A HAUNTED HOUSE.
Mabin was taken so thoroughly by surprise, on seeing the wild
self-abandonment of her unhappy companion, that for a few minutes she
stood staring at the crouching figure on the floor like one only
half-awake.
Was this really Mrs. Dale, this haggard, panting creature with the
hoarse voice, the twitching hands, the wide eyes full of unspeakable
terror. Mabin’s sympathy was ready, but at first she did not dare to
offer it. Such terrible anguish, such paralyzing fear, as that from
which the miserable woman was suffering, was something surely beyond
her poor powers of comfort! And even as the girl advanced timidly a
step nearer to her grief-stricken friend, there flashed into her mind
the horrible question: What must this secret be which was locked in
the widow’s breast, that could throw her into such paroxysms of abject
terror? For, not unnaturally, Mabin came to the conclusion that the
vision which had alarmed Mrs. Dale was one of the results of the
remorse from which she owned that she was suffering.
“Don’t! Don’t sob like that! You will make yourself ill; you will
indeed. There is nothing, there is nobody here to frighten you,” said
the girl at last, drawing a little closer to the crouching figure, but
not yet daring to touch her, or to speak in a tone louder than a
whisper.
At the first sound of her voice, Mrs. Dale had started, and raised her
head quickly, turning to the girl’s view a face so much altered, so
drawn, so old-looking, that she hardly recognized the features of the
lovely widow. Then, when the voice ceased, she glanced round the room
again, with the same hunted, anxious look as before.
“Nothing--nobody to frighten me!” she repeated in a shaking voice.
“No, of course not, of course not. How silly I have been! I am afraid
I frightened you, dear,--with my dreams, my silly fancies!”
She struggled, as if worn out and exhausted by her emotion, to gain
her feet. Timidly, gently, Mabin helped her to rise.
“I’m very glad I was here,” answered Mabin, in kindly tones that sent
a shiver of grateful recognition through her agitated companion. “Do
you feel better now?”
“Yes, oh, yes, I am all right. I am not ill. I am so much ashamed of
myself for disturbing you. I don’t know how to apologize,” answered
Mrs. Dale, trying bravely to speak in her usual tone, but glancing at
the door and then back to the windows as she uttered the words: “It
must have been a dream, of course, that frightened me.”
And then, quite suddenly, she broke down again, and slipping from the
supporting arm of her young companion, she threw herself into the
wicker arm-chair, and burst into a passion of tears. Uncertain what to
do, Mabin, in her sympathy and kindness, did exactly the right thing.
She drew another chair besides the wicker one, sat down in it, and
putting her right arm round Mrs. Dale’s shoulder, and holding the poor
lady’s trembling fingers in her own, remained in perfect silence until
the first ebullition of violent grief had passed away.
“I shall never forget your kindness, child, never,” said Mrs. Dale,
when, as suddenly as it had begun, her passion of tears ended. “You
have saved me from going mad--yes, mad. I--I must leave you now, or
you won’t get any rest.”
She rose as she spoke; but Mabin saw that the panic of terror which
had been upon her at her entrance was regaining its hold upon her as
she approached the door. With her fingers on the handle she stopped,
and seemed once more to grow rigid with fear.
Mabin was by her side in an instant.
“Stay here,” she said. “You will have the dream again perhaps, if you
go away by yourself.”
At these words a shiver ran through Mrs. Dale, and she faltered.
“It must have been that gloomy room!” she said at last in a whisper.
“And the effect of her visit! But it will kill me if it comes again!”
Suddenly she turned to Mabin. “May I lie on the sofa until the
morning?” she asked piteously. “I won’t disturb you. I feel as if I
should be safe from--it--in here with you?”
The wistful pleading in her eyes brought the tears to Mabin’s.
“Of course you must stay,” she cried heartily. “And I do hope you will
get to sleep, and not have any more dreams.”
Very quietly Mrs. Dale lay down on the couch between the windows, and
drawing the sofa blanket over her, and refusing any other covering,
she closed her eyes. Mabin knew that this apparent tranquillity was
assumed only, and she placed herself on the bed in such a position
that she could watch her friend, while appearing to be herself asleep.
Before many minutes had passed, she saw, from between half-closed
eyelashes, that Mrs. Dale was sitting up, and bending her head in a
listening attitude. And presently the slender figure with its white
dressing-gown slipped softly off the sofa, and hurried on tiptoe
across the floor to the door. There it knelt down and listened again.
And after a few minutes Mrs. Dale turned the key in the lock and crept
back, not to the couch, but to the arm-chair.
Mabin shut her eyes and tried to disentangle the knot of strange ideas
that filled her brain:
What was the nature of the secret which weighed on the conscience of
Mrs. Dale? Why was she kept in luxury by the very woman who tried to
make her life unbearable, to cut her off from every human friend? What
was the strange tie between the hard, elderly woman and the impulsive,
volatile young one? What was the vision which had caused her so much
distress? And, above all, why, if it was only a vision, did she try to
keep it away by locking the door?
And why--and why--? More questions surged up into her tired brain; but
Mabin forgot them as they rose. She fell asleep.
When she awoke in the morning it was to find that some one was
knocking at the door, and then she heard the housemaid’s voice
announcing that it was eight o’clock. She sprang up, and looked toward
the sofa, but there was no one but herself in the room.
Surely, she thought, the strange visit of the night must have been a
dream? The rug on the sofa was neatly folded, just as it had been when
she came up to bed last night. Not a sign was to be seen of any
intrusion during the night.
Even when she went downstairs and met Mrs. Dale in the hall, there was
little to tell of the experience of the hours of darkness. Perhaps the
pretty widow looked a little paler than usual, but in every other
respect she was the same airy, impulsive creature, now smiling, now
looking sad, as she had been before the dreadful visit of the lady
whom irreverent Mabin called “the cat.”
It was not indeed until breakfast was over and they had gone out into
the garden to cut some flowers while the dew was on them, that either
of the ladies made any reference to the events of the night.
Mrs. Dale, with one daintily shod foot in a flower-bed, was stretching
out her hands toward a bush of sweet-peas, when, without turning her
head, she said:
“I am in great trouble about you, Mabin.”
“Are you? Why, Mrs. Dale?”
“I don’t quite know what to do with you. If I send you to Mrs.
Bonnington, I shall have to tell some shocking tarradiddle about the
drains having come up, or the roof having given way, and she will be
sure to find me out and to pry, and to give both of us what the old
women call ‘much unpleasantness.’ And if I send you on to Geneva, I
don’t know whether they will be glad to see you when you arrive.”
“And I’m sure they won’t,” said Mabin heartily. “And there is one
other objection to sending me anywhere, and that is that I won’t go.”
Mrs. Dale dropped her sweet-peas, and turned round. Her eyes were full
of sudden tears.
“Nonsense, child!” she said sharply, but in a querulous tone which
betrayed her emotion, “nonsense! It was decided yesterday afternoon
that you were to go. You know it was.”
“You decided that I was to go. _I_ didn’t. And--” instinctively she
dropped her voice--“And something that happened last night--in the
night, made _me_ decide not to go. There!”
“But, my dear----”
“No, Mrs. Dale, I’m not to be ‘got round.’ You’ve chosen to take me
upon your shoulders, so now you must just keep me. Ha, ha! You didn’t
know I had so much determination, did you?”
But Mrs. Dale could scarcely speak. Now for the first time that
morning Mabin realized that the scene of the night had really taken
place, for the emotion aroused by this little bit of talk had brought
back into Mrs. Dale’s blue eyes a faint reproduction of the wild
terror she had shown when she came to the girl’s room. When she had
recovered her voice, the lady in black, pale, hoarse, shaken with her
agitation, stammered out these words:
“My dear girl, it is beautiful of you to offer to stay. But I cannot
let you. You ought never to have come. I was mad, wicked to let you
come; and my madness and my wickedness I must bear alone.”
How strange these words seemed in the broad daylight, Mabin thought!
By the weak glimmer of the night-light Mrs. Dale’s wild looks and
words had seemed fantastic, weird. But the broad sunlight seemed to
give the nameless horror which hung about the poor little lady in
black a reality as vivid as it was painful. But with this feeling
there came also into the heart of the young girl a great tenderness
toward the suffering woman, who was haunted by the shadow of her own
past. So she smiled, and with a pretty, half-shy look in her eyes,
said:
“You told me I saved you from going mad. So I mean to stay. And I mean
to sleep in the same room with you, so that you shall not be
frightened any more.”
Mrs. Dale shook her head.
“I can’t let you do that,” said she. “I don’t sleep very well, and
sometimes I start up and cry out. I should frighten you.”
“Then we will exchange rooms,” said Mabin.
By the look of joy and relief which flashed over Mrs. Dale’s face at
this suggestion, Mabin saw that she had conquered.
“But--won’t you be afraid?” asked the widow in a troubled voice.
“What! Of a ghost, a vision? Or of having bad dreams? No, not a bit.”
Mrs. Dale glanced gratefully at the young face, with its look of
robust Philistine scorn of phantoms.
“It is a temptation,” she murmured. “For, after all, I know, I _know_
that it was only a dream, a horrible dream. And there is no fear that
the dream will come to _you_.”
“And if it did,” retorted Mabin stoutly, “it wouldn’t frighten me. I’m
too ‘stodgy;’ I have no imagination.”
Mrs. Dale smiled sadly.
“You are right,” she said. “If you did have the same dream, it would
have no terrors for you. Your conscience is clear.”
“And my digestion good,” added Mabin lightly, as she picked up the
fallen flowers and put them in her basket.
There was no doubt that her refusal to go had taken a load of
melancholy from the shoulders of her hostess, who sent the young girl
out for a walk as soon as the gathering of the flowers was over, and
charged her not to go far enough to tire her still weak ankle.
Mabin, with a book and a sunshade, sauntered slowly down the hill to
the nearest gap in the cliff, and went down the steep descent to the
sands. This was no paradise of nursemaids and babies, but a solitary
nook beloved by quiet maiden ladies and sentimental couples. With rash
disregard of the danger of sitting under a chalk cliff, Mabin found a
seat on a rock worn smooth by the sea, opened her book and
began--_not_ to read.
The circumstances to which she found herself were far too interesting
for her to be able to give herself up to the milder excitements of
fiction. She sat with her open book on her lap and her eyes staring
out at the sea, which was vividly blue in the strong sunshine, when
she became suddenly conscious of a footstep she knew in her immediate
neighborhood.
Although she affected to be surprised when Rudolph appeared before
her, she had known that he was approaching, and her heart began to
beat very fast. He looked down at her between the spikes of her
sunshade, pretending to be afraid to speak to her.
“Good-morning,” said she at last.
“I was wondering whether I dared say the same thing!”
“Dared?”
“Yes. After your treatment of me last night, I felt nervous.”
“My treatment of you! What treatment?”
“Why were you so unkind? Or mustn’t I ask why?”
“You may ask, of course. But I can’t give you any answer, because I
didn’t know that I was unkind.”
“I wish I could believe that.”
“Well, if you won’t believe it, I have nothing to say.”
Rudolph was silent a few minutes. Then with a burst of explosive
energy, he made up his mind.
“No!” he cried so loudly that Mabin started, and threw himself down on
the sand beside her, “I will not be daunted. I will encase myself in
double snub-proof armor plates, and I will try to teach her that to be
dignified it is not necessary to be unkind--and--yes, I will say
it--absolutely rude.”
Mabin became crimson, and the tears started to her eyes. She had not
meant to be rude, but undoubtedly her behavior had laid her open to
this accusation.
“I am stupid, clumsy; I am rude without meaning it,” she said in a
tone of such excessive humility and penitence that it was impossible
to doubt her sincerity. “I am very sorry. But you shouldn’t take any
notice of what I do or say. Nobody does at home. When I am more
awkward and tiresome than usual, they always say: ‘Oh, it’s only
Mabin!’ And then nobody minds.”
“Ah, well, I can’t quite feel like that--that it’s only Mabin. When
one likes a person, and wants to be good friends, very good friends
with that person, just as one used to be when that person and one’s
self were little things in short frocks and knickerbockers, it is very
disheartening to find that person so determined to be--er--to
be--er--so reserved that when one sits beside that person as I did
last night, you know, she will only let one see so much of her right
ear as to practically turn her back to one!”
“I didn’t!”
“You did though. And it is what you were doing again just now until
the horror of hearing the truth made you turn around to fly at me! You
did turn your back upon me last night, Miss Rose, and you hurt my
feelings.”
“Indeed, you did not seem to be hurt. You seemed to be enjoying
yourself very much!”
“Well, so I was in a way. But I should have enjoyed myself much more
if you had been as nice as you were in the garden.”
Mabin heaved a deep sigh.
“It’s no use expecting me to be nice,” she said in a voice of despair,
“I can only manage it so very seldom.”
“Well, could you hold out some signal, such as by wearing a particular
flower, or color, or some especial knot of ribbon, to let one know
when one may speak to you without being snubbed?”
“No, I couldn’t,” retorted Mabin with great fierceness, but with a
twinkle of fun in her gray eyes, which gave greater hopes than her
words did. “It is of no use for me to promise more than I can perform.
You had much better look upon me as a decidedly disagreeable person,
with rare moments of proper behavior.”
“Proper behavior, then, means niceness? I’m glad you think it proper
to be nice to me!” said Rudolph. “I perceive that I’ve lighted upon
one of the ‘rare moments,’ and I’m going to take advantage of it,” he
added, as he came a little nearer to her, and looked up in her face
with a glance of amusement and admiration which made her blush a
little. “I’m going to make you talk to me, and amuse me, as you were
told to do last night.”
“No! It was _you_ who were told to amuse me!”
“Was it? Well, we’ll take it in turn then. Do you remember how I
taught you cricket?”
“Yes, oh yes.”
“And what a rage you used to be in when you were caught out?”
“Yes,” answered Mabin, “I remember; but I don’t want to talk about
cricket. I want to tell you something. Mrs. Dale has a fancy that ‘The
Towers’ is haunted.”
And she related the adventure of the previous night, and her intention
of changing rooms with her hostess.
Rudolph listened gravely, and there was a pause when she had finished
before he made any comment. Then he said abruptly:
“You are not nervous, are you, Mabin? I know you used to have no end
of pluck.”
“Well, I haven’t any less than I ever had.”
“Well, if you do change rooms, you have got to be prepared to see the
ghost yourself.”
“You make me feel rather--rather creepy! What do you really think I
shall see?”
“A face at the window probably. The face of the spy from your house.
What else can she have seen?”
Mabin considered a moment.
“I’ll risk it!” she cried at last. “I shan’t go to bed at all. I shall
sit up and watch.”
“I wish you would. We should find out something if you had the
strength of mind to do that.”
Not without a wild beating of the heart, Mabin undertook the task of
holding the strange night-watch, without saying a word to Mrs. Dale of
her intention.
“She thinks she only had a dreadful dream, you know,” said Mabin.
“Well,” replied Rudolph, “I want to know what sort of dream you will
have.”
He had to admire the courage she showed in undertaking a task which
was, as she expressed it, “rather shuddery,” but when he left her at
the gate of “The Towers” she was still steadfast in her intention.
It was not until after dinner that evening that Mrs. Dale introduced
the young girl to the apartment she was to occupy that night. Mabin
was astonished at its dinginess, its gloominess, contrasting so
strongly as they did with the fresh prettiness of the room which had
been prepared for herself.
It was a large square room, with a mouldy old-fashioned wall-paper, on
which unnatural pink roses climbed up a succession of thin hop poles.
The pictures were groups of trees, done with the pencil in the woolly
early Victorian manner, and stiff bouquets, in water-color, of
conventional early Victorian flowers. The bed, which was hung with
green curtains, occupied an undue space; and Mabin felt that, in the
weird circumstances of her tenancy of the room, she would have died
rather than sleep in that funereal erection.
When Mrs. Dale had kissed her and bade her good-night, after receiving
Mabin’s assurance that she did not feel in the least nervous, the
young girl felt a strong inclination to follow her friend out of the
room, and to implore her to find her some other sleeping-place.
By a valiant effort, however, she conquered this weakness, and made a
careful survey of her surroundings. In the first place, the windows
and their fastenings had to be examined. They were carefully secured,
and were both so high above the ground that it would have been
impossible for an intruder to reach them without a ladder.
There were three doors; and at first Mabin was inclined to regard this
as a disquieting circumstance. But on finding that two of them were
unused, locked, and without a key, and that there was a bolt on the
door by which she had entered, she began to feel more at ease.
Exchanging her frock for a dressing-gown, and providing herself with a
book, she placed herself in an arm-chair which stood near the
fireplace, which, although shabby, was sufficiently comfortable, and,
putting her candles on a small table beside her, settled herself to
read. Her book was a novel of an excellent type, not too clever to be
charming, not so commonplace as to be dull. Much to her own surprise,
she got interested, and forgot, or almost forgot, the vague fears
which kept her in the arm-chair instead of in bed.
She was in the very heart of the book, and her candles had burnt low
in their sockets, when a sound, a very slight sound, behind her back,
caused the blood almost to freeze in her veins.
It was a soft, stealthy tread.
Looking round, half paralyzed with terror, she saw that the door was
ajar, and that creeping softly round toward the inside handle was the
long, thin hand of a man.