Chapter 2

Is
this house haunted, or what?"

"I don't know anything about a house being haunted. I don't believe in
such things. Be you crazy?" Mrs. Dent spoke with gathering force.
The colour flashed back to her cheeks.

"No," said Rebecca shortly. "I ain't crazy yet, but I shall be if this
keeps on much longer. I'm going to find out where that girl is before
night."

Mrs. Dent eyed her.

"What be you going to do?"

"I'm going to Lincoln."

A faint triumphant smile overspread Mrs. Dent's large face.

"You can't," said she; "there ain't any train."

"No train?"

"No; there ain't any afternoon train from the Falls to Lincoln."

"Then I'm going over to the Slocums' again to-night."

However, Rebecca did not go; such a rain came up as deterred even her
resolution, and she had only her best dresses with her. Then in the
evening came the letter from the Michigan village which she had left
nearly a week ago. It was from her cousin, a single woman, who had
come to keep her house while she was away. It was a pleasant
unexciting letter enough, all the first of it, and related mostly how
she missed Rebecca; how she hoped she was having pleasant weather and
kept her health; and how her friend, Mrs. Greenaway, had come to stay
with her since she had felt lonesome the first night in the house; how
she hoped Rebecca would have no objections to this, although nothing
had been said about it, since she had not realized that she might be
nervous alone. The cousin was painfully conscientious, hence the
letter. Rebecca smiled in spite of her disturbed mind as she read it,
then her eye caught the postscript. That was in a different hand,
purporting to be written by the friend, Mrs. Hannah Greenaway,
informing her that the cousin had fallen down the cellar stairs and
broken her hip, and was in a dangerous condition, and begging Rebecca
to return at once, as she herself was rheumatic and unable to nurse her
properly, and no one else could be obtained.

Rebecca looked at Mrs. Dent, who had come to her room with the letter
quite late; it was half-past nine, and she had gone upstairs for the
night.

"Where did this come from?" she asked.

"Mr. Amblecrom brought it," she replied.

"Who's he?"

"The postmaster. He often brings the letters that come on the late
mail. He knows I ain't anybody to send. He brought yours about your
coming. He said he and his wife came over on the ferry-boat with you."

"I remember him," Rebecca replied shortly. "There's bad news in this
letter."

Mrs. Dent's face took on an expression of serious inquiry.

"Yes, my Cousin Harriet has fallen down the cellar stairs--they were
always dangerous--and she's broken her hip, and I've got to take the
first train home to-morrow."

"You don't say so. I'm dreadfully sorry."

"No, you ain't sorry!" said Rebecca, with a look as if she leaped.
"You're glad. I don't know why, but you're glad. You've wanted to get
rid of me for some reason ever since I came. I don't know why. You're
a strange woman. Now you've got your way, and I hope you're satisfied."

"How you talk."

Mrs. Dent spoke in a faintly injured voice, but there was a light in
her eyes.

"I talk the way it is. Well, I'm going to-morrow morning, and I want
you, just as soon as Agnes Dent comes home, to send her out to me.
Don't you wait for anything. You pack what clothes she's got, and
don't wait even to mend them, and you buy her ticket. I'll leave the
money, and you send her along. She don't have to change cars. You
start her off, when she gets home, on the next train!"

"Very well," replied the other woman. She had an expression of covert
amusement.

"Mind you do it."

"Very well, Rebecca."

Rebecca started on her journey the next morning. When she arrived, two
days later, she found her cousin in perfect health. She found,
moreover, that the friend had not written the postscript in the
cousin's letter. Rebecca would have returned to Ford Village the next
morning, but the fatigue and nervous strain had been too much for her.
She was not able to move from her bed. She had a species of low fever
induced by anxiety and fatigue. But she could write, and she did, to
the Slocums, and she received no answer. She also wrote to Mrs. Dent;
she even sent numerous telegrams, with no response. Finally she wrote
to the postmaster, and an answer arrived by the first possible mail.
The letter was short, curt, and to the purpose. Mr. Amblecrom, the
postmaster, was a man of few words, and especially wary as to his
expressions in a letter.

"Dear madam," he wrote, "your favour rec'ed. No Slocums in Ford's
Village. All dead. Addie ten years ago, her mother two years later,
her father five. House vacant. Mrs. John Dent said to have neglected
stepdaughter. Girl was sick. Medicine not given. Talk of taking
action. Not enough evidence. House said to be haunted. Strange sights
and sounds. Your niece, Agnes Dent, died a year ago, about this time.

"Yours truly,

"THOMAS AMBLECROM."

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 demeanour.
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 splendour 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 parlour, 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 parlour 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 though 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 parlour, 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, the 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 parlour," 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.