Chapter 3

That was how I first asked Margaret Lammas to be my wife, and I
will agree with anyone who says I behaved very foolishly. But I
have not repented of it, and I never shall. I have long ago
understood that I was out of my mind that evening, but I think my
temporary insanity on that occasion has had the effect of making me
a saner man ever since. Her manner turned my head, for it was so
different from what I had expected. To hear this lovely creature,
who, in my imagination, was a heroine of romance, if not of
tragedy, talking familiarly and laughing readily was more than my
equanimity could bear, and I lost my head as well as my heart. But
when I went back to England in the spring, I went to make certain
arrangements at the Castle—certain changes and improvements which
would be absolutely necessary. I had won the race for which I had
entered myself so rashly, and we were to be married in June.

Whether the change was due to the orders I had left with the
gardener and the rest of the servants, or to my own state of mind,
I cannot tell. At all events, the old place did not look the same
to me when I opened my window on the morning after my arrival.
There were the gray walls below me and the gray turrets flanking
the huge building; there were the fountains, the marble causeways,
the smooth basins, the tall box hedges, the water lilies and the
swans, just as of old. But there was something else there, too—
something in the air, in the water, and in the greenness that I did
not recognize—a light over everything by which everything was
transfigured. The clock in the tower struck seven, and the strokes
of the ancient bell sounded like a wedding chime. The air sang
with the thrilling treble of the song-birds, with the silvery music
of the plashing water and the softer harmony of the leaves stirred
by the fresh morning wind. There was a smell of new-mown hay from
the distant meadows, and of blooming roses from the beds below,
wafted up together to my window. I stood in the pure sunshine and
drank the air and all the sounds and the odors that were in it; and
I looked down at my garden and said: “It is Paradise, after all.”
I think the men of old were right when they called heaven a garden,
and Eden a garden inhabited by one man and one woman, the Earthly
Paradise.

I turned away, wondering what had become of the gloomy memories I
had always associated with my home. I tried to recall the
impression of my nurse’s horrible prophecy before the death of my
parents—an impression which hitherto had been vivid enough. I
tried to remember my old self, my dejection, my listlessness, my
bad luck, my petty disappointments. I endeavored to force myself
to think as I used to think, if only to satisfy myself that I had
not lost my individuality. But I succeeded in none of these
efforts. I was a different man, a changed being, incapable of
sorrow, of ill luck, or of sadness. My life had been a dream, not
evil, but infinitely gloomy and hopeless. It was now a reality,
full of hope, gladness, and all manner of good. My home had been
like a tomb; to-day it was Paradise. My heart had been as though
it had not existed; to-day it beat with strength and youth and the
certainty of realized happiness. I reveled in the beauty of the
world, and called loveliness out of the future to enjoy it before
time should bring it to me, as a traveler in the plains looks up to
the mountains, and already tastes the cool air through the dust of
the road.

Here, I thought, we will live and live for years. There we will
sit by the fountain toward evening and in the deep moonlight. Down
those paths we will wander together. On those benches we will rest
and talk. Among those eastern hills we will ride through the soft
twilight, and in the old house we will tell tales on winter nights,
when the logs burn high, and the holly berries are red, and the old
clock tolls out the dying year. On these old steps, in these dark
passages and stately rooms, there will one day be the sound of
little pattering feet, and laughing child voices will ring up to
the vaults of the ancient hall. Those tiny footsteps shall not be
slow and sad as mine were, nor shall the childish words be spoken
in an awed whisper. No gloomy Welshwoman shall people the dusky
corners with weird horrors, nor utter horrid prophecies of death
and ghastly things. All shall be young, and fresh, and joyful, and
happy, and we will turn the old luck again, and forget that there
was ever any sadness.

So I thought, as I looked out of my window that morning and for
many mornings after that, and every day it all seemed more real
than ever before, and much nearer. But the old nurse looked at me
askance, and muttered odd sayings about the Woman of the Water. I
cared little what she said, for I was far too happy.

At last the time came near for the wedding. Lady Bluebell and all
the tribe of Bluebells, as Margaret called them, were at Bluebell
Grange, for we had determined to be married in the country, and to
come straight to the Castle afterwards. We cared little for
traveling, and not at all for a crowded ceremony at St. George’s in
Hanover Square, with all the tiresome formalities afterwards. I
used to ride over to the Grange every day, and very often Margaret
would come with her aunt and some of her cousins to the Castle. I
was suspicious of my own taste, and was only too glad to let her
have her way about the alterations and improvements in our home.

We were to be married on the thirtieth of July, and on the evening
of the twenty-eighth Margaret drove over with some of the Bluebell
party. In the long summer twilight we all went out into the
garden. Naturally enough, Margaret and I were left to ourselves,
and we wandered down by the marble basins.

“It is an odd coincidence,” I said; “it was on this very night last
year that I first saw you.”

“Considering that it is the month of July,” answered Margaret with
a laugh, “and that we have been here almost every day, I don’t
think the coincidence is so extraordinary, after all.”

“No, dear,” said I, “I suppose not. I don’t know why it struck me.
We shall very likely be here a year from today, and a year from
that. The odd thing, when I think of it, is that you should be
here at all. But my luck has turned. I ought not to think
anything odd that happens now that I have you. It is all sure to
be good.”

“A slight change in your ideas since that remarkable performance of
yours in Paris,” said Margaret. “Do you know, I thought you were
the most extraordinary man I had ever met.”

“I thought you were the most charming woman I had ever seen. I
naturally did not want to lose any time in frivolities. I took you
at your word, I followed your advice, I asked you to marry me, and
this is the delightful result—what’s the matter?”

Margaret had started suddenly, and her hand tightened on my arm.
An old woman was coming up the path, and was close to us before we
saw her, for the moon had risen, and was shining full in our faces.
The woman turned out to be my old nurse.

“It’s only Judith, dear—don’t be frightened,” I said. Then I
spoke to the Welshwoman: “What are you about, Judith? Have you
been feeding the Woman of the Water?”

“Aye—when the clock strikes, Willie—my Lord, I mean,” muttered
the old creature, drawing aside to let us pass, and fixing her
strange eyes on Margaret’s face.

“What does she mean?” asked Margaret, when we had gone by.

“Nothing, darling. The old thing is mildly crazy, but she is a
good soul.”

We went on in silence for a few moments, and came to the rustic
bridge just above the artificial grotto through which the water ran
out into the park, dark and swift in its narrow channel. We
stopped, and leaned on the wooden rail. The moon was now behind
us, and shone full upon the long vista of basins and on the huge
walls and towers of the Castle above.

“How proud you ought to be of such a grand old place!” said
Margaret, softly.

“It is yours now, darling,” I answered. “You have as good a right
to love it as I—but I only love it because you are to live in it,
dear.”

Her hand stole out and lay on mine, and we were both silent. Just
then the clock began to strike far off in the tower. I counted—
eight—nine—ten—eleven—I looked at my watch—twelve—thirteen—I
laughed. The bell went on striking.

“The old clock has gone crazy, like Judith,” I exclaimed. Still it
went on, note after note ringing out monotonously through the still
air. We leaned over the rail, instinctively looking in the
direction whence the sound came. On and on it went. I counted
nearly a hundred, out of sheer curiosity, for I understood that
something had broken and that the thing was running itself down.

Suddenly there was a crack as of breaking wood, a cry and a heavy
splash, and I was alone, clinging to the broken end of the rail of
the rustic bridge.

I do not think I hesitated while my pulse beat twice. I sprang
clear of the bridge into the black rushing water, dived to the
bottom, came up again with empty hands, turned and swam downward
through the grotto in the thick darkness, plunging and diving at
every stroke, striking my head and hands against jagged stones and
sharp corners, clutching at last something in my fingers and
dragging it up with all my might. I spoke, I cried aloud, but
there was no answer. I was alone in the pitchy darkness with my
burden, and the house was five hundred yards away. Struggling
still, I felt the ground beneath my feet, I saw a ray of
moonlight—the grotto widened, and the deep water became a broad
and shallow brook as I stumbled over the stones and at last laid
Margaret’s body on the bank in the park beyond.

“Aye, Willie, as the clock struck!” said the voice of Judith, the
Welsh nurse, as she bent down and looked at the white face. The
old woman must have turned back and followed us, seen the accident,
and slipped out by the lower gate of the garden. “Aye,” she
groaned, “you have fed the Woman of the Water this night, Willie,
while the clock was striking.”

I scarcely heard her as I knelt beside the lifeless body of the
woman I loved, chafing the wet white temples and gazing wildly into
the wide-staring eyes. I remember only the first returning look of
consciousness, the first heaving breath, the first movement of
those dear hands stretching out toward me.

That is not much of a story, you say. It is the story of my life.
That is all. It does not pretend to be anything else. Old Judith
says my luck turned on that summer’s night when I was struggling in
the water to save all that was worth living for. A month later
there was a stone bridge above the grotto, and Margaret and I stood
on it and looked up at the moonlit Castle, as we had done once
before, and as we have done many times since. For all those things
happened ten years ago last summer, and this is the tenth Christmas
Eve we have spent together by the roaring logs in the old hall,
talking of old times; and every year there are more old times to
talk of. There are curly-headed boys, too, with red-gold hair and
dark-brown eyes like their mother’s, and a little Margaret, with
solemn black eyes like mine. Why could not she look like her
mother, too, as well as the rest of them?

The world is very bright at this glorious Christmas time, and
perhaps there is little use in calling up the sadness of long ago,
unless it be to make the jolly firelight seem more cheerful, the
good wife’s face look gladder, and to give the children’s laughter
a merrier ring, by contrast with all that is gone. Perhaps, too,
some sad-faced, listless, melancholy youth, who feels that the
world is very hollow, and that life is like a perpetual funeral
service, just as I used to feel myself, may take courage from my
example, and having found the woman of his heart, ask her to marry
him after half an hour’s acquaintance. But, on the whole, I would
not advise any man to marry, for the simple reason that no man will
ever find a wife like mine, and being obliged to go farther, he
will necessarily fare worse. My wife has done miracles, but I will
not assert that any other woman is able to follow her example.

Margaret always said that the old place was beautiful, and that I
ought to be proud of it. I dare say she is right. She has even
more imagination than I. But I have a good answer and a plain one,
which is this,—that all the beauty of the Castle comes from her.
She has breathed upon it all, as the children blow upon the cold
glass window panes in winter; and as their warm breath crystallizes
into landscapes from fairyland, full of exquisite shapes and
traceries upon the blank surface, so her spirit has transformed
every gray stone of the old towers, every ancient tree and hedge in
the gardens, every thought in my once melancholy self. All that
was old is young, and all that was sad is glad, and I am the
gladdest of all. Whatever heaven may be, there is no earthly
paradise without woman, nor is there anywhere a place so desolate,
so dreary, so unutterably miserable that a woman cannot make it
seem heaven to the man she loves and who loves her.

I hear certain cynics laugh, and cry that all that has been said
before. Do not laugh, my good cynic. You are too small a man to
laugh at such a great thing as love. Prayers have been said before
now by many, and perhaps you say yours, too. I do not think they
lose anything by being repeated, nor you by repeating them. You
say that the world is bitter, and full of the Waters of Bitterness.
Love, and so live that you may be loved—the world will turn sweet
for you, and you shall rest like me by the Waters of Paradise.

From “The Play-Actress and the Upper Berth,” by F. Marion Crawford.
Copyright, 1896, by G. P. Putnam’s Sons.

Mary E. Wilkins Freeman

The Shadows on the Wall

“Henry had words with Edward in the study the night before Edward
died,” said Caroline Glynn.

She was elderly, tall, and harshly thin, with a hard colourlessness
of face. She spoke not with acrimony, but with grave severity.
Rebecca Ann Glynn, younger, stouter and rosy of face between her
crinkling puffs of gray hair, gasped, by way of assent. She sat in
a wide flounce of black silk in the corner of the sofa, and rolled
terrified eyes from her sister Caroline to her sister Mrs. Stephen
Brigham, who had been Emma Glynn, the one beauty of the family. She
was beautiful still, with a large, splendid, full-blown beauty; she
filled a great rocking-chair with her superb bulk of femininity,
and swayed gently back and forth, her black silks whispering and
her black frills fluttering. Even the shock of death (for her
brother Edward lay dead in the house,) could not disturb her
outward serenity of demeanor. She was grieved over the loss of her
brother: he had been the youngest, and she had been fond of him,
but never had Emma Brigham lost sight of her own importance amidst
the waters of tribulation. She was always awake to the
consciousness of her own stability in the midst of vicissitudes and
the splendor of her permanent bearing.

But even her expression of masterly placidity changed before her
sister Caroline’s announcement and her sister Rebecca Ann’s gasp of
terror and distress in response.

“I think Henry might have controlled his temper, when poor Edward
was so near his end,” said she with an asperity which disturbed
slightly the roseate curves of her beautiful mouth.

“Of course he did not KNOW,” murmured Rebecca Ann in a faint tone
strangely out of keeping with her appearance.

One involuntarily looked again to be sure that such a feeble pipe
came from that full-swelling chest.

“Of course he did not know it,” said Caroline quickly. She turned
on her sister with a strange sharp look of suspicion. “How could
he have known it?” said she. Then she shrank as if from the
other’s possible answer. “Of course you and I both know he could
not,” said she conclusively, but her pale face was paler than it
had been before.

Rebecca gasped again. The married sister, Mrs. Emma Brigham, was
now sitting up straight in her chair; she had ceased rocking, and
was eyeing them both intently with a sudden accentuation of family
likeness in her face. Given one common intensity of emotion and
similar lines showed forth, and the three sisters of one race were
evident.

“What do you mean?” said she impartially to them both. Then she,
too, seemed to shrink before a possible answer. She even laughed
an evasive sort of laugh. “I guess you don’t mean anything,” said
she, but her face wore still the expression of shrinking horror.

“Nobody means anything,” said Caroline firmly. She rose and
crossed the room toward the door with grim decisiveness.

“Where are you going?” asked Mrs. Brigham.

“I have something to see to,” replied Caroline, and the others at
once knew by her tone that she had some solemn and sad duty to
perform in the chamber of death.

“Oh,” said Mrs. Brigham.

After the door had closed behind Caroline, she turned to Rebecca.

“Did Henry have many words with him?” she asked.

“They were talking very loud,” replied Rebecca evasively, yet with
an answering gleam of ready response to the other’s curiosity in
the quick lift of her soft blue eyes.

Mrs. Brigham looked at her. She had not resumed rocking. She
still sat up straight with a slight knitting of intensity on her
fair forehead, between the pretty rippling curves of her auburn
hair.

“Did you—hear anything?” she asked in a low voice with a glance
toward the door.

“I was just across the hall in the south parlor, and that door was
open and this door ajar,” replied Rebecca with a slight flush.

“Then you must have—”

“I couldn’t help it.”

“Everything?”

“Most of it.”

“What was it?”

“The old story.”

“I suppose Henry was mad, as he always was, because Edward was
living on here for nothing, when he had wasted all the money father
left him.”

Rebecca nodded with a fearful glance at the door.

When Emma spoke again her voice was still more hushed. “I know how
he felt,” said she. “He had always been so prudent himself, and
worked hard at his profession, and there Edward had never done
anything but spend, and it must have looked to him as if Edward was
living at his expense, but he wasn’t.”

“No, he wasn’t.”

“It was the way father left the property—that all the children
should have a home here—and he left money enough to buy the food
and all if we had all come home.”

“Yes.”

“And Edward had a right here according to the terms of father’s
will, and Henry ought to have remembered it.”

“Yes, he ought.”

“Did he say hard things?”

“Pretty hard from what I heard.”

“What?”

“I heard him tell Edward that he had no business here at all, and
he thought he had better go away.”

“What did Edward say?”

“That he would stay here as long as he lived and afterward, too, if
he was a mind to, and he would like to see Henry get him out; and
then—”

“What?”

“Then he laughed.”

“What did Henry say.”

“I didn’t hear him say anything, but—”

“But what?”

“I saw him when he came out of this room.”

“He looked mad?”

“You’ve seen him when he looked so.”

Emma nodded; the expression of horror on her face had deepened.

“Do you remember that time he killed the cat because she had
scratched him?”

“Yes. Don’t!”

Then Caroline reentered the room. She went up to the stove in
which a wood fire was burning—it was a cold, gloomy day of fall—
and she warmed her hands, which were reddened from recent washing
in cold water.

Mrs. Brigham looked at her and hesitated. She glanced at the door,
which was still ajar, as it did not easily shut, being still
swollen with the damp weather of the summer. She rose and pushed
it together with a sharp thud which jarred the house. Rebecca
started painfully with a half exclamation. Caroline looked at her
disapprovingly.

“It is time you controlled your nerves, Rebecca,” said she.

“I can’t help it,” replied Rebecca with almost a wail. “I am
nervous. There’s enough to make me so, the Lord knows.”

“What do you mean by that?” asked Caroline with her old air of
sharp suspicion, and something between challenge and dread of its
being met.

Rebecca shrank.

“Nothing,” said she.

“Then I wouldn’t keep speaking in such a fashion.”

Emma, returning from the closed door, said imperiously that it
ought to be fixed, it shut so hard.

“It will shrink enough after we have had the fire a few days,”
replied Caroline. “If anything is done to it it will be too small;
there will be a crack at the sill.”

“I think Henry ought to be ashamed of himself for talking as he did
to Edward,” said Mrs. Brigham abruptly, but in an almost inaudible
voice.

“Hush!” said Caroline, with a glance of actual fear at the closed
door.

“Nobody can hear with the door shut.”

“He must have heard it shut, and—”

“Well, I can say what I want to before he comes down, and I am not
afraid of him.”

“I don’t know who is afraid of him! What reason is there for
anybody to be afraid of Henry?” demanded Caroline.

Mrs. Brigham trembled before her sister’s look. Rebecca gasped
again. “There isn’t any reason, of course. Why should there be?”

“I wouldn’t speak so, then. Somebody might overhear you and think
it was queer. Miranda Joy is in the south parlor sewing, you
know.”

“I thought she went upstairs to stitch on the machine.”

“She did, but she has come down again.”

“Well, she can’t hear.”

“I say again I think Henry ought to be ashamed of himself. I
shouldn’t think he’d ever get over it, having words with poor
Edward the very night before he died. Edward was enough sight
better disposition than Henry, with all his faults. I always
thought a great deal of poor Edward, myself.”

Mrs. Brigham passed a large fluff of handkerchief across her eyes;
Rebecca sobbed outright.

“Rebecca,” said Caroline admonishingly, keeping her mouth stiff and
swallowing determinately.

“I never heard him speak a cross word, unless he spoke cross to
Henry that last night. I don’t know, but he did from what Rebecca
overheard,” said Emma.

“Not so much cross as sort of soft, and sweet, and aggravating,”
sniffled Rebecca.

“He never raised his voice,” said Caroline; “but he had his way.”

“He had a right to in this case.”

“Yes, he did.”

“He had as much of a right here as Henry,” sobbed Rebecca, “and now
he’s gone, and he will never be in this home that poor father left
him and the rest of us again.”

“What do you really think ailed Edward?” asked Emma in hardly more
than a whisper. She did not look at her sister.

Caroline sat down in a nearby armchair, and clutched the arms
convulsively until her thin knuckles whitened.

“I told you,” said she.

Rebecca held her handkerchief over her mouth, and looked at them
above it with terrified, streaming eyes.

“I know you said that he had terrible pains in his stomach, and had
spasms, but what do you think made him have them?”

“Henry called it gastric trouble. You know Edward has always had
dyspepsia.”

Mrs. Brigham hesitated a moment. “Was there any talk of an—
examination?” said she.

Then Caroline turned on her fiercely.

“No,” said she in a terrible voice. “No.”

The three sisters’ souls seemed to meet on one common ground of
terrified understanding through their eyes. The old-fashioned
latch of the door was heard to rattle, and a push from without made
the door shake ineffectually. “It’s Henry,” Rebecca sighed rather
than whispered. Mrs. Brigham settled herself after a noiseless
rush across the floor into her rocking-chair again, and was swaying
back and forth with her head comfortably leaning back, when the
door at last yielded and Henry Glynn entered. He cast a covertly
sharp, comprehensive glance at Mrs. Brigham with her elaborate
calm; at Rebecca quietly huddled in the corner of the sofa with her
handkerchief to her face and only one small reddened ear as
attentive as a dog’s uncovered and revealing her alertness for his
presence; at Caroline sitting with a strained composure in her
armchair by the stove. She met his eyes quite firmly with a look
of inscrutable fear, and defiance of the fear and of him.

Henry Glynn looked more like this sister than the others. Both had
the same hard delicacy of form and feature, both were tall and
almost emaciated, both had a sparse growth of gray blond hair far
back from high intellectual foreheads, both had an almost noble
aquilinity of feature. They confronted each other with the
pitiless immovability of two statues in whose marble lineaments
emotions were fixed for all eternity.

Then Henry Glynn smiled and the smile transformed his face. He
looked suddenly years younger, and an almost boyish recklessness
and irresolution appeared in his face. He flung himself into a
chair with a gesture which was bewildering from its incongruity
with his general appearance. He leaned his head back, flung one
leg over the other, and looked laughingly at Mrs. Brigham.

“I declare, Emma, you grow younger every year,” he said.

She flushed a little, and her placid mouth widened at the corners.
She was susceptible to praise.

“Our thoughts to-day ought to belong to the one of us who will
NEVER grow older,” said Caroline in a hard voice.

Henry looked at her, still smiling. “Of course, we none of us
forget that,” said he, in a deep, gentle voice, “but we have to
speak to the living, Caroline, and I have not seen Emma for a long
time, and the living are as dear as the dead.”

“Not to me,” said Caroline.

She rose, and went abruptly out of the room again. Rebecca also
rose and hurried after her, sobbing loudly.

Henry looked slowly after them.

“Caroline is completely unstrung,” said he. Mrs. Brigham rocked. A
confidence in him inspired by his manner was stealing over her. Out
of that confidence she spoke quite easily and naturally.

“His death was very sudden,” said she.

Henry’s eyelids quivered slightly but his gaze was unswerving.

“Yes,” said he; “it was very sudden. He was sick only a few
hours.”

“What did you call it?”

“Gastric.”

“You did not think of an examination?”

“There was no need. I am perfectly certain as to the cause of his
death.”

Suddenly Mrs. Brigham felt a creep as of some live horror over her
very soul. Her flesh prickled with cold, before an inflection of
his voice. She rose, tottering on weak knees.

“Where are you going?” asked Henry in a strange, breathless voice.

Mrs. Brigham said something incoherent about some sewing which she
had to do, some black for the funeral, and was out of the room. She
went up to the front chamber which she occupied. Caroline was
there. She went close to her and took her hands, and the two
sisters looked at each other.

“Don’t speak, don’t, I won’t have it!” said Caroline finally in an
awful whisper.

“I won’t,” replied Emma.

That afternoon the three sisters were in the study, the large front
room on the ground floor across the hall from the south parlor,
when the dusk deepened.

Mrs. Brigham was hemming some black material. She sat close to the
west window for the waning light. At last she laid her work on her
lap.

“It’s no use, I cannot see to sew another stitch until we have a
light,” said she.

Caroline, who was writing some letters at the table, turned to
Rebecca, in her usual place on the sofa.

“Rebecca, you had better get a lamp,” she said.

Rebecca started up; even in the dusk her face showed her agitation.

“It doesn’t seem to me that we need a lamp quite yet,” she said in
a piteous, pleading voice like a child’s.

“Yes, we do,” returned Mrs. Brigham peremptorily. “We must have a
light. I must finish this to-night or I can’t go to the funeral,
and I can’t see to sew another stitch.”

“Caroline can see to write letters, and she is farther from the
window than you are,” said Rebecca.

“Are you trying to save kerosene or are you lazy, Rebecca Glynn?”
cried Mrs. Brigham. “I can go and get the light myself, but I have
this work all in my lap.”

Caroline’s pen stopped scratching.

“Rebecca, we must have the light,” said she.

“Had we better have it in here?” asked Rebecca weakly.

“Of course! Why not?” cried Caroline sternly.

“I am sure I don’t want to take my sewing into the other room, when
it is all cleaned up for to-morrow,” said Mrs. Brigham.

“Why, I never heard such a to-do about lighting a lamp.”

Rebecca rose and left the room. Presently she entered with a lamp—
a large one with a white porcelain shade. She set it on a table,
an old-fashioned card-table which was placed against the opposite
wall from the window. That wall was clear of bookcases and books,
which were only on three sides of the room. That opposite wall was
taken up with three doors, the one small space being occupied by
the table. Above the table on the old-fashioned paper, of a white
satin gloss, traversed by an indeterminate green scroll, hung quite
high a small gilt and black-framed ivory miniature taken in her
girlhood of the mother of the family. When the lamp was set on the
table beneath it, the tiny pretty face painted on the ivory seemed
to gleam out with a look of intelligence.

“What have you put that lamp over there for?” asked Mrs. Brigham,
with more of impatience than her voice usually revealed. “Why
didn’t you set it in the hall and have done with it. Neither
Caroline nor I can see if it is on that table.”

“I thought perhaps you would move,” replied Rebecca hoarsely.

“If I do move, we can’t both sit at that table. Caroline has her
paper all spread around. Why don’t you set the lamp on the study
table in the middle of the room, then we can both see?”

Rebecca hesitated. Her face was very pale. She looked with an
appeal that was fairly agonizing at her sister Caroline.

“Why don’t you put the lamp on this table, as she says?” asked
Caroline, almost fiercely. “Why do you act so, Rebecca?”

“I should think you WOULD ask her that,” said Mrs. Brigham. “She
doesn’t act like herself at all.”

Rebecca took the lamp and set it on the table in the middle of the
room without another word. Then she turned her back upon it
quickly and seated herself on the sofa, and placed a hand over her
eyes as if to shade them, and remained so.

“Does the light hurt your eyes, and is that the reason why you
didn’t want the lamp?” asked Mrs. Brigham kindly.

“I always like to sit in the dark,” replied Rebecca chokingly. Then
she snatched her handkerchief hastily from her pocket and began to
weep. Caroline continued to write, Mrs. Brigham to sew.

Suddenly Mrs. Brigham as she sewed glanced at the opposite wall.
The glance became a steady stare. She looked intently, her work
suspended in her hands. Then she looked away again and took a few
more stitches, then she looked again, and again turned to her task.
At last she laid her work in her lap and stared concentratedly. She
looked from the wall around the room, taking note of the various
objects; she looked at the wall long and intently. Then she turned
to her sisters.

“What IS that?” said she.

“What?” asked Caroline harshly; her pen scratched loudly across the
paper.

Rebecca gave one of her convulsive gasps.

“That strange shadow on the wall,” replied Mrs. Brigham.

Rebecca sat with her face hidden: Caroline dipped her pen in the
inkstand.

“Why don’t you turn around and look?” asked Mrs. Brigham in a
wondering and somewhat aggrieved way.

“I am in a hurry to finish this letter, if Mrs. Wilson Ebbit is
going to get word in time to come to the funeral,” replied Caroline
shortly.

Mrs. Brigham rose, her work slipping to the floor, and she began
walking around the room, moving various articles of furniture, with
her eyes on the shadow.

Then suddenly she shrieked out:

“Look at this awful shadow! What is it? Caroline, look, look!
Rebecca, look! WHAT IS IT?”

All Mrs. Brigham’s triumphant placidity was gone. Her handsome
face was livid with horror. She stood stiffly pointing at the
shadow.

“Look!” said she, pointing her finger at it. “Look! What is it?”

Then Rebecca burst out in a wild wail after a shuddering glance at
the wall:

“Oh, Caroline, there it is again! There it is again!”

“Caroline Glynn, you look!” said Mrs. Brigham. “Look! What is
that dreadful shadow?”

Caroline rose, turned, and stood confronting the wall.

“How should I know?” she said.

“It has been there every night since he died,” cried Rebecca.

“Every night?”

“Yes. He died Thursday and this is Saturday; that makes three
nights,” said Caroline rigidly. She stood as if holding herself
calm with a vise of concentrated will.

“It—it looks like—like—” stammered Mrs. Brigham in a tone of
intense horror.

“I know what it looks like well enough,” said Caroline. “I’ve got
eyes in my head.”

“It looks like Edward,” burst out Rebecca in a sort of frenzy of
fear. “Only—”

“Yes, it does,” assented Mrs. Brigham, whose horror-stricken tone
matched her sister’s, “only— Oh, it is awful! What is it,
Caroline?”

“I ask you again, how should I know?” replied Caroline. “I see it
there like you. How should I know any more than you?”

“It MUST be something in the room,” said Mrs. Brigham, staring
wildly around.

“We moved everything in the room the first night it came,” said
Rebecca; “it is not anything in the room.”

Caroline turned upon her with a sort of fury. “Of course it is
something in the room,” said she. “How you act! What do you mean
by talking so? Of course it is something in the room.”

“Of course, it is,” agreed Mrs. Brigham, looking at Caroline
suspiciously. “Of course it must be. It is only a coincidence. It
just happens so. Perhaps it is that fold of the window curtain
that makes it. It must be something in the room.”

“It is not anything in the room,” repeated Rebecca with obstinate
horror.

The door opened suddenly and Henry Glynn entered. He began to
speak, then his eyes followed the direction of the others’. He
stood stock still staring at the shadow on the wall. It was life
size and stretched across the white parallelogram of a door, half
across the wall space on which the picture hung.

“What is that?” he demanded in a strange voice.

“It must be due to something in the room, Mrs. Brigham said
faintly.

“It is not due to anything in the room,” said Rebecca again with
the shrill insistency of terror.

“How you act, Rebecca Glynn,” said Caroline.

Henry Glynn stood and stared a moment longer. His face showed a
gamut of emotions—horror, conviction, then furious incredulity.
Suddenly he began hastening hither and thither about the room. He
moved the furniture with fierce jerks, turning ever to see the
effect upon the shadow on the wall. Not a line of its terrible
outlines wavered.

“It must be something in the room!” he declared in a voice which
seemed to snap like a lash.

His face changed. The inmost secrecy of his nature seemed evident
until one almost lost sight of his lineaments. Rebecca stood close
to her sofa, regarding him with woeful, fascinated eyes. Mrs.
Brigham clutched Caroline’s hand. They both stood in a corner out
of his way. For a few moments he raged about the room like a caged
wild animal. He moved every piece of furniture; when the moving of
a piece did not affect the shadow, he flung it to the floor, his
sisters watching.

Then suddenly he desisted. He laughed and began straightening the
furniture which he had flung down.

“What an absurdity,” he said easily. “Such a to-do about a
shadow.”

“That’s so,” assented Mrs. Brigham, in a scared voice which she
tried to make natural. As she spoke she lifted a chair near her.

“I think you have broken the chair that Edward was so fond of,”
said Caroline.

Terror and wrath were struggling for expression on her face. Her
mouth was set, her eyes shrinking. Henry lifted the chair with a
show of anxiety.

“Just as good as ever,” he said pleasantly. He laughed again,
looking at his sisters. “Did I scare you?” he said. “I should
think you might be used to me by this time. You know my way of
wanting to leap to the bottom of a mystery, and that shadow does
look—queer, like—and I thought if there was any way of accounting
for it I would like to without any delay.”

“You don’t seem to have succeeded,” remarked Caroline dryly, with a
slight glance at the wall.

Henry’s eyes followed hers and he quivered perceptibly.

“Oh, there is no accounting for shadows,” he said, and he laughed
again. “A man is a fool to try to account for shadows.”

Then the supper bell rang, and they all left the room, but Henry
kept his back to the wall, as did, indeed, the others.

Mrs. Brigham pressed close to Caroline as she crossed the hall. “He
looked like a demon!” she breathed in her ear.

Henry led the way with an alert motion like a boy; Rebecca brought
up the rear; she could scarcely walk, her knees trembled so.

“I can’t sit in that room again this evening,” she whispered to
Caroline after supper.

“Very well, we will sit in the south room,” replied Caroline. “I
think we will sit in the south parlor,” she said aloud; “it isn’t
as damp as the study, and I have a cold.”

So they all sat in the south room with their sewing. Henry read
the newspaper, his chair drawn close to the lamp on the table.
About nine o’clock he rose abruptly and crossed the hall to the
study. The three sisters looked at one another. Mrs. Brigham
rose, folded her rustling skirts compactly around her, and began
tiptoeing toward the door.

“What are you going to do?” inquired Rebecca agitatedly.

“I am going to see what he is about,” replied Mrs. Brigham
cautiously.

She pointed as she spoke to the study door across the hall; it was
ajar. Henry had striven to pull it together behind him, but it had
somehow swollen beyond the limit with curious speed. It was still
ajar and a streak of light showed from top to bottom. The hall
lamp was not lit.

“You had better stay where you are,” said Caroline with guarded
sharpness.

“I am going to see,” repeated Mrs. Brigham firmly.

Then she folded her skirts so tightly that her bulk with its
swelling curves was revealed in a black silk sheath, and she went
with a slow toddle across the hall to the study door. She stood
there, her eye at the crack.

In the south room Rebecca stopped sewing and sat watching with
dilated eyes. Caroline sewed steadily. What Mrs. Brigham,
standing at the crack in the study door, saw was this:

Henry Glynn, evidently reasoning that the source of the strange
shadow must be between the table on which the lamp stood and the
wall, was making systematic passes and thrusts all over and through
the intervening space with an old sword which had belonged to his
father. Not an inch was left unpierced. He seemed to have divided
the space into mathematical sections. He brandished the sword with
a sort of cold fury and calculation; the blade gave out flashes of
light, the shadow remained unmoved. Mrs. Brigham, watching, felt
herself cold with horror.

Finally Henry ceased and stood with the sword in hand and raised as
if to strike, surveying the shadow on the wall threateningly. Mrs.
Brigham toddled back across the hall and shut the south room door
behind her before she related what she had seen.

“He looked like a demon!” she said again. “Have you got any of
that old wine in the house, Caroline? I don’t feel as if I could
stand much more.”

Indeed, she looked overcome. Her handsome placid face was worn and
strained and pale.

“Yes, there’s plenty,” said Caroline; “you can have some when you
go to bed.”

“I think we had all better take some,” said Mrs. Brigham. “Oh, my
God, Caroline, what—”

“Don’t ask and don’t speak,” said Caroline.

“No, I am not going to,” replied Mrs. Brigham; “but—”

Rebecca moaned aloud.

“What are you doing that for?” asked Caroline harshly.

“Poor Edward,” returned Rebecca.

“That is all you have to groan for,” said Caroline. “There is
nothing else.”

“I am going to bed,” said Mrs. Brigham. “I sha’n’t be able to be
at the funeral if I don’t.”

Soon the three sisters went to their chambers and the south parlor
was deserted. Caroline called to Henry in the study to put out the
light before he came upstairs. They had been gone about an hour
when he came into the room bringing the lamp which had stood in the
study. He set it on the table and waited a few minutes, pacing up
and down. His face was terrible, his fair complexion showed livid;
his blue eyes seemed dark blanks of awful reflections.

Then he took the lamp up and returned to the library. He set the
lamp on the centre table, and the shadow sprang out on the wall.
Again he studied the furniture and moved it about, but
deliberately, with none of his former frenzy. Nothing affected the
shadow. Then he returned to the south room with the lamp and again
waited. Again he returned to the study and placed the lamp on the
table, and the shadow sprang out upon the wall. It was midnight
before he went upstairs. Mrs. Brigham and the other sisters, who
could not sleep, heard him.

The next day was the funeral. That evening the family sat in the
south room. Some relatives were with them. Nobody entered the
study until Henry carried a lamp in there after the others had
retired for the night. He saw again the shadow on the wall leap to
an awful life before the light.

The next morning at breakfast Henry Glynn announced that he had to
go to the city for three days. The sisters looked at him with
surprise. He very seldom left home, and just now his practice had
been neglected on account of Edward’s death. He was a physician.

“How can you leave your patients now?” asked Mrs. Brigham
wonderingly.

“I don’t know how to, but there is no other way,” replied Henry
easily. “I have had a telegram from Doctor Mitford.”

“Consultation?” inquired Mrs. Brigham.

“I have business,” replied Henry.

Doctor Mitford was an old classmate of his who lived in a
neighboring city and who occasionally called upon him in the case
of a consultation.

After he had gone Mrs. Brigham said to Caroline that after all
Henry had not said that he was going to consult with Doctor
Mitford, and she thought it very strange.

“Everything is very strange,” said Rebecca with a shudder.

“What do you mean?” inquired Caroline sharply.

“Nothing,” replied Rebecca.

Nobody entered the library that day, nor the next, nor the next.
The third day Henry was expected home, but he did not arrive and
the last train from the city had come.

“I call it pretty queer work,” said Mrs. Brigham. “The idea of a
doctor leaving his patients for three days anyhow, at such a time
as this, and I know he has some very sick ones; he said so. And
the idea of a consultation lasting three days! There is no sense
in it, and NOW he has not come. I don’t understand it, for my
part.”

“I don’t either,” said Rebecca.

They were all in the south parlor. There was no light in the study
opposite, and the door was ajar.

Presently Mrs. Brigham rose—she could not have told why; something
seemed to impel her, some will outside her own. She went out of
the room, again wrapping her rustling skirts around that she might
pass noiselessly, and began pushing at the swollen door of the
study.

“She has not got any lamp,” said Rebecca in a shaking voice.

Caroline, who was writing letters, rose again, took a lamp (there
were two in the room) and followed her sister. Rebecca had risen,
but she stood trembling, not venturing to follow.

The doorbell rang, but the others did not hear it; it was on the
south door on the other side of the house from the study. Rebecca,
after hesitating until the bell rang the second time, went to the
door; she remembered that the servant was out.

Caroline and her sister Emma entered the study. Caroline set the
lamp on the table. They looked at the wall. “Oh, my God,” gasped
Mrs. Brigham, “there are—there are TWO—shadows.” The sisters
stood clutching each other, staring at the awful things on the
wall. Then Rebecca came in, staggering, with a telegram in her
hand. “Here is—a telegram,” she gasped. “Henry is—dead.”

From “The Wind in the Rosebush,” by Mary E. Wilkins Freeman.
Copyright, 1903, by Doubleday, Page & Company.

Melville Davisson Post

Introduction to The Corpus Delicti

The high ground of the field of crime has not been explored; it has
not even been entered. The book stalls have been filled to
weariness with tales based upon plans whereby the DETECTIVE, or
FERRETING power of the State might be baffled. But, prodigious
marvel! no writer has attempted to construct tales based upon plans
whereby the PUNISHING power of the State might be baffled.

The distinction, if one pauses for a moment to consider it, is
striking. It is possible, even easy, deliberately to plan crimes
so that the criminal agent and the criminal agency cannot be
detected. Is it possible to plan and execute wrongs in such a
manner that they will have all the effect and all the resulting
profit of desperate crimes and yet not be crimes before the law?

We are prone to forget that the law is no perfect structure, that
it is simply the result of human labor and human genius, and that
whatever laws human ingenuity can create for the protection of men,
those same laws human ingenuity can evade. The Spirit of Evil is
no dwarf; he has developed equally with the Spirit of Good.

All wrongs are not crimes. Indeed only those wrongs are crimes in
which certain technical elements are present. The law provides a
Procrustean standard for all crimes. Thus a wrong, to become
criminal, must fit exactly into the measure laid down by the law,
else it is no crime; if it varies never so little from the legal
measure, the law must, and will, refuse to regard it as criminal,
no matter how injurious a wrong it may be. There is no measure of
morality, or equity, or common right that can be applied to the
individual case. The gauge of the law is iron-bound. The wrong
measured by this gauge is either a crime or it is not. There is no
middle ground.

Hence is it, that if one knows well the technicalities of the law,
one may commit horrible wrongs that will yield all the gain and all
the resulting effect of the highest crimes, and yet the wrongs
perpetrated will constitute no one of the crimes described by the
law. Thus the highest crimes, even murder, may be committed in
such manner that although the criminal is known and the law holds
him in custody, yet it cannot punish him. So it happens that in
this year of our Lord of the nineteenth century, the skillful
attorney marvels at the stupidity of the rogue who, committing
crimes by the ordinary methods, subjects himself to unnecessary
peril, when the result which he seeks can easily be attained by
other methods, equally expeditious and without danger of liability
in any criminal tribunal. This is the field into which the author
has ventured, and he believes it to be new and full of interest.

It may be objected that the writer has prepared here a text-book
for the shrewd knave. To this it is answered that, if he instructs
the enemies, he also warns the friends of law and order; and that
Evil has never yet been stronger because the sun shone on it.

[See Lord Hale’s Rule, Russell on Crimes. For the law in New York
see 18th N. Y. Reports, 179; also N. Y. Reports, 49, page 137. The
doctrine there laid down obtains in almost every State, with the
possible exception of a few Western States, where the decisions are
muddy.]

The Corpus Delicti