It may be said, and with truth, that so far I have recorded little
but subjective terror, possibly easily explained by my occupancy of an
isolated house, plus a few unimportant incidents, capable of various
interpretations. But the fear was, and is today as I look back, a real
thing. As real--and as difficult to describe--as a chill, for instance.
A severe mental chill it was, indeed.
I went upstairs finally to a restless night, and rose early, after only
an hour or so of sleep. One thing I was determined on--to find out,
if possible, the connection between the terror and the telephone. I
breakfasted early, and was dressing to go to the village when I had
a visitor, no other than Miss Emily herself. She looked fluttered and
perturbed at the unceremonious hour of her visit--she was the soul of
convention--and explained, between breaths as it were, that she had come
to apologize for the day before. She had hardly slept. I must forgive
her. She had been very nervous since her brother's death, and small
things upset her.
How much of what I say of Miss Emily depends on my later knowledge, I
wonder? Did I notice then that she was watching me furtively, or is it
only on looking back that I recall it? I do recall it--the hall door
open and a vista of smiling garden beyond, and silhouetted against the
sunshine, Miss Emily's frail figure and searching, slightly uplifted
face. There was something in her eyes that I had not seen before--a
sort of exaltation. She was not, that morning, the Miss Emily who ran a
finger along her baseboards to see if we dusted them.
She had walked out, and it had exhausted her. She breathed in little
gasps.
"I think," she said at last, "that I must telephone for Mr. Staley, I am
never very strong in hot weather."
"Please let me call him, for you, Miss Emily." I am not a young woman,
and she was at least sixty-five. But, because she was so small and
frail, I felt almost a motherly anxiety for her that morning.
"I think I should like to do it, if you don't mind. We are old friends.
He always comes promptly when I call him."
She went back alone, and I waited in the doorway. When she came out, she
was smiling, and there was more color in her face.
"He is coming at once. He is always very thoughtful for me."
Now, without any warning, something that had been seething since her
breathless arrival took shape in my mind, and became--suspicion. What
if it had been Miss Emily who had called me the second time to the
telephone, and having established the connection, had waited, breathing
hard for--what?
It was fantastic, incredible in the light of that brilliant summer day.
I looked at her, dainty and exquisite as ever, her ruchings fresh and
white, her very face indicative of decorum and order, her wistful old
mouth still rather like a child's, her eyes, always slightly upturned
because of her diminutive height, so that she had habitually a look of
adoration.
"One of earth's saints," the rector had said to me on Sunday morning. "A
good woman, Miss Blakiston, and a sacrifice to an unworthy family."
Suspicion is like the rain. It falls on the just and on the unjust. And
that morning I began to suspect Miss Emily. I had no idea of what.
On my mentioning an errand in the village she promptly offered to take
me with her in the Staley hack. She had completely altered in manner.
The strain was gone. In her soft low voice, as we made our way to the
road, she told me the stories of some of the garden flowers.
"The climbing rose over the arch, my dear," she said, "my mother brought
from England on her wedding journey. People have taken cuttings from it
again and again, but the cuttings never thrive. A bad winter, and they
are gone. But this one has lived. Of course now and then it freezes
down."
She chattered on, and my suspicions grew more and more shadowy. They
would have gone, I think, had not Maggie called me back with a grocery
list.
"A sack of flour," she said, "and some green vegetables, and--Miss
Agnes, that woman was down on her knees beside the telephone!--and
bluing for the laundry, and I guess that's all."
The telephone! It was always the telephone. We drove on down the lane,
eyed somnolently by spotted cows and incurious sheep, and all the way
Miss Emily talked. She was almost garrulous. She asked the hackman about
his family and stopped the vehicle to pick up a peddler, overburdened
with his pack. I watched her with amazement. Evidently this was Mr.
Staley's Miss Emily. But it was not mine.
But I saw mine, too, that morning. It was when I asked the hackman to
put me down at the little telephone building. I thought she put her
hand to her throat, although the next moment she was only adjusting the
ruching at her neck.
"You--you have decided to have the second telephone put in, then?"
I hesitated. She so obviously did not want it installed. And was I to
submit meekly to the fear again, without another effort to vanquish it?
"I think not, dear Miss Emily," I said at last, smiling at her drawn
face. "Why should I disturb your lovely old house and its established
order?"
"But I want you to do just what you think best," she protested. She had
put her hands together. It was almost a supplication.
As to the strange night calls, there was little to be learned. The
night operator was in bed. The manager made a note of my complaint, and
promised an investigation, which, having had experience with telephone
investigations, I felt would lead nowhere. I left the building, with my
grocery list in my hand.
The hack was gone, of course. But--I may have imagined it--I thought
I saw Miss Emily peering at me from behind the bonnets and hats in the
milliner's window.