might face the camera properly, but Hoyt said he could overcome the
recumbent attitude and make it appear that the face was taken in the
position it would naturally hold in life, and so they went out and left
him alone with the dead.
The face of the deceased was a strong and positive one, such as
may often be seen among Jewish matrons. Hoyt regarded it with some
admiration, thinking to himself that she was a woman who had known
what she wanted, and who, once having made up her mind, would prove
immovable. Such a character appealed to Hoyt. He reflected that he
might have married if only he could have found a woman with strength of
character sufficient to disagree with him. There was a strand of hair
out of place on the dead woman's brow, and he gently pushed it back.
A bud lifted its head too high from among the roses on her breast and
spoiled the contour of the chin, so he broke it off. He remembered these
things later with keen distinctness, and that his hand touched her chill
face two or three times in the making of his arrangements.
Then he took the impression, and left the house.
He was busy at the time with some railroad work, and several days passed
before he found opportunity to develop the plates. He took them from
the bath in which they had lain with a number of others, and went
energetically to work upon them, whistling some very saucy songs he had
learned of the guide in the Red River country, and trying to forget that
the face which was presently to appear was that of a dead woman. He had
used three plates as a precaution against accident, and they came
up well. But as they developed, he became aware of the existence of
something in the photograph which had not been apparent to his eye
in the subject. He was irritated, and without attempting to face the
mystery, he made a few prints and laid them aside, ardently hoping that
by some chance they would never be called for.
However, as luck would have it,--and Hoyt's luck never had been
good,--his employer asked one day what had become of those photographs.
Hoyt tried to evade making an answer, but the effort was futile, and he
had to get out the finished prints and exhibit them. The older man sat
staring at them a long time.
“Hoyt,” he said, “you're a young man, and very likely you have never
seen anything like this before. But I have. Not exactly the same thing,
perhaps, but similar phenomena have come my way a number of times since
I went in the business, and I want to tell you there are things in
heaven and earth not dreamt of--”
“Oh, I know all that tommy-rot,” cried Hoyt, angrily, “but when anything
happens I want to know the reason why and how it is done.”
“All right,” answered his employer, “then you might explain why and how
the sun rises.”
But he humored the young man sufficiently to examine with him the baths
in which the plates were submerged, and the plates themselves. All was
as it should be; but the mystery was there, and could not be done away
with.
Hoyt hoped against hope that the friends of the dead woman would somehow
forget about the photographs; but the idea was unreasonable, and one
day, as a matter of course, the daughter appeared and asked to see the
pictures of her mother.
“Well, to tell the truth,” stammered Hoyt, “they didn't come out
quite--quite as well as we could wish.”
“But let me see them,” persisted the lady. “I'd like to look at them
anyhow.”
“Well, now,” said Hoyt, trying to be soothing, as he believed it was
always best to be with women,--to tell the truth he was an ignoramus
where women were concerned,--“I think it would be better if you didn't
look at them. There are reasons why--” he ambled on like this, stupid
man that he was, till the lady naturally insisted upon seeing the
pictures without a moment's delay.
So poor Hoyt brought them out and placed them in her hand, and then
ran for the water pitcher, and had to be at the bother of bathing her
forehead to keep her from fainting.
For what the lady saw was this: Over face and flowers and the head of
the coffin fell a thick veil, the edges of which touched the floor in
some places. It covered the features so well that not a hint of them was
visible.
“There was nothing over mother's face!” cried the lady at length.
“Not a thing,” acquiesced Hoyt. “I know, because I had occasion to touch
her face just before I took the picture. I put some of her hair back
from her brow.”
“What does it mean, then?” asked the lady.
“You know better than I. There is no explanation in science. Perhaps
there is some in--in psychology.”
“Well,” said the young woman, stammering a little and coloring, “mother
was a good woman, but she always wanted her own way, and she always had
it, too.”
“Yes.”
“And she never would have her picture taken. She didn't admire her own
appearance. She said no one should ever see a picture of her.”
“So?” said Hoyt, meditatively. “Well, she's kept her word, hasn't she?”
The two stood looking at the photographs for a time. Then Hoyt pointed
to the open blaze in the grate.
“Throw them in,” he commanded. “Don't let your father see them--don't
keep them yourself. They wouldn't be agreeable things to keep.”
“That's true enough,” admitted the lady. And she threw them in the fire.
Then Virgil Hoyt brought out the plates and broke them before her eyes.
And that was the end of it--except that Hoyt sometimes tells the story
to those who sit beside him when his pipe is lighted.
A CHILD OF THE RAIN
IT was the night that Mona Meeks, the dressmaker, told him she didn't
love him. He couldn't believe it at first, because he had so long been
accustomed to the idea that she did, and no matter how rough the weather
or how irascible the passengers, he felt a song in his heart as he
punched transfers, and rang his bell punch, and signalled the driver
when to let people off and on.
Now, suddenly, with no reason except a woman's, she had changed her
mind. He dropped in to see her at five o'clock, just before time for the
night shift, and to give her two red apples he had been saving for her.
She looked at the apples as if they were invisible and she could not see
them, and standing in her disorderly little dressmaking parlor, with its
cuttings and scraps and litter of fabrics, she said:
“It is no use, John. I shall have to work here like this all my
life--work here alone. For I don't love you, John. No, I don't. I
thought I did, but it is a mistake.”
“You mean it?” asked John, bringing up the words in a great gasp.
“Yes,” she said, white and trembling and putting out her hands as if to
beg for his mercy. And then--big, lumbering fool--he turned around
and strode down the stairs and stood at the corner in the beating rain
waiting for his car. It came along at length, spluttering on the wet
rails and spitting out blue fire, and he took his shift after a gruff
“Good night” to Johnson, the man he relieved.
He was glad the rain was bitter cold and drove in his face fiercely.
He rejoiced at the cruelty of the wind, and when it hustled pedestrians
before it, lashing them, twisting their clothes, and threatening their
equilibrium, he felt amused. He was pleased at the chill in his bones
and at the hunger that tortured him. At least, at first he thought it
was hunger till he remembered that he had just eaten. The hours passed
confusedly. He had no consciousness of time. But it must have been
late,--near midnight,--judging by the fact that there were few persons
visible anywhere in the black storm, when he noticed a little figure
sitting at the far end of the car. He had not seen the child when she
got on, but all was so curious and wild to him that evening--he himself
seemed to himself the most curious and the wildest of all things--that
it was not surprising that he should not have observed the little
creature.
She was wrapped in a coat so much too large that it had become frayed
at the bottom from dragging on the pavement. Her hair hung in unkempt
stringiness about her bent shoulders, and her feet were covered with old
arctics, many sizes too big, from which the soles hung loose.
Beside the little figure was a chest of dark wood, with curiously
wrought hasps. From this depended a stout strap by which it could be
carried over the shoulders. John Billings stared in, fascinated by the
poor little thing with its head sadly drooping upon its breast, its thin
blue hands relaxed upon its lap, and its whole attitude so suggestive
of hunger, loneliness, and fatigue, that he made up his mind he would
collect no fare from it.
“It will need its nickel for breakfast,” he said to himself. “The
company can stand this for once. Or, come to think of it, I might
celebrate my hard luck. Here's to the brotherhood of failures!” And
he took a nickel from one pocket of his great-coat and dropped it in
another, ringing his bell punch to record the transfer.
The car plunged along in the darkness, and the rain beat more viciously
than ever in his face. The night was full of the rushing sound of the
storm. Owing to some change of temperature the glass of the car became
obscured so that the young conductor could no longer see the little
figure distinctly, and he grew anxious about the child.
“I wonder if it's all right,” he said to himself. “I never saw living
creature sit so still.”
He opened the car door, intending to speak with the child, but just
then something went wrong with the lights. There was a blue and green
flickering, then darkness, a sudden halting of the car, and a great
sweep of wind and rain in at the door. When, after a moment, light and
motion reasserted themselves, and Billings had got the door together, he
turned to look at the little passenger. But the car was empty.
It was a fact. There was no child there--not even moisture on the seat
where she had been sitting.
“Bill,” said he, going to the front door and addressing the driver,
“what became of that little kid in the old cloak?”
“I didn't see no kid,” said Bill, crossly. “For Gawd's sake, close the
door, John, and git that draught off my back.”
“Draught!” said John, indignantly, “where's the draught?”
“You've left the hind door open,” growled Bill, and John saw him
shivering as a blast struck him and ruffled the fur on his bear-skin
coat. But the door was not open, and yet John had to admit to himself
that the car seemed filled with wind and a strange coldness.
However, it didn't matter. Nothing mattered! Still, it was as well no
doubt to look under the seats just to make sure no little crouching
figure was there, and so he did. But there was nothing. In fact, John
said to himself, he seemed to be getting expert in finding nothing where
there ought to be something.
He might have stayed in the car, for there was no likelihood of more
passengers that evening, but somehow he preferred going out where the
rain could drench him and the wind pommel him. How horribly tired he
was! If there were only some still place away from the blare of the city
where a man could lie down and listen to the sound of the sea or the
storm--or if one could grow suddenly old and get through with the bother
of living--or if--
The car gave a sudden lurch as it rounded a curve, and for a moment it
seemed to be a mere chance whether Conductor Billings would stay on
his platform or go off under those fire-spitting wheels. He caught
instinctively at his brake, saved himself, and stood still for a moment,
panting.
“I must have dozed,” he said to himself.
Just then, dimly, through the blurred window, he saw again the little
figure of the child, its head on its breast as before, its blue hands
lying in its lap and the curious box beside it. John Billings felt a
coldness beyond the coldness of the night run through his blood. Then,
with a half-stifled cry, he threw back the door, and made a desperate
spring at the corner where the eerie thing sat.
And he touched the green carpeting on the seat, which was quite dry
and warm, as if no dripping, miserable little wretch had ever crouched
there.
He rushed to the front door.
“Bill,” he roared, “I want to know about that kid.”
“What kid?”
“The same kid! The wet one with the old coat and the box with iron
hasps! The one that's been sitting here in the car!”
Bill turned his surly face to confront the young conductor.
“You've been drinking, you fool,” said he. “Fust thing you know you'll
be reported.”
The conductor said not a word. He went slowly and weakly back to his
post and stood there the rest of the way leaning against the end of the
car for support. Once or twice he muttered:
“The poor little brat!” And again he said, “So you didn't love me after
all!”
He never knew how he reached home, but he sank to sleep as dying men
sink to death. All the same, being a hearty young man, he was on duty
again next day but one, and again the night was rainy and cold.
It was the last run, and the car was spinning along at its limit, when
there came a sudden soft shock. John Billings knew what that meant. He
had felt something of the kind once before. He turned sick for a moment,
and held on to the brake. Then he summoned his courage and went around
to the side of the car, which had stopped. Bill, the driver, was before
him, and had a limp little figure in his arms, and was carrying it to
the gaslight. John gave one look and cried:
“It's the same kid, Bill! The one I told you of!”
True as truth were the ragged coat dangling from the pitiful body, the
little blue hands, the thin shoulders, the stringy hair, the big arctics
on the feet. And in the road not far off was the curious chest of dark
wood with iron hasps.
“She ran under the car deliberate!” cried Bill. “I yelled to her, but
she looked at me and ran straight on!”
He was white in spite of his weather-beaten skin.
“I guess you wasn't drunk last night after all, John,” said he.
“You--you are sure the kid is--is there?” gasped John.
“Not so damned sure!” said Bill.
But a few minutes later it was taken away in a patrol wagon, and with it
the little box with iron hasps.
THE ROOM OF THE EVIL THOUGHT
THEY called it the room of the Evil Thought. It was really the
pleasantest room in the house, and when the place had been used as the
rectory, was the minister's study. It looked out on a mournful clump
of larches, such as may often be seen in the old-fashioned yards in
Michigan, and these threw a tender gloom over the apartment.
There was a wide fireplace in the room, and it had been the young
minister's habit to sit there hours and hours, staring ahead of him at
the fire, and smoking moodily. The replenishing of the fire and of his
pipe, it was said, would afford him occupation all the day long, and
that was how it came about that his parochial duties were neglected so
that, little by little, the people became dissatisfied with him, though
he was an eloquent young man, who could send his congregation away drunk
on his influence. However, the calmer pulsed among his parish began to
whisper that it was indeed the influence of the young minister and not
that of the Holy Ghost which they felt, and it was finally decided
that neither animal magnetism nor hypnotism were good substitutes for
religion. And so they let him go.
The new rector moved into a smart brick house on the other side of the
church, and gave receptions and dinner parties, and was punctilious
about making his calls. The people therefore liked him very much--so
much that they raised the debt on the church and bought a chime of
bells, in their enthusiasm. Every one was lighter of heart than under
the ministration of the previous rector. A burden appeared to be lifted
from the community. True, there were a few who confessed the new man
did not give them the food for thought which the old one had done, but,
then, the former rector had made them uncomfortable! He had not only
made them conscious of the sins of which they were already guilty, but
also of those for which they had the latent capacity. A strange and
fatal man, whom women loved to their sorrow, and whom simple men could
not understand! It was generally agreed that the parish was well rid of
him.
“He was a genius,” said the people in commiseration. The word was an
uncomplimentary epithet with them.
When the Hanscoms moved in the house which had been the old rectory,
they gave Grandma Hanscom the room with the fireplace. Grandma was well
pleased. The roaring fire warmed her heart as well as her chill old
body, and she wept with weak joy when she looked at the larches, because
they reminded her of the house she had lived in when she was first
married. All the forenoon of the first day she was busy putting things
away in bureau drawers and closets, but by afternoon she was ready to
sit down in her high-backed rocker and enjoy the comforts of her room.
She nodded a bit before the fire, as she usually did after luncheon, and
then she awoke with an awful start and sat staring before her with such
a look in her gentle, filmy old eyes as had never been there before.
She did not move, except to rock slightly, and the Thought grew and grew
till her face was disguised as by some hideous mask of tragedy.
By and by the children came pounding at the door.
“Oh, grandma, let us in, please. We want to see your new room, and mamma
gave us some ginger cookies on a plate, and we want to give some to
you.”
The door gave way under their assaults, and the three little ones stood
peeping in, waiting for permission to enter. But it did not seem to be
their grandma--their own dear grandma--who arose and tottered toward
them in fierce haste, crying:
“Away, away! Out of my sight! Out of my sight before I do the thing I
want to do! Such a terrible thing! Send some one to me quick, children,
children! Send some one quick!”
They fled with feet shod with fear, and their mother came, and Grandma
Hanscom sank down and clung about her skirts and sobbed:
“Tie me, Miranda. Make me fast to the bed or the wall. Get some one to
watch me. For I want to do an awful thing!”
They put the trembling old creature in bed, and she raved there all
the night long and cried out to be held, and to be kept from doing the
fearful thing, whatever it was--for she never said what it was.
The next morning some one suggested taking her in the sitting-room
where she would be with the family. So they laid her on the sofa, hemmed
around with cushions, and before long she was her quiet self again,
though exhausted, naturally, with the tumult of the previous night.
Now and then, as the children played about her, a shadow crept over
her face--a shadow as of cold remembrance--and then the perplexed tears
followed.
When she seemed as well as ever they put her back in her room. But
though the fire glowed and the lamp burned, as soon as ever she was
alone they heard her shrill cries ringing to them that the Evil Thought
had come again. So Hal, who was home from college, carried her up to his
room, which she seemed to like very well. Then he went down to have a
smoke before grandma's fire.
The next morning he was absent from breakfast. They thought he might
have gone for an early walk, and waited for him a few minutes. Then
his sister went to the room that looked upon the larches, and found him
dressed and pacing the floor with a face set and stern. He had not been
in bed at all, as she saw at once. His eyes were bloodshot, his face
stricken as if with old age or sin or--but she could not make it out.
When he saw her he sank in a chair and covered his face with his hands,
and between the trembling fingers she could see drops of perspiration on
his forehead.
“Hal!” she cried, “Hal, what is it?”
But for answer he threw his arms about the little table and clung to
it, and looked at her with tortured eyes, in which she fancied she saw
a gleam of hate. She ran, screaming, from the room, and her father came
and went up to him and laid his hands on the boy's shoulders. And then
a fearful thing happened. All the family saw it. There could be no
mistake. Hal's hands found their way with frantic eagerness toward his
father's throat as if they would choke him, and the look in his eyes was
so like a madman's that his father raised his fist and felled him as he
used to fell men years before in the college fights, and then dragged
him into the sitting-room and wept over him.
By evening, however, Hal was all right, and the family said it must have
been a fever,--perhaps from overstudy,--at which Hal covertly smiled.
But his father was still too anxious about him to let him out of his
sight, so he put him on a cot in his room, and thus it chanced that the
mother and Grace concluded to sleep together downstairs.
The two women made a sort of festival of it, and drank little cups of
chocolate before the fire, and undid and brushed their brown braids,
and smiled at each other, understandingly, with that sweet intuitive
sympathy which women have, and Grace told her mother a number of things
which she had been waiting for just such an auspicious occasion to
confide.
But the larches were noisy and cried out with wild voices, and the flame
of the fire grew blue and swirled about in the draught sinuously, so
that a chill crept upon the two. Something cold appeared to envelop
them--such a chill as pleasure voyagers feel when a berg steals beyond
Newfoundland and glows blue and threatening upon their ocean path.
Then came something else which was not cold, but hot as the flames of
hell--and they saw red, and stared at each other with maddened eyes, and
then ran together from the room and clasped in close embrace safe beyond
the fatal place, and thanked God they had not done the thing that they
dared not speak of--the thing which suddenly came to them to do.
So they called it the room of the Evil Thought. They could not account
for it. They avoided the thought of it, being healthy and happy folk.
But none entered it more. The door was locked.
One day, Hal, reading the paper, came across a paragraph concerning the
young minister who had once lived there, and who had thought and
written there and so influenced the lives of those about him that they
remembered him even while they disapproved.
“He cut a man's throat on board ship for Australia,” said he, “and then
he cut his own, without fatal effect--and jumped overboard, and so ended
it. What a strange thing!”
Then they all looked at one another with subtle looks, and a shadow fell
upon them and stayed the blood at their hearts.
The next week the room of the Evil Thought was pulled down to make way
for a pansy bed, which is quite gay and innocent, and blooms all the
better because the larches, with their eternal murmuring, have been laid
low and carted away to the sawmill.
STORY OF THE VANISHING PATIENT
THERE had always been strange stories about the house, but it was a
sensible, comfortable sort of a neighborhood, and people took pains to
say to one another that there was nothing in these tales--of course
not! Absolutely nothing! How could there be? It was a matter of common
remark, however, that considering the amount of money the Nethertons had
spent on the place, it was curious they lived there so little. They
were nearly always away,--up North in the summer and down South in the
winter, and over to Paris or London now and then,--and when they did
come home it was only to entertain a number of guests from the city. The
place was either plunged in gloom or gayety. The old gardener who kept
house by himself in the cottage at the back of the yard had things much
his own way by far the greater part of the time.
Dr. Block and his wife lived next door to the Nethertons, and he and his
wife, who were so absurd as to be very happy in each other's company,
had the benefit of the beautiful yard. They walked there mornings when
the leaves were silvered with dew, and evenings they sat beside the lily
pond and listened for the whip-poor-will. The doctor's wife moved her
room over to that side of the house which commanded a view of the yard,
and thus made the honeysuckles and laurel and clematis and all the
masses of tossing greenery her own. Sitting there day after day with
her sewing, she speculated about the mystery which hung impalpably yet
undeniably over the house.
It happened one night when she and her husband had gone to their room,
and were congratulating themselves on the fact that he had no very sick
patients and was likely to enjoy a good night's rest, that a ring came
at the door.
“If it's any one wanting you to leave home,” warned his wife, “you must
tell them you are all worn out. You've been disturbed every night this
week, and it's too much!”
The young physician went downstairs. At the door stood a man whom he had
never seen before.