“And you’re perfectly sure he was real--I mean, wasn’t human?”
The distinction made me smile, though the question irritated me. “You
can see that if his object was murder he made a poor job. You found all
your silver, didn’t you?” Then I played my trump-card. “And do you
suppose that a burglar would wander round this countryside in a
nose-ring and a loincloth? Nice disguise!”
Lithway looked disturbed. “But the other one,” he murmured. “I don’t
understand the other.”
“She seems much easier to understand than mine,” I protested.
“Oh, I don’t mean _her_!” he said. “I mean _it_.”
For the first time I began to be afraid that Lithway had left the
straight track of common sense. It was silly enough to have two ghosts
in a new house--but three!
“It?” I asked.
“The one Wender saw.”
“Oh! Wender has seen one?”
“Six months ago. I’ve never been able to get him here since. It _was_
rather nasty, and Wender--well, Wender’s sensitive. And he’s a little
dotty on the occult, in any case.”
“Did he see it at eleven in the morning?”
Lithway seemed irritated. “Of course!” he snapped out. He spoke as if
the idiosyncrasy of his damned house had a dignity that he was bound to
defend.
“And what was it?”
“A big rattlesnake, coiled to strike.”
Even then I could not take it seriously. “That’s not a ghost; it’s a
symptom.”
“It _did_ strike,” Lithway went on.
“Did he have a scar?”
“No. He couldn’t even swear that it quite touched him.”
“Then why did it worry him?”
Lithway hesitated. “I suppose the uncertainty----”
“Uncertainty! If there’s anything less dreadful than an imaginary snake
that has struck, it is an imaginary snake that hasn’t struck. What has
got into Wender?”
“Fear, apparently,” said Lithway shortly. “He won’t come back. Says a
real rattlesnake probably wouldn’t get into a house in Braythe more than
once, but an unreal rattlesnake might get in any day. I don’t blame
him.”
“May I ask,” I said blandly, “if you are so far gone that you think
rattlesnakes have ghosts?”
Lithway lost his temper. “If you want to jeer at the thing, for God’s
sake have the manners not to do it in this house! I tell you we have all
three seen ghosts.”
“The ghost of a rattlesnake,” I murmured to myself. “It beats
everything!” And I looked once more into the mirror. The scar that the
knife had made was still perceptible, but very faint. “Did you hunt the
house over for the snake?”
“Of course we did.”
“Did you find it?”
“Of course we didn’t--any more than we found your Zulu.”
“Then why did you insist so on hunting the Zulu?”
Lithway colored a little. “Well, to tell the truth, I never wholly
believed in that snake. If you or Wender had only seen _her_, now!”
“I don’t see why Wender was so worried,” I said. “After all, a snake
might have got in--and got out.”
“He saw it twice,” explained Lithway.
“Symptoms,” I murmured. “Had he ever had an adventure with a
rattlesnake?”
“No.”
“Then why should it make him nervous?”
“I suppose”--Lithway looked at me a little cautiously, I thought--“just
because he never _had_ seen one. He said, I remember, that that
rattlesnake hadn’t been born yet.”
I laughed. “Wender _is_ sensitive. The ghost of a rattlesnake that has
never lived--well, you can’t be more fantastic than that!”
“Wender has a theory,” Lithway said.
But he seemed actually to want to change the subject. Accordingly, I did
change it--a little. I didn’t really care for Wender’s theories. I had
heard some of them. They included elementals.
“Tell me some more about yours. She’s the most convincing of the three.
Do you recognize her?”
“Never saw any one that looked remotely like her.”
“And you are the first occupant of this house,” I mused. “Was she
dressed in an old-fashioned way?”
Lithway actually blushed. “She is dressed rather oddly--her hair is done
queerly. I’ve hunted the fashion-books through, and I can’t find such a
fashion anywhere in the last century. I’m not in the least afraid, but I
am curious about her, I admit.”
“Was Wender’s rattlesnake old-fashioned?”
Lithway got up. “See here,” he said, “I’m not going to stand jollying.
That’s the one thing I _am_ afraid of. Should you like to hear Wender’s
theory?”
“Not I,” I said firmly. “He believes in two kinds of magic--white and
black--and has eaten the fruit of the mango-tree that a fakir has just
induced to grow out of the seed before his eyes. He told me once that
devils were square. I’m not in the least interested in Wender’s
rattlesnake. The wonder is, with his peculiar twist of mind, that he
doesn’t insist on living in this house.”
“He particularly hates snakes,” answered Lithway. “He was hoping to see
_her_, but he never could. Nor you, apparently.”
“How often do you see her?”
“About once in six months.”
“And you’re not afraid?”
“Well--she doesn’t _do_ anything to me, you know.” He was very serious.
“Probably couldn’t hurt you if she did--a young thing like that. But why
don’t you move out?”
Lithway frankly crimsoned. “I--like her.”
“In spite of her eyes?”
“In spite of her eyes. And--I’ve thought that look in them might be the
cross light on the staircase.”
I burst out laughing. “Lithway, come away with me. Solitude is getting
on your nerves. We’ll go to Germany and look after your little cousin
and the aunt who writes such wonderful letters.”
“No.” Lithway was firm. “It’s too much like work.”
I was serious, for he really seemed to me, at the time of this visit, in
rather a bad way. I urged him with every argument I could think of. He
had no counter-arguments, but finally he broke out: “Well, if you will
have it, I feel safer here.”
“You’ve never seen her anywhere else, have you?”
“No.”
“Then this seems to be the one point of danger.”
“Wender’s theory is that--” he began.
But I persisted in not hearing Wender’s theory. Even when, a week later,
my own experience was exactly duplicated and I had spent another day in
watching a white line fade off my forehead, I still persisted. But, as
Lithway wouldn’t leave the house, I did. I began even to have a sneaking
sympathy for Wender. But I didn’t want to hear his theory. Indeed, to
this day I never have heard it. Oddly enough, though, I should be
willing to wager a good sum that it was accurate.
I was arranging for a considerable flight--something faddier and more
dangerous than I had hitherto attempted--and to a friend as indolent as
Lithway I could only prepare to bid a long farewell. He positively
refused to accompany me even on the earlier and less difficult stages of
my journey. “I’ll stick to my home,” he declared. It was a queer home to
want to stick to, I thought privately, especially as the ghost was
obviously local. He had never seen an apparition except at Braythe--nor
had I, nor had Wender. I worried about leaving him there, for the one
danger I apprehended was the danger of overwrought nerves; but Lithway
refused to budge, and you can’t coerce a sane and able-bodied man with a
private fortune. I did carry my own precautions to the point of looking
up the history of the house. The man from whom Lithway had bought it,
while it was still unfinished, had intended it for his own occupancy;
but a lucrative post in a foreign country had determined him to leave
America. The very architect was a churchwarden, the husband of one wife
and the father of eight children. I even hunted up the contractor: not
one accident had occurred while the house was building, and he had
employed throughout, most amicably, union labor on its own terms. It
was silly of me, if you like, but I had really been shaken by the
unpleasant powers of the place. After my researches it seemed clear that
in objecting to it any further I shouldn’t have a leg to stand on. In
any case, Lithway would probably rather live in a charnel-house than
move. I had to wash my hands of it all.
The last weeks of my visit were perfectly uneventful, both for Lithway
and me--as if the house, too, were on its guard. I came to believe that
there was nothing in it, and if either of us had been given to drinking,
I should have called the eleven-o’clock visitation a new form of
hang-over. I was a little inclined, in defiance of medical authorities,
to consider it an original and interesting form of indigestion. By
degrees I imposed upon myself to that extent. I did not impose on
myself, however, to the extent of wanting to hear Wender talk about it;
and I still blush to think how shallow were the excuses that I mustered
for not meeting him at any of the times that he proposed.
This is a bad narrative, for the reason that it must be so fragmentary.
It is riddled with lapses of time. Ghosts may get in their fine work in
an hour, but they have always been preparing their _coup_ for years.
Every ghost, compared with us, is Methuselah. We have to fight in a
vulnerable and dissolving body; but they aren’t pressed for time.
They’ve only to lie low until the psychologic moment. Oh, I’d undertake
to accomplish almost anything if you’d give me the ghost’s chance. If he
can’t get what he wants out of this generation, he can get it out of the
next. Grand thing, to be a ghost!
It was some years before I went back to Braythe. Wender, I happen to
know, never went back. Lithway used to write me now and then, but seldom
referred to my adventure. He couldn’t very well, since the chief burden
of his letters was always “When are you coming to visit me?” Once, when
I had pressed him to join me for a season in Japan, he virtually
consented, but at the last moment I got a telegram, saying: “I can’t
leave her. _Bon voyage!_” That didn’t make me want to go back to
Braythe. I was worried about him, but his persistent refusal to act on
any one’s advice made it impossible to do anything for him. I thought
once of hiring some one to burn the house down; but Lithway wouldn’t
leave it, and I didn’t want to do anything clumsy that would imperil
him. I was much too far away to arrange it neatly. I suggested it once
to Wender, when we happened to meet in London, and he was exceedingly
taken with the idea. I half hoped, for a moment, that he would do it
himself. But the next afternoon he came back with a lot of reasons why
it wouldn’t do--he had been grubbing in the British Museum all day. I
very nearly heard Wender’s theory that time, but I pleaded a dinner
engagement and got off.
You can imagine that I was delighted when I heard from Lithway, some
years after my own encounter with the savage on the staircase, that he
had decided to pull out and go to Europe. He had the most fantastic
reasons for doing it--this time he wrote me fully. It seems he had
become convinced that his apparition was displeased with him--didn’t
like the look in her eyes, found it critical. As he wasn’t doing
anything in particular except live like a hermit at Braythe, the only
thing he could think of to propitiate her was to leave. Perhaps there
was a sort of withered coquetry in it, too; he may have thought the
lady would miss him if he departed and shut up the house. You see, by
this time she was about the most real thing in his life. I don’t defend
Lithway; but I thought then that, whatever the impelling motive, it
would be an excellent thing for him to leave Braythe for a time.
Perhaps, once free of it, he would develop a normal and effectual
repugnance to going back, and then we should all have our dear,
delightful Lithway again. I wrote triumphantly to Wender, and he replied
hopefully, but on a more subdued note.
Lithway came over to Europe. He wrote to me, making tentative
suggestions that I should join him; but, as he refused to join me and I
didn’t care at all about the sort of thing he was planning, we didn’t
meet. I was all for the Peloponnesus, and he was for a wretched
tourist’s itinerary that I couldn’t stomach. I hoped to get him in the
end to wander about in more interesting places, but as he had announced
that he was going first to Berlin to look up the little cousin and her
maternal aunt, I thought I would wait until he had satisfied his
clannish conscience. Then, one fine day, his old curiosity would waken,
and we should perhaps start out together to get new impressions. That
fine day never dawned, however. He lingered on in Germany, following his
relatives to Marienbad when they left Berlin for the summer. I hoped,
with each mail, that he would announce his arrival in some spot where I
could conceivably meet him; but the particular letter announcing that
never came. He was quite taken up with the cousins. He said nothing
about going home, and I was thoroughly glad of that, at least.
I was not wholly glad, just at the moment, when a letter bounced out at
me one morning, announcing that he was to marry the little cousin--by
this time, as I had understood from earlier correspondence, a lovely
girl of eighteen. I had looked forward to much companionship with the
Lithway I had known of old, when he should be free of his obsession. I
had thought him on the way to freedom; and here he was, caught by a
flesh-and-blood damsel who thrust me out quite as decisively as the
phantasmal lady on the staircase. I had decency enough to be glad for
Lithway, if not for myself; glad that he could strike the old idyllic
note and live again delightfully in the moment. I didn’t go to Berlin to
see them married, but I sent them my blessing and a very curious and
beautiful eighteenth-century clock. I also promised to visit them in
America. I felt that, if necessary, I could face Braythe, now that the
ghost was so sure to be laid. No woman would stay in a house where her
husband was carrying on, however unwillingly, an affair with an
apparition; and, as their address remained the same, I believed that the
ghost had given up the fight.
This story has almost the gait of history. I have to sum up decades in a
phrase. It is really the span of one man’s whole life that I am
covering, you see. But have patience with me while I skim the
intervening voids, and hover meticulously over the vivid patches of
detail.... It was some two years before I reached Braythe. I don’t
remember particularly what went on during those two years; I only know
that I was a happy wanderer. I was always a happy wanderer, it seems to
me as I look back on life, except for the times when I sank by Lithway’s
side into his lethargy--a lucid lethargy, in which unaccountable things
happened very quietly, with an utter stillness of context. I do know
that I was planning a hunting-trip in British Central Africa, and wrote
Lithway that I had better postpone my visit until that was over. He
seemed so hurt to think that I could prefer any place to him that I did
put it off until the next year and made a point of going to the
Lithways.
I had no forebodings when I got out of Lithway’s car at his gate and
faced the second Mrs. Lithway, who had framed her beauty in the
clustering wistaria of the porch. I was immensely glad for Lithway that
he had a creature like that to companion him. Youth and beauty are
wonderful things to keep by one’s fireside. There was more than a touch
of vicarious gratitude in my open admiration of Mrs. Lithway. He was a
person one couldn’t help wanting good things for; and one felt it a
delicate personal attention to oneself when they came to him.
Nothing changes a man, however, after he has once achieved his type:
that was what I felt most keenly, at the end of the evening, as I sat
with Lithway in his library. Mrs. Lithway had trailed her light skirts
up the staircase with incomparable grace, smiling back at us over her
shoulder; and I had gone with Lithway to the library, wondering how long
I could hold him with talk of anything but her. I soon saw that he
didn’t wish to talk of her. That, after all, was comprehensible--you
could take it in so many ways; but it was with real surprise that I saw
him sink almost immediately into gloom. Gloom had never been a gift of
Lithway’s; his indolence had always been shot through with mirth. Even
his absorption in the ghost had been whimsical--almost as if he had
deliberately let himself go, had chosen to be obsessed. I didn’t know
what to make of the gloom, the unresilient heaviness with which he met
my congratulations and my sallies. They had been perfect together at
dinner and through the early evening. Now he fell slack in every muscle
and feature, as if the preceding hours had been a diabolic strain. I
wondered a little if he could be worried about money. I supposed Lithway
had enough--and his bride too, if it came to that--though I didn’t know
how much. But one could not be long in the house without noticing
luxuries that had nothing to do with its original unpretending comfort.
You were met at every turn by some æsthetic refinement as costly as the
lace and jewels in which Mrs. Lithway’s own loveliness was wrapped. It
was evident from all her talk that her standard of civilization was very
high; that she had a natural attachment to shining non-essentials. I was
at a loss; I didn’t know what to say to him, he looked so tired. Such
silence, even between Lithway and me, was awkward.
Finally he spoke: “Do you remember my ghost?”
“I remember your deafening me with talk of her. I never saw her.”
“No, of course you wouldn’t have seen her.”
“I saw one of my own, you remember.”
“Oh, yes! A black man who struck at you. You never have had a black man
strike at you in real life, have you?” He turned to me with a faint
flicker of interest.
“Never. We threshed all that out before, you know. I never even saw that
particular nigger except at Braythe.”
“You will see him, perhaps, if you are fool enough to go to British
Central Africa,” he jerked out.
“Perhaps,” I answered. But I was more interested in Lithway’s adventure.
“Do you see your ghost now?” I had been itching to ask, and it seemed to
me that he had given me a fair opening.
Lithway passed his hand across his brows. “I don’t know. I’m not quite
sure. Sometimes I think so. But I couldn’t swear to it.”
“Has she grown dimmer, then--more hazy? You used to speak of her as if
she were a real woman coming to a tryst: flesh and blood, at the least.”
He looked at me a little oddly. “I’m not awfully well. My eyes play me
tricks sometimes.... When you got off the train to-night, I could have
sworn you had a white scar on your forehead. As soon as we got out here
and I had a good look at you, I saw you hadn’t, of course.” Then he went
back. “I don’t believe I really do see her now. I think it may be an
hallucination when occasionally I think I do. Yes, I’m pretty sure that,
when I think I do, it’s pure hallucination. I don’t like it; I wish
she’d either go or stay.”
“My dear fellow, you speak as if she had ever, in her palmiest days,
been anything but an hallucination. Did you get to the point of
believing that the girl you say used to hang over the staircase was
real?”
“She was more real than the one that sometimes I see there now. Oh, yes,
she was real! What I see now--when I see it at all--is just the ghost of
her.”
“The ghost of a ghost!” I ejaculated. “It’s as bad as Wender’s
rattlesnake.”
Lithway turned to me suddenly. “Where is Wender?”
“Why, don’t you know? Working on American archæology at some
university--I don’t know which. He hadn’t decided on the place, when he
last wrote. I was going to get his address from you.”
“He won’t come here, you know. And Margaret’s feelings are a little
hurt--he has often been quite near. So there’s a kind of official
coolness. She doesn’t know about the ghosts, and therefore I can’t quite
explain Wender’s refusals to her. Of course, I know it’s on that
account; he’s as superstitious as a woman. But poor Margaret, I suppose,
believes he doesn’t approve of my having taken a wife. She’s as sweet as
possible about it, but I can see she’s hurt. And yet I’d rather she
would be hurt than to know about the house.”
“Why, in Heaven’s name, don’t you sell it and move, Lithway?” I cried.
He colored faintly. “Margaret is very fond of the place. I couldn’t,
considering its idiosyncrasy, sell with a good conscience, and if I
didn’t sell, it would mean losing a pretty penny--more, certainly, than
Margaret and I can afford to. She lost most of her own money, you know,
a few years ago.”
“The aunt?”
“Oh, dear, no!” He said it rather hastily. “But you were quite right at
the time. I ought to have gone out there ten years ago. Women never know
how to manage money.”
I looked him in the eyes. “Lithway, anything in the world is better than
staying in this house. You’re in a bad way. You admit, yourself, you’re
not well. And Mrs. Lithway would rather cut out the motor and live
anywhere than have you go to pieces.”
He laughed. “Tell Margaret that I’m going to pieces--if you dare!”
“I’m not afraid of you, even if I should.”
“No; but wouldn’t you be afraid of her?”
I thought of the utter youth of Mrs. Lithway; the little white teeth
that showed so childishly when she laughed; her small white hands that
had seemed so weighed down with a heavy piece of embroidery; her tiny
feet that slipped along the polished floors--a girl that you could pick
up and throw out of the window.
“Certainly not. Would you?”
“I should think so!” He smiled. “We’ve been very happy here. I don’t
think she would like to move. I shan’t suggest it to her. And mind”--he
turned to me rather sharply--“don’t you hint to her that the house is
the uncanny thing you and that fool Wender seem to think it is.”
I saw that there was no going ahead on that tack. Beyond a certain
point, you can’t interfere with mature human beings. But certainly
Lithway looked ill; and if he admitted ill health, there must be
something in it. It was extraordinary that Mrs. Lithway saw nothing. I
was almost sorry--in spite of the remembered radiance of the vision on
the porch--that Lithway had chosen to fall in love with a young fool. I
rose.
“Love must be blind, if your wife doesn’t see you’re pulled down.”
“Oh, love--it’s the blindest thing going, thank God!” He was silent for
a moment. “There are a great many things I can’t explain,” he said. “But
you can be sure that everything’s all right.”
I was quite sure, though I couldn’t wholly have told why, that
everything was at least moderately wrong. But I decided to say nothing
more that night. I went to bed.
Lithway _was_ ill; only so could I account for his nervousness, which
sometimes, in the next days, mounted to irritability. He was never
irritable with his wife; when the tenser moods were on, he simply ceased
to address her, and turned his attention to me. We motored a good deal;
that seemed to agree with him. But one morning he failed to appear at
breakfast, and Mrs. Lithway seemed surprised that I had heard nothing
during the night. He had had an attack of acuter pain--the doctor had
been sent for. There had been telephoning, running to and fro, and talk
in the corridors that no one had thought of keying down on my account. I
was a little ashamed of not having waked, and more than a little cross
at not having been called. She assured me that I could have done
nothing, and apologized as prettily as possible for having to leave me
to myself during the day. Lithway was suffering less, but, of course,
she would be at his bedside. Naturally, I made no objections to her
wifely solicitude. I was allowed to see Lithway for a few minutes; but
the pain was severe, and I cut my conversation short. The doctor
suspected the necessity for an operation, and they sent to New York for
a consulting specialist. I determined to wait until they should have
reached their gruesome decision, on the off chance that I might, in the
event of his being moved, be of service to Mrs. Lithway. In spite of her
calm and sweetness, and the perfect working of the household
mechanism--no flurry, no fright, no delays or hitches--I thought her,
still, a young fool. Any woman, of any age, was a fool if she had not
seen Lithway withering under her very eyes.
It was a dreary day during which we waited for the New York physician;
one of those days when sunlight seems drearier than mist--a monotonous
and hostile glare. I tried reading Lithway’s books, but the mere fact
that they were his got on my nerves. I decided to go to my room and
throw myself on the resources of my own luggage. There would be
something there to read, I knew. I closed the library door quietly and
went up-stairs. Outside my own door I stopped and looked--involuntarily,
with no conscious curiosity--up to the third-story hall. There, in the
dim corridor, leaning over the balustrade in a thin shaft of sunlight
that struck up from the big window on the landing, stood Mrs. Lithway,
with a folded paper in her hand, looking down at me. I did not wish to
raise my voice--Lithway, I thought, might be sleeping--so did not speak
to her. I don’t think, in any case, I should have wanted to speak to
her. The look in her eyes was distinctly unpleasant--the kind of look
people don’t usually face you with. I remember wondering, as our
surprised glances met, why the deuce she should hate me like that--how
the deuce a nice young thing could hate any one like that. It must be
personal to me, I thought--no nice young thing would envisage the world
at large with such venom. I turned away; and as I turned, I saw her, out
of the tail of my eye, walk, with her peculiar lightness of step, along
the upper corridor to the trunk-loft. She had the air of being caught,
of not having wished to be seen. I opened my bedroom door immediately,
but as I opened it I heard a sound behind me. Margaret Lithway stood on
the threshold of her husband’s room, with an empty bottle.
“Would you mind taking the car into the village and getting this filled
again?” she asked. Her eyes had dark shadows beneath them; she had
evidently not slept, the night before.
I flatter myself that I did not betray to her in any way my
perturbation. Indeed, the event had fallen on a mind so ripe for
solutions that, in the very instant of my facing her, I realized that
what I had just seen above-stairs (and seen by mistake, I can assure
you; she had fled from me) was Lithway’s old ghost--no less. I took the
bottle, read the label, and assured Mrs. Lithway that I would go at
once. Mrs. Lithway was wrapped in a darkish house-gown of some sort.
The lady in the upper hall had been in white, with a blue sash.... I was
very glad when I saw Mrs. Lithway go into her husband’s room and shut
the door. I was having hard work to keep my expression where it
belonged. For five minutes I stood in the hall; five minutes of unbroken
stillness. Then I went to the garage, ordered out the car, and ran into
the village, where I presented the bottle to the apothecary. He filled
it immediately. As I re-entered the house, the great hall clock struck;
it was half past eleven. I sent the stuff--lime-water, I believe--up to
Mrs. Lithway by a servant, went into my room, and locked the door.
I cannot say that I solved the whole enigma of Braythe in the hour
before luncheon; but I faced for the first time the seriousness of a
situation that had always seemed to me, save for Lithway’s curious
reactions upon it, more than half fantastic, if not imaginary. I had
seen, actually seen, Lithway’s ghost. I had not been meant to see her;
and I was inclined to regret the sudden impulse that had led me to leave
Lithway’s library and go to my own room. The identity of the “ghost”
with Mrs. Lithway was appalling to me--the more so, that there could
have been no mistake about the nature of the personality that had
reluctantly presented itself to my vision. I found myself saying: “Could
that look in her eyes be the cross light on the stairs?” and then
suddenly remembered that I was only echoing the Lithway of years ago. It
was incredible that any man should have liked the creature I had seen;
and I could account for Lithway’s long and sentimental relation with the
apparition only by supposing that he had never seen her, as I had, quite
off her guard. But if, according to his hint of the night before, he had
come to confound the ghost with the real woman--what sort of marriage
was _that_? I asked myself. The ghost was a bad lot, straight through.
It brought me into the realm of pure horror. The event explained--oh, I
raised my hands to wave away the throng of things it explained! Indeed,
until I could talk once more with Lithway, I didn’t want to face them; I
didn’t want to see clear. I had a horrid sense of being left alone with
the phantoms that infested the house: alone, with a helpless, bedridden
friend to protect. Mrs. Lithway didn’t need protection--that was clearer
than anything else. Mrs. Lithway was safe.
Before night, the consultation had been held, and it was decided that
Lithway should be rushed straight to town for an operation. The pain was
not absolutely constant; he had tranquil moments; but the symptoms were
alarming enough to make them afraid of even a brief delay. We were to
take him up the next morning. To all my offers of help, Mrs. Lithway
gave a smiling refusal. She could manage perfectly, she said. I am bound
to say that she did manage perfectly, thinking of everything, never
losing her head, unfailingly adequate, though the shadows under her eyes
seemed to grow darker hour by hour. A nurse had come down from town, but
I could hardly see what tasks Mrs. Lithway left to the nurse. I did my
best, out of loyalty to the loyal Lithway, to subdue my aversion to his
wife. I hoped that my aversion was quite unreasonable and that, safe in
Europe, I should feel it so. I ventured to say, after dinner, that I
hoped she would try to get some sleep.
“Oh, yes, I shall!” She smiled. “There will be a great deal to do
to-morrow; and the day after, when they operate, will be a strain.
There’s nothing harder than waiting outside. I know.” Her eyes filled,
but she went on very calmly. “I am so grateful to you for being here and
for going up with us. I have no people of my own, you know, to call on.
You have been the greatest comfort.” She gave me a cool hand, said “good
night,” and left me.
I do not know whether or not Mrs. Lithway slept, but I certainly did
not, save in fitful dozes. I was troubled about Lithway: I thought him
in very bad shape for an operation; and I had, besides, nameless
forebodings of every sort. It was a comfort, the next morning, to hear
him, through an open door, giving practical suggestions to his wife and
the nurse about packing his things. I went in to see him before we
started off. The doctor was down-stairs with Mrs. Lithway.
“Sorry to let you in for this, my boy. But you are a great help.”
“Mrs. Lithway is wonderful,” I said. “I congratulate you.”
His sombre eyes held me. “Ah, you will never know how
wonderful--never!” He said it with a kind of brooding triumph, which, at
the moment, I did not wholly understand. Now, long afterwards, I think I
do.
I left him, and crossed the corridor to my own room. A slight rustle
made me turn. Mrs. Lithway stood in the upper hall, looking down at
me--the same creature, to every detail of dress, even to the folded
paper in her hand, that I had seen the previous morning. This time I
braced myself to face the ghost, to examine her with a passionate
keenness. I hoped to find her a less appalling creature. But, at once,
Mrs. Lithway leaned over the rail and spoke to me--a little sharply, I
remember.
“Would you please telephone to the garage and say that the doctor thinks
we ought to start ten minutes earlier than we had planned? I shall be
down directly.”
The hand that held the paper was by this time hidden in the folds of her
skirt. She turned and sped lightly along the corridor to the trunk-loft.
Save for the voice, it was a precise repetition of what had happened the
day before.
“Certainly,” I said; but I did not turn away until she had disappeared
into the trunk-loft. I went to the telephone and gave the message; it
took only a few seconds. Then I went to my own room, leaving the door
open so that I commanded the hall. In a few minutes Mrs. Lithway came
down the stairs from the third story. “Did you telephone?” she asked
accusingly, as she caught my eye. I bowed. She passed on into Lithway’s
room. There was no paper in her hand. I knew that this time there had
been no ghost.
Well.... Lithway, as every one knows, died under the ether. His heart
suddenly and unaccountably went back on him. He left no will; and, as he
had no relations except the cousin whom he had married, everything went
to her. I had once, before his second marriage, seen a will of
Lithway’s, myself; but I didn’t care to go into court with that
information, especially as in that will he had left me his library. I
should have liked, for old sake’s sake, to have Lithway’s library. His
widow sold it, and it is by now dispersed about the land. She told me,
after the funeral, that she should go on at Braythe, that she never
wanted to leave it; but, for whatever reason, she did, after a few
years, sell the place suddenly and go to Europe. I have never happened
to see her since she sold it, and I did not know the people she sold it
to. The house was burned many years ago, I believe, and an elaborate
golf-course now covers the place where it stood. I have not been to
Braythe since poor Lithway was buried.
I took the hunting-trip that Lithway had been so violently and
inexplicably opposed to. I think I was rather a fool to do it, for I
ought to have realized, after Lithway’s death, the secret of the house,
its absolutely unique specialty. But such is the peacock heart of man
that I still, for myself, trusted in “common sense”--in my personal
immunity, at least, from every supernatural law. Indeed, it was not
until I had actually encountered my savage, and got the wound I bear the
scar of, that I gave entire credence to Lithway’s tragedy. I put some
time into recovering from the effect of that midnight skirmish in the
jungle, and during my recovery I had full opportunity to pity Lithway.
It became quite clear to me that the presences at Braythe concerned
themselves only with major dooms. If Lithway’s ghost had been his wife,
his wife must have been a bad lot. I am as certain as I can be of
anything that he was exceedingly unhappy with her. It was a thousand
pities that, for so many years, he had misunderstood the vision; that he
had permitted himself--for that was what it amounted to--to fall in love
with her in advance. She was, quite literally, his “fate.” Of course, by
this time, I feel sure that he couldn’t have escaped her. I don’t
believe the house went in for kindly warnings; I think it merely, with
the utmost insolence, foretold the inevitable and dared you to escape
it. If I hadn’t gone out for big game in Africa, I am quite sure that my
nigger would have got at me somewhere else--even if he had to be a
cannibal out of a circus running amuck down Broadway. That was the trick
of the house: the worst thing that was going to happen to you leered at
you authentically over that staircase. I have never understood why I saw
Lithway’s apparition; but I can bear witness to the fact that she was
furious at my having seen her--as furious as Mrs. Lithway was, the next
day, if it comes to that. It was a mistake. My step may have sounded
like Lithway’s. Who knows? At least it should be clear what Lithway
meant when he said that he didn’t always know whether he saw her or not.
The two were pin for pin alike. The apparition, of course, had, from the
beginning, worn the dress that Mrs. Lithway was to wear on the day that
Lithway was taken to the hospital. I have never liked to penetrate
further into the Lithways’ intimate history. I am quite sure that the
folded paper was the old will, but I have always endeavored, in my own
mind, not to implicate Margaret Lithway more than that. Of course, there
could never have been any question of implicating her before the public.
I never had a chance, after my own accident, to consult Wender. I stuck
to Europe unbrokenly for many years, as he stuck to America. Both Wender
and I, I fancy, were chary of writing what might have been written. Some
day, I thought, we would meet and have the whole thing out; but that day
never came. Suddenly, one autumn, I had news of his death. He was a
member of a summer expedition in Utah and northern Arizona--I think I
mentioned that he had gone in for American ethnology. There are, as
every one knows, rich finds in our western States for any one who will
dig long enough; and they were hoping to get aboriginal skulls and
mummies. All this his sister referred to when she wrote me the
particulars of his death. She dwelt with forgivable bitterness on the
fact of Wender’s having been told beforehand that the particular section
he was assigned to was free from rattlesnakes. “Perhaps you know,” she
wrote, “that my brother had had, since childhood, a morbid horror of
reptiles.” I did know it--Lithway had told me. Wender’s death from the
bite of a rattlesnake was perhaps the most ironic of the three
adventures; for Wender was the one of us who put most faith in the
scenes produced on the stage of Braythe. I never heard Wender’s theory;
but I fancy he realized, as Lithway and I did not, that since the
“ghosts” we saw were not of the past they must be of the future--a most
logical step, which I am surprised none of us should have taken until
after the event.
Wender’s catastrophe killed in me much of my love of wandering. At
least, it drove me to Harry Medway; and Harry Medway did the rest. I am
not afraid of another warrior’s cutting at me with his assegai; but I do
not like to be too far from specialists. I have already been warned that
I may sometime go blind; and I know that other complications may be
expected. Pathology and surgery are sealed books to me; but I still hold
so far to logic that I fully expect to die some time as an indirect
result of that wound. The scar reminds me daily that its last word has
not been said.
I am a fairly old man--the older that I no longer wander, and that I
cling so weakly to the great capitals which hold the great physicians.
The only thing that I was ever good at I can no longer do. Curiosity has
died in me, for the most part; one or two such mighty curiosities have
been, you see, already so terribly appeased. But I think I would rise
from my death-bed, and wipe away with my own hand the mortal sweat from
my face, for the chance of learning what it was that drove Mrs. Lithway,
in midwinter, from Braythe. If I could once know what she saw on the
staircase, I think I should ask no more respite. The scar might fulfil
its mission.