A week went by and not much happened. And, while I was not actively
unhappy, I was never once happy. Amy had lots to do, and I didn’t see
her often, and of course Evelyn was hardly in at all, and, when she
rarely was, she was too cross to talk to. I wondered about her, as I had
about Uncle Archie--whether the return paid for what they both gave up?
For Evelyn was tired and strained and losing all her sweetness, and
Uncle Archie had lost all his talk. I came to feel that it wasn’t worth
while in either case.
I thought a great deal those days. Thought is almost forced upon you, if
you aren’t a social success, or can’t play baseball. You see, in such
case, there is nothing to divert you and keep you from reflection. So, I
thought. I also wrote home often and sent Willy Jepson post-cards,
because he sent me one of the gaol, on which he had written: “My room is
marked with a cross.” (There was a cross over the only window that is
barred.) And he also sent me a picture of Miss Hooker, taken, I imagine,
in 1892, on which he had written: “She has consented to be mine! Sweet
love has bloomed within my heart at last!” But I knew he got that out of
a book, because it didn’t sound like Willy. Those, with a letter from
Uncle Frank, which contained much information about the larvæ of the
bee, cheered me greatly. The letter sounded so like Uncle Frank that all
I had to do was to shut my eyes, and then I could hear him “Ho hum.” And
I did that quite a good deal as I re-read his letter.
That week was, I found afterward, a normal week for my aunt and cousins
and uncle, but it seemed frightfully hurried to me. Everyone had decided
that I had been choked and chloroformed by a sneak thief, and after
uncle muttered about speaking to the building’s owner about the
fire-escapes, and aunt’s warning Ito and Jane about the pantry window,
and one of mine (which opens on an iron balcony, as does one of Amy’s),
everyone forgot the episode. It seemed Evelyn once lost a fur coat that
way, and that upstairs thieving was not uncommon. But I knew they were
wrong. However, nothing strengthened my belief until the event which
came in the first part of the following week. But that comes later.
As I said, the week dragged by. I lived through it very slowly (it is
strange how time is affected by the way YOU feel, isn’t it?), and at
last it was Friday.
My aunt was going out to a luncheon, and because I had been alone all
morning and wanted company, I followed her to the hall, and there we
found Mr. Kempwood’s letter.
“My dear,” said Aunt Penelope, “what a stunning hand, and what a
charming shade for letter paper. . . . For you. Do let’s see whom it’s
from.”
I opened it, feeling excited. It was from Mr. Kempwood, and he asked if
I would come down and have tea with him at four o’clock on Saturday, and
he said that if I liked we would afterward take a drive. My aunt said I
most certainly could, and then she kissed me with unusual interest, and
left. And I took the letter and read it three more times, especially the
end, where he had written: “And it is with genuine pleasure and great
pride, my dear Miss Natalie, that I sign myself your friend, Samuel
Kempwood.” I did like that!
Well, I went in my room, and thought about all the things I would wear,
and I hoped so much that my aunt would let me wear my pink dress, but
she didn’t. However, I had such a good time that my disappointment was
soon forgotten. I decided I would wear my jewellery, which consists of
the Jumel bracelet and a ring with a silver skull on it which Willy
Jepson gave me.
I thought my tam would be best for motoring, because it sticks on and
Mr. Kempwood likes it. And I meant to accept that part of the invitation
very hard, because I love it, and there never seems to be enough room in
aunt’s motor. Everyone is always sorry, but someone else always has to
go. Amy has so many friends that it is difficult to pay them all
sufficient attention. This week she took them motoring each
morning--different sets--and deeply regretted she couldn’t take me. But
I understood how it was, and said so. I tried to make her just as
comfortable as I could about it. They are all being very kind to me.
That night Evelyn had dinner at home; Uncle Archie was there too, and it
might have been nice if they’d acted so. But aunt sighed a great deal
and said Evelyn _needed_ a new fur coat and that there was a beauty on
Fifth Avenue for only twenty-two hundred (and she made a long lecture
about getting good things when you bought, because they lasted and it
really was an _economy_), and then Amy began to whine and say that if
Evelyn had a new coat she didn’t see why she, Amy, couldn’t have one,
and that she felt like a pauper when she went to school. I felt sorry
for Uncle Archie. He didn’t seem to mind, but I think it must have
bothered him. After he said “Huh” a few times he turned to me and really
spoke to me for the first time.
“What do _you_ want?” he asked. “Must _want_ something.”
But I said I didn’t. And I added that I was grateful for all the lovely
things aunt had bought me. I told him that they were beautiful. He
looked at me hard, said “Huh!” and went on eating.
Then I asked aunt if I could wear the pink dress to Mr. Kempwood’s
party.
“Mr. Kempwood’s?” echoed Evelyn, and she did not seem pleased when her
mother told her about it. “I think that’s very _kind_ of him,” she said,
after her mother finished.
Uncle Archie went out after dinner, and Evelyn went to a dance with some
friends at about nine; and Aunt Penelope, sighing and saying thank
Heaven she actually had an evening free, wrote a lot of notes, and
telephoned friends, making engagements for all the evenings of the next
week.
Amy and I went to bed at nine-thirty because we are supposed to at nine.
Amy sleeps with me now, because she thinks I may be frightened. At
least, that is what she _says_, but I, privately, think she is scared to
be alone. However, that is not vital. After we got in bed Amy told me
that lots of men had proposed to Evelyn, but that she had “scorned them
all.” However, she said that there was a man in the next house whom
Evelyn really liked.
“She’s dippy about him,” Amy said. “You can see it. They both simper and
act silly when they meet, and they have a basket strung between the
houses on a wire (you know they’re ever so close), and they pass notes
that way!”
“Honestly?” I said. It didn’t sound like Evelyn. She seems too hard for
anything romantic.
“Honestly,” Amy assured me. “She doesn’t think anyone will notice the
wire, and the basket is hidden under her window-box.”
“I see,” I said, and I did. There are flower-boxes on the outsides of a
good many of the windows. It would be easy enough to manage to make one
a garage for her basket mail-carrier, if she wanted to.
“She’d die if anyone knew it,” Amy confided. “It would fuss her. . . . I
just can’t imagine Evelyn mooning around in the dark, waiting for that
basket to slide across. I’m dying to get one of those notes.”
“Wouldn’t it be funny to fill that basket full of cold flour paste,” I
said. “Just think how she’d jump, if she slid her hand in it--up to the
wrist.”
“Wouldn’t she!” agreed Amy, and giggled. “But of course we mustn’t,” she
added in a sobered tone.
“Of course not,” I said, adding: “She couldn’t tell on us, either.”
“No,” said Amy. “But we mustn’t let that influence us. Where could we
get the paste?”
I suggested that we ask the cook to let us make candy Saturday night.
Then we giggled a good deal. And after that Amy said “darn” awfully
hard, and got out of bed growling and fussing terribly, for she’d
forgotten to say her prayers.
The next morning when I got up I found my bracelet was gone, and I was
upset by it, and disappointed, because I had wanted to wear it down to
Mr. Kempwood’s. I decided to ask Madam Jumel to return it again,
although the recollection of the way it came back before made me so
frightened that my palms grew damp, even though my hands were cold. But
I did want it. Even at that time I had made up my mind I would win. For
Madam Jumel had given it to us; it was ours, and she had no right to
make everyone miserable.
So--at about three-thirty I went over to the Jumel Mansion. I asked
which room Madam Jumel slept in, this time, and they told me. I went up
to stand at the door. Some visitors went past me talking of the room
where Lafayette had slept and of Washington’s bedroom, but neither
Washington nor Lafayette interested me that day.
“You know,” I whispered, “it isn’t _fair_. You gave it to her, and since
you _did_----” And then I stopped, for one of the curators came by and
heard me.
“Absorbing the habit from one of the old mistresses?” he asked. I didn’t
know what he meant, and he explained. It seemed Madam Jumel’s mind had
wavered as she grew older, and she did strange things, among
them--talking to herself of the great people she had entertained and the
power she had been.
“Absolutely mad,” said the gentleman, whom I had come to know well in
those few visits. “Why, she employed a lot of French refugees who were
out of work and would take any--starving, I suppose--brought them up
here, and drilled them as her army. Boys who were fishing on the other
side of the river would look up to see the old woman heading a little
crowd of ragged men, who carried sticks for guns. She always rode a
horse, sitting erect, and now and again they said she would turn proudly
to survey her troops. . . . She was a queer one. . . . They say”--he
paused and looked in the room--“that she haunts this room. I don’t
believe in such things, but her relatives who lived here afterward
(three families, they were) swore that she came back to rap so hard that
the walls shook. . . . They all quarrelled, and none spoke to each
other; but having no money, while they waited for the will to be
settled, they lived here; the Nelson Chase family, the Will Chase
family, and the Pérys. The Chases were her nephews, Mrs. Péry her niece.
Mademoiselle Nitschke, the governess of small Mathilde Péry, did not
believe in ghosts, but--one night even she was convinced. . . . You’ll
find all that story in a book called ‘The Jumel Mansion,’ which Mr.
William Henry Shelton, whom you have seen here, wrote.”
I hunted Mr. Shelton, and he showed me this. I won’t quote it entire,
but only in part. It is in his book, as Mademoiselle Nitschke told it.
“I came to live at the Mansion three years after Madam Jumel died, or
about 1868. My room was on the third floor. . . . After a little time I
was moved down to the Lafayette Room, to be nearer Mrs. Péry, who was in
nightly terror of the ghost of Madam Jumel, which, she claimed, came
with terrible rappings between twelve and one o’clock, or about
midnight.
“Mrs. Péry would come to my room in the night in great excitement to
escape the ghost. . . . One night she insisted on my coming to their
bedroom and awaiting the ghost. I had always told them there was no such
thing as a ghost.
“On that particular night the trouble began as early as seven o’clock in
the evening. They had just come up from supper when Mrs. Péry rushed
into the hall, trembling with fright and calling: ‘Mademoiselle!’ . . .
At about that same time, probably hearing cries, Mr. Péry came up the
stairs from the kitchen where he had been toasting cheese. He disliked
to sleep in the room in question, claiming that Madam Jumel had come to
the side of his bed in white. . . .”
And she described it quite a while. Mademoiselle Nitschke said it was a
very quiet September night and hardly a leaf stirred. . . . She said
they all sat in absolute silence, and things seemed to grow even more
still as midnight approached. . . . And when it came, a loud rap, such
as a wooden mallet might make, came directly under Mr. Péry’s
chair--“From which,” she said, “he leaped as if he had been shot. . . .”
And I, for one, don’t blame him. . . . Well, then Mademoiselle, who must
have been very brave, asked if Madam Jumel desired prayers said for her,
and Madam replied with three knocks, which is knock-language for yes.
Mr. Shelton told me more. And I enjoyed it so much. But--I could not
understand it, and it made me feel creepy. I think it is pleasanter not
to believe in ghosts.
After this, since it was getting late, I went downstairs and stood
before the portrait. And here I again asked for my bracelet. It seemed
to me the portrait smiled--unpleasantly, but I suppose that was only my
imagination. For when you are nervous, you cannot tell what you see, or
what you don’t. And the real becomes hazy and the unreal real. I was
glad to go to Mr. Kempwood’s. But I will tell about that later.
That night the bracelet came back.
Amy slept with me, and we were ready to sleep, having worked very hard
to make flour paste of the right consistency. It had to be sloppy, and
so that it wouldn’t harden when cold. We also had to arrange an inner
holder for it, since the basket was not built to hold juice. We didn’t
get started undressing until ten, and Jane, who is supposed to remind us
of bedtime, became very disagreeable. But we ignored her and didn’t let
her irritate us. We fixed a heavy paper inside to the basket and then
poured the stuff in, and then Amy pulled it halfway out on the line, so
that Evelyn would think he’d started something. We put ice in it, and it
began to feel far from pleasant. We both tried it. “Sort of like cold
frogs--mashed,” said Amy, which was an admirable description.
Then after this we went to bed. We decided we needn’t stay awake, for we
felt sure that Evelyn would yell. And she did, but that comes later.
I didn’t go to sleep early. I have not since the bracelet was first
returned. And the consciousness that it might come back again, in the
same way, made me lie awake and feel gaspy. So--when I heard a little
noise I was not surprised. . . . Our door was open a little way, and
there was a noise at this. . . . Then a scratching noise by my bedside
(the bed head is by the door). . . . In the tiniest light something
glittered and made a bright point SLOWLY MOVING ACROSS THE FLOOR. . . .
I struggled up, and somehow found my searchlight. . . . Swallowing hard
and feeling sick, I pressed it. The Jumel bracelet lay one yard inside
the door on the floor. . . . It was the glitter on the gold that had let
me see it, as it moved.
It had come back again.