|MARY'S labors and mine did not last very long. At the end of a week,
a promising couple applied for the position described in Mrs. Brane's
advertisement. They drove up to the house in a hired hack one morning,
and Mrs. Brane and I interviewed them in my little office. They were
English people, and had one or two super-excellent references. These
were rather antiquated, to be sure, dating to a time before the couple's
marriage, but they explained that for a long while they had been living
on their savings, but that now the higher cost of living had forced them
to go into service again.
The woman would have been very handsome except for a defect in her
proportions: her face was very much too large. Also, there was a lack
of expression in the large, heavy-lidded eyes. The man was the most
discreet type of English house servant imaginable, with side whiskers
and a small, thin-lipped, slightly caved-in mouth. His eyes were so
small that they were almost negligible in the long, narrow head. Their
general appearance, however, was presentable, and their manner left
nothing to be desired. To me, especially, they were so respectful, so
docile, so eager to serve, that I found it almost disconcerting. They
had the oddest way of fixing their eyes on me, as though waiting for
some sort of signal. Sometimes, I fancied that, far down underneath the
servility of those two pairs of eyes, there was a furtive expression
of something I could not quite translate, fear, perhaps, or--how can
I express it?--a sort of fearful awareness of secret understanding.
Perhaps there is no better way to describe it than to say that I should
not have been astonished if, looking up quickly into the woman's large,
blank, handsome face, I should have surprised a wink. And she would have
expected me to understand the wink.
Of course, I did not gather all these impressions at once. It was only
as the days went by that I accumulated them. Once, and once only, Henry
Lorrence, the new man, was guilty of a real impertinence. I had been
busy in the bookroom with my interminable, but delightful, task of
dusting and arranging Mr. Brane's books in Paul Dabney's company, and,
hearing Mary's voice calling from the garden rather anxiously for “Miss
Gale,” I came out suddenly into the hall. Henry was standing there near
the door of the bookroom, doing nothing that I could see, though he
certainly had a dust-cloth in his hand. He looked not at all abashed by
my discovery of him; on the contrary, that indescribable look of mutual
understanding or of an expectation of mutual understanding took strong
possession of his face.
“I see you're keepin' your eyes on him, madam,” said he softly, jerking
his head towards the room where I had left Mr. Dabney.
I was vexed, of course, and I suppose my face showed it. My reproof was
not so severe, however, as to cause such a look of cowering fear. Henry
turned pale, his thin, loose lips seemed to find themselves unable to
fit together properly. He stammered out an abject apology, and melted
away in the hall.
I stood for several minutes staring after him, I remember, and when,
turning, I found that Mr. Dabney had followed me to the door and
was watching both me and the departing man, I was distinctly and
unreasonably annoyed with him.
He, too, melted away into the room, and I went out to see Mary in
the garden. Truly I never thought myself a particularly awe-inspiring
person, but, since I had come to “The Pines,” every one from Robbie to
this young man, every one, that is, except Mary and Mrs. Brane, seemed
to regard me with varying degrees of fear. It distressed me, but, at
the same time, gave me a new feeling of power, and I believe it was a
support to me in the difficult and terrifying days to come.
At the box hedge of the garden, Mary met me. As usual, she kept me at a
distance from her charge.
“Miss Gale,” she said, “may I speak to you for a minute?”
“For as many minutes as you like,” I said cordially.
She moved to a little arbor near by where there was a rustic seat. I sat
down upon it, and she stood before me, her strong, red hands folded on
her apron. I saw that she was grave and anxious, though as steady As
ever.
“Miss Gale, 't is a queer matter,” she began.
My heart gave a sad jump. “Oh, Mary,” I begged her, “don't say anything,
please, about ghosts or weird presences in the house.”
She tried to smile, but it was a half-hearted attempt.
“Miss Gale,” she said, “you know I aren't the one to make mountains out
of mole-hills, and you know I ain't easy scairt. But, miss, for Robbie's
sake, somethin' must be done.”
“What must be done, Mary?”
“Well, miss, I don't say as it mayn't be nerves; nerves is mysterious
things as well I know, havin' lived in a haunted house in the old
country where chains was dragged up and down the front stairs regular
after dark, and such-like doin's which all of us took as a matter of
course, but which was explained to the help when they was engaged. But
I do think that Mrs. Brane had ought to move Robbie out of that wing.
Yes'm, that I do.”
“Has anything more happened?” I asked blankly.
“Yes'm. That is to say, Robbie's nightmares has been gettin' worse than
ever, and, last night, when I run into the nursery, jumpin' out of my
bed as quick as I could and not even stoppin' for my slippers--you
know, miss, I sleep right next to the nursery, and keeps a night light
burnin', for I'm not one of the people that holds to discipline and lets
a nervous child cry hisself into fits--when I come in I seen the nursery
door close, and just a bit of a gown of some sort whiskin' round the
edge. Robbie was most beside hisself, I did n't hardly dare to leave
him, but I run to the door and I flung it wide open sudden, the way a
body does when they're scairt-like but means to do the right thing, and,
in course, the hall was dark, but miss,”--Mary swallowed,--“I heard a
footstep far down the passage in the direction of your room.”
My blood chilled all along my veins. “In the direction of my room?”
“Yes, miss, so much so that I thought it must'a' been you, and I felt a
bit easier like, but when I come back to Robbie--” here she turned her
troubled eyes from my face--“why, he was yellin' and screamin' again
about that woman with red hair.... Oh, Miss Gale, ma'am, don't you be
angry with me. You know I'm your friend, but, miss, did you ever walk in
your sleep?”
“No, Mary, no,” I said, and, to my surprise, I had no more of a voice
than a whisper to say it in.
After a pause, “You must lock me in at night after this, Mary,” I added
more firmly.
“Or, better still, after Robbie is sound asleep, let me come into your
bedroom. You can make me up some sort of a bed there, and we will keep
watch over Robbie. I am sure it is just a dream of his--the woman with
red hair bending over him--and I am sure, too, that the closing door,
and the gown, and the footstep were the result of a nervous and excited
imagination. You had been waked suddenly out of a sound sleep.”
“I was broad awake, ma'am,” said Mary, in the voice of one who would
like to be convinced.
I sat there cold in the warm sun, thinking of that woman with long,
red hair who visited Robbie. That it might be myself, prompted by some
ghoulish influence of sleep and night, made my very heart sick.
“Mary,” I asked pitifully enough, “didn't Robbie ever see the woman with
red hair before I came to 'The Pines'?”
Unwillingly she shook her head. “No, miss. The first time he woke up
screamin' about her was the night before Delia and Jane and Annie gave
notice.”
“But he was afraid of red-haired women before, Mary, because, as soon
as I took off my hat downstairs in the drawing-room the afternoon I
arrived, he pointed at me and cried, 'It's her hair!'”
“Is that so, miss?” said Mary, much impressed. “Well, that does point
to his havin' been scairt by some red-haired person before you come
here.”
“Surely Robbie could tell you something that would explain the whole
thing,” I said irritably. “Haven't you questioned him?”
Mary flung up her hands. “Have n't I? As long as I dared, Miss Gale,
it's as much as his life is worth. Dr. Haverstock has forbidden it
absolutely.”
“That's strange, I think, for I know that the first way to be rid of
some nervous terror is to confess its cause.”
“Yes, miss.” Mary was evidently impressed by my knowledge. “And that's
just what Dr. Haverstock said hisself. But he says it has got to be
drawn out of Robbie by what he calls the indirect method. He has asked
Mr. Dabney to win the child's confidence; that is, it was Mr. Dabney's
own suggestion, I believe. Mr. Dabney was with Mrs. Brane and the doctor
when they was discussing Robbie and he says he likes children and
they likes him, as, indeed, they do, miss. Robbie and him are like
two kiddies together, a-playin' at railroads and such in the gravel
yesterday--”
“Did he ask Robbie about the red-haired woman yesterday, because that
may have brought on the nightmare last night?”
“I don't know, miss. I was n't in earshot of them. Mr. Dabney, he always
coaxes Robbie a bit away from the bench where I set and sew out here.”
“I think I'll ask Mr. Dabney,” I said. I began to move away; then,
with an afterthought I turned back to Mary. She was studying me with a
dubious air.
“I think we had better try the plan of watching closely over Robbie
before we say anything to alarm Mrs. Brane,” I said. “It would distress
her very much to move Robbie out of his nursery, and she has been very
tired and languid lately. She has been doing too much, I think. This new
woman, Sara Lorrence, is a terror for house-cleaning, and she's
urged Mrs. Brane to let her give the old part of the house a thorough
cleaning. Mrs. Brane simply won't keep away. She works almost as hard
as Sara, and goes into every crack and cranny and digs out old
rubbish--nothing's more exhausting.”
“Yes, ma'am,” Mary agreed, “she's sure a wonder at cleaning, that Sara.
She's straightened out our kitchen closet somethin' wonderful, miss.”
“She has?” I wondered if Sara, too, had discovered that queer opening
in the back of the closet. I had almost forgotten it, but now I decided,
absurd as such action probably was, to investigate the black hole into
which I had fallen when I tried to move the lawn roller.
I chose a time when Sara Lorrence was out of the kitchen, cutting
lettuces in the kitchen-garden. For several minutes I watched her broad,
well-corseted body at its task, then, singing softly to myself,--for
some reason I had a feeling that I was in danger,--I walked across the
clean board floor and stepped into the closet to which my attention
had first been drawn by Mary. It was indeed a renovated spot, sweet
and garnished like the abode of devils in the parable; pots scoured and
arranged on shelves, rubbish cleared out, the lawn-mower removed, the
roller taken to some more appropriate place. But it was, in its further
recesses, as dark as ever. I moved in, bending down my head and feeling
before me with my hand. My fingers came presently against a wall. I
felt about, in front, on either side, up and down; there was no break
anywhere. Either I had imagined an opening or my hole had been boarded
up.
I went out, lighted a candle, and returned. The closet was entirely
normal,--just a kitchen closet with a sloping roof; it lay under the
back stairs, one small, narrow wall, and three high, wide ones. The
low, narrow wall stood where I had imagined my hole. I went close and
examined it by the light of my candle. There was only one peculiarity
about this wall; it had a temporary look, and was made of odd, old
boards, which, it seemed to me, showed signs of recent workmanship.
Perhaps Henry had made repairs. I blew out my candle and stepped from
the closet.
Sara had come back from the garden. She greeted my appearance with a
low, quavering cry of fear. “Oh, my God!” Then, recovering herself,
though her large face remained ashen, “Excuse me, ma'am,” she
said timidly, “I wasn't expectin' to see you there”--and she added
incomprehensibly--“_not in the daytime_, ma'am.”
Now, for some reason, these words gave me the most horrible chill of
fear. My mind simply turned away from them. I could not question Sara of
their meaning. Subconsciously, I must have refused to understand them.
It is always difficult to describe such psychological phenomena, but
this is one that I am sure many people have experienced. It is akin to
the paralysis which attacks one in frightening dreams and sometimes in
real life, and prevents escape. The sort of shock it gave me absolutely
forbade my taking any notice of it. I spoke to Sara in a strained, hard
voice.
“You have been putting the closet in order,” I said. “Has Henry been
repairing it? I mean has he been mending up that--hole?”
“Yes, ma'am,” she said half sullenly, “accordin' to your orders.” And
she glanced around as though she were afraid some one might be listening
to us.
“My orders? I gave no orders whatever about this closet!” My voice was
almost shrill, and sounded angry, though I was not angry, only terribly
and quite unreasonably frightened.
“Just as you please, ma'am,” said Sara with that curious submissiveness
and its undercurrent of something else,--“just as you say. Of course
you did n't give no such orders. Not you. I just had Henry nail it up
myself”--? here she fixed those expressionless eyes upon me and the lid
of one, or I imagined it, just drooped--“on account of sleuths.”
“Sleuths?” I echoed.
“A kitchen name for rats, ma'am,” said Sara, and came as near to
laughing as I ever saw her come. “Rats, ma'am, that comes about old
houses such as this.” And here she glanced in a meaning way over her
shoulder out of the window.
My glance followed hers; in fact, my whole body followed. I went and
stood near the window. The kitchen was on a lower level than the garden,
so that I looked up to the gravel path. Here Mr. Dabney was walking with
Robbie's hand in his. Robbie was chattering like a bird, and Paul Dabney
was smiling down at him. It was a pretty picture in the pale November
sunshine, a prettier picture than Sara's face. But, as I looked at them
gratefully, feeling that the very sight of those two was bringing me
back from a queer attack of dementia, Robbie, looking by chance my way,
threw himself against his companion, stiffening and pointing. I heard
his shrill cry, “There she is! I _wisht_ they'd take her away!”
I flinched out of his sight, covering my face with my hands and hurrying
towards the inner door which led to the kitchen stairs. I did not
want to look again at Sara, but something forced me to do so. She was
watching me with a look of fearful amusement, a most disgusting look. I
rushed through the door and stumbled up the stairs. I was shaking with
anger, and fear, and pain of heart, and, yet, this last feeling was the
only one whose cause I could fully explain to myself. Paul Dabney had
seen a child turn pale and stiff with fear at the mere sight of me, and
I could not forget the grim, stern look with which he followed Robbie's
little pitiful, pointing finger. And I had fancied that this man was
falling in love with me!
Truly my nerves should have been in no condition to face the dreadful
ordeal of the time that was to come, but, truly, too, and very
mercifully, those nerves are made of steel. They bend often, and with
agonizing pain, but they do not break. I know now that they never will.
They have been tested supremely, and have stood the test.