A GHOST STORY
"It all happened such a long time ago I can't zactly call to mind the
whole story," confessed Sam. "But they was two brothers that owned this
here old place. They was in the war and fought side by side. Then they
lived here together, peaceful, for a long time. One of them was married
and the other wasn't, but it didn't seem to make no difference. All of a
sudden they fell out, and after a while one of the brothers died,
mysterious like. The live man went away from here and he hasn't been
heard of since. But they do say," Sam shivered and looked fearfully at
the dilapidated mansion, "that the murdered man still walks around this
here place at night. People even claim to see him in the daytime.
Sometimes he is by himself, and then again he brings a lady-ghost with
him, but there ain't nobody ever lived in this here house since them two
brothers fell out," Sam concluded, mightily pleased with the gruesome
impression that his tale had made on his hearers.
"I should think not," agreed Lillian Seldon hastily. "I don't like ghost
stories."
"I am sorry, Lillian, because I know a perfectly stunning one that is as
true as history," declared Harry Sears. "If we had time, and Lillian
didn't mind, I was going to tell it to you while we rested."
Madge put her arm around Lillian. "Do tell it, Harry," she begged. "I'll
protect Lillian from the 'ghosties.'"
The other young people clamored for the ghost story.
Harry looked serious. "My story isn't a joke," he announced. "It hasn't
a beginning or much of an end, like ordinary ghost stories, but it is
true. The people to whom the ghost appeared are great friends of my
mother and father. Somehow this deserted place here makes me think of
the one down on Cape Cod. That house was also uninhabited for years and
years, and no one knew exactly why, except that there were rumors that
the place was haunted. One day a Mr. Peabody, of Boston, an old friend
of ours, went down to Cape Cod to look for a home for the summer. The
ghost house was what he wanted, so he rented it and left orders for it
to be fixed up. He didn't know about the ghosts, though, and he wondered
why the real estate agent let him have the place so cheaply. Mr. Peabody
was a bachelor, so he asked two friends, Captain Smith and his wife, to
occupy the house with him for the summer."
"Oh, trot out your ghosts, Harry. We are getting impatient," interposed
Jack Bolling.
"The first day that Mrs. Smith was alone in the house," continued Harry,
"she was in the sitting room with the door open when a fragile old lady
passed right through the hall. She disappeared into space. That very
same night, just at midnight, when Mr. Peabody, Captain Smith and his
wife were in the library, they heard the fall of a heavy body upstairs
on the second floor. Captain Smith and Mr. Peabody rushed up the steps
just in time to see an old man, leading a young girl by the hand, enter
a room where the door was locked. When they got the door unfastened
there was no one in the room."
"Harry, don't go on with that horrible tale," entreated Lillian, looking
timidly up at the dusty windows of the old house, under whose shadow
they had taken refuge. The sun was no longer shining brightly, but the
shade was grateful to the little circle of listeners on the grass.
"Don't be such a goose, Lillian," protested Phil. "What have Harry's
Massachusetts ghosts to do with us way down here in 'ole Virginny'?"
Lillian gave a shriek. The entire company sprang to their feet,
scattering sandwiches, cakes and pickles on the grass. Inside the empty
house there had been a distinct noise. Something had fallen heavily to
the floor.
At the same instant David, who had been apart from the others, appeared
around the corner of the house.
"Whew, I am glad it was you who made that racket, Brewster!" declared
Jack Bolling, grinning rather foolishly.
The young people looked at one another with relieved expressions.
"I'm so grateful it isn't night time," sighed Eleanor.
"I didn't make any noise," declared David, seeming rather confused. No
one paid any attention to his reply. They were again clustered about
Harry Sears, begging him to go on with his ghost story.
"Things went from bad to worse in the house I was telling you about,"
continued Harry. "Every night, at the same hour, the same noise was
heard and the old man and the girl reappeared. Why, once Mr. Peabody was
sitting in his garden, just as we are doing here"--Harry glanced across
the old garden. Was it a branch that stirred behind the tangle of
evergreen bushes? The day was very still--"and he saw the same old man
walk by him and enter his house through a closed side door. After
awhile Mrs. Smith became ill from the strain and she sent for a
physician who had been living in the neighborhood a long time. The
doctor did not wish to come to see Mrs. Smith just at first. When he did
he related his own experience in the same house years before. He had
just moved into the neighborhood, as a young physician, when one night,
at about midnight, he was aroused by some one ringing his bell. An old
man asked the doctor to come with him at once, as a young girl, his
grand-daughter, was dangerously ill. Dr. Block went with the old
gentleman. He found the young girl, dying with consumption, in a room on
the second floor of a house. An old lady was with her, but the doctor
saw no one else. He wrote a prescription, put it on the mantel-piece and
said he would come back in the morning."
Harry stopped talking. A distant roll of thunder interrupted him.
"Do hurry, Harry; we must be off!" exclaimed Jack Bolling.
"The next morning the doctor went back to the same house. It was closed
and boarded up, and the caretaker told the physician that no one had
lived in the house for many years. The doctor was indignant, so the
caretaker opened the door and let Dr. Block into the house, so he could
see for himself that it was empty. The hall was covered with dust, but
a single pair of footprints could be seen going from the hall door to
the bedroom on the second floor. The old man had left no tracks. The
physician entered the room, which was empty. There was no old man, no
old woman, no sick girl, not even a bed, but"--Harry made a dramatic
pause--"the doctor walked over to the mantel-piece and there lay the
prescription that he had written the night before!"
"Oh, my! Oh, my!" exclaimed Lillian. She was on her feet, pointing with
trembling fingers toward a window of the old house which was back of the
rest of the party. "I am sure I saw a face at that window," she cried.
"No one will believe me, but I did, I did! It was a girl's face, too,
very white and thin. Please take me away from here."
Madge slipped her arms about the frightened Lillian. For an instant she
almost believed that she, too, had seen the specter that must have been
born of Lillian's overwrought imagination as a result of the ghost
stories she had just heard.
Madge and Lillian led the way down the tangled path from the haunted
house. They were some distance from the others when the little captain
discovered that David was following them. She had not looked at him, not
spoken to him since he had so rudely refused her simple request.
Now she walked on, with her head in the air. Lillian did not like David,
but now she was almost sorry for the boy: she knew the weight of Madge's
displeasure. "David Brewster wants to speak to you, Madge, dear," she
whispered in her friend's ear.
Madge made no answer, nor glanced behind her.
"Miss Morton!"--David's face was very white; he was bitterly ashamed--"I
am sorry, beastly sorry, I was so rude to you this morning. I was angry,
not with you, but about something else. I don't seem to know how to
control my temper. Perhaps it is because I am not a gentleman. I would
do anything I knew how to serve you." David was not looking at Madge,
but on the ground in front of him.
Madge's expression cleared as though by magic. "Never mind, David," she
said impulsively. "Let's not think anything more about it. I lose my
temper quite as often as any one else. And don't say it is because you
are not a gentleman; you _are_ a gentleman, if you wish to be."
The other young people came hurrying on. The clouds were now heavy
overhead and the thunder seemed ominously near. The lightning began to
streak in forked flames across the summer sky.
"I think everybody had better run for the farm," suggested Phyllis. "Sam
says it is only a short distance away."
No one cared to linger any longer in the deserted grounds. The story of
the tragic old house, oddly mixed as it was with Harry Sears's ghostly
tale and Lillian's fancied apparition of a girl's white face at the
window, did not leave a pleasant recollection of the morning spent near
Sam's "ha'nted house."