The Ghost Mansion
Unable to understand what had caused the workmen to act as they had, and
sensing the possibility of a further fright to the horses, Arden and her
chums were about to wheel and ride away. But Dick called to them:
“Steady; I think it will be all right. These men don’t know what they’re
doing. They are just frightened.”
“At what?” asked Arden.
“That’s what I’m going to try to discover,” said the young groom. Then,
shouting to the running Negroes, he inquired:
“What’s the matter?”
“Don’t ask us, boss,” answered one, dubiously shaking his head. “We sho’
am finished on dat job! I never could abide t’ wuk in haunted houses!”
“Dat goes fo’ me, too!” echoed the other. “I don’t laik ghosts!”
Then they both ran on, disappearing into the woods.
“Ghosts!” laughed Terry after a moment of silence. “They’re just what we
need to brighten up our lives.”
“Let’s go in the old mansion and look around,” proposed Arden.
“Have we time?” suggested Sim.
They glanced at Dick for his verdict.
“We have about half an hour,” he said, looking at his watch. “Go on in if
you want to.”
When they urged their horses through the overgrown tangle that had once
been a front yard and came to a stop near the big broad porch, the
pillars of which were tilting, Dick helped the three girls to dismount.
Then, leading the horses to a tree with conveniently low branches, he
looped the reins so the animals would not stray. Horses in the East are
not trained like their Western cousins, to stand if the reins are left to
dangle on the ground.
The girls held back a little before going up the four steps at the
entrance of the house. It was a combination Georgian-Colonial style,
squarely built, with a beautiful fanlight still intact over the center
door.
“It is spooky, isn’t it?” asked Sim with a pleased little shiver.
“Did you ever see such a sorrowful house, though?” Arden wanted to know.
“What do you mean, sorrowful? To me it seems very proud and stern,” Terry
decided.
“I don’t think so. Look at the way the door hangs on its hinges. Ready to
fall off if it had a good push. And what lovely hinges they are, too.
Hand forged, I’ll bet,” Arden said, going a little closer to inspect.
Sim, quickly sympathetic, fell under the spell of Arden’s imagining.
“Poor old place,” she murmured, “I don’t blame it for haunting the
workmen. I suppose this house has been the scene of many an exciting
adventure. Do you know anything about it, Dick?” Sim turned to the boy,
who stood aside waiting for them to enter.
He hesitated a moment before replying and then seemed reluctant to give
much information.
“Yes,” he said slowly, “I know a little bit about it. You see this place
once belonged to my ancestors.” He looked down at his polished boots and
appeared rather bashful.
“Really?” asked Sim. “Tell us, please,” and she smiled disarmingly at
him.
Arden and Terry waited hopefully for Dick to continue.
“Suppose we go in and I’ll show you the place,” the young groom
suggested.
“How about the ghosts?” Terry asked.
“These ghosts aren’t the common graveyard variety—that is, if the stories
are true. They all seem to be spirits of soldiers, farmers, and sometimes
there’s the ghost of a lovely girl,” Dick went on. “You see this place
was built during the Revolution. The Continental army ‘dug in’ at Jockey
Hollow, here, for the winter of 1779.”
Terry, growing bolder, preceded the others into the hall. Rooms very much
dilapidated were on either side. One room, probably a parlor, was
dominated by an enormous fireplace with a faded picture above it.
“Oh, girls, come here!” Terry called. “Look at this! Is this your girl
ghost, Dick?”
They hurried to Terry as she stood before the painting. Terry was in
sharp contrast to the charming scene above. Feet planted a little apart,
hands clasped behind her back, tall as she was, her head just came to the
old, high mantel. The girl in the picture was also in riding clothes, but
far different from Terry’s. They looked like a tableau: “The Past and
Present.”
Terry wore smart riding trousers and a flaring coat. Her sandy hair was
just showing beneath a well blocked hat.
The girl in the picture was dark-haired and tall. Her right arm was
thrust through the reins of a black horse. The panniers of her dark-green
riding costume seemed to melt into the leafy background of the painting.
The picture girl was staring straight at Terry and perhaps it was not
entirely imagination that disclosed something akin in the two girls.
“What a charming picture you make!” Arden remarked, and then, as she saw
that Terry was perhaps too delighted at the compliment, she added: “In
this dim light we can’t see the freckles.”
Terry turned and, like a small boy, stuck a pink tongue out at Arden.
Dick, in the meanwhile, was looking thoughtfully at the girls. Sim went
to him.
“Dick,” she said softly, “I can see that you somehow belong here. Won’t
you tell us about it? We’ve been riding with you several seasons now, and
we won’t repeat a thing if you don’t want us to.”
“Please,” begged Arden. “You look as sad as this house, Dick. What’s the
matter?”
“This place,” Dick began with an including gesture, “once belonged in my
grandmother’s family. But the deed, or some necessary paper, has been
lost, and now the state claims the estate, and the old house is to be
torn down to make way for a road. The march of progress, you know, must
not be halted.”
“But has it no historic interest?” Terry asked. “Couldn’t it be preserved
as a shrine of some sort? I mean the house, for you said Jockey Hollow is
going to be a park.”
“I’m afraid not,” continued Dick. “I guess it’s about the only mansion
that George Washington never visited. Besides, the original house has
been added to so many times that now it is a combination of three or four
periods.”
“What would your grandmother do with this property if she could find the
deed?” asked Terry practically.
“Sell it,” answered Dick without any hesitation. “At least it would bring
enough money for me to give up this stable job that any half-wit could
hold and let me finish at college. Then Betty, she’s my sister, could go
to New York and keep on with her work in costume design and interior
decoration. She’s really talented,” he added earnestly.
“If this home were mine I should hate to part with it,” Arden announced.
“I don’t see how your grandmother can bear to give it up. Isn’t there a
chance that she could keep it, Dick?”
“Perhaps, if we could prove title. But even then we need the money its
sale would bring. Granny ought to have little comforts, though really
she’s been swell about it all. Never complains. And the stories she
knows!”
“What does she say about the ghosts?” Sim asked.
“Just laughs. She says she’d sleep here on All Souls’ Eve or any other
particularly ghostly time. I guess she likes ghosts.”
“I’d love to meet her sometime. Do you think we might? I wish we could
help some way,” said Arden thoughtfully.
“I’ll ask her. I’m sure she would. She leads rather a lonely life,” Dick
answered. “And she loves young folks.”
“Say, Dick, who is this girl in the picture? Isn’t it too valuable a
painting to be left here?” Terry was studying the painting.
“It’s not worth much. It was probably painted by one of those traveling
artists who could do family portraits or barns, whichever might be
wanted. Granny has left a few things in here to sort of claim the place,
though the claim isn’t recognized. And we live now in a little house
behind this one. It used to be the servants’ quarters,” Dick finished
bitterly.
The little group fell silent. The girls had stumbled, it seemed, upon
something very private, and they felt embarrassed at learning of
someone’s misfortune.
“Like finding somebody crying when they thought they were alone,” Terry
later remarked.
No one knew what to say. Dick walked to a window that reached almost from
the ceiling to the floor, and stood looking out. Terry, always the first
to move, stepped over the fender around the fireplace and peered up the
chimney. For no reason except to break the trying silence, as far as she
knew.
Barely perceptible at first, gradually a sound impressed itself on the
girls. Like footsteps on a stair, far away but coming nearer, the sound
approached.
Terry pulled back her head from the dark corner of the fireplace and
looked at her friends. They stood like statues staring back at each
other, while Dick turned slowly from the window.
“What’s that?” Sim asked, cocking her head like a young puppy as if to
hear better.
“Sounds like someone creeping down the stairs,” Arden ventured.
“Perhaps it’s one of the workmen coming back,” suggested Terry.
At this Dick shook his head. “No,” he said. “I happen to know that those
two men we saw a while ago were the only ones on the job today, and they
left in a hurry,” he finished, grinning.
“Well, then, there is only one explanation left.” Arden was glowing with
excitement. “Ghosts!”
“Oh, gosh!” exclaimed Sim. “Let’s go! I like to read about ghosts but I
don’t like to meet ’em. Come on!” Without waiting for the others, Sim ran
from the room.
“Wait, Sim, wait!” Terry called. And when Sim did not return Terry added:
“Arden, we’ll have to go too! I don’t like it, either.” Then she turned
traitor to the cause and ran after Sim.
There was nothing left, then, for Arden and Dick to do but follow. But
Arden lingered a moment in the hall on her way out and listened.
The measured sound above was slowly coming closer. Heavy steps, as though
the feet making the noise were encased in thick boots.
“Thud! Thud! Thud!”
Above the first landing all was in darkness, and even Arden, ghost-loving
as she was, decided to wait no longer to find out what might be coming
down the long stairs.
With a last fearful look she also fled, calling to Dick for protection
and stumbling over a loose floor board in her haste.