closing for the night; bolts shot noisily behind them, and, as the regular customers trudged slowly homewards, they set off at a brisk pace in the direction of the house. Most of the cottages were already in darkness, and lights in others went out as they passed.

“It seems rather hard that we have got to lose a night’s rest in order to convince Barnes of the existence of ghosts,” said White.

“It’s in a good cause,” said Meagle. “A most worthy object; and something seems to tell me that we shall succeed. You didn’t forget the candles, Lester?”

“I have brought two,” was the reply; “all the old man could spare.”

There was but little moon, and the night was cloudy. The road between high hedges was dark, and in one place, where it ran through a wood, so black that they twice stumbled in the uneven ground at the side of it.

“Fancy leaving our comfortable beds for this!” said White again. “Let me see; this desirable residential sepulchre lies to the right, doesn’t it?”

“Farther on,” said Meagle.

They walked on for some time in silence, broken only by White’s tribute to the softness, the cleanliness, and the comfort of the bed which was receding farther and farther into the distance. Under Meagle’s guidance they turned oft at last to the right, and, after a walk of a quarter of a mile, saw the gates of the house before them.

The lodge was almost hidden by overgrown shrubs and the drive was choked with rank growths. Meagle leading, they pushed through it until the dark pile of the house loomed above them.

“There is a window at the back where we can get in, so the landlord says,” said Lester, as they stood before the hall door.

“Window?” said Meagle. “Nonsense. Let’s do the thing properly. Where’s the knocker?”

He felt for it in the darkness and gave a thundering rat-tat-tat at the door.

“Don’t play the fool,” said Barnes crossly.

“Ghostly servants are all asleep,” said Meagle gravely, “but I’ll wake them up before I’ve done with them. It’s scandalous keeping us out here in the dark.”

He plied the knocker again, and the noise volleyed in the emptiness beyond. Then with a sudden exclamation he put out his hands and stumbled forward.

“Why, it was open all the time,” he said, with an odd catch in his voice. “Come on.”

“I don’t believe it was open,” said Lester, hanging back. “Somebody is playing us a trick.”

“Nonsense,” said Meagle sharply. “Give me a candle. Thanks. Who’s got a match?”

Barnes produced a box and struck one, and Meagle, shielding the candle with his hand, led the way forward to the foot of the stairs. “Shut the door, somebody,” he said, “there’s too much draught.”

“It is shut,” said White, glancing behind him.

Meagle fingered his chin. “Who shut it?” he inquired, looking from one to the other. “Who came in last?”

“I did,” said Lester, “but I don’t remember shutting it – perhaps I did, though.”

Meagle, about to speak, thought better of it, and, still carefully guarding the flame, began to explore the house, with the others close behind. Shadows danced on the walls and lurked in the corners as they proceeded. At the end of the passage they found a second staircase, and ascending it slowly gained the first floor.

“Careful!” said Meagle, as they gained the landing.

He held the candle forward and showed where the balusters had broken away. Then he peered curiously into the void beneath.

“This is where the tramp hanged himself, I suppose,” he said thoughtfully.

“You’ve got an unwholesome mind,” said White, as they walked on. “This place is quite creepy enough without your remembering that. Now let’s find a comfortable room and have a little nip of whiskey apiece and a pipe. How will this do?”

He opened a door at the end of the passage and revealed a small square room. Meagle led the way with the candle, and, first melting a drop or two of tallow, stuck it on the mantelpiece. The others seated themselves on the floor and watched pleasantly as White drew from his pocket a small bottle of whiskey and a tin cup.

“H’m! I’ve forgotten the water,” he exclaimed. “I’ll soon get some,” said Meagle.

He tugged violently at the bell-handle, and the rusty jangling of a bell sounded from a distant kitchen. He rang again.

“Don’t play the fool,” said Barnes roughly.

Meagle laughed. “I only wanted to convince you,” he said kindly. “There ought to be, at any rate, one ghost in the servants’ hall.”

Barnes held up his hand for silence.

“Yes?” said Meagle with a grin at the other two. “Is anybody coming?”

“Suppose we drop this game and go back,” said Barnes suddenly. “I don’t believe in spirits, but nerves are outside anybody’s command. You may laugh as you like, but it really seemed to me that I heard a door open below and steps on the stairs.”

His voice was drowned in a roar of laughter.

“He is coming round,” said Meagle with a smirk. “By the time I have done with him he will be a confirmed believer. Well, who will go and get some water? Will you, Barnes?”

“No,” was the reply.

“If there is any it might not be safe to drink after all these years,” said Lester. “We must do without it.”

Meagle nodded, and taking a seat on the floor held out his hand for the cup. Pipes were lit and the clean, wholesome smell of tobacco filled the room. White produced a pack of cards; talk and laughter rang through the room and died away reluctantly in distant corridors.

“Empty rooms always delude me into the belief that I possess a deep voice,” said Meagle. “Tomorrow—”

He started up with a smothered exclamation as the light went out suddenly and something struck him on the head. The others sprang to their feet. Then Meagle laughed.

“It’s the candle,” he exclaimed. “I didn’t stick it enough.”

Barnes struck a match and relighting the candle stuck it on the mantelpiece, and sitting down took up his cards again.

“What was I going to say?” said Meagle. “Oh, I know; tomorrow I—”

“Listen!” said White, laying his hand on the other’s sleeve. “Upon my word I really thought I heard a laugh.”

“Look here!” said Barnes. “What do you say to going back? I’ve had enough of this. I keep fancying that I hear things too; sounds of something moving about in the passage outside. I know it’s only fancy, but it’s uncomfortable.”

“You go if you want to,” said Meagle, “and we will play dummy. Or you might ask the tramp to take your hand for you, as you go downstairs.”

Barnes shivered and exclaimed angrily. He got up and, walking to the half-closed door, listened.

“Go outside,” said Meagle, winking at the other two. “I’ll dare you to go down to the hall door and back by yourself.”

Barnes came back and, bending forward, lit his pipe at the candle.

“I am nervous but rational,” he said, blowing out a thin cloud of smoke. “My nerves tell me that there is something prowling up and down the long passage outside; my reason tells me that it is all nonsense. Where are my cards?”

He sat down again, and taking up his hand, looked through it carefully and led.

“Your play, White,” he said after a pause. White made no sign.

“Why, he is asleep,” said Meagle. “Wake up, old man. Wake up and play.”

Lester, who was sitting next to him, took the sleeping man by the arm and shook him, gently at first and then with some roughness; but White, with his back against the wall and his head bowed, made no sign. Meagle bawled in his ear and then turned a puzzled face to the others.

“He sleeps like the dead,” he said, grimacing. “Well, there are still three of us to keep each other company.”

“Yes,” said Lester, nodding. “Unless – Good Lord! suppose—”

He broke off and eyed them trembling.

“Suppose what?” inquired Meagle.

“Nothing,” stammered Lester. “Let’s wake him. Try him again. White! White!”

“It’s no good,” said Meagle seriously; “there’s something wrong about that sleep.”

“That’s what I meant,” said Lester; “and if he goes to sleep like that, why shouldn’t—”

Meagle sprang to his feet. “Nonsense,” he said roughly. “He’s tired out; that’s all. Still, let’s take him up and clear out. You take his legs and Barnes will lead the way with the candle. Yes? Who’s that?”

He looked up quickly towards the door. “Thought I heard somebody tap,” he said with a shamefaced laugh. “Now, Lester, up with him. One, two – Lester! Lester!”

He sprang forward too late; Lester, with his face buried in his arms, had rolled over on the floor fast asleep, and his utmost efforts failed to awaken him.

“He – is – asleep,” he stammered. “Asleep!”

Barnes, who had taken the candle from the mantel-piece, stood peering at the sleepers in silence and dropping tallow over the floor.

“We must get out of this,” said Meagle. “Quick!” Barnes hesitated. “We can’t leave them here—” he began.

“We must,” said Meagle in strident tones. “If you go to sleep I shall go – Quick! Come.”

He seized the other by the arm and strove to drag him to the door. Barnes shook him off, and putting the candle back on the mantelpiece, tried again to arouse the sleepers.

“It’s no good,” he said at last, and, turning from them, watched Meagle. “Don’t you go to sleep,” he said anxiously.

Meagle shook his head, and they stood for some time in uneasy silence. “May as well shut the door,” said Barnes at last.

He crossed over and closed it gently. Then at a scuffling noise behind him he turned and saw Meagle in a heap on the hearthstone.

With a sharp catch in his breath he stood motionless. Inside the room the candle, fluttering in the draught, showed dimly the grotesque attitudes of the sleepers. Beyond the door there seemed to his overwrought imagination a strange and stealthy unrest. He tried to whistle, but his lips were parched, and in a mechanical fashion he stooped, and began to pick up the cards which littered the floor.

He stopped once or twice and stood with bent head listening. The unrest outside seemed to increase; a loud creaking sounded from the stairs.

“Who is there?” he cried loudly.

The creaking ceased. He crossed to the door and flinging it open, strode out into the corridor. As he walked his fears left him suddenly.

“Come on!” he cried with a low laugh. “All of you! All of you! Show your faces – your infernal ugly faces! Don’t skulk!”

He laughed again and walked on; and the heap in the fireplace put out his head tortoise fashion and listened in horror to the retreating footsteps. Not until they had become inaudible in the distance did the listeners’ features relax.

“Good Lord, Lester, we’ve driven him mad,” he said in a frightened whisper. “We must go after him.”

There was no reply. Meagle sprung to his feet. “Do you hear?” he cried. “Stop your fooling now; this is serious. White! Lester! Do you hear?”

He bent and surveyed them in angry bewilderment. “All right,” he said in a trembling voice. “You won’t frighten me, you know.”

He turned away and walked with exaggerated carelessness in the direction of the door. He even went outside and peeped through the crack, but the sleepers did not stir. He glanced into the blackness behind, and then came hastily into the room again.

He stood for a few seconds regarding them. The stillness in the house was horrible; he could not even hear them breathe. With a sudden resolution he snatched the candle from the mantelpiece and held the flame to White’s finger. Then as he reeled back stupefied the footsteps again became audible.

He stood with the candle in his shaking hand listening. He heard them ascending the farther staircase, but they stopped suddenly as he went to the door. He walked a little way along the passage, and they went scurrying down the stairs and then at a jog-trot along the corridor below. He went back to the main staircase, and they ceased again.

For a time he hung over the balusters, listening and trying to pierce the blackness below; then slowly, step by step, he made his way downstairs, and, holding the candle above his head, peered about him.

“Barnes!” he called. “Where are you?” Shaking with fright, he made his way along the passage, and summoning up all his courage pushed open doors and gazed fearfully into empty rooms. Then, quite suddenly, he heard the footsteps in front of him.

He followed slowly for fear of extinguishing the candle, until they led him at last into a vast bare kitchen with damp walls and a broken floor. In front of him a door leading into an inside room had just closed. He ran towards it and flung it open, and a cold air blew out the candle. He stood aghast.

“Barnes!” he cried again. “Don’t be afraid! It is I – Meagle!”

There was no answer. He stood gazing into the darkness, and all the time the idea of something close at hand watching was upon him. Then suddenly the steps broke out overhead again.

He drew back hastily, and passing through the kitchen groped his way along the narrow passages. He could now see better in the darkness, and finding himself at last at the foot of the staircase began to ascend it noiselessly. He reached the landing just in time to see a figure disappear round the angle of a wall. Still careful to make no noise, he followed the sound of the steps until they led him to the top floor, and he cornered the chase at the end of a short passage.

“Barnes!” he whispered. “Barnes!”

Something stirred in the darkness. A small circular window at the end of the passage just softened the blackness and revealed the dim outlines of a motionless figure. Meagle, in place of advancing, stood almost as still as a sudden horrible doubt took possession of him. With his eyes fixed on the shape in front he fell back slowly and, as it advanced upon him, burst into a terrible cry.

“Barnes! For God’s sake! Is it you?”

The echoes of his voice left the air quivering, but the figure before him paid no heed. For a moment he tried to brace his courage up to endure its approach, then with a smothered cry he turned and fled.

The passages wound like a maze, and he threaded them blindly in a vain search for the stairs. If he could get down and open the hall door—

He caught his breath in a sob; the steps had begun again. At a lumbering trot they clattered up and down the bare passages, in and out, up and down, as though in search of him. He stood appalled, and then as they drew near entered a small room and stood behind the door as they rushed by. He came out and ran swiftly and noiselessly in the other direction, and in a moment the steps were after him. He found the long corridor and raced along it at top speed. The stairs he knew were at the end, and with the steps close behind he descended them in blind haste. The steps gained on him, and he shrank to the side to let them pass, still continuing his headlong flight. Then suddenly he seemed to slip off the earth into space.

Lester awoke in the morning to find the sunshine streaming into the room, and White sitting up and regarding with some perplexity a badly blistered finger.

“Where are the others?” inquired Lester.

“Gone, I suppose,” said White. “We must have been asleep.”

Lester arose, and stretching his stiffened limbs, dusted his clothes with his hands, and went out into the corridor. White followed. At the noise of their approach a figure which had been lying asleep at the other end sat up and revealed the face of Barnes. “Why, I’ve been asleep,” he said in surprise. “I don’t remember coming here. How did I get here?”

“Nice place to come for a nap,” said Lester, severely, as he pointed to the gap in the balusters. “Look there! Another yard and where would you have been?”

He walked carelessly to the edge and looked over. In response to his startled cry the others drew near, and all three stood gazing at the dead man below.

OLD FAGS

Stacy Aumonier

1917

The boys called him “Old Fags,” and the reason was not hard to seek. He occupied a room in a block of tenements off Lisson Grove, bearing the somewhat grandiloquent title of Bolingbroke Buildings and, conspicuous among the many doubtful callings that occupied his time, was one in which he issued forth with a deplorable old canvas sack, which, after a day’s peregrination along the gutters, he would manage to partly fill with cigar and cigarette ends. The exact means by which he managed to convert this patiently gathered garbage into the wherewithal to support his disreputable body, nobody took the trouble to inquire; nor was there any further interest aroused by the disposal of the contents of the same sack when he returned with the gleanings of dustbins, distributed thoughtfully at intervals along certain thoroughfares by a maternal Borough Council.

No one had ever penetrated to the inside of his room, but the general opinion in Bolingbroke Buildings was that he managed to live in a state of comfortable filth. And Mrs. Read, who lived in the room opposite Number 477 with her four children, was of opinion that “Old Fags ’ad ’oarded up a bit.” He certainly was never behind with the payment of the weekly three and sixpence that entitled him to the sole enjoyment of Number 475; and when the door was opened, among the curious blend of odours that issued forth, that of onions and other luxuries of this sort was undeniable. Nevertheless, he was not a popular figure in the Buildings; many, in fact, looked upon him as a social blot on the Bolingbroke escutcheon. The inhabitants were mostly labourers and their wives, charwomen and lady helps, dressmakers’ assistants, and mechanics. There was a vague, tentative effort among a great body of them to be a little respectable, and among some, even to be clean. No such uncomfortable considerations hampered the movements of “Old Fags.” He was frankly and ostentatiously a social derelict. He had no pride and no shame. He shuffled out in the morning, his blotchy face covered with dirt and black hair, his threadbare green clothes tattered and in rags, the toes all too visible through his forlorn-looking boots. He was rather a large man with a fat, flabby person, and a shiny face that was over-affable and bleary through a too constant attention to the gin bottle.

He had a habit of ceaseless talk. He talked and chuckled to himself all the time; he talked to everyone he met in an undercurrent of jeering affability. Sometimes he would retire to his room with a gin bottle for days together and then – the walls at Bolingbroke Buildings are not very thick – he would be heard to talk and chuckle and snore alternately, until the percolating atmosphere of stewed onions heralded the fact that “Old Fags” was shortly on the warpath again.

He would meet Mrs. Read with her children on the stairs and would mutter: “Oh! here we are again! All these dear little children. Been out for a walk, eh? Oh! these dear little children!” and he would pat one of them gaily on the head. And Mrs. Read would say: “’Ere, you, keep your filthy ’ands off my kids, you dirty old swine, or I’ll catch you a swipe over the mouth!” And “Old Fags” would shuffle off muttering: “Oh, dear; oh, dear; these dear little children! Oh, dear; oh, dear.” And the boys would call after him and even throw orange peel and other things at him, but nothing seemed to disturb the serenity of “Old Fags.” Even when young Charlie Good threw a dead mouse, that hit him on the chin, he only said: “Oh, these Boys! These BOYS!”

Quarrels, noise and bad odours were the prevailing characteristics of Bolingbroke Buildings, and “Old Fags,” though contributing in some degree to the latter quality, rode serenely through the other two in spite of multiform aggression. The penetrating intensity of his onion stew had driven two lodgers already from Number 476, and was again a source of aggravation to the present holders, old Mrs. Birdle and her daughter, Minnie.

Minnie Birdle was what was known as a “tweeny” at a house in Hyde Park Square, but she lived at home. Her mistress – to whom she had never spoken, being engaged by the Housekeeper – was Mrs. Bastien-Melland, a lady who owned a valuable collection of little dogs. These little dogs somehow gave Minnie an unfathomable sense of respectability. She loved to talk about them. She told Mrs. Read that her mistress paid “’undreds and ’undreds of pahnds for each of them.” They were taken out every day by a groom on two leads of five, – ten highly groomed, bustling, yapping, snapping, vicious little luxuries. Some had won prizes at Dog Shows, and two men were engaged for the sole purpose of ministering to their creature comforts.

The consciousness of working in a house which furnished such an exhibition of festive cultivation brought into sharp relief the degrading social condition of her next-room neighbour. Minnie hated “Old Fags” with a bitter hatred. She even wrote to a firm of lawyers, who represented some remote landlord, and complained of the dirty habits of the old drunken wretch next door. But she never received any answer to her complaint. It was known that “Old Fags” had lived there for seven years and paid his rent regularly. Moreover, on one critical occasion, Mrs. Read, who had periods of rheumatic gout and could not work, had got into hopeless financial straits, having reached the very limit of her borrowing capacity, and being three weeks in arrears with her rent, “Old Fags” had come over and had insisted on lending her fifteen shillings! Mrs. Read eventually paid it back, and the knowledge of the transaction further accentuated her animosity toward him.

One day “Old Fags” was returning from his dubious round and was passing through Hyde Park Square with his canvas bag slung over his back, when he ran into the cortege of little dogs under the control of Meads, the groom.

“Oh, dear! Oh, dear!” muttered “Old Fags” to himself. “What dear little dogs! H’m! What dear little dogs!”

A minute later Minnie Birdle ran up the area steps and gave Meads a bright smile. “Good-night, Mr. Meads,” she said.

Mr. Meads looked at her and said: “’Ullo! you off?”

“Yes!” she answered.

“Oh, well,” he said, “good-night! Be good!” They both sniggered, and Minnie hurried down the street. Before she reached Lisson Grove “Old Fags” had caught her up.

“I say,” he said, getting into her stride, “what dear little dogs those are! Oh, dear! what dear little dogs!”

Minnie turned, and when she saw him her face flushed, and she said: “Oh, you go to Hell!” with which unladylike expression she darted across the road and was lost to sight.

“Oh, these women!” said “Old Fags” to himself, “these WOMEN!”

It often happened, thereafter, that “Old Fags’” business carried him in the neighbourhood of Hyde Park Square, and he ran into the little dogs. One day he even ventured to address Meads and to congratulate him on the beauty of his canine protegees, an attention that elicited a very unsympathetic response; a response, in fact, that amounted to being told “to clear off.”

The incident of “Old Fags” running into this society was entirely accidental. It was due, in part, to the fact that the way lay through there to a tract of land in Paddington that “Old Fags” seemed to find peculiarly attractive. It was a neglected strip of ground by the railway, that butted at one end onto a canal. It would have made quite a good siding, but that it seemed somehow to have been overlooked by the Railway Company, and to have become a dumping ground for tins and old refuse from the houses in the neighbourhood of Harrow Road. “Old Fags” would spend hours there alone with his canvas bag.

When the winter came on there was a great wave of what the papers would call economic unrest. There were strikes in three great industries, a political upheaval, and a severe tightening of the Money Market. All of these misfortunes reacted on Bolingbroke Buildings. The dwellers became even more impecunious, and consequently more quarrelsome, more noisy and more malodorous. Rents were all in arrears, ejections were the order of the day, and borrowing became a tradition rather than an actuality. Want and hunger brooded over the dejected Buildings. But still “Old Fags” came and went, carrying his shameless gin and permeating the. passages with his onion stews.

Old Mrs. Birdle became bedridden and the support of Room Number 476 fell on the shoulders of Minnie. The wages of a “tweeny” are not excessive, and the way in which she managed to support herself and her invalid mother must have excited the wonder of the other dwellers in the building, if they had not had more pressing affairs of their own to wonder about. Minnie was a short, sallow little thing with a rather full figure, and heavy grey eyes that somehow conveyed a sense of sleeping passion. She had a certain instinct for dress, a knack of putting some trinket in the right place, and of always being neat. Mrs. Bastien-Melland had one day asked who she was. On being informed, her curiosity did not prompt her to push the matter further, and she did not speak to her; but the incident gave Minnie a better standing in the domestic household at Hyde Park Square. It was probably this attention that caused Meads, the head dog groom, to cast an eye in her direction. It is certain that he did so, and, moreover, on a certain Thursday evening had taken her to a cinema performance in the Edgware Road. Such attention naturally gave rise to discussion; and, alas, to jealousy; for there was an under house maid, and even a Lady’s maid, who were not impervious to the attentions of the good-looking groom.

When Mrs. Bastien-Melland went to Egypt in January, she took only three of the small dogs with her, for she could not be bothered with the society of a groom, and three dogs were as many as her two maids could spare time for, after devoting their energies to Mrs. Bastien-Melland’s toilette. Consequently, Meads was left behind, and was held directly responsible for seven, five Chows and two Pekinese, or, as he expressed it, over a thousand pounds’ worth of dogs. It was a position of enormous responsibility. They had to be fed on the very best food, all carefully prepared and cooked, and in small quantities. They had to be taken for regular exercise, and washed in specially prepared condiments. Moreover, at the slightest symptom of indisposition he was to telephone to Sir Andrew Fossiter, the great veterinary specialist in Hanover Square. It is not to be wondered at that Meads became a person of considerable standing and envy, and that little Minnie Birdle was intensely flattered when he occasionally condescended to look in her direction. She had been in Mrs. Bastien-Melland’s service now for seven months, and the attentions of the dog groom had not only been a matter of general observation, for some time past, but had become a subject of reckless mirth and innuendo among the other servants.

One night she was hurrying home. Her mother had been rather worse than usual of late, and she was carrying a few scraps that the cook had given her. It was a wretched night and she was not feeling well herself: a mood of tired dejection possessed her. She crossed a drab street off Lisson Grove and, as she reached the curb, her eye lighted on “Old Fags.” He did not see her. He was walking along the gutter, patting the road occasionally with his stick. She had not spoken to him since the occasion we have mentioned. For once he was not talking – his eyes were fixed in listless apathy on the road. As he passed, she caught the angle of his chin silhouetted against the window of a shop. For the rest of her walk the haunting vision of that chin beneath the drawn cheeks, and the brooding hopelessness of those sunken eyes, kept recurring to her. Perhaps, in some remote past, he had been as good to look upon as Meads, the groom! Perhaps someone had cared for him! She tried to push this thought from her, but some chord m her nature seemed to have been awakened and to vibrate with an unaccountable sympathy toward this undesirable fellow lodger.

She hurried home, and in the night was ill. She could not go to Mrs. Melland’s for three days and she wanted the money badly. When she got about again she was subject to fainting fits and sickness. On one such occasion, as she was going upstairs at the Buildings, she felt faint and leaned against the wall just as “Old Fags” was going up.

He stopped and said: “Hullo, now what are we doing? Oh, dear! Oh, dear!”

And she said: “It’s all right, old ’un.” These were the kindest words she had ever spoken to “Old Fags.”

During the next month there were strange symptoms about Minnie Birdle that caused considerable comment, and there were occasions when old Mrs. Birdle pulled herself together, and became the active partner and waited on Minnie. On one such occasion, “Old Fags” came home late and, after drawing a cork, varied his usual programme of talking and snoring by singing in a maudlin key, and old Mrs. Birdle came banging at his door and shrieked out: “Stop your row, you old – – – . My daughter is ill. Can’t you hear?”

And “Old Fags” came to his door and blinked at her and said: “Ill, is she? Oh, dear! oh, dear! Would she like some stew, eh?”

And old Mrs. Birdle said: “No, she don’t want any of your muck,” and bundled back. But they did not hear any more of “Old Fags” that night, or any other night when Minnie came home queer.

Early in March Minnie got the sack from Hyde Park Square. Mrs. Melland was still away – having decided to winter in Rome – but the Housekeeper assumed the responsibility of this action, and in writing to Mrs. Melland, justified the course she had taken by saying that “she could not expect the other maids to work in the same house with an unmarried girl in that condition.” Mrs. Melland, whose letter in reply was full of the serious illness of poor little Annisette, one of the Chows, that had suffered in Egypt on account of a maid giving it too much rice, with its boned chicken; and how much better it had been in Rome under the treatment of Dr. Lascati, – made no special reference to the question of Minnie Birdle, only saying that “she was so sorry if Mrs. Bellingham was having trouble with these tiresome servants.”

The spring came, and the summer, and the two inhabitants of Room 476 eked out their miserable existence. One day Minnie would pull herself together and get a day’s charring and occasionally Mrs. Birdle would struggle along to a laundry in Maida Vale, where a benevolent proprietress would pay her one shilling and threepence to do a day’s ironing; for the old lady was rather neat with her hands. And once, when things were very desperate, the brother of a nephew from Walthamstow turned up. He was a small cabinet-maker by trade, and he agreed to allow them three shillings a week, “till things righted themselves a bit.” But nothing was seen of Meads, the groom. One night Minnie was rather worse and the idea occurred to her that she would like to send a message to him. It was right that he should know. He had made no attempt to see her since she had left Mrs. Melland’s service. She lay awake thinking of him and wondering how she could send a message, when she suddenly thought of “Old Fags.” He had been quiet of late; whether the demand for cigarette ends was abating and he could not afford the luxuries that their disposal seemed to supply, or whether he was keeping quiet for any ulterior reason, she was not able to determine. In the morning she sent her mother across to ask him if he would “oblige by calling at Hyde Park Square and asking Mr. Meads if he would oblige by calling at 476 Bolingbroke Buildings, to see Miss Birdle.”

There is no record of how “Old Fags” delivered this message, but it is known that that same afternoon Mr. Meads did call. He left about three-thirty in a great state of perturbation, and in a very bad temper. He passed “Old Fags” on the stairs, and the only comment he made was: “I never have any luck! God help me!” And he did not return, although he had apparently promised to do so.

In a few weeks’ time the position of the occupants of Room 476 became desperate. It was, in fact, a desperate time all round. Work was scarce and money scarcer. Waves of ill-temper and depression swept Bolingbroke Buildings. Mrs. Read had gone – Heaven knows where. Even “Old Fags” seemed at the end of his tether. True, he still managed to secure his inevitable bottle, but the stews became scarcer and less potent. All Mrs. Birdle’s time and energy were taken up in nursing Minnie, and the two somehow existed on the money – now increased to four shillings a week – which the sympathetic cabinet-maker from Walthamstow allowed them. The question of rent was shelved. Four shillings a week for two people means ceaseless, gnawing hunger. The widow and her daughter lost pride and hope, and further messages to Mr. Meads failed to elicit any response. The widow became so desperate that she even asked “Old Fags” one night if he could spare a little stew for her daughter who was starving. The pungent odour of the hot food was too much for her.

“Old Fags” came to the door: “Oh, dear! Oh, dear!” he said, “what trouble there is! Let’s see what we can do!” He messed about for some time and then took it across to them. It was a strange concoction. Meat that it would have been difficult to know what to ask for at a butcher’s, and many bones, but the onions seemed to pull it together. To anyone starving it was good. After that it became a sort of established thing: whenever “Old Fags” had a stew, he sent some over to the widow and daughter. But apparently things were not going too well in the cigarette-end trade, for the stews became more and more intermittent, and sometimes were desperately “boney.”

And then one night a climax was reached. “Old Fags” was awakened in the night by fearful screams. There was a district nurse in the next room, and also a student from a great hospital. No one knows how it all affected “Old Fags.” He went out at a very unusual hour in the early morning, and seemed more garrulous and meandering in his speech. He stopped the widow in the passage and mumbled incomprehensible solicitude.

Minnie was very ill for three days, but she recovered, faced by the insoluble proposition of feeding three mouths, instead of two, and two of them requiring enormous quantities of milk. This terrible crisis brought out many good qualities in various people. The cabinet-maker sent ten shillings extra, and others came forward as though driven by some race instinct. “Old Fags” disappeared for ten days after that. It was owing to an unfortunate incident in Hyde Park, when he insisted on sleeping on a flower bed with a gin bottle under his left arm, and on account of the unreasonable attitude that he took up toward a policeman in the matter. When he returned things were assuming their normal course. Mrs. Birdle’s greeting was: “’Ullo, old ’un, we’ve missed your stoos.”

“Old Fags” had undoubtedly secured a more stable position in the eyes of the Birdles, and one day he was even allowed to see the baby. He talked to it from the door. “Oh, dear! oh, dear!” he said. “What a beautiful little baby! What a dear little baby! Oh, dear! oh, dear!” The baby shrieked with unrestrained terror at sight of him, but that night some more stew was sent in.

Then the autumn came on. People, whose romantic instincts had been touched at the arrival of the child, gradually lost interest and fell away. The cabinet-maker from Walthamstow wrote a long letter, saying that after next week the payment of the four shillings would have to stop, he hoped he had been of some help in their trouble, but that things were going on all right now; of course he had to think of his own family first, and so on.

The lawyers of the remote landlord, who was assiduously killing stags in Scotland, regretted that their client could not see his way to allow any further delay in the matter of the payment of rent due. The position of the Birdle family became once more desperate. Old Mrs. Birdle had become frailer, and though Minnie could now get about, she found work difficult to obtain, owing to people’s demand for a character from the last place. Their thoughts once more reverted to Meads, and Minnie lay in wait for him one morning as he was taking the dogs out. There was a very trying scene ending in a very vulgar quarrel, and Minnie came home and cried all the rest of the day and through half the night.

“Old Fags’” stews became scarcer and less palatable. He, too, seemed in dire straits.

We now come to an incident that, we are ashamed to say, owes its inception to the effect of alcohol. It was a wretched morning in late October, bleak and foggy. The blue-grey corridors of Bolingbroke Buildings seemed to exude damp. The strident voices of the unkempt children, quarrelling in the courtyard below, permeated the whole Buildings. The strange odour, that was its characteristic, lay upon it like the foul breath of some evil god. All its inhabitants seemed hungry, wretched and vile. Their lives of constant protest seemed, for the moment, lulled to a sullen indifference, whilst they huddled behind their gloomy doors and listened to the raucous railings of their offspring.

The widow Birdle and her daughter sat silently in their room. The child was asleep. It had had its milk, and it would have to have its milk, whatever happened. The crumbs from the bread the women had had at breakfast lay ungathered on the bare table. They were both hungry and very desperate. There was a knock at the door. Minnie went to it, and there stood “Old Fags.” He leered at them meekly and under his arm carried a gin bottle, three parts full.

“Oh, dear! Oh, dear!” he said. “What a dreadful day! What a dreadful day! Will you have a little drop of gin to comfort you? Now! What do you say?”

Minnie looked at her mother – in other days the door would have been slammed in his face, but “Old Fags” had certainly been kind in the matter of stews. They asked him to sit down. Then old Mrs. Birdle did accept just a tiny drop of gin, and they both persuaded Minnie to have a little. Now neither of the women had had food of any worth for days, and the gin went straight to their heads. It was already in “Old Fags’” head, firmly established. The three immediately became garrulous. They all talked volubly and intimately. The women railed “Old Fags” about his dirt, but allowed that he had “a good ’eart.” They talked longingly and lovingly about “his stoos” and “Old Fags” said: “Well, my dears, you shall have the finest stoo you’ve ever had in your lives tonight.”

He repeated this nine times, only each time the whole sentence sounded like one word.

Then the conversation drifted to the child, and the hard lot of parents, and by a natural sequence to Meads, its father. Meads was discussed with considerable bitterness, and the constant reiteration of the threat by the women that they meant to ’ave the Lor on ’im all right, mingled with the jeering sophistries of “Old Fags” on the genalman’s behaviour, and the impossibility of expecting a dog groom to be a sportsman, lasted a considerable time. “Old Fags” talked expansively about leaving it to him, and somehow as he stood there with his large, puffy figure, looming up in the dimly lighted room, and waving his long arms, he appeared to the women a figure of portentous significance. In the eyes of the women he typified powers they had not dreamt of. Under the veneer of his hidebound depravity Minnie seemed to detect some slow moving force trying to assert itself.

He meandered on in a vague monologue, using terms and expressions they did not know the meaning of. He gave the impression of some fettered animal, launching a fierce indictment against the fact of its life. At last he took up the gin bottle and moved to the door and then leered round the room.

“You shall have the finest stoo you’ve ever had in your life tonight, my dears.”

He repeated this seven times again and then went heavily out.

That afternoon a very amazing fact was observed by several inhabitants of Bolingbroke Buildings. “Old Fags” washed his face! He went out about three o’clock without his sack. His face had certainly been cleaned up and his clothes seemed in some mysterious fashion to hold together. He went across Lisbon Grove and made for Hyde Park Square. He hung about for nearly an hour at the corner, and then he saw a man come up the area steps of a house on the south side and walk rapidly away. “Old Fags” followed him. He took a turning sharp to the left through a Mews, and entered a narrow street at the end. There he entered a deserted-looking pub, kept by an ex-butler and his wife. He passed right through to a room at the back and called for some beer. Before it was brought, “Old Fags” was seated at the next table ordering gin.

“Dear, oh, dear! what a wretched day!” said “Old Fags.”

The groom grunted assent. But “Old Fags” was not to be put off by mere indifference. He broke ground on one or two subjects that interested the groom, one subject in particular being Dog. He seemed to have a profound knowledge of Dog, and before Mr. Meads quite realised what was happening he was trying gin in his beer at “Old Fags’” expense.

The groom was feeling particularly morose that afternoon. His luck seemed out. Bookmakers had appropriated several half-crowns that he sorely begrudged, and he had other expenses. The beer-gin mixture comforted him, and the rambling eloquence of the old fool, who seemed disposed to be content paying for drinks and talking, fitted in with his mood. They drank and talked for a full hour, and at length got to a subject that all men get to sooner or later if they drink and talk long enough – the subject of Woman.

Mr. Meads became confiding and philosophic. He talked of women in general and what triumphs and adventures he had had among them in particular. But what a trial and tribulation they had been to him in spite of all! “Old Fags” winked knowingly and was splendidly comprehensive and tolerant of Meads’ peccadillos.

“It’s all a game,” said Meads. “You’ve got to manage ’em. There ain’t much I don’t know, old bird!” Then suddenly “Old Fags” leaned forward in the dark room and said: “No, Mr. Meads, but you ought to play the game, you know. Oh, dear, yes!”

“What do you mean, Mister Meads?” said that gentleman sharply.

“Minnie Birdle, eh, you haven’t mentioned Minnie Birdle yet!” said “Old Fags.”

“What the Devil are you talking about?” said Meads drunkenly.

“She’s starving,” said “Old Fags,” “starving, wretched, alone with her old mother and your child. Oh, dear! yes, it’s terrible!”

Meads’ eyes flashed with a sullen frenzy, but fear was gnawing at his heart, and he felt more disposed to placate this mysterious old man than to quarrel with him.

“I tell you I have no luck,” he said after a pause.

“Old Fags” looked at him gloomily and ordered some more gin. When it was brought he said: “You ought to play the game, you know, Mr. Meads. After all – luck? Oh, dear! Oh, dear! Would you rather be the woman? Five shillings a week, you know, would—”

“No, I’m damned if I do!” cried Meads fiercely. “It’s all right for all these women – Gawd! How do I know if it’s true? Look here, old bird, do you know I’m already done in for two five bobs a week, eh! One up in Norfolk and the other at Enfield. Ten shillings a week of my – – – money goes to these blasted women. No fear, no more, I’m through with it!”

“Oh, dear! oh, dear!” said “Old Fags,” and he moved a little further into the shadow of the room and watched the groom out of the depths of his sunken eyes.

But Meads’ courage was now fortified by the fumes of a large quantity of fiery alcohol, and he spoke witheringly of women in general and seemed disposed to quarrel if “Old Fags” disputed his right to place them in the position that Meads considered their right and natural position. But “Old Fags” gave no evidence of taking up the challenge – on the contrary he seemed to suddenly shift his ground. He grinned and leered and nodded at Meads’ string of coarse sophistry, and suddenly he touched him on the arm and looked round the room and said very confidentially:

“Oh, dear! yes, Mr. Meads. Don’t take too much to heart what I said,” and then he sniffed and whispered: “I could put you on to a very nice thing, Mr. Meads. I could introduce you to a lady I know would take a fancy to you, and you to her. Oh, dear, yes!”

Meads pricked up his ears like a fox-terrier and his small eyes glittered.

“Oh!” he said. “Are you one of those, eh, old bird? Who is she?”

“Old Fags” took out a piece of paper and fumbled with a pencil. He then wrote down a name and address somewhere at Shepherds Bush.

“What’s a good time to call?” said Meads.

“Between six and seven,” answered “Old Fags.”

“Oh, Hell!” said Meads. “I can’t do it. I’ve got to get back and take the dogs out at half-past five, old bird. From half-past five to half-past six. The missus is back, she’ll kick up a hell of a row.”

“Oh, dear! oh, dear!” said “Old Fags.” “What a pity! The young lady is going away, too!” He thought for a moment and then an idea seemed to strike him. “Look here, would you like me to meet you and take the dogs round the Park till you return?”

“What!” said Meads, “trust you with a thousand pounds’ worth of dogs! Not much.”

“No, no, of course not, I hadn’t thought of that!” said “Old Fags” humbly.

Meads looked at him, and it is very difficult to tell what it was about the old man that gave him a sudden feeling of complete trust. The ingenuity of his speech, the ingratiating confidence that a mixture of beer-gin gives, tempered by the knowledge that famous pedigree Pekinese would be almost impossible to dispose of, perhaps it was a combination of these motives. In any case a riotous impulse drove him to fall in with “Old Fags’” suggestion, and he made the appointment for half-past five.

****

Evening had fallen early, and a fine rain was driving in fitful gusts when the two met at the corner of Hyde Park. There were the ten little dogs on their lead, and Meads with a cap pulled close over his eyes.

“Oh, dear! oh, dear!” cried “Old Fags” as he approached. “What dear little dogs! What dear little dogs!”

Meads handed the lead over to “Old Fags” and asked more precise instructions of the way to get to the address.

“What are you wearing that canvas sack inside your coat for, old bird, eh?” asked Meads when these instructions had been given. “Oh, my dear sir,” said

“Old Fags,” “if you had the asthma like I get it! and no underclothes on these damp days! Oh, dear! Oh, dear!” He wheezed drearily.

Meads gave him one or two more exhortations about the extreme care and tact he was to observe.

“Be very careful with that little Chow on the left lead. ’E’s got his coat on, see? ’E’s ’ad a chill and you must keep ’im on the move. Gently, see?”

“Oh, dear! oh, dear! poor little chap! What’s his name?” said “Old Fags.”

“Pelleas,” answered Mr. Meads.

“Oh, poor little Pelleas! Poor little Pelleas! Come along, you won’t be too long, Mr. Meads, will you?”

“You bet I won’t,” said the groom, and nodding he crossed the road rapidly and mounting a Shepherds Bush motor bus, he set out on his journey to an address that didn’t exist.

“Old Fags” ambled slowly round the Park snuffling and talking to the dogs. He gauged the time when Meads would be somewhere about Queens Road, then he ambled slowly back to the point from which he had started. With extreme care he piloted the small army across the High Road and led them in the direction of Paddington. He drifted with leisurely confidence through a maze of small streets. Several people stopped and looked at the dogs and the boys barked and mimicked them, but nobody took the trouble to look at “Old Fags.” At length he came to a district where their presence seemed more conspicuous. Rows of squalid houses and advertisement hoardings. He slightly increased his pace, and a very stout policeman standing outside a funeral furnisher’s glanced at him with a vague suspicion. In strict accordance, however, with an ingrained officialism, that hates to act “without instructions,” he let the cortege pass.

“Old Fags” wandered through a wretched street that seemed entirely peopled by children. Several of them came up and followed the dogs.

“Dear little dogs, aren’t they? Oh my, yes, dear little dogs!” he said to the children.

At last he reached a broad, gloomy thoroughfare with low, irregular buildings on one side, and an in terminable length of hoardings on the other, that screened a strip of land by the railway land that harboured a wilderness of tins and garbage. “Old Fags” led the dogs along by the hoarding. It was very dark. Three children who had been following, tired of the pastime and drifted away. He went along once more. There was a gap in a hoarding on which was notified that “Pogram’s Landaulettes could be hired for the evening at an inclusive fee of two guineas. Telephone 47901 Mayfair.” The meagre light from a street lamp thirty yards away revealed a colossal coloured picture of a very beautiful young man and woman stepping out of a car and entering a gorgeous restaurant, having evidently just enjoyed the advantage of this peerless luxury.

“Old Fags” went on another forty yards and then returned. There was no one in sight. “Oh, dear little dogs!” he said. “Oh, dear! oh, dear! what dear little dogs! Just through here, my pretty pets. Gentle, Pelleas! gently, very gently! There, there, there! Oh, what dear little dogs!” He stumbled forward through the quagmire of desolation, picking his way as though familiar with every inch of ground, to the further corner where it was even darker, and where the noise of shunting freight trains drowned every other murmur of the night.

****

It was eight o’clock when “Old Fags” reached his room in Bolingbroke Buildings, carrying his heavily laden sack across his shoulders. The child in Room 476 had been peevish and fretful all the afternoon, and the two women were lying down, exhausted. They heard “Old Fags” come in. He seemed very busy, banging about with bottles and tins and alternately coughing and wheezing. But soon the potent aroma of onions reached their nostrils and they knew he was preparing to keep his word.

At nine o’clock he staggered across with a steaming saucepan of hot stew. In contrast to the morning’s conversation, which though devoid of self-consciousness had taken on at times an air of moribund analysis, making little stabs at fundamental things, the evening passed off on a note of almost joyous levity. The stew was extremely good to the starving women, and “Old Fags” developed a vein of fantastic pleasantry. He talked unceasingly, sometimes on things they understood, sometimes on matters of which they were entirely ignorant; and sometimes he appeared to them obtuse, maudlin and incoherent. Nevertheless, he brought to their room a certain light-hearted raillery that had never visited it before. No mention was made of Meads.

The only blemish to the serenity of this bizarre supper party was that “Old Fags” developed intervals of violent coughing, intervals when he had to walk around the room and beat his chest. These fits had the unfortunate result of waking the baby.

When this undesirable result had occurred for the fourth time, “Old Fags” said: “Oh, dear! oh, dear! this won’t do. Oh, no, this won’t do. I must go back to my hotel!” A remark that caused paroxysms of mirth to old Mrs. Birdle. Nevertheless, “Old Fags” retired, and it was then just on eleven o’clock.

The women went to bed, and all through the night Minnie heard the old man coughing.

****

Meads jumped off the bus at Shepherds Bush and hurried in the direction that “Old Fags” had instructed him. He asked three people for the Pomeranian Road before an errand boy told him that he believed it was somewhere off Giles Avenue; but at Giles Avenue no one seemed to know it. He retraced his steps in a very bad temper and inquired again. Five other people had never heard of it. So he went to a post office, and a young lady in charge informed him that there was no such road in the neighbourhood. He tried other roads whose names vaguely resembled it, then he came to the conclusion that “that blamed old fool had made some silly mistake.”

He took a bus back with a curious gnawing fear at the pit of his stomach, a fear that he kept thrusting back, he dare not allow himself to contemplate it. It was nearly seven-thirty when he got back to Hyde Park, and his eye quickly scanned the length of railing near which “Old Fags” was to be. Immediately that he saw no sign of him or the little dogs, a horrible feeling of physical sickness assailed him. The whole truth flashed through in his mind. He saw the fabric of his life crumble to dust. He was conscious of visions of past acts and misdeeds tumbling over each other in a furious kaleidoscope. The groom was terribly frightened. Mrs. Bastien-Melland would be in at eight o’clock to dinner, and the first thing she would ask for would be the little dogs. They were never supposed to go out after dark, but he had been busy that afternoon and arranged to take them out later. How was he to account for himself and their loss? He visualised himself in a dock, and all sorts of other horrid things coming up – a forged character, an affair in Norfolk, and another at Enfield, and a little trouble with a bookmaker seven years ago. For he felt convinced that the little dogs had gone forever, and “Old Fags” with them.

He cursed blindly in his soul at his foul luck and the wretched inclination that had lured him to drink “beer-gin” with the old thief. Forms of terrific vengeance passed through his mind, if he should meet the old devil again. In the meantime what should he do? He had never even thought of making “Old Fags” give him any sort of address. He dared not go back to Hyde Park Square without the dogs. He ran breathlessly up and down, peering in every direction. Eight o’clock came and there was still no sign. Suddenly he remembered Minnie Birdle. He remembered that the old ruffian had mentioned, and seemed to know, Minnie Birdle. It was a connection that he had hoped to have wiped out of his life, but the case was desperate. Curiously enough, during his desultory courtship of Minnie, he had never been to her home; the only occasion when he had visited it, was after the birth of the child. He had done so under the influence of three pints of beer, and he hadn’t the faintest recollection now of the number or the block. He hurried there, however, in feverish trepidation.

Now Bolingbroke Buildings harbour some eight hundred people; and it is a remarkable fact that, although the Birdles had lived there about a year, of the eleven people that Meads asked, not one happened to know the name. People develop a profound sense of self-concentration in Bolingbroke Buildings.

Meads wandered up all the stairs and through the slate-tile passages. Twice he passed their door without knowing it – on the first occasion, only five minutes after “Old Fags” had carried a saucepan of steaming stew from Number 475 to Number 476. At ten o’clock he gave it up. He had four shillings on him, and he adjourned to a small “pub” hard by, and ordered a tankard of ale, and as an afterthought three pennyworth of gin which he mixed in it. Probably he thought that this mixture, which was so directly responsible for the train of tragic circumstance that encompassed him, might continue to act in some manner toward a more desirable conclusion.

It did, indeed, drive him to action of a sort, for he sat there drinking and smoking Navy Cut cigarettes, and by degrees he evolved a most engaging, but impossible, story, of being lured to the river by three men and chloroformed; and when he came to, finding that the dogs and the men had gone. He drank a further quantity of beer-gin, and rehearsed his role in detail, and at length brought himself to the point of facing Mrs. Melland.…

It was the most terrifying ordeal of his life. The servants frightened him for a start. They almost shrieked when they saw him and drew back. Mrs. Bastien-Melland had left word that he was to go to a small breakfast-room in the basement directly he came in, and she would come and see him. There was a small dinner party on that evening and an agitated game of bridge. Meads had not stood on the hearth rug of the breakfast-room two minutes before he heard the foreboding swish of skirts, the door burst open, and Mrs. Bastien-Melland stood before him, a thing of penetrating perfumes, high-lights and trepidation.

She just said, “Well!” and fixed her hard, bright eyes on him.

Meads launched forth into his impossible story, but he dared not look at her. He tried to gather together the pieces of the tale he had so carefully rehearsed in the pub, but he felt like some helpless bark at the mercy of a hostile battle fleet; the searchlight of Mrs. Melland’s cruel eyes was concentrated on him; while a flotilla of small diamonds on her heaving bosom winked and glittered with a dangerous insolence.

He was stumbling over a phrase about the effects of chloroform when he became aware that Mrs. Melland was not listening to the matter of his story, she was only concerned with the manner. Her lips were set and her straining eyes insisted on catching his. He looked full at her and caught his breath and stopped.

Mrs. Melland still staring at him was moving slowly to the door. A moment of panic seized him. He mumbled something, and also moved toward the door. Mrs. Melland was first to grip the handle. Meads made a wild dive and seized her wrist. But Mrs. Bastien-Melland came of a hard-riding Yorkshire family. She did not lose her head. She struck him across the mouth with her flat hand, and as he reeled back she opened the door and called to the servants.

Suddenly Meads remembered that the room had a French window onto the garden. He pushed her clumsily against the door and sprang across the room. He clutched wildly at the bolts while Mrs. Melland’s voice was ringing out:

“Catch that man! Hold him! Catch thief!”

But before the other servants had had time to arrive he managed to get through the door and to pull it after him. His hand was bleeding with cuts from broken glass, but he leapt the wall and got into the shadow of some shrubs three gardens away.

He heard whistles blowing and the dominant voice of Mrs. Melland, directing a hue-and-cry. He rested some moments, then panic seized him and he laboured over another wall and found the passage of a semi-detached house. A servant opened a door and looked out and screamed. He struck her wildly and unreasonably on the shoulder, and rushed up some steps and got into a front garden. There was no one there, and he darted into the street and across the road.

In a few minutes he was lost in a labyrinth of back streets and laughing hysterically to himself.

He had two shillings and eightpence on him. He spent fourpence of this on whiskey, and then another fourpence just before the pubs closed. He struggled vainly to formulate some definite plan of campaign. The only point that seemed terribly clear to him was that he must get away. He knew Mrs. Melland only too well. She would spare no trouble in hunting him down. She would exact the uttermost farthing. It meant gaol and ruin. The obvious impediment to getting away was that he had no money and no friends. He had not sufficient strength of character to face a tramp-life. He had lived too long in the society of the pampered Pekinese. He loved comfort.

Out of the simmering tumult of his soul grew a very definite passion – the passion of hate. He developed a vast, bitter, scorching hatred for the person who had caused this ghastly climax to his unfortunate career – “Old Fags.” He went over the whole incidents of the day again, rapidly recalling every phase of “Old Fags’” conversation and manner. What a blind fool he was not to have seen through the filthy old swine’s game! But what had he done with the dogs? Sold the lot for a pound, perhaps! The idea made Meads shiver. He slouched through the streets harbouring his pariah-like lust.

****

We will not attempt to record the psychologic changes that harassed the soul of Mr. Meads during the next two days and nights; the ugly passions that stirred him and beat their wings against the night; the tentative intuitions urging toward some vague new start; the various compromises he made with himself, his weakness and inconsistency that found him bereft of any quality other than the sombre shadow of some ill-conceived revenge. We will only note that on the evening of the day we mention, he turned up at Bolingbroke Buildings. His face was haggard and drawn, his eyes bloodshot and his clothes tattered and muddy. His appearance and demeanour were, unfortunately, not so alien to the general character of Bolingbroke Buildings as to attract any particular attention, and he slunk like a wolf through the dreary passages, and watched the people come and go.

It was at about a quarter to ten, when he was going along a passage in Block “F,” that he suddenly saw Minnie Birdle come out of one door and go into another. His small eyes glittered and he went on tiptoe. He waited till Minnie was quite silent in her room and then he went stealthily to Room 475. He tried the handle and it gave. He opened the door and peered in. There was a cheap tin lamp guttering on a box, that dimly revealed a room of repulsive wretchedness. The furniture seemed to mostly consist of bottles and rags. But in one corner on a mattress he beheld the grinning face of his enemy – “Old Fags.”

Meads shut the door silently and stood with his back to it.

“Oh,” he said, “so here we are at last, old bird, eh!” This move was apparently a supremely successful dramatic coup; for “Old Fags” lay still, paralysed with fear, no doubt.

“So this is our little ’ome, eh?” Meads continued, “where we bring little dogs and sell ’em. What have you got to say, you old ———”

The groom’s face blazed into a sudden accumulated fury. He thrust his chin forward and let forth a volley of frightful and blasting oaths. But “Old Fags” didn’t answer, his shiny face seemed to be intensely amused with this outburst.

“We got to settle our little account, old bird, see?” and the suppressed fury of Meads’ voice denoted some physical climax. “Why the Hell don’t you answer?” he suddenly shrieked; and springing forward he lashed “Old Fags” across the cheek.

A terrible horror came over him. The cheek he had struck was as cold as marble and the head fell a little impotently to one side.

Trembling as though struck with an ague the groom picked up the guttering lamp and held it close to the face of “Old Fags.” It was set in an impenetrable repose, the significance of which even the groom could not misunderstand. The features were calm and childlike, lit by a half-smile of splendid tolerance, that seemed to have over-ridden the temporary buffets of a queer world.

Meads had no idea how long he stood there gazing horror -struck at the face of his enemy. He only knew that he was presently conscious that Minnie Birdle was standing by his side; and as he looked at her, her gaze was fixed on “ Old Fags,” and a tear was trickling down either cheek.

“’E’s dead,” she said. “Old Fags is dead. ’E died this morning of noomonyer.”

She said this quite simply, as though it was a statement that explained the wonder of her presence. She did not look at Meads, or seem aware of him.

He watched the flickering light from the lamp illumining the underside of her chin and nostrils and her quivering brows.

“’E’s dead,” she said again, and the statement seemed to come as an edict of dismissal, as though love and hatred and revenge had no place in these fundamental things.

Meads looked from her to the tousled head, leaning slightly to one side on the mattress, and he felt himself in the presence of forces he could not comprehend. He put the lamp back quietly on the box and tiptoed from the room.