parlor, staring at the curtain where a spirit form was in process of
materializing. One dark lantern in a corner of the room contributed the
light that emphasized the darkness rather than relieved it. The room was
pervaded by profound silence, save the quickened, suppressed breathing
of the spectators. The fire in the grate cast mysterious rays of light,
resembling fugitive spirits, upon the objects around, almost
indistinguishable in the semi-gloom.
Professor Davenport was at his best this evening. The spirit world
obeyed him without hesitation, like their lawful master. He was the
mighty prince of souls. Hands that had no arms were seen picking flowers
from the vases; the touch of an invisible spirit conjured sweet
melodies from the keys of the piano; the furniture responded by
intelligent rappings to the most unanticipated questions. The professor
himself elevated his form in symbolical distortions from the floor to an
altitude of three feet, indicated by Mrs. Harding, and remained
suspended in the air for a quarter of an hour, holding live coals in his
hands.
III.
But the most interesting, as well as the most conclusive, test was to be
the materialization of the spirit of Mrs. Arabella Davenport, which the
professor had promised at the beginning of the seance.
“The hour has come,” exclaimed the medium.
And while the hearts of all throbbed with anxious suspense, and their
eyes distended with painful expectancy of the promised materialization,
Benjamin Davenport stood before the curtain. In the twilight the tall
man with the disheveled hair and demon look, was really terrible and
handsome.
“Appear, Arabella!” he exclaimed, in a commanding voice, with gestures
of the Nazarene at the sepulcher of Lazarus.
All are waiting----
Suddenly a cry burst from behind the curtain--a piercing, shuddering,
horrible shriek, the shriek of an expiring soul.
The spectators trembled. Mrs. Harding almost fainted. The medium
himself appeared surprised.
But Benjamin recovered his composure on seeing the curtain move and
admit the spirit.
The apparition was that of a young woman with long blonde tresses; she
was beautiful and pale, clad in some light, whitish material. Her breast
was bare, and on the left side appeared a bleeding wound, in which
trembled a knife.
The spectators arose and retreated, pushing their chairs to the wall.
Those who chanced to look at the medium noticed that a deathly pallor
had overspread his face, and that he was cowering and trembling.
But the young woman, Mrs. Arabella, the real one, whom he so well
remembered, she had come in response to his summons, and advanced in a
direct line toward Benjamin, who in terror covered his eyes to shut out
the ghastly sight, and with a cry fled behind the furniture. But she
dipped the finger of her thin hand into the blood from her wound and
traced it across the brow of the unconscious medium, the while
repeating, in a slow, monotonous tone that sounded like the echo of a
wail, again and again:
“You are my murderer! You are my murderer!”
And while he was rolling and tossing in deadly terror on the floor they
turned up the lights.
The spirit had vanished. But in the communicating room, behind the
curtain, they found the body of poor Miss Ida Soutchotte with horribly
distorted features. A physician who was present pronounced it heart
stroke.
And that is the reason that Prof. Benjamin Davenport appeared alone in a
New York courtroom to answer to the charge of having murdered his wife
four years ago in San Francisco.
THE PHANTOM WOMAN.
He took an all-possessing, burning fancy to her from the first. She was
neither young nor pretty, so far as he could see--but she was wrapped
round with mystery. That was the key of it all; she was noticeable in
spite of herself. Her face at the window, sunset after sunset; her eyes,
gazing out mournfully through the dusty panes, hypnotized the lawyer. He
saw her through the twilight night after night, and he grew at length to
wait through the days in a feverish waiting for dusk, and that one look
at an unknown woman.
She was always at the same window on the ground floor, sitting doing
nothing. She looked beyond, so the infatuated solicitor fancied, at him.
Once he even thought that he detected the ghost of a friendly smile on
her lips. Their eyes always met with a mute desire to make acquaintance.
This romance went on for a couple of months.
Gilbert Dent assured himself that nothing in this life can possibly
remain stationary, and he cudgeled his brain for a respectable manner of
introducing himself to his idol.
He had hardly arrived at this point when he received a shock. There came
an evening when she was not at the window.
Next morning he walked down Wood Lane on his way to the office. He
always went by train, but he felt a strong disinclination to go through
another day without a sight of her. His heart began to beat like a
schoolgirl’s as he drew near the house. If she should be at the window.
He was almost disposed to take his courage in his hand and call on her,
and--yes, even--tell her in a quick burst that she had mysteriously
become all the world to him. He could see nothing ridiculous in this
course; the possibility of her being married, or having family ties of
any sort, had simply never occurred to him.
However, she was not at the window; what was more, there was a sinister
silence, a sort of breathlessness about the whole place.
It was a very hot morning in late August. He looked a long time, but no
face came, and no movement stirred the house.
He went his way, walking like a man who has been heavily knocked on the
brow and sees stars still. That afternoon he left the office early, and
in less than an hour stood at the gate again. The window was blank. He
pushed the gate back--it hung on one hinge--and walked up the drive to
the door. There were five steps--five steps leading up to it. At the
foot he wheeled aside sharply to the window; he had a sick dread of
looking through the small panes--why he could not have told.
When at last he found courage to look he saw that there was a small
round table set just under the window--a work-table to all appearance;
one of those things with lots of little compartments all round and a lid
in the middle which shut over a well-like cavity for holding pieces of
needlework. He remembered that his mother had one--thirty years before.
Round the edge of the table was gripped a small, delicate hand. Gilbert
Dent’s eyes ran from this bloodless hand and slim wrist to a shoulder
under a coarse stuff bodice--to a rather wasted throat, which was bare
and flung back.
So this was the end--before the beginning. He saw her. She was dead;
twisted on the floor with a ghastly face turned up toward the ceiling,
and stiff fingers caught in desperation round the work table.
He stumbled away along the path and into the lane.
For a long time he could not realize the horror of this thing. The
influence of the decayed house hung over him--nothing seemed real. It
was quite dark when he moved away from the gate, and went in the
direction of the nearest police station. That she was dead--this woman
whose very name he did not know although she influenced him so
powerfully--he was certain; one look at the face would have told anyone
that. That she was murdered he more than suspected. He had seen no blood
about; there had been no mark on the long, bare throat, and yet the word
rushed in his ears, “Murder.”
Later on he went back with a police officer.
They broke into the house and entered the room. It was in utter
darkness, of course, by now. Dent, his fingers trembling, struck a
match. It flared round the walls and lighted them for a moment before he
let it fall on the dusty floor.
The policeman began to light his lantern and turned it stolidly on the
window. He had no reason for delay; he was eager to get to the bottom of
the business. His professional zeal was whetted; this promised to be a
mystery with a spice in it.
He turned the light full on the window; he gave a strange, choked cry,
half of rage, half of apprehension. Then he went up to Gilbert Dent, who
stood in the middle of the room with his hands before his eyes, and took
his shoulder and shook it none too gently.
“There ain’t nobody,” he said.
Dent looked wildly at the window--the recess was empty except for the
work-table. The woman was gone.
They searched the house; they minutely inspected the garden. Everything
was normal; everything told the same mournful tale--of desertion, of
death, of long empty years. But they found no woman, nor trace of one.
“This house,” said the policeman, looking suspiciously into the lawyer’s
face, “has been empty for longer than I can remember. Nobody’ll live in
it. They do say something about foul play a good many years ago. I don’t
know about that. All I do know is that the landlord can’t get it off his
hands.”
It was doubtful if Gilbert Dent heard one word of what the man was
saying. He was too stunned to do anything but creep home--when he was
allowed to go--and let himself stealthily into his own house with a
latch key; he was afraid even of himself. He did not go to bed that
night.
As for the mystery of the woman, the matter was allowed to drop; it
ended--officially. There was a shrug and a grin at the police station.
The impression there was that the lawyer had been drinking--that the
dead woman in the empty room was a gruesome freak of his tipsy brain.
* * * * *
A week or so later Dent called on his brother Ned--the one near relation
he had. Ned was a doctor; perhaps he was a shade more matter-of-fact
than Gilbert; at all events, when the latter told his story of the house
and the woman, he attributed the affair solely to liver.
“You are overworked”--the elder brother looked at the younger’s yellow
face. “An experience of this nature is by no means uncommon. Haven’t you
heard of people having their pet ‘spooks’?”
“But this was a real woman,” he declared. “I--I, well, I was in love
with her. I had made up my mind to marry her--if I could.”
Ned gave him a keen, swift glance.
“We’ll go to Brighton to-morrow,” he said, with quiet decision. “As for
your work, everything must be put aside. You’ve run completely down. You
ought to have been taken in hand before.”
They went to Brighton, and it really seemed as if Ned was right, and
that the woman at the window had been merely a nervous creation. It
seemed so, that is, for nearly three weeks, and then the climax came.
It was in the twilight--she had always been part of it--that Gilbert
Dent saw her again; the woman that he had found lying dead.
They were walking, the two brothers, along the cliffs.
The wind was blowing in their faces, the sea was booming beneath the
cliff. Ned had just said it was about time they turned back to the hotel
and had some dinner, when Gilbert with a cry leapt forward to the very
edge of the flat grass path on which they were strolling. The movement
was so sudden that his brother barely caught him in time. They
struggled and swayed on the very edge of the cliff for a second;
Gilbert, possessed by some sudden frenzy, seemed resolved to go over,
but the other at last dragged him backward, and they rolled together on
the close, thick turf.
At this point Gilbert opened his eyes and tried to get on his feet.
“Better?” asked his brother, cheerfully, holding out a helping hand.
“Strange! The sea has that effect on some people. Didn’t think that you
were one of them.”
“What effect?”
“Vertigo, my dear fellow.”
“Ned,” said the other solemnly, “I saw her. It is not worth your while
to try to account for anything. I have been inclined to think that you
were right--that she, the woman at the window, was a fancy, that I had
fallen in love with a creation of my own brain; but I saw her again
to-night. You must have seen her yourself--she was within a couple of
feet of you. Why did you not try and save her? It was nothing short of
murder to let her go over like that. I did my best.”
“You certainly did--to kill us both,” said Ned, grimly.
Gilbert gave him a wild look.
After luncheon Ned persuaded him to rest--watched him fall asleep, and
then went out.
In the porch of the hotel he was met by a waiter on his return who told
him that Gilbert had left about a quarter of an hour after he had
himself gone out.
Directly he heard this he feared the worst; having, as is usual in such
cases, a very hazy idea of what the worst might be. Of course he must
follow without a moment’s delay; but a reference to the time-table told
him that there was not another train for an hour, and that was slow.
It was already getting dusk when he arrived there. He felt certain that
Gilbert would go there. He got to the end of the lane and walked up it
slowly, examining every house. There would be no difficulty in
recognizing the one he wanted; Gilbert had described it in detail more
than once.
He stood outside the loosely hanging gate at last, and stared through
the darkness at the shabby stucco front and rank garden.
He went down a flight of steps to the back door, and finding it
unfastened, stepped into a stone passage. It was one of the problems of
the place that he should have avoided the main entrance door with a
half-admitted dread, and that, only half admitting still, he was afraid
to mount the long flight of stone stairs leading from the servants’
quarters. However, he pulled himself together and went up to the room.
It was quite dark inside. He heard something scuttle across the floor;
he felt the grit and dust of years under his feet. He struck a
match--just as Gilbert had done--and looked first at the recess in which
the window was built. The match flared round the room for a moment and
gave him a flash picture of his surroundings. He saw the stripes of
gaudy paper moving almost imperceptibly, like tentacles of some sea
monster, from the wall; he saw a creature--it looked like a rat--scurry
across the floor from the window to the great mantelpiece of hard white
marble.
If he had seen nothing more than this.
He saw in detail all that the first match had flashed at him. He saw his
brother lying on the floor; a ghastly coincidence, his hand was caught
round the edge of the work-table as hers had been. The other hand was
clenched across his breast; there was a look of great agony on his face.
A dead face, of course. This was the end of the affair. He was lying
dead by the window where the woman had sat every night at dusk and
smiled at him.
The second match went out; the brother of the dead man struck a third.
He looked again and closely. Then he staggered to his feet and gave a
cry. It rang through the empty rooms and echoed without wearying down
the long, stone passages in the basement.
Gilbert’s head was thrown back; his chin peaked to the ceiling. On his
throat were livid marks. The doctor saw them distinctly; he saw the grip
of small fingers; the distinct impression of a woman’s little hand.
* * * * *
The curious thing about the whole story--the most curious thing,
perhaps--is that no other eye ever saw those murderous marks. So there
was no scandal, no chase after the murderer, no undiscovered crime. They
faded; when the doctor saw his brother again in the full light and in
the presence of others his throat was clear. And the post mortem proved
that death was due to natural causes.
So the matter stands, and will.
But where the house and its overgrown garden stood runs a new road with
neat red and white villas.
Whatever secret it knew--if any--it kept discreetly.
Ned Dent is morbid enough to go down the smart new road in the twilight
sometimes and wonder.
THE PHANTOM HAG.
The other evening in an old castle the conversation turned upon
apparitions, each one of the party telling a story. As the accounts grew
more horrible the young ladies drew closer together.
“Have you ever had an adventure with a ghost?” said they to me. “Do you
not know a story to make us shiver? Come, tell us something.”
“I am quite willing to do so,” I replied. “I will tell you of an
incident that happened to myself.”
Toward the close of the autumn of 1858 I visited one of my friends,
sub-prefect of a little city in the center of France. Albert was an old
companion of my youth, and I had been present at his wedding. His
charming wife was full of goodness and grace. My friend wished to show
me his happy home, and to introduce me to his two pretty little
daughters. I was feted and taken great care of. Three days after my
arrival I knew the entire city, curiosities, old castles, ruins, etc.
Every day about four o’clock Albert would order the phaeton, and we
would take a long ride, returning home in the evening. One evening my
friend said to me:
“To-morrow we will go further than usual. I want to take you to the
Black Rocks. They are curious old Druidical stones, on a wild and
desolate plain. They will interest you. My wife has not seen them yet,
so we will take her.”
The following day we drove out at the usual hour. Albert’s wife sat by
his side. I occupied the back seat alone. The weather was gray and
somber that afternoon, and the journey was not very pleasant. When we
arrived at the Black Rocks the sun was setting. We got out of the
phaeton, and Albert took care of the horses.
We walked some little distance through the fields before reaching the
giant remains of the old Druid religion. Albert’s wife wished to climb
to the summit of the altar, and I assisted her. I can still see her
graceful figure as she stood draped in a red shawl, her veil floating
around her.
“How beautiful it is! But does it not make you feel a little
melancholy?” said she, extending her hand toward the dark horizon, which
was lighted a little by the last rays of the sun.
The afternoon wind blew violently, and sighed through the stunted trees
that grew around the stone cromlechs; not a dwelling nor a human being
was in sight. We hastened to get down, and silently retraced our steps
to the carriage.
“We must hurry,” said Albert; “the sky is threatening, and we shall have
scarcely time to reach home before night.”
We carefully wrapped the robes around his wife. She tied the veil around
her face, and the horses started into a rapid trot. It was growing dark;
the scenery around us was bare and desolate; clumps of fir trees here
and there and furze bushes formed the only vegetation. We began to feel
the cold, for the wind blew with fury; the only sound we heard was the
steady trot of the horses and the sharp clear tinkle of their bells.
Suddenly I felt the heavy grasp of a hand upon my shoulder. I turned my
head quickly. A horrible apparition presented itself before my eyes. In
the empty place at my side sat a hideous woman. I tried to cry out; the
phantom placed her fingers upon her lips to impose silence upon me. I
could not utter a sound. The woman was clothed in white linen; her head
was cowled; her face was overspread with a corpse-like pallor, and in
place of eyes were ghastly black cavities.
I sat motionless, overcome by terror.
The ghost suddenly stood up and leaned over the young wife. She
encircled her with her arms, and lowered her hideous head as if to kiss
her forehead.
“What a wind!” cried Madame Albert, turning precipitately toward me. “My
veil is torn.”
As she turned I felt the same infernal pressure on my shoulder, and the
place occupied by the phantom was empty. I looked out to the right and
left--the road was deserted, not an object in sight.
“What a dreadful gale!” said Madame Albert. “Did you feel it? I cannot
explain the terror that seized me; my veil was torn by the wind as if by
an invisible hand; I am trembling still.”
“Never mind,” said Albert, smiling; “wrap yourself up, my dear; we will
soon be warming ourselves by a good fire at home. I am starving.”
A cold perspiration covered my forehead; a shiver ran through me; my
tongue clove to the roof of my mouth, and I could not articulate a
sound; a sharp pain in my shoulder was the only sensible evidence that I
was not the victim of an hallucination. Putting my hand upon my aching
shoulder, I felt a rent in the cloak that was wrapped around me. I
looked at it; five perfectly distinct holes--visible traces of the grip
of the horrible phantom. I thought for a moment that I should die or
that my reason should leave me; it was, I think, the most dreadful
moment of my life.
Finally I became more calm; this nameless agony had lasted for some
minutes; I do not think it is possible for a human being to suffer more
than I did during that time. As soon as I had recovered my senses, I
thought at first I would tell my friends all that had passed, but
hesitated, and finally did not, fearing that my story would frighten
Madame Albert, and feeling sure my friend would not believe me. The
lights of the little city revived me, and gradually the oppression of
terror that overwhelmed me became lighter.
So soon as we reached home, Madame Albert untied her veil; it was
literally in shreds. I hoped to find my clothes whole and prove to
myself that it was all imagination. But no, the cloth was torn in five
places, just where the fingers had seized my shoulder. There was no
mark, however, upon my flesh, only a dull pain.
I returned to Paris the next day, where I endeavored to forget the
strange adventure; or at least when I thought of it, I would force
myself to think it an hallucination.
The day after my return I received a letter from my friend Albert. It
was edged with black. I opened it with a vague fear.
His wife had died the day of my return.
FROM THE TOMB.
TRANSLATED FROM THE FRENCH OF DE MAUPASSANT BY E. C. WAGGENER.
The guests filed slowly into the hotel’s great dining-hall and took
their places, the waiters began to serve them leisurely, to give the
tardy ones time to arrive and to save themselves the bother of bringing
back the courses; and the old bathers, the yearly habitues, with whom
the season was far advanced, kept a close watch on the door each time it
opened, hoping for the coming of new faces.
New faces! the single distraction of all pleasure resorts. We go to
dinner chiefly to canvass the daily arrivals, to wonder who they are,
what they do and what they think. A restless desire seems to have taken
possession of us, a longing for pleasant adventures, for friendly
acquaintances, perhaps, for possible lovers. In this elbow-to-elbow life
our unknown neighbors become of paramount importance. Curiosity is
piqued, sympathy on the alert and the social instinct doubly active.
We have hatreds for a week, friendships for a month, and view all men
with the special eyes of watering-place intimacy. Sometimes during an
hour’s chat after dinner, under the trees of the park, where ripples a
healing spring, we discover men of superior intellect and surprising
merit, and a month later have wholly forgotten these new friends, so
charming at first sight.
There, too, more specially than elsewhere, serious and lasting ties are
formed. We see each other every day, we learn to know each other very
soon, and in the affection that springs up so rapidly between us there
is mingled much of the sweet abandon of old and tried intimates. And
later on, how tender are the memories cherished of the first hours of
this friendship, of the first communion in which the soul came to light,
of the first glances that questioned and responded to the secret
thoughts and interrogatories the lips have not dared yet to utter, of
the first cordial confidence and delicious sensation of opening one’s
heart to someone who has seemed to lay bare to you his own! The very
dullness of the hours, as it were, the monotony of days all alike, but
renders more complete the rapid budding and blooming of friendship’s
flower.
That evening, then, as on every evening, we awaited the appearance of
unfamiliar faces.
There came only two, but very peculiar ones, those of a man and a
woman--father and daughter. They seemed to have stepped from the pages
of some weird legend; and yet there was an attraction about them, albeit
an unpleasant one, that made me set them down at once as the victims of
some fatality.
The father was tall, spare, a little bent, with hair blanched white; too
white for his still young countenance, and in his manner and about his
person the sedate austerity of carriage that bespeaks the Puritan. The
daughter was, possibly, some twenty-four or twenty-five years of age.
She was very slight, emaciated, her exceedingly pale countenance bearing
a languid, spiritless expression; one of those people whom we sometimes
encounter, apparently too weak for the cares and tasks of life, too
feeble to move or do the things that we must do every day. Nevertheless
the girl was pretty, with the ethereal beauty of an apparition. It was
she, undoubtedly, who came for the benefit of the waters.