THE ABANDONED HOTEL
As we followed this street, East Bay Street it is called, we came upon a
great old custard-colored house built right on the water's edge so that
the waves almost lapped its long pleasant galleries.
"Isn't this a jolly place?" we cried, but when we got closer to it we
decided jolly was certainly not the name for it.
The window panes of its many windows were missing or broken. The doors
were open and swinging in the strong breeze that seemed to develop
almost into a hurricane as it hit the exposed corner of the old
custard-colored house. A tattered awning was flapping continuously from
one end of the porch, an awning that had been gaily striped once, but
now was faded to a dull gray except one spot where it had wrapped
itself around one of the columns and in so doing, had protected a
portion of itself from the weather to bear witness to its former glory.
"What a dismal place! What could it have been?"
"It is open! Let's go in and see what we can see."
"It is positively weird. I am afraid of ghosts in such a place even in
broad daylight," I declared half in earnest, but Tweedles wanted to go
in and I was never one to hang back when a possible adventure was on
foot.
The creaking door swung in as if propelled by unseen hands and we found
ourselves in a hall of rather fine proportions with a broad stairway
leading up. Doors opening into this hall were also swinging in the wind,
so we entered the room to the right, the parlor, of course, we thought.
The paper was hanging in shreds from the wall, adding to the dismal
swishing sound that pervaded the whole building. From this room we
entered another hall that had a peculiar looking counter built on one
side.
"What do you fancy this thing is for?" demanded Dum.
"I've got it! I've got it!" exclaimed Dee. "This is an old inn or hotel
or something and that is the clerk's desk. Look, here is a row of hooks
for keys and here is a rusty key still hanging on the hook."
"It must have been a delightful place to stay with such a view of the
harbor and those beautiful porches where one could sit and watch the
ships come in. This room next must have been the dining room, and see
where there is a little stage! That was for the musicians to sit on,"
enthused Dum.
"When they finished supper they put the tables against the wall and
danced like this," and Dee pirouetted around the dusty, rotting floor.
"Isn't it awful to let a place like this go to pieces so? I don't
believe there is a whole pane of glass in the house, and I am sure no
door will stay shut. It's too gloomy for me; let's get out in the street
again," I begged.
"You can go, but I am going upstairs before I leave. I should think a
would-be author would want to see all the things she could, and if there
are any ghosts meet them," and Dee started valiantly up the creaking
stairs. Of course Dum and I followed.
A silence settled on us as we mounted. The wind that had been noisy
enough below was simply deafening the higher we got. The paper that was
hanging from the ceilings rattled ceaselessly and the wind was tugging
at what was still sticking tenaciously to some of the side walls making
a strange whistling sound.
"Gee whiz! I feel like Jane Eyre!" whispered Dum.
"No; 'The Fall of the House of Usher'!" I gasped. "Just think of such a
place as this being right here in sight of all those grand houses!"
"I know it's haunted! I feel a presence!" and Dee stopped suddenly on
the landing.
"Who's a 'fraid cat now?" I taunted. "Let the would-be author go in
front. 'Infirm of purpose, give me the dagger!'"
At that Dee ran lightly on ahead of us and disappeared in a room to the
right. We followed in time to see her skirts vanishing through a door
beyond.
"This must have been the bridal chamber, it is so grand. Just look at
the view of the harbor through this window," said Dum, still whispering,
as there was something about the place, a kind of gruesomeness, that
made one feel rather solemn. I thought of Poe's "Haunted Palace" and
whispered some of the stanzas to Dum, for the moment both of us
forgetting Dee, who had rushed off so precipitately.
"'In the greenest of our valleys
By good angels tenanted,
Once a fair and stately palace--
Radiant palace--reared its head.
In the monarch Thought's dominion,
It stood there;
Never seraph spread a pinion
Over fabric half so fair.
"'But evil things in robes of sorrow,
Assailed the monarch's high estate;
(Ah, let us mourn, for never morrow
Shall dawn upon him desolate!)
And round about his home, the glory
That blushed and bloomed
Is but a dim-remembered story
Of the old time entombed.
"'And travelers now, within that valley,
Through the red-litten windows see
Vast forms that move fantastically
To a discordant melody;
While like a ghastly, rapid river,
Through the pale door
A hideous throng rush out forever,
And laugh--but smile no more.'"
I had hardly finished the last stanza of what is to me the most ghastly
poem in the English language, when a strange blood-curdling shriek was
heard echoing through the rattle-trap old house.
"Dee!" we shouted together and started on a run through the door where
we had last seen her new brown suit vanishing. It opened into a long
corridor with doors all down the side, evidently bedrooms. Numbers were
over the doors. All the doors were shut. Where was Dee? The wind had
stopped as quickly as it had started and the old house was as quiet as
the grave.
"Dee! Dee!" we called. "Where are you, Dee?"
Our voices sounded as though we had yelled down a well. No answer! My
eye fastened on the door with No. 13 over it. All of us have some
superstitions, and anyone brought up by a colored mammy is certain to
have many.
"No. 13 is sure to be right," I thought, and pushed open the door.
A strange sight met my gaze: Dee, with her arms thrown around a youth
who crouched on the floor, his face buried in his hands while his whole
frame was shaken with sobs! From the chandelier hung a rope with a noose
tied in the dangling end, and under it a pile of bricks carefully placed
as though some child had been building a house of blocks. The bricks had
evidently been taken from among others that were scattered over the
hearth near a chimney that had fallen in.
Our relief at finding Dee and finding her unharmed was so great that
nothing mattered to us. Dee put her finger on her lips and we stopped
stock-still. The slender figure of the young man was still convulsed
with sobs, and Dee held him and soothed him as though he had been a baby
and she some grandmother. Finally he spoke, with his face still
covered:
"Claire must never know!" Claire? Then this was Louis Gaillard! Dee had
said several times she would like to know him, but she had had no idea
of her idle wish being granted so quickly and in such a manner. When the
boy said "Claire must never know," Dee arose to the occasion as only Dee
could and said in a perfectly matter-of-fact tone: "No, Louis, I promise
you that Claire shall never know from me." This calling him by name at
the time did not seem strange to him. He was under such stress of
emotion that the use of his Christian name by an unknown young girl
seemed perfectly natural to the stricken youth.
It seems that when Dee went on ahead of us while I was so
grandiloquently spouting poetry, she had flitted from room to room. The
doors had been open all along the corridor except in No. 13. She had had
a fancy to close them after each exploration until she had come to 13.
On opening that door she had met a sight to freeze her young blood, but
instead of freezing her young blood she had simply let out a most
normal and healthy yell. Louis Gaillard was standing on the pile of
bricks that he had placed with great precision under the chandelier, and
as Dee entered he was in the act of fitting the noose around his poor
young neck. His plan of course had been to slip the noose and then kick
the pile of bricks from under him and there to hang until he should die.
The realization of what had occurred came to Dum and me without an
explanation, which Dee gave us later when we could be alone with her.
Dee, in the meantime, continued to pat the boy's shoulder and hold him
tight in her courageous arms until the sobs ceased and he finally looked
up. Then he slowly rose to his feet. He was a tall, slender youth, every
inch of him the aristocrat. His countenance was not weak, just
despondent. I could well fancy him to be very handsome, but now his
sombre eyes were red with weeping and his mouth trembling with emotion.
"I don't know what made me be so wicked," he finally stammered.
"I know. You are very despondent over your life. You are tired of
idleness and see no way to be occupied because your father opposes the
kind of thing you feel yourself fitted to do," and Dee, ordinarily the
kind of girl who hated lollapalusing, as she called it, took the boy's
nerveless hand in both of hers. She said afterwards she knew by instinct
that he needed flesh and blood to hang to, something tangible to keep
his reason from leaving him. He looked at her wonderingly and she
continued: "Claire has been away on a trip and while she was gone your
father has nagged you. He thinks working in flowers is not the work for
a Gaillard and wants you to be a lawyer or preacher. You have no money
to go to college, and he seems to think you can be a preacher without
the education necessary to be a lawyer--which is news to me. You have
offers to plant gardens right here in Charleston, but your father will
not permit you to do it. You have become despondent and have lost
appetite and are now suffering from a nervousness that makes you not
quite yourself."
"But you--how do you know all this?"
"I am ashamed to tell you how I know it. I am afraid you will never be
able to trust me if you know."
"I not trust you! You seem like an angel from heaven to me."
"Well, first let me introduce my sister and friend to you."
Dee had a wonderful power of putting persons at their ease and now in
these circumstances, to say the least unconventional, she turned and
introduced us to Mr. Louis Gaillard with as much simplicity as she would
have shown at a tennis game or in a ball-room. He, with the polished
manners of his race, bowed low over our proffered hands. All of us
ignored the pile of bricks and the sinister rope hanging from the
chandelier.
"We are twins and this is our best friend, Page Allison. We have got
some real long names, but Dum and Dee are the names we go by as a rule,
Dum and Dee Tucker. We are down here in Charleston with our father
Jeffry Tucker, Zebedee for short. And now I want you to do us a big
favor----"
"Me? A favor for you?" Dee had proceeded rather rapidly and the dazed
young man had some difficulty in following her.
"Yes, a favor! I want you, all of us want you, to come up to the hotel
and have lunch with us and meet Zebedee. It is lunch time now almost,
and we promised to be back in time,--you see, if you come with us,
Zebedee can't row with us about being late. He will be awfully cut up
over our being late--nothing makes him so cross. I know if you are with
us he will be unable to rag us. Just as soon as he gets something to eat
he will be all right."
What was Dee driving at? Zebedee cross! Had she caught the young man's
malady and gone a little off her hooks? Dum and I looked at each other
wonderingly--then a light dawned on us: she wanted to get the young man
entirely away from this terrible room, and felt if she made him think
that he was to go along to protect us from an irate father, he would do
it from a sense of chivalry. Having more experience with an irate
father than any other kind, Louis was easily persuaded.
"Certainly, if I can be of any assistance!"
"Well, you can! Now let's hurry!"