Interlude

A Haunted House

Whatever hour you woke there was a door shutting. From room to room they went, hand in hand, lifting here, opening there, making sure--a ghostly couple.

"Here we left it," she said. And he added, "Oh, but here tool" "It's upstairs," she murmured. "And in the garden," he whispered. "Quietly," they said, "or we shall wake them."

But it wasn't that you woke us. Oh, no. "They're looking for it; they're drawing the curtain," one might say, and so read on a page or two. "Now they've found it,' one would be certain, stopping the pencil on the margin. And then, tired of reading, one might rise and see for oneself, the house all empty, the doors standing open, only the wood pigeons bubbling with content and the hum of the threshing machine sounding from the farm. "What did I come in here for? What did I want to find?" My hands were empty. "Perhaps its upstairs then?" The apples were in the loft. And so down again, the garden still as ever, only the book had slipped into the grass.

But they had found it in the drawing room. Not that one could ever see them. The windowpanes reflected apples, reflected roses; all the leaves were green in the glass. If they moved in the drawing room, the apple only turned its yellow side. Yet, the moment after, if the door was opened, spread about the floor, hung upon the walls, pendant from the ceiling--what? My hands were empty. The shadow of a thrush crossed the carpet; from the deepest wells of silence the wood pigeon drew its bubble of sound. "Safe, safe, safe" the pulse of the house beat softly. "The treasure buried; the room . . ." the pulse stopped short. Oh, was that the buried treasure?

A moment later the light had faded. Out in the garden then? But the trees spun darkness for a wandering beam of sun. So fine, so rare, coolly sunk beneath the surface the beam I sought always burned behind the glass. Death was the glass; death was between us, coming to the woman first, hundreds of years ago, leaving the house, sealing all the windows; the rooms were darkened. He left it, left her, went North, went East, saw the stars turned in the Southern sky; sought the house, found it dropped beneath the Downs. "Safe, safe, safe," the pulse of the house beat gladly. 'The Treasure yours."

The wind roars up the avenue. Trees stoop and bend this way and that. Moonbeams splash and spill wildly in the rain. But the beam of the lamp falls straight from the window. The candle burns stiff and still. Wandering through the house, opening the windows, whispering not to wake us, the ghostly couple seek their joy.

"Here we slept," she says. And he adds, "Kisses without number." "Waking in the morning--" "Silver between the trees--" "Upstairs--" 'In the garden--" "When summer came--" 'In winter snowtime--" "The doors go shutting far in the distance, gently knocking like the pulse of a heart.

Nearer they come, cease at the doorway. The wind falls, the rain slides silver down the glass. Our eyes darken, we hear no steps beside us; we see no lady spread her ghostly cloak. His hands shield the lantern. "Look," he breathes. "Sound asleep. Love upon their lips."

Stooping, holding their silver lamp above us, long they look and deeply. Long they pause. The wind drives straightly; the flame stoops slightly. Wild beams of moonlight cross both floor and wall, and, meeting, stain the faces bent; the faces pondering; the faces that search the sleepers and seek their hidden joy.

"Safe, safe, safe," the heart of the house beats proudly. "Long years--" he sighs. "Again you found me." "Here," she murmurs, "sleeping; in the garden reading; laughing, rolling apples in the loft. Here we left our treasure--" Stooping, their light lifts the lids upon my eyes. "Safe! safe! safe!" the pulse of the house beats wildly. Waking, I cry "Oh, is this your buried treasure? The light in the heart."

By: Virginia Woolf

Down Pens

"Have you written to thank the Froplinsons for what they sent us?" asked Egbert.

"No," said Janetta, with a note of tired defiance in her voice; "I've written eleven letters to-day expressing surprise and gratitude for sundry unmerited gifts, but I haven't written to the Froplinsons."

"Some one will have to write to them," said Egbert.

"I don't dispute the necessity, but I don't think the some one should be me," said Janetta. "I wouldn't mind writing a letter of angry recrimination or heartless satire to some suitable recipient; in fact, I should rather enjoy it, but I've come to the end of my capacity for expressing servile amiability. Eleven letters to-day and nine yesterday, all couched in the same strain of ecstatic thankfulness: really, you can't expect me to sit down to another. There is such a thing as writing oneself out."

"I've written nearly as many," said Egbert, "and I've had my usual business correspondence to get through, too. Besides, I don't know what it was that the Froplinsons sent us."

"A William the Conqueror calendar," said Janetta, "with a quotation of one of his great thoughts for every day in the year."

"Impossible," said Egbert; "he didn't have three hundred and sixty-five thoughts in the whole of his life, or, if he did, he kept them to himself. He was a man of action, not of introspection."

"Well, it was William Wordsworth, then," said Janetta; "I know William came into it somewhere."

"That sounds more probable," said Egbert; "well, let's collaborate on this letter of thanks and get it done. I'll dictate, and you can scribble it down. 'Dear Mrs. Froplinson - thank you and your husband so much for the very pretty calendar you sent us. It was very good of you to think of us.' "

"You can't possibly say that," said Janetta, laying down her pen.

"It's what I always do say, and what every one says to me," protested Egbert.

"We sent them something on the twenty-second," said Janetta, "so they simply had to think of us. There was no getting away from it."

"What did we send them?" asked Egbert gloomily.

"Bridge-markers," said Janetta, "in a cardboard case, with some inanity about 'digging for fortune with a royal spade' emblazoned on the cover. The moment I saw it in the shop I said to myself 'Froplinsons' and to the attendant 'How much?' When he said 'Ninepence,' I gave him their address, jabbed our card in, paid tenpence or elevenpence to cover the postage, and thanked heaven. With less sincerity and infinitely more trouble they eventually thanked me."

"The Froplinsons don't play bridge," said Egbert.

"One is not supposed to notice social deformities of that sort," said Janetta; "it wouldn't be polite. Besides, what trouble did they take to find out whether we read Wordsworth with gladness? For all they knew or cared we might be frantically embedded in the belief that all poetry begins and ends with John Masefield, and it might infuriate or depress us to have a daily sample of Wordsworthian products flung at us."

"Well, let's get on with the letter of thanks," said Egbert.

"Proceed," said Janetta.

" 'How clever of you to guess that Wordsworth is our favourite poet,' " dictated Egbert.

Again Janetta laid down her pen.

"Do you realise what that means?" she asked; "a Wordsworth booklet next Christmas, and another calendar the Christmas after, with the same problem of having to write suitable letters of thankfulness. No, the best thing to do is to drop all further allusion to the calendar and switch off on to some other topic."

"But what other topic?"

"Oh, something like this: 'What do you think of the New Year Honours List? A friend of ours made such a clever remark when he read it.' Then you can stick in any remark that comes into your head; it needn't be clever. The Froplinsons won't know whether it is or isn't."

"We don't even know on which side they are in politics," objected Egbert; "and anyhow you can't suddenly dismiss the subject of the calendar. Surely there must be some intelligent remark that can be made about it."

"Well, we can't think of one," said Janetta wearily; "the fact is, we've both written ourselves out. Heavens! I've just remembered Mrs. Stephen Ludberry. I haven't thanked her for what she sent."

"What did she send?"

"I forget; I think it was a calendar."

There was a long silence, the forlorn silence of those who are bereft of hope and have almost ceased to care.

Presently Egbert started from his seat with an air of resolution. The light of battle was in his eyes.

"Let me come to the writing-table," he exclaimed.

"Gladly," said Janetta. "Are you going to write to Mrs. Ludberry or the Froplinsons?"

"To neither," said Egbert, drawing a stack of notepaper towards him; "I'm going to write to the editor of every enlightened and influential newspaper in the Kingdom, I'm going to suggest that there should be a sort of epistolary Truce of God during the festivities of Christmas and New Year. From the twenty-fourth of December to the third or fourth of January it shall be considered an offence against good sense and good feeling to write or expect any letter or communication that does not deal with the necessary events of the moment. Answers to invitations, arrangements about trains, renewal of club subscriptions, and, of course, all the ordinary everyday affairs of business, sickness, engaging new cooks, and so forth, these will be dealt with in the usual manner as something inevitable, a legitimate part of our daily life. But all the devastating accretions of correspondence, incident to the festive season, these should be swept away to give the season a chance of being really festive, a time of untroubled, unpunctuated peace and good will."

"But you would have to make some acknowledgment of presents received," objected Janetta; "otherwise people would never know whether they had arrived safely."

"Of course, I have thought of that," said Egbert; "every present that was sent off would be accompanied by a ticket bearing the date of dispatch and the signature of the sender, and some conventional hieroglyphic to show that it was intended to be a Christmas or New Year gift; there would be a counterfoil with space for the recipient's name and the date of arrival, and all you would have to do would be to sign and date the counterfoil, add a conventional hieroglyphic indicating heartfelt thanks and gratified surprise, put the thing into an envelope and post it."

"It sounds delightfully simple," said Janetta wistfully, "but people would consider it too cut-anddried, too perfunctory."

"It is not a bit more perfunctory than the present system," said Egbert; "I have only the same conventional language of gratitude at my disposal with which to thank dear old Colonel Chuttle for his perfectly delicious Stilton, which we shall devour to the last morsel, and the Froplinsons for their calendar, which we shall never look at. Colonel Chuttle knows that we are grateful for the Stilton, without having to be told so, and the Froplinsons know that we are bored with their calendar, whatever we may say to the contrary, just as we know that they are bored with the bridge-markers in spite of their written assurance that they thanked us for our charming little gift. What is more, the Colonel knows that even if we had taken a sudden aversion to Stilton or been forbidden it by the doctor, we should still have written a letter of hearty thanks around it. So you see the present system of acknowledgment is just as perfunctory and conventional as the counterfoil business would be, only ten times more tiresome and brain-racking."

"Your plan would certainly bring the ideal of a Happy Christmas a step nearer realisation," said Janetta.

"There are exceptions, of course," said Egbert, "people who really try to infuse a breath of reality into their letters of acknowledgment. Aunt Susan, for instance, who writes: 'Thank you very much for the ham; not such a good flavour as the one you sent last year, which itself was not a particularly good one. Hams are not what they used to be.' It would be a pity to be deprived of her Christmas comments, but that loss would be swallowed up in the general gain."

"Meanwhile," said Janetta, "what am I to say to the Froplinsons?"

By: H.H. Munro (SAKI)

Book of the month

Interlude

Happy Halloween

The Yellow Wallpaper

by Charlotte Perkins Gilman

It is very seldom that mere ordinary people like John and
myself secure ancestral halls for the summer.

A colonial mansion, a hereditary estate, I would say a
haunted house, and reach the height of romantic felicity--but
that would be asking too much of fate!

Still I will proudly declare that there is something queer
about it.

Else, why should it be let so cheaply?  And why have stood
so long untenanted?

John laughs at me, of course, but one expects that in
marriage.

John is practical in the extreme.  He has no patience with
faith, an intense horror of superstition, and he scoffs openly at
any talk of things not to be felt and seen and put down in
figures.

John is a physician, and PERHAPS--(I would not say it to a
living soul, of course, but this is dead paper and a great relief
to my mind)--PERHAPS that is one reason I do not get well
faster.

You see he does not believe I am sick!

And what can one do?

If a physician of high standing, and one's own husband,
assures friends and relatives that there is really nothing the
matter with one but temporary nervous depression--a slight
hysterical tendency--what is one to do?

My brother is also a physician, and also of high standing,
and he says the same thing.

So I take phosphates or phosphites--whichever it is, and
tonics, and journeys, and air, and exercise, and am absolutely
forbidden to "work" until I am well again.

Personally, I disagree with their ideas.

Personally, I believe that congenial work, with excitement
and change, would do me good.

But what is one to do?

I did write for a while in spite of them; but it DOES
exhaust me a good deal--having to be so sly about it, or else
meet with heavy opposition.

I sometimes fancy that my condition if I had less opposition
and more society and stimulus--but John says the very worst thing
I can do is to think about my condition, and I confess it always
makes me feel bad.

So I will let it alone and talk about the house.

The most beautiful place!  It is quite alone, standing well
back from the road, quite three miles from the village.  It makes
me think of English places that you read about, for there are
hedges and walls and gates that lock, and lots of separate little
houses for the gardeners and people.

There is a DELICIOUS garden!  I never saw such a
garden--large and shady, full of box-bordered paths, and lined
with long grape-covered arbors with seats under them.

There were greenhouses, too, but they are all broken now.

There was some legal trouble, I believe, something about the
heirs and coheirs; anyhow, the place has been empty for years.

That spoils my ghostliness, I am afraid, but I don't
care--there is something strange about the house--I can feel it.

I even said so to John one moonlight evening, but he said
what I felt was a DRAUGHT, and shut the window.

I get unreasonably angry with John sometimes.  I'm sure I
never used to be so sensitive.  I think it is due to this nervous
condition.

But John says if I feel so, I shall neglect proper
self-control; so I take pains to control myself--before him, at
least, and that makes me very tired.

I don't like our room a bit.  I wanted one downstairs that
opened on the piazza and had roses all over the window, and such
pretty old-fashioned chintz hangings! but John would not hear of
it.

He said there was only one window and not room for two beds,
and no near room for him if he took another.

He is very careful and loving, and hardly lets me stir
without special direction.

I have a schedule prescription for each hour in the day; he
takes all care from me, and so I feel basely ungrateful not to
value it more.

He said we came here solely on my account, that I was to
have perfect rest and all the air I could get.  "Your exercise
depends on your strength, my dear," said he, "and your food
somewhat on your appetite; but air you can absorb all the time."
So we took the nursery at the top of the house.

It is a big, airy room, the whole floor nearly, with windows
that look all ways, and air and sunshine galore.  It was nursery
first and then playroom and gymnasium, I should judge; for the
windows are barred for little children, and there are rings and
things in the walls.

The paint and paper look as if a boys' school had used it.
It is stripped off--the paper--in great patches all around the
head of my bed, about as far as I can reach, and in a great place
on the other side of the room low down.  I never saw a worse
paper in my life.

One of those sprawling flamboyant patterns committing every
artistic sin.

It is dull enough to confuse the eye in following,
pronounced enough to constantly irritate and provoke study, and
when you follow the lame uncertain curves for a little distance
they suddenly commit suicide--plunge off at outrageous angles,
destroy themselves in unheard of contradictions.

The color is repellent, almost revolting; a smouldering
unclean yellow, strangely faded by the slow-turning sunlight.

It is a dull yet lurid orange in some places, a sickly
sulphur tint in others.

No wonder the children hated it!  I should hate it myself if
I had to live in this room long.

There comes John, and I must put this away,--he hates to
have me write a word.


We have been here two weeks, and I haven't felt like writing
before, since that first day.

I am sitting by the window now, up in this atrocious
nursery, and there is nothing to hinder my writing as much as I
please, save lack of strength.

John is away all day, and even some nights when his cases
are serious.

I am glad my case is not serious!

But these nervous troubles are dreadfully depressing.

John does not know how much I really suffer.  He knows there
is no REASON to suffer, and that satisfies him.

Of course it is only nervousness.  It does weigh on me so
not to do my duty in any way!

I meant to be such a help to John, such a real rest and
comfort, and here I am a comparative burden already!

Nobody would believe what an effort it is to do what little
I am able,--to dress and entertain, and other things.

It is fortunate Mary is so good with the baby.  Such a dear
baby!

And yet I CANNOT be with him, it makes me so nervous.

I suppose John never was nervous in his life.  He laughs at
me so about this wall-paper!

At first he meant to repaper the room, but afterwards he
said that I was letting it get the better of me, and that nothing
was worse for a nervous patient than to give way to such fancies.

He said that after the wall-paper was changed it would be
the heavy bedstead, and then the barred windows, and then that
gate at the head of the stairs, and so on.

"You know the place is doing you good," he said, "and
really, dear, I don't care to renovate the house just for a three
months' rental."

"Then do let us go downstairs," I said, "there are such
pretty rooms there."

Then he took me in his arms and called me a blessed little
goose, and said he would go down to the cellar, if I wished, and
have it whitewashed into the bargain.

But he is right enough about the beds and windows and
things.

It is an airy and comfortable room as any one need wish,
and, of course, I would not be so silly as to make him
uncomfortable just for a whim.

I'm really getting quite fond of the big room, all but that
horrid paper.

Out of one window I can see the garden, those mysterious
deepshaded arbors, the riotous old-fashioned flowers, and bushes
and gnarly trees.

Out of another I get a lovely view of the bay and a little
private wharf belonging to the estate.  There is a beautiful
shaded lane that runs down there from the house.  I always fancy
I see people walking in these numerous paths and arbors, but John
has cautioned me not to give way to fancy in the least.  He says
that with my imaginative power and habit of story-making, a
nervous weakness like mine is sure to lead to all manner of
excited fancies, and that I ought to use my will and good sense
to check the tendency.  So I try.

I think sometimes that if I were only well enough to write a
little it would relieve the press of ideas and rest me.

But I find I get pretty tired when I try.

It is so discouraging not to have any advice and
companionship about my work.  When I get really well, John says
we will ask Cousin Henry and Julia down for a long visit; but he
says he would as soon put fireworks in my pillow-case as to let
me have those stimulating people about now.

I wish I could get well faster.

But I must not think about that.  This paper looks to me as
if it KNEW what a vicious influence it had!

There is a recurrent spot where the pattern lolls like a
broken neck and two bulbous eyes stare at you upside down.

I get positively angry with the impertinence of it and the
everlastingness.  Up and down and sideways they crawl, and those
absurd, unblinking eyes are everywhere.  There is one place where
two breadths didn't match, and the eyes go all up and down the
line, one a little higher than the other.

I never saw so much expression in an inanimate thing before,
and we all know how much expression they have!  I used to lie
awake as a child and get more entertainment and terror out of
blank walls and plain furniture than most children could find in
a toy store.

I remember what a kindly wink the knobs of our big, old
bureau used to have, and there was one chair that always seemed
like a strong friend.

I used to feel that if any of the other things looked too
fierce I could always hop into that chair and be safe.

The furniture in this room is no worse than inharmonious,
however, for we had to bring it all from downstairs.  I suppose
when this was used as a playroom they had to take the nursery
things out, and no wonder!  I never saw such ravages as the
children have made here.

The wall-paper, as I said before, is torn off in spots, and
it sticketh closer than a brother--they must have had
perseverance as well as hatred.

Then the floor is scratched and gouged and splintered, the
plaster itself is dug out here and there, and this great heavy
bed which is all we found in the room, looks as if it had been
through the wars.

But I don't mind it a bit--only the paper.

There comes John's sister.  Such a dear girl as she is, and
so careful of me!  I must not let her find me writing.

She is a perfect and enthusiastic housekeeper, and hopes for
no better profession.  I verily believe she thinks it is the
writing which made me sick!

But I can write when she is out, and see her a long way off
from these windows.

There is one that commands the road, a lovely shaded winding
road, and one that just looks off over the country.  A lovely
country, too, full of great elms and velvet meadows.

This wall-paper has a kind of sub-pattern in a different
shade, a particularly irritating one, for you can only see it in
certain lights, and not clearly then.

But in the places where it isn't faded and where the sun is
just so--I can see a strange, provoking, formless sort of figure,
that seems to skulk about behind that silly and conspicuous front
design.

There's sister on the stairs!


Well, the Fourth of July is over!  The people are gone and I
am tired out.  John thought it might do me good to see a little
company, so we just had mother and Nellie and the children down
for a week.

Of course I didn't do a thing.  Jennie sees to everything
now.

But it tired me all the same.

John says if I don't pick up faster he shall send me to Weir
Mitchell in the fall.

But I don't want to go there at all.  I had a friend who was
in his hands once, and she says he is just like John and my
brother, only more so!

Besides, it is such an undertaking to go so far.

I don't feel as if it was worth while to turn my hand over
for anything, and I'm getting dreadfully fretful and querulous.

I cry at nothing, and cry most of the time.

Of course I don't when John is here, or anybody else, but
when I am alone.

And I am alone a good deal just now.  John is kept in town
very often by serious cases, and Jennie is good and lets me alone
when I want her to.

So I walk a little in the garden or down that lovely lane,
sit on the porch under the roses, and lie down up here a good
deal.

I'm getting really fond of the room in spite of the
wall-paper.  Perhaps BECAUSE of the wall-paper.

It dwells in my mind so!

I lie here on this great immovable bed--it is nailed down, I
believe--and follow that pattern about by the hour.  It is as
good as gymnastics, I assure you.  I start, we'll say, at the
bottom, down in the corner over there where it has not been
touched, and I determine for the thousandth time that I WILL
follow that pointless pattern to some sort of a conclusion.

I know a little of the principle of design, and I know this
thing was not arranged on any laws of radiation, or alternation,
or repetition, or symmetry, or anything else that I ever heard
of.

It is repeated, of course, by the breadths, but not
otherwise.

Looked at in one way each breadth stands alone, the bloated
curves and flourishes--a kind of "debased Romanesque" with
delirium tremens--go waddling up and down in isolated columns
of fatuity.

But, on the other hand, they connect diagonally, and the
sprawling outlines run off in great slanting waves of optic
horror, like a lot of wallowing seaweeds in full chase.

The whole thing goes horizontally, too, at least it seems
so, and I exhaust myself in trying  to distinguish the order of
its going in that direction.

They have used a horizontal breadth for a frieze, and that
adds wonderfully to the confusion.

There is one end of the room where it is almost intact, and
there, when the crosslights fade and the low sun shines directly
upon it, I can almost fancy radiation after all,--the
interminable grotesques seem to form around a common centre and
rush off in headlong plunges of equal distraction.

It makes me tired to follow it.  I will take a nap I guess.

I don't know why I should write this.

I don't want to.

I don't feel able.

And I know John would think it absurd.  But I MUST say
what I feel and think in some way--it is such a relief!

But the effort is getting to be greater than the relief.

Half the time now I am awfully lazy, and lie down ever so
much.

John says I musn't lose my strength, and has me take cod
liver oil and lots of tonics and things, to say nothing of ale
and wine and rare meat.

Dear John!  He loves me very dearly, and hates to have me
sick.  I tried to have a real earnest reasonable talk with him
the other day, and tell him how I wish he would let me go and
make a visit to Cousin Henry and Julia.

But he said I wasn't able to go, nor able to stand it after
I got there; and I did not make out a very good case for myself,
for I was crying before I had finished.

It is getting to be a great effort for me to think straight.
Just this nervous weakness I suppose.

And dear John gathered me up in his arms, and just carried
me upstairs and laid me on the bed, and sat by me and read to me
till it tired my head.

He said I was his darling and his comfort and all he had,
and that I must take care of myself for his sake, and keep well.

He says no one but myself can help me out of it, that I must
use my will and self-control and not let any silly fancies run
away with me.

There's one comfort, the baby is well and happy, and does
not have to occupy this nursery with the horrid wall-paper.

If we had not used it, that blessed child would have!  What
a fortunate escape!  Why, I wouldn't have a child of mine, an
impressionable little thing, live in such a room for worlds.

I never thought of it before, but it is lucky that John kept
me here after all, I can stand it so much easier than a baby, you
see.

Of course I never mention it to them any more--I am too
wise,--but I keep watch of it all the same.

There are things in that paper that nobody knows but me, or
ever will.

Behind that outside pattern the dim shapes get clearer every
day.

It is always the same shape, only very numerous.

And it is like a woman stooping down and creeping about
behind that pattern.  I don't like it a bit.  I wonder--I begin
to think--I wish John would take me away from here!

It is so hard to talk with John about my case, because he is
so wise, and because he loves me so.

But I tried it last night.

It was moonlight.  The moon shines in all around just as the
sun does.

I hate to see it sometimes, it creeps so slowly, and always
comes in by one window or another.

John was asleep and I hated to waken him, so I kept still
and watched the moonlight on that undulating wall-paper till I
felt creepy.

The faint figure behind seemed to shake the pattern, just as
if she wanted to get out.

I got up softly and went to feel and see if the paper DID
move, and when I came back John was awake.

"What is it, little girl?" he said.  "Don't go walking about
like that--you'll get cold."

I though it was a good time to talk, so I told him that I
really was not gaining here, and that I wished he would take me
away.

"Why darling!" said he, "our lease will be up in three
weeks, and I can't see how to leave before.

"The repairs are not done at home, and I cannot possibly
leave town just now.  Of course if you were in any danger, I
could and would, but you really are better, dear, whether you can
see it or not.  I am a doctor, dear, and I know.  You are gaining
flesh and color, your appetite is better, I feel really much
easier about you."

"I don't weigh a bit more," said I, "nor as much; and my
appetite may be better in the evening when you are here, but it
is worse in the morning when you are away!"

"Bless her little heart!" said he with a big hug, "she shall
be as sick as she pleases!  But now let's improve the shining
hours by going to sleep, and talk about it in the morning!"

"And you won't go away?" I asked gloomily.

"Why, how can I, dear?  It is only three weeks more and then
we will take a nice little trip of a few days while Jennie is
getting the house ready.  Really dear you are better!"

"Better in body perhaps--" I began, and stopped short, for
he sat up straight and looked at me with such a stern,
reproachful look that I could not say another word.

"My darling," said he, "I beg of you, for my sake and for
our child's sake, as well as for your own, that you will never
for one instant let that idea enter your mind!  There is nothing
so dangerous, so fascinating, to a temperament like yours.  It is
a false and foolish fancy.  Can you not trust me as a physician
when I tell you so?"

So of course I said no more on that score, and we went to
sleep before long.  He thought I was asleep first, but I wasn't,
and lay there for hours trying to decide whether that front
pattern and the back pattern really did move together or
separately.


On a pattern like this, by daylight, there is a lack of
sequence, a defiance of law, that is a constant irritant to a
normal mind.

The color is hideous enough, and unreliable enough, and
infuriating enough, but the pattern is torturing.

You think you have mastered it, but just as you get well
underway in following, it turns a back-somersault and there you
are.  It slaps you in the face, knocks you down, and tramples
upon you.  It is like a bad dream.

The outside pattern is a florid arabesque, reminding one of
a fungus.  If you can imagine a toadstool in joints, an
interminable string of toadstools, budding and sprouting in
endless convolutions--why, that is something like it.

That is, sometimes!

There is one marked peculiarity about this paper, a thing
nobody seems to notice but myself,and that is that it changes as
the light changes.

When the sun shoots in through the east window--I always
watch for that first long, straight ray--it changes so quickly
that I never can quite believe it.

That is why I watch it always.

By moonlight--the moon shines in all night when there is a
moon--I wouldn't know it was the same paper.

At night in any kind of light, in twilight, candle light,
lamplight, and worst of all by moonlight, it becomes bars!  The
outside pattern I mean, and the woman behind it is as plain as
can be.

I didn't realize for a long time what the thing was that
showed behind, that dim sub-pattern, but now I am quite sure it
is a woman.

By daylight she is subdued, quiet.  I fancy it is the
pattern that keeps her so still.  It is so puzzling.  It keeps me
quiet by the hour.

I lie down ever so much now.  John says it is good for me,
and to sleep all I can.

Indeed he started the habit by making me lie down for an
hour after each meal.

It is a very bad habit I am convinced, for you see I don't
sleep.

And that cultivates deceit, for I don't tell them I'm
awake--O no!

The fact is I am getting a little afraid of John.

He seems very queer sometimes, and even Jennie has an
inexplicable look.

It strikes me occasionally, just as a scientific
hypothesis,--that perhaps it is the paper!

I have watched John when he did not know I was looking, and
come into the room suddenly on the most innocent excuses, and
I've caught him several times LOOKING AT THE PAPER!  And Jennie
too.  I caught Jennie with her hand on it once.

She didn't know I was in the room, and when I asked her in a
quiet, a very quiet voice, with the most restrained manner
possible, what she was doing with the paper--she turned around as
if she had been caught stealing, and looked quite angry--asked me
why I should frighten her so!

Then she said that the paper stained everything it touched,
that she had found yellow smooches on all my clothes and John's,
and she wished we would be more careful!

Did not that sound innocent?  But I know she was studying
that pattern, and I am determined that nobody shall find it out
but myself!


Life is very much more exciting now than it used to be.  You
see I have something more to expect, to look forward to, to
watch.  I really do eat better, and am more quiet than I was.

John is so pleased to see me improve!  He laughed a little
the other day, and said I seemed to be flourishing in spite of my
wall-paper.

I turned it off with a laugh.  I had no intention of telling
him it was BECAUSE of the wall-paper--he would make fun of me.
He might even want to take me away.

I don't want to leave now until I have found it out.  There
is a week more, and I think that will be enough.


I'm feeling ever so much better!  I don't sleep much at
night, for it is so interesting to watch developments; but I
sleep a good deal in the daytime.

In the daytime it is tiresome and perplexing.

There are always new shoots on the fungus, and new shades of
yellow all over it.  I cannot keep count of them, though I have
tried conscientiously.

It is the strangest yellow, that wall-paper!  It makes me
think of all the yellow things I ever saw--not beautiful ones
like buttercups, but old foul, bad yellow things.

But there is something else about that paper--the smell!  I
noticed it the moment we came into the room, but with so much air
and sun it was not bad.  Now we have had a week of fog and rain,
and whether the windows are open or not, the smell is here.

It creeps all over the house.

I find it hovering in the dining-room, skulking in the
parlor, hiding in the hall, lying in wait for me on the stairs.

It gets into my hair.

Even when I go to ride, if I turn my head suddenly and
surprise it--there is that smell!

Such a peculiar odor, too!  I have spent hours in trying to
analyze it, to find what it smelled like.

It is not bad--at first, and very gentle, but quite the
subtlest, most enduring odor I ever met.

In this damp weather it is awful, I wake up in the night and
find it hanging over me.

It used to disturb me at first.  I thought seriously of
burning the house--to reach the smell.

But now I am used to it.  The only thing I can think of that
it is like is the COLOR of the paper!  A yellow smell.

There is a very funny mark on this wall, low down, near the
mopboard.  A streak that runs round the room.  It goes behind
every piece of furniture, except the bed, a long, straight, even
SMOOCH, as if it had been rubbed over and over.

I wonder how it was done and who did it, and what they did
it for.  Round and round and round--round and round and round--it
makes me dizzy!


I really have discovered something at last.

Through watching so much at night, when it changes so, I
have finally found out.

The front pattern DOES move--and no wonder!  The woman
behind shakes it!

Sometimes I think there are a great many women behind, and
sometimes only one, and she crawls around fast, and her crawling
shakes it all over.

Then in the very bright spots she keeps still, and in the
very shady spots she just takes hold of the bars and shakes them
hard.

And she is all the time trying to climb through.  But nobody
could climb through that pattern--it strangles so; I think that
is why it has so many heads.

They get through, and then the pattern strangles them off
and turns them upside down, and makes their eyes white!

If those heads were covered or taken off it would not be
half so bad.


I think that woman gets out in the daytime!

And I'll tell you why--privately--I've seen her!

I can see her out of every one of my windows!

It is the same woman, I know, for she is always creeping,
and most women do not creep by daylight.

I see her on that long road under the trees, creeping along,
and when a carriage comes she hides under the blackberry vines.

I don't blame her a bit.  It must be very humiliating to be
caught creeping by daylight!

I always lock the door when I creep by daylight.  I can't do
it at night, for I know John would suspect something at once.

And John is so queer now, that I don't want to irritate him.
I wish he would take another room!  Besides, I don't want anybody
to get that woman out at night but myself.

I often wonder if I could see her out of all the windows at
once.

But, turn as fast as I can, I can only see out of one at a
time.

And though I always see her, she MAY be able to creep
faster than I can turn!

I have watched her sometimes away off in the open country,
creeping as fast as a cloud shadow in a high wind.

If only that top pattern could be gotten off from the under
one!  I mean to try it, little by little.

I have found out another funny thing, but I shan't tell it
this time!  It does not do to trust people too much.

There are only two more days to get this paper off, and I
believe John is beginning to notice.  I  don't like the look in
his eyes.

And I heard him ask Jennie a lot of professional questions
about me.  She had a very good report to give.

She said I slept a good deal in the daytime.

John knows I don't sleep very well at night, for all I'm so
quiet!

He asked me all sorts of questions, too, and pretended to be
very loving and kind.

As if I couldn't see through him!

Still, I don't wonder he acts so, sleeping under this paper
for three months.

It only interests me, but I feel sure John and Jennie are
secretly affected by it.


Hurrah!  This is the last day, but it is enough.  John is to
stay in town over night, and won't be out until this evening.

Jennie wanted to sleep with me--the sly thing! but I told
her I should undoubtedly rest better for a night all alone.

That was clever, for really I wasn't alone a bit!  As soon
as it was moonlight and that poor thing began to crawl and shake
the pattern, I got up and ran to help her.

I pulled and she shook, I shook and she pulled, and before
morning we had peeled off yards of that paper.

A strip about as high as my head and half around the room.

And then when the sun came and that awful pattern began to
laugh at me, I declared I would finish it to-day!

We go away to-morrow, and they are moving all my furniture
down again to leave things as they were before.

Jennie looked at the wall in amazement, but I told her
merrily that I did it out of pure spite at the vicious thing.

She laughed and said she wouldn't mind doing it herself, but
I must not get tired.

How she betrayed herself that time!

But I am here, and no person touches this paper but me--not
ALIVE!

She tried to get me out of the room--it was too patent!  But
I said it was so quiet and empty and clean now that I believed I
would lie down again and sleep all I could; and not to wake me
even for dinner--I would call when I woke.

So now she is gone, and the servants are gone, and the
things are gone, and there is nothing left but that great
bedstead nailed down, with the canvas mattress we found on it.

We shall sleep downstairs to-night, and take the boat home
to-morrow.

I quite enjoy the room, now it is bare again.

How those children did tear about here!

This bedstead is fairly gnawed!

But I must get to work.

I have locked the door and thrown the key down into the
front path.

I don't want to go out, and I don't want to have anybody
come in, till John comes.

I want to astonish him.

I've got a rope up here that even Jennie did not find.  If
that woman does get out, and tries to get away, I can tie her!

But I forgot I could not reach far without anything to stand
on!

This bed will NOT move!

I tried to lift and push it until I was lame, and then I got
so angry I bit off a little piece at one corner--but it hurt my
teeth.

Then I peeled off all the paper I could reach standing on
the floor.  It sticks horribly and the pattern just enjoys it!
All those strangled heads and bulbous eyes and waddling fungus
growths just shriek with derision!

I am getting angry enough to do something desperate.  To
jump out of the window would be admirable exercise, but the bars
are too strong even to try.

Besides I wouldn't do it.  Of course not.  I know well
enough that a step like that is improper and might be
misconstrued.

I don't like to LOOK out of the windows even--there are so
many of those creeping women, and they creep so fast.

I wonder if they all come out of that wall-paper as I did?

But I am securely fastened now by my well-hidden rope--you
don't get ME out in the road there!

I suppose I shall have to get back behind the pattern when
it comes night, and that is hard!

It is so pleasant to be out in this great room and creep
around as I please!

I don't want to go outside.  I won't, even if Jennie asks me
to.

For outside you have to creep on the ground, and everything
is green instead of yellow.

But here I can creep smoothly on the floor, and my shoulder
just fits in that long smooch around the wall, so I cannot lose
my way.

Why there's John at the door!

It is no use, young man, you can't open it!

How he does call and pound!

Now he's crying for an axe.

It would be a shame to break down that beautiful door!

"John dear!' said I in the gentlest voice, "the key is down
by the front steps, under a plantain leaf!"

That silenced him for a few moments.

Then he said--very quietly indeed, "Open the door, my
darling!"

"I can't", said I.  "The key is down by the front door under
a plantain leaf!"

And then I said it again, several times, very gently and
slowly, and said it so often that he had to go and see, and he
got it of course, and came in.  He stopped short by the door.

"What is the matter?" he cried.  "For God's sake, what are
you doing!"

I kept on creeping just the same, but I looked at him over
my shoulder.

"I've got out at last," said I, "in spite of you and Jane.
And I've pulled off most of the paper, so you can't put me back!"

Now why should that man have fainted?  But he did, and right
across my path by the wall, so that I had to creep over him every
time!

The Southwest chamber

"That school-teacher from Acton is coming to-day," said the elder Miss
Gill, Sophia.

"So she is," assented the younger Miss Gill, Amanda.

"I have decided to put her in the southwest chamber," said Sophia.

Amanda looked at her sister with an expression of mingled doubt and
terror.  "You don't suppose she would--" she began hesitatingly.

"Would what?" demanded Sophia, sharply.  She was more incisive than her
sister.  Both were below the medium height, and stout, but Sophia was
firm where Amanda was flabby.  Amanda wore a baggy old muslin (it was a
hot day), and Sophia was uncompromisingly hooked up in a starched and
boned cambric over her high shelving figure.

"I didn't know but she would object to sleeping in that room, as long as
Aunt Harriet died there such a little time ago," faltered Amanda.

"Well!" said Sophia, "of all the silly notions!  If you are going to
pick out rooms in this house where nobody has died, for the boarders,
you'll have your hands full.  Grandfather Ackley had seven children;
four of them died here to my certain knowledge, besides grandfather and
grandmother.  I think Great-grandmother Ackley, grandfather's mother,
died here, too; she must have; and Great-grandfather Ackley, and
grandfather's unmarried sister, Great-aunt Fanny Ackley.  I don't
believe there's a room nor a bed in this house that somebody hasn't
passed away in."

"Well, I suppose I am silly to think of it, and she had better go in
there," said Amanda.

"I know she had.  The northeast room is small and hot, and she's stout
and likely to feel the heat, and she's saved money and is able to board
out summers, and maybe she'll come here another year if she's well
accommodated," said Sophia.  "Now I guess you'd better go in there and
see if any dust has settled on anything since it was cleaned, and open
the west windows and let the sun in, while I see to that cake."

Amanda went to her task in the southwest chamber while her sister
stepped heavily down the back stairs on her way to the kitchen.

"It seems to me you had better open the bed while you air and dust, then
make it up again," she called back.

"Yes, sister," Amanda answered, shudderingly.

Nobody knew how this elderly woman with the untrammeled imagination of a
child dreaded to enter the southwest chamber, and yet she could not have
told why she had the dread.  She had entered and occupied rooms which
had been once tenanted by persons now dead. The room which had been hers
in the little house in which she and her sister had lived before coming
here had been her dead mother's. She had never reflected upon the fact
with anything but loving awe and reverence.  There had never been any
fear.  But this was different.  She entered and her heart beat thickly
in her ears. Her hands were cold.  The room was a very large one.  The
four windows, two facing south, two west, were closed, the blinds also.
The room was in a film of green gloom.  The furniture loomed out
vaguely.  The gilt frame of a blurred old engraving on the wall caught a
little light.  The white counterpane on the bed showed like a blank
page.

Amanda crossed the room, opened with a straining motion of her thin back
and shoulders one of the west windows, and threw back the blind.  Then
the room revealed itself an apartment full of an aged and worn but no
less valid state.  Pieces of old mahogany swelled forth; a
peacock-patterned chintz draped the bedstead.  This chintz also covered
a great easy chair which had been the favourite seat of the former
occupant of the room.  The closet door stood ajar. Amanda noticed that
with wonder.  There was a glimpse of purple drapery floating from a peg
inside the closet.  Amanda went across and took down the garment hanging
there.  She wondered how her sister had happened to leave it when she
cleaned the room.  It was an old loose gown which had belonged to her
aunt.  She took it down, shuddering, and closed the closet door after a
fearful glance into its dark depths.  It was a long closet with a strong
odour of lovage.  The Aunt Harriet had had a habit of eating lovage and
had carried it constantly in her pocket.  There was very likely some of
the pleasant root in the pocket of the musty purple gown which Amanda
threw over the easy chair.

Amanda perceived the odour with a start as if before an actual presence.
Odour seems in a sense a vital part of a personality. It can survive the
flesh to which it has clung like a persistent shadow, seeming to have in
itself something of the substance of that to which it pertained.  Amanda
was always conscious of this fragrance of lovage as she tidied the room.
She dusted the heavy mahogany pieces punctiliously after she had opened
the bed as her sister had directed.  She spread fresh towels over the
wash-stand and the bureau; she made the bed.  Then she thought to take
the purple gown from the easy chair and carry it to the garret and put
it in the trunk with the other articles of the dead woman's wardrobe
which had been packed away there; BUT THE PURPLE GOWN WAS NOT ON THE
CHAIR!

Amanda Gill was not a woman of strong convictions even as to her own
actions.  She directly thought that possibly she had been mistaken and
had not removed it from the closet.  She glanced at the closet door and
saw with surprise that it was open, and she had thought she had closed
it, but she instantly was not sure of that. So she entered the closet
and looked for the purple gown.  IT WAS NOT THERE!

Amanda Gill went feebly out of the closet and looked at the easy chair
again.  The purple gown was not there!  She looked wildly around the
room.  She went down on her trembling knees and peered under the bed,
she opened the bureau drawers, she looked again in the closet.  Then she
stood in the middle of the floor and fairly wrung her hands.

"What does it mean?" she said in a shocked whisper.

She had certainly seen that loose purple gown of her dead Aunt
Harriet's.

There is a limit at which self-refutation must stop in any sane person.
Amanda Gill had reached it.  She knew that she had seen that purple gown
in that closet; she knew that she had removed it and put it on the easy
chair.  She also knew that she had not taken it out of the room.  She
felt a curious sense of being inverted mentally.  It was as if all her
traditions and laws of life were on their heads.  Never in her simple
record had any garment not remained where she had placed it unless
removed by some palpable human agency.

Then the thought occurred to her that possibly her sister Sophia might
have entered the room unobserved while her back was turned and removed
the dress.  A sensation of relief came over her.  Her blood seemed to
flow back into its usual channels; the tension of her nerves relaxed.

"How silly I am," she said aloud.

She hurried out and downstairs into the kitchen where Sophia was making
cake, stirring with splendid circular sweeps of a wooden spoon a creamy
yellow mass.  She looked up as her sister entered.

"Have you got it done?" said she.

"Yes," replied Amanda.  Then she hesitated.  A sudden terror overcame
her.  It did not seem as if it were at all probable that Sophia had left
that foamy cake mixture a second to go to Aunt Harriet's chamber and
remove that purple gown.

"Well," said Sophia, "if you have got that done I wish you would take
hold and string those beans.  The first thing we know there won't be
time to boil them for dinner.

Amanda moved toward the pan of beans on the table, then she looked at
her sister.

"Did you come up in Aunt Harriet's room while I was there?" she asked
weakly.

She knew while she asked what the answer would be.

"Up in Aunt Harriet's room?  Of course I didn't.  I couldn't leave this
cake without having it fall.  You know that well enough. Why?"

"Nothing," replied Amanda.

Suddenly she realized that she could not tell her sister what had
happened, for before the utter absurdity of the whole thing her belief
in her own reason quailed.  She knew what Sophia would say if she told
her.  She could hear her.

"Amanda Gill, have you gone stark staring mad?"

She resolved that she would never tell Sophia.  She dropped into a chair
and begun shelling the beans with nerveless fingers.  Sophia looked at
her curiously.

"Amanda Gill, what on earth ails you?" she asked.

"Nothing," replied Amanda.  She bent her head very low over the green
pods.

"Yes, there is, too!  You are as white as a sheet, and your hands are
shaking so you can hardly string those beans.  I did think you had more
sense, Amanda Gill."

"I don't know what you mean, Sophia."

"Yes, you do know what I mean, too; you needn't pretend you don't. Why
did you ask me if I had been in that room, and why do you act so queer?"

Amanda hesitated.  She had been trained to truth.  Then she lied.

"I wondered if you'd noticed how it had leaked in on the paper over by
the bureau, that last rain," said she.

"What makes you look so pale then?"

"I don't know.  I guess the heat sort of overcame me."

"I shouldn't think it could have been very hot in that room when it had
been shut up so long," said Sophia.

She was evidently not satisfied, but then the grocer came to the door
and the matter dropped.

For the next hour the two women were very busy.  They kept no servant.
When they had come into possession of this fine old place by the death
of their aunt it had seemed a doubtful blessing. There was not a cent
with which to pay for repairs and taxes and insurance, except the twelve
hundred dollars which they had obtained from the sale of the little
house in which they had been born and lived all their lives.  There had
been a division in the old Ackley family years before.  One of the
daughters had married against her mother's wish and had been
disinherited.  She had married a poor man by the name of Gill, and
shared his humble lot in sight of her former home and her sister and
mother living in prosperity, until she had borne three daughters; then
she died, worn out with overwork and worry.

The mother and the elder sister had been pitiless to the last. Neither
had ever spoken to her since she left her home the night of her
marriage.  They were hard women.

The three daughters of the disinherited sister had lived quiet and poor,
but not actually needy lives.  Jane, the middle daughter, had married,
and died in less than a year.  Amanda and Sophia had taken the girl baby
she left when the father married again.  Sophia had taught a primary
school for many years; she had saved enough to buy the little house in
which they lived.  Amanda had crocheted lace, and embroidered flannel,
and made tidies and pincushions, and had earned enough for her clothes
and the child's, little Flora Scott.

Their father, William Gill, had died before they were thirty, and now in
their late middle life had come the death of the aunt to whom they had
never spoken, although they had often seen her, who had lived in
solitary state in the old Ackley mansion until she was more than eighty.
There had been no will, and they were the only heirs with the exception
of young Flora Scott, the daughter of the dead sister.

Sophia and Amanda thought directly of Flora when they knew of the
inheritance.

"It will be a splendid thing for her; she will have enough to live on
when we are gone," Sophia said.

She had promptly decided what was to be done.  The small house was to be
sold, and they were to move into the old Ackley house and take boarders
to pay for its keeping.  She scouted the idea of selling it.  She had an
enormous family pride.  She had always held her head high when she had
walked past that fine old mansion, the cradle of her race, which she was
forbidden to enter.  She was unmoved when the lawyer who was advising
her disclosed to her the fact that Harriet Ackley had used every cent of
the Ackley money.

"I realize that we have to work," said she, "but my sister and I have
determined to keep the place."

That was the end of the discussion.  Sophia and Amanda Gill had been
living in the old Ackley house a fortnight, and they had three boarders:
an elderly widow with a comfortable income, a young congregationalist
clergyman, and the middle-aged single woman who had charge of the
village library.  Now the school-teacher from Acton, Miss Louisa Stark,
was expected for the summer, and would make four.

Sophia considered that they were comfortably provided for.  Her wants
and her sister's were very few, and even the niece, although a young
girl, had small expenses, since her wardrobe was supplied for years to
come from that of the deceased aunt.  There were stored away in the
garret of the Ackley house enough voluminous black silks and satins and
bombazines to keep her clad in somber richness for years to come.

Flora was a very gentle girl, with large, serious blue eyes, a
seldom-smiling, pretty mouth, and smooth flaxen hair.  She was delicate
and very young--sixteen on her next birthday.

She came home soon now with her parcels of sugar and tea from the
grocer's.  She entered the kitchen gravely and deposited them on the
table by which her Aunt Amanda was seated stringing beans. Flora wore an
obsolete turban-shaped hat of black straw which had belonged to the dead
aunt; it set high like a crown, revealing her forehead.  Her dress was
an ancient purple-and-white print, too long and too large except over
the chest, where it held her like a straight waistcoat.

"You had better take off your hat, Flora," said Sophia.  She turned
suddenly to Amanda.  "Did you fill the water-pitcher in that chamber for
the schoolteacher?" she asked severely.  She was quite sure that Amanda
had not filled the water-pitcher.

Amanda blushed and started guiltily.  "I declare, I don't believe I
did," said she.

"I didn't think you had," said her sister with sarcastic emphasis.

"Flora, you go up to the room that was your Great-aunt Harriet's, and
take the water-pitcher off the wash-stand and fill it with water.  Be
real careful, and don't break the pitcher, and don't spill the water."

"In THAT chamber?" asked Flora.  She spoke very quietly, but her face
changed a little.

"Yes, in that chamber," returned her Aunt Sophia sharply.  "Go right
along."

Flora went, and her light footstep was heard on the stairs.  Very soon
she returned with the blue-and-white water-pitcher and filled it
carefully at the kitchen sink.

"Now be careful and not spill it," said Sophia as she went out of the
room carrying it gingerly.

Amanda gave a timidly curious glance at her; she wondered if she had
seen the purple gown.

Then she started, for the village stagecoach was seen driving around to
the front of the house.  The house stood on a corner.

"Here, Amanda, you look better than I do; you go and meet her," said
Sophia.  "I'll just put the cake in the pan and get it in the oven and
I'll come.  Show her right up to her room."

Amanda removed her apron hastily and obeyed.  Sophia hurried with her
cake, pouring it into the baking-tins.  She had just put it in the oven,
when the door opened and Flora entered carrying the blue water-pitcher.

"What are you bringing down that pitcher again for?" asked Sophia.

"She wants some water, and Aunt Amanda sent me," replied Flora.

Her pretty pale face had a bewildered expression.

"For the land sake, she hasn't used all that great pitcherful of water
so quick?"

"There wasn't any water in it," replied Flora.

Her high, childish forehead was contracted slightly with a puzzled frown
as she looked at her aunt.

"Wasn't any water in it?"

"No, ma'am."

"Didn't I see you filling the pitcher with water not ten minutes ago, I
want to know?"

"Yes, ma'am."

"What did you do with that water?"

"Nothing."

"Did you carry that pitcherful of water up to that room and set it on
the washstand?"

"Yes, ma'am."

"Didn't you spill it?"

"No, ma'am."

"Now, Flora Scott, I want the truth!  Did you fill that pitcher with
water and carry it up there, and wasn't there any there when she came to
use it?"

"Yes, ma'am."

"Let me see that pitcher."  Sophia examined the pitcher.  It was not
only perfectly dry from top to bottom, but even a little dusty. She
turned severely on the young girl.  "That shows," said she, "you did not
fill the pitcher at all.  You let the water run at the side because you
didn't want to carry it upstairs.  I am ashamed of you.  It's bad enough
to be so lazy, but when it comes to not telling the truth--"

The young girl's face broke up suddenly into piteous confusion, and her
blue eyes became filmy with tears.

"I did fill the pitcher, honest," she faltered, "I did, Aunt Sophia.
You ask Aunt Amanda."

"I'll ask nobody.  This pitcher is proof enough.  Water don't go off and
leave the pitcher dusty on the inside if it was put in ten minutes ago.
Now you fill that pitcher full quick, and you carry it upstairs, and if
you spill a drop there'll be something besides talk."

Flora filled the pitcher, with the tears falling over her cheeks. She
sniveled softly as she went out, balancing it carefully against her
slender hip.  Sophia followed her.

"Stop crying," said she sharply; "you ought to be ashamed of yourself.
What do you suppose Miss Louisa Stark will think.  No water in her
pitcher in the first place, and then you come back crying as if you
didn't want to get it."

In spite of herself, Sophia's voice was soothing.  She was very fond of
the girl.  She followed her up the stairs to the chamber where Miss
Louisa Stark was waiting for the water to remove the soil of travel.
She had removed her bonnet, and its tuft of red geraniums lightened the
obscurity of the mahogany dresser.  She had placed her little beaded
cape carefully on the bed.  She was replying to a tremulous remark of
Amanda's, who was nearly fainting from the new mystery of the
water-pitcher, that it was warm and she suffered a good deal in warm
weather.

Louisa Stark was stout and solidly built.  She was much larger than
either of the Gill sisters.  She was a masterly woman inured to command
from years of school-teaching.  She carried her swelling bulk with
majesty; even her face, moist and red with the heat, lost nothing of its
dignity of expression.

She was standing in the middle of the floor with an air which gave the
effect of her standing upon an elevation.  She turned when Sophia and
Flora, carrying the water-pitcher, entered.

"This is my sister Sophia," said Amanda tremulously.

Sophia advanced, shook hands with Miss Louisa Stark and bade her welcome
and hoped she would like her room.  Then she moved toward the closet.
"There is a nice large closet in this room--the best closet in the
house.  You might have your trunk--" she said, then she stopped short.

The closet door was ajar, and a purple garment seemed suddenly to swing
into view as if impelled by some wind.

"Why, here is something left in this closet," Sophia said in a mortified
tone.  "I thought all those things had been taken away."

She pulled down the garment with a jerk, and as she did so Amanda passed
her in a weak rush for the door.

"I am afraid your sister is not well," said the school-teacher from
Acton.  "She looked very pale when you took that dress down.  I noticed
it at once.  Hadn't you better go and see what the matter is?  She may
be going to faint."

"She is not subject to fainting spells," replied Sophia, but she
followed Amanda.

She found her in the room which they occupied together, lying on the
bed, very pale and gasping.  She leaned over her.

"Amanda, what is the matter; don't you feel well?" she asked.

"I feel a little faint."

Sophia got a camphor bottle and began rubbing her sister's forehead.

"Do you feel better?" she said.

Amanda nodded.

"I guess it was that green apple pie you ate this noon," said Sophia.
"I declare, what did I do with that dress of Aunt Harriet's?  I guess if
you feel better I'll just run and get it and take it up garret.  I'll
stop in here again when I come down. You'd better lay still.  Flora can
bring you up a cup of tea.  I wouldn't try to eat any supper."

Sophia's tone as she left the room was full of loving concern. Presently
she returned; she looked disturbed, but angrily so. There was not the
slightest hint of any fear in her expression.

"I want to know," said she, looking sharply and quickly around, "if I
brought that purple dress in here, after all?"

"I didn't see you," replied Amanda.

"I must have.  It isn't in that chamber, nor the closet.  You aren't
lying on it, are you?"

"I lay down before you came in," replied Amanda.

"So you did.  Well, I'll go and look again."

Presently Amanda heard her sister's heavy step on the garret stairs.
Then she returned with a queer defiant expression on her face.

"I carried it up garret, after all, and put it in the trunk," said, she.
"I declare, I forgot it.  I suppose your being faint sort of put it out
of my head.  There it was, folded up just as nice, right where I put
it."

Sophia's mouth was set; her eyes upon her sister's scared, agitated face
were full of hard challenge.

"Yes," murmured Amanda.

"I must go right down and see to that cake," said Sophia, going out of
the room.  "If you don't feel well, you pound on the floor with the
umbrella."

Amanda looked after her.  She knew that Sophia had not put that purple
dress of her dead Aunt Harriet in the trunk in the garret.

Meantime Miss Louisa Stark was settling herself in the southwest
chamber.  She unpacked her trunk and hung her dresses carefully in the
closet.  She filled the bureau drawers' with nicely folded linen and
small articles of dress.  She was a very punctilious woman.  She put on
a black India silk dress with purple flowers. She combed her
grayish-blond hair in smooth ridges back from her broad forehead.  She
pinned her lace at her throat with a brooch, very handsome, although
somewhat obsolete--a bunch of pearl grapes on black onyx, set in gold
filagree.  She had purchased it several years ago with a considerable
portion of the stipend from her spring term of school-teaching.

As she surveyed herself in the little swing mirror surmounting the
old-fashioned mahogany bureau she suddenly bent forward and looked
closely at the brooch.  It seemed to her that something was wrong with
it.  As she looked she became sure.  Instead of the familiar bunch of
pearl grapes on the black onyx, she saw a knot of blonde and black hair
under glass surrounded by a border of twisted gold. She felt a thrill of
horror, though she could not tell why.  She unpinned the brooch, and it
was her own familiar one, the pearl grapes and the onyx.  "How very
foolish I am," she thought.  She thrust the pin in the laces at her
throat and again looked at herself in the glass, and there it was
again--the knot of blond and black hair and the twisted gold.

Louisa Stark looked at her own large, firm face above the brooch and it
was full of terror and dismay which were new to it.  She straightway
began to wonder if there could be anything wrong with her mind.  She
remembered that an aunt of her mother's had been insane.  A sort of fury
with herself possessed her.  She stared at the brooch in the glass with
eyes at once angry and terrified. Then she removed it again and there
was her own old brooch. Finally she thrust the gold pin through the lace
again, fastened it and turning a defiant back on the glass, went down to
supper.

At the supper table she met the other boarders--the elderly widow, the
young clergyman and the middle-aged librarian.  She viewed the elderly
widow with reserve, the clergyman with respect, the middle- aged
librarian with suspicion.  The latter wore a very youthful shirt-waist,
and her hair in a girlish fashion which the school- teacher, who twisted
hers severely from the straining roots at the nape of her neck to the
small, smooth coil at the top, condemned as straining after effects no
longer hers by right.

The librarian, who had a quick acridness of manner, addressed her,
asking what room she had, and asked the second time in spite of the
school-teacher's evident reluctance to hear her.  She even, since she
sat next to her, nudged her familiarly in her rigid black silk side.

"What room are you in, Miss Stark?" said she.

"I am at a loss how to designate the room," replied Miss Stark stiffly.

"Is it the big southwest room?"

"It evidently faces in that direction," said Miss Stark.

The librarian, whose name was Eliza Lippincott, turned abruptly to Miss
Amanda Gill, over whose delicate face a curious colour compounded of
flush and pallour was stealing.

"What room did your aunt die in, Miss Amanda?" asked she abruptly.

Amanda cast a terrified glance at her sister, who was serving a second
plate of pudding for the minister.

"That room," she replied feebly.

"That's what I thought," said the librarian with a certain triumph. "I
calculated that must be the room she died in, for it's the best room in
the house, and you haven't put anybody in it before. Somehow the room
that anybody has died in lately is generally the last room that anybody
is put in.  I suppose YOU are so strong- minded you don't object to
sleeping in a room where anybody died a few weeks ago?" she inquired of
Louisa Stark with sharp eyes on her face.

"No, I do not," replied Miss stark with emphasis.

"Nor in the same bed?" persisted Eliza Lippincott with a kittenish
reflection.

The young minister looked up from his pudding.  He was very spiritual,
but he had had poor pickings in his previous boarding place, and he
could not help a certain abstract enjoyment over Miss Gill's cooking.

"You would certainly not be afraid, Miss Lippincott?" he remarked, with
his gentle, almost caressing inflection of tone.  "You do not for a
minute believe that a higher power would allow any manifestation on the
part of a disembodied spirit--who we trust is in her heavenly home--to
harm one of His servants?"

"Oh, Mr. Dunn, of course not," replied Eliza Lippincott with a blush.
"Of course not.  I never meant to imply--"

"I could not believe you did," said the minister gently.  He was very
young, but he already had a wrinkle of permanent anxiety between his
eyes and a smile of permanent ingratiation on his lips. The lines of the
smile were as deeply marked as the wrinkle.

"Of course dear Miss Harriet Gill was a professing Christian," remarked
the widow, "and I don't suppose a professing Christian would come back
and scare folks if she could.  I wouldn't be a mite afraid to sleep in
that room; I'd rather have it than the one I've got.  If I was afraid to
sleep in a room where a good woman died, I wouldn't tell of it.  If I
saw things or heard things I'd think the fault must be with my own
guilty conscience."  Then she turned to Miss Stark.  "Any time you feel
timid in that room I'm ready and willing to change with you," said she.

"Thank you; I have no desire to change.  I am perfectly satisfied with
my room," replied Miss Stark with freezing dignity, which was thrown
away upon the widow.

"Well," said she, "any time, if you should feel timid, you know what to
do.  I've got a real nice room; it faces east and gets the morning sun,
but it isn't so nice as yours, according to my way of thinking.  I'd
rather take my chances any day in a room anybody had died in than in one
that was hot in summer.  I'm more afraid of a sunstroke than of spooks,
for my part."

Miss Sophia Gill, who had not spoken one word, but whose mouth had
become more and more rigidly compressed, suddenly rose from the table,
forcing the minister to leave a little pudding, at which he glanced
regretfully.

Miss Louisa Stark did not sit down in the parlour with the other
boarders.  She went straight to her room.  She felt tired after her
journey, and meditated a loose wrapper and writing a few letters quietly
before she went to bed.  Then, too, she was conscious of a feeling that
if she delayed, the going there at all might assume more terrifying
proportions.  She was full of defiance against herself and her own
lurking weakness.

So she went resolutely and entered the southwest chamber.  There was
through the room a soft twilight.  She could dimly discern everything,
the white satin scroll-work on the wall paper and the white counterpane
on the bed being most evident.  Consequently both arrested her attention
first.  She saw against the wall-paper directly facing the door the
waist of her best black satin dress hung over a picture.

"That is very strange," she said to herself, and again a thrill of vague
horror came over her.

She knew, or thought she knew, that she had put that black satin dress
waist away nicely folded between towels in her trunk.  She was very
choice of her black satin dress.

She took down the black waist and laid it on the bed preparatory to
folding it, but when she attempted to do so she discovered that the two
sleeves were firmly sewed together.  Louisa Stark stared at the sewed
sleeves.  "What does this mean?" she asked herself.  She examined the
sewing carefully; the stitches were small, and even, and firm, of black
silk.

She looked around the room.  On the stand beside the bed was something
which she had not noticed before: a little old-fashioned work-box with a
picture of a little boy in a pinafore on the top. Beside this work-box
lay, as if just laid down by the user, a spool of black silk, a pair of
scissors, and a large steel thimble with a hole in the top, after an old
style.  Louisa stared at these, then at the sleeves of her dress.  She
moved toward the door.  For a moment she thought that this was something
legitimate about which she might demand information; then she became
doubtful.  Suppose that work-box had been there all the time; suppose
she had forgotten; suppose she herself had done this absurd thing, or
suppose that she had not, what was to hinder the others from thinking
so; what was to hinder a doubt being cast upon her own memory and
reasoning powers?

Louisa Stark had been on the verge of a nervous breakdown in spite of
her iron constitution and her great will power.  No woman can teach
school for forty years with absolute impunity.  She was more credulous
as to her own possible failings than she had ever been in her whole
life.  She was cold with horror and terror, and yet not so much horror
and terror of the supernatural as of her own self. The weakness of
belief in the supernatural was nearly impossible for this strong nature.
She could more easily believe in her own failing powers.

"I don't know but I'm going to be like Aunt Marcia," she said to
herself, and her fat face took on a long rigidity of fear.

She started toward the mirror to unfasten her dress, then she remembered
the strange circumstance of the brooch and stopped short.  Then she
straightened herself defiantly and marched up to the bureau and looked
in the glass.  She saw reflected therein, fastening the lace at her
throat, the old-fashioned thing of a large oval, a knot of fair and
black hair under glass, set in a rim of twisted gold.  She unfastened it
with trembling fingers and looked at it.  It was her own brooch, the
cluster of pearl grapes on black onyx.  Louisa Stark placed the trinket
in its little box on the nest of pink cotton and put it away in the
bureau drawer. Only death could disturb her habit of order.

Her fingers were so cold they felt fairly numb as she unfastened her
dress; she staggered when she slipped it over her head.  She went to the
closet to hang it up and recoiled.  A strong smell of lovage came in her
nostrils; a purple gown near the door swung softly against her face as
if impelled by some wind from within. All the pegs were filled with
garments not her own, mostly of somber black, but there were some
strange-patterned silk things and satins.

Suddenly Louisa Stark recovered her nerve.  This, she told herself, was
something distinctly tangible.  Somebody had been taking liberties with
her wardrobe.  Somebody had been hanging some one else's clothes in her
closet.  She hastily slipped on her dress again and marched straight
down to the parlour.  The people were seated there; the widow and the
minister were playing backgammon. The librarian was watching them.  Miss
Amanda Gill was mending beside the large lamp on the centre table.  They
all looked up with amazement as Louisa Stark entered.  There was
something strange in her expression.  She noticed none of them except
Amanda.

"Where is your sister?" she asked peremptorily of her.

"She's in the kitchen mixing up bread," Amanda quavered; "is there
anything--"  But the school-teacher was gone.

She found Sophia Gill standing by the kitchen table kneading dough with
dignity.  The young girl Flora was bringing some flour from the pantry.
She stopped and stared at Miss Stark, and her pretty, delicate young
face took on an expression of alarm.

Miss Stark opened at once upon the subject in her mind.

"Miss Gill," said she, with her utmost school-teacher manner, "I wish to
inquire why you have had my own clothes removed from the closet in my
room and others substituted?"

Sophia Gill stood with her hands fast in the dough, regarding her. Her
own face paled slowly and reluctantly, her mouth stiffened.

"What?  I don't quite understand what you mean, Miss Stark," said she.

"My clothes are not in the closet in my room and it is full of things
which do not belong to me," said Louisa Stark.

"Bring me that flour," said Sophia sharply to the young girl, who
obeyed, casting timid, startled glances at Miss Stark as she passed her.
Sophia Gill began rubbing her hands clear of the dough.  "I am sure I
know nothing about it," she said with a certain tempered asperity.  "Do
you know anything about it, Flora?"

"Oh, no, I don't know anything about it, Aunt Sophia," answered the
young girl, fluttering.

Then Sophia turned to Miss Stark.  "I'll go upstairs with you, Miss
Stark," said she, "and see what the trouble is.  There must be some
mistake."  She spoke stiffly with constrained civility.

"Very well," said Miss Stark with dignity.  Then she and Miss Sophia
went upstairs.  Flora stood staring after them.

Sophia and Louisa Stark went up to the southwest chamber.  The closet
door was shut.  Sophia threw it open, then she looked at Miss Stark.  On
the pegs hung the schoolteacher's own garments in ordinary array.

"I can't see that there is anything wrong," remarked Sophia grimly.

Miss Stark strove to speak but she could not.  She sank down on the
nearest chair.  She did not even attempt to defend herself.  She saw her
own clothes in the closet.  She knew there had been no time for any
human being to remove those which she thought she had seen and put hers
in their places.  She knew it was impossible.  Again the awful horror of
herself overwhelmed her.

"You must have been mistaken," she heard Sophia say.

She muttered something, she scarcely knew what.  Sophia then went out of
the room.  Presently she undressed and went to bed.  In the morning she
did not go down to breakfast, and when Sophia came to inquire, requested
that the stage be ordered for the noon train. She said that she was
sorry, but was ill, and feared lest she might be worse, and she felt
that she must return home at once.  She looked ill, and could not take
even the toast and tea which Sophia had prepared for her.  Sophia felt a
certain pity for her, but it was largely mixed with indignation.  She
felt that she knew the true reason for the school-teacher's illness and
sudden departure, and it incensed her.

"If folks are going to act like fools we shall never be able to keep
this house," she said to Amanda after Miss Stark had gone; and Amanda
knew what she meant.

Directly the widow, Mrs. Elvira Simmons, knew that the school- teacher
had gone and the southwest room was vacant, she begged to have it in
exchange for her own.  Sophia hesitated a moment; she eyed the widow
sharply.  There was something about the large, roseate face worn in firm
lines of humour and decision which reassured her.

"I have no objection, Mrs. Simmons," said she, "if--"

"If what?" asked the widow.

"If you have common sense enough not to keep fussing because the room
happens to be the one my aunt died in," said Sophia bluntly.

"Fiddlesticks!" said the widow, Mrs. Elvira Simmons.

That very afternoon she moved into the southwest chamber.  The young
girl Flora assisted her, though much against her will.

"Now I want you to carry Mrs. Simmons' dresses into the closet in that
room and hang them up nicely, and see that she has everything she
wants," said Sophia Gill.  "And you can change the bed and put on fresh
sheets.  What are you looking at me that way for?"

"Oh, Aunt Sophia, can't I do something else?"

"What do you want to do something else for?"

"I am afraid."

"Afraid of what?  I should think you'd hang your head.  No; you go right
in there and do what I tell you."

Pretty soon Flora came running into the sitting-room where Sophia was,
as pale as death, and in her hand she held a queer, old- fashioned
frilled nightcap.

"What's that?" demanded Sophia.

"I found it under the pillow."

"What pillow?"

"In the southwest room."

Sophia took it and looked at it sternly.

"It's Great-aunt Harriet's," said Flora faintly.

"You run down street and do that errand at the grocer's for me and I'll
see that room," said Sophia with dignity.  She carried the nightcap away
and put it in the trunk in the garret where she had supposed it stored
with the rest of the dead woman's belongings. Then she went into the
southwest chamber and made the bed and assisted Mrs. Simmons to move,
and there was no further incident.

The widow was openly triumphant over her new room.  She talked a deal
about it at the dinner-table.

"It is the best room in the house, and I expect you all to be envious of
me," said she.

"And you are sure you don't feel afraid of ghosts?" said the librarian.

"Ghosts!" repeated the widow with scorn.  "If a ghost comes I'll send
her over to you.  You are just across the hall from the southwest room."

"You needn't," returned Eliza Lippincott with a shudder.  "I wouldn't
sleep in that room, after--" she checked herself with an eye on the
minister.

"After what?" asked the widow.

"Nothing," replied Eliza Lippincott in an embarrassed fashion.

"I trust Miss Lippincott has too good sense and too great faith to
believe in anything of that sort," said the minister.

"I trust so, too," replied Eliza hurriedly.

"You did see or hear something--now what was it, I want to know?" said
the widow that evening when they were alone in the parlour. The minister
had gone to make a call.

Eliza hesitated.

"What was it?" insisted the widow.

"Well," said Eliza hesitatingly, "if you'll promise not to tell."

"Yes, I promise; what was it?"

"Well, one day last week, just before the school-teacher came, I went in
that room to see if there were any clouds.  I wanted to wear my gray
dress, and I was afraid it was going to rain, so I wanted to look at the
sky at all points, so I went in there, and--"

"And what?"

"Well, you know that chintz over the bed, and the valance, and the easy
chair; what pattern should you say it was?"

"Why, peacocks on a blue ground.  Good land, I shouldn't think any one
who had ever seen that would forget it."

"Peacocks on a blue ground, you are sure?"

"Of course I am.  Why?"

"Only when I went in there that afternoon it was not peacocks on a blue
ground; it was great red roses on a yellow ground."

"Why, what do you mean?"

"What I say."

"Did Miss Sophia have it changed?"

"No.  I went in there again an hour later and the peacocks were there."

"You didn't see straight the first time."

"I expected you would say that."

"The peacocks are there now; I saw them just now."

"Yes, I suppose so; I suppose they flew back."

"But they couldn't."

"Looks as if they did."

"Why, how could such a thing be?  It couldn't be."

"Well, all I know is those peacocks were gone for an hour that afternoon
and the red roses on the yellow ground were there instead."

The widow stared at her a moment, then she began to laugh rather
hysterically.

"Well," said she, "I guess I sha'n't give up my nice room for any such
tomfoolery as that.  I guess I would just as soon have red roses on a
yellow ground as peacocks on a blue; but there's no use talking, you
couldn't have seen straight.  How could such a thing have happened?"

"I don't know," said Eliza Lippincott; "but I know I wouldn't sleep in
that room if you'd give me a thousand dollars."

"Well, I would," said the widow, "and I'm going to."

When Mrs. Simmons went to the southwest chamber that night she cast a
glance at the bed-hanging and the easy chair.  There were the peacocks
on the blue ground.  She gave a contemptuous thought to Eliza
Lippincott.

"I don't believe but she's getting nervous," she thought.  "I wonder if
any of her family have been out at all."

But just before Mrs. Simmons was ready to get into bed she looked again
at the hangings and the easy chair, and there were the red roses on the
yellow ground instead of the peacocks on the blue. She looked long and
sharply.  Then she shut her eyes, and then opened them and looked.  She
still saw the red roses.  Then she crossed the room, turned her back to
the bed, and looked out at the night from the south window.  It was
clear and the full moon was shining.  She watched it a moment sailing
over the dark blue in its nimbus of gold.  Then she looked around at the
bed hangings.  She still saw the red roses on the yellow ground.

Mrs. Simmons was struck in her most venerable point.  This apparent
contradiction of the reasonable as manifested in such a commonplace
thing as chintz of a bed-hanging affected this ordinarily unimaginative
woman as no ghostly appearance could have done. Those red roses on the
yellow ground were to her much more ghostly than any strange figure clad
in the white robes of the grave entering the room.

She took a step toward the door, then she turned with a resolute air.
"As for going downstairs and owning up I'm scared and having that
Lippincott girl crowing over me, I won't for any red roses instead of
peacocks.  I guess they can't hurt me, and as long as we've both of us
seen 'em I guess we can't both be getting loony," she said.

Mrs. Elvira Simmons blew out her light and got into bed and lay staring
out between the chintz hangings at the moonlit room.  She said her
prayers in bed always as being more comfortable, and presumably just as
acceptable in the case of a faithful servant with a stout habit of body.
Then after a little she fell asleep; she was of too practical a nature
to be kept long awake by anything which had no power of actual bodily
effect upon her.  No stress of the spirit had ever disturbed her
slumbers.  So she slumbered between the red roses, or the peacocks, she
did not know which.

But she was awakened about midnight by a strange sensation in her
throat.  She had dreamed that some one with long white fingers was
strangling her, and she saw bending over her the face of an old woman in
a white cap.  When she waked there was no old woman, the room was almost
as light as day in the full moonlight, and looked very peaceful; but the
strangling sensation at her throat continued, and besides that, her face
and ears felt muffled.  She put up her hand and felt that her head was
covered with a ruffled nightcap tied under her chin so tightly that it
was exceedingly uncomfortable.  A great qualm of horror shot over her.
She tore the thing off frantically and flung it from her with a
convulsive effort as if it had been a spider.  She gave, as she did so,
a quick, short scream of terror.  She sprang out of bed and was going
toward the door, when she stopped.

It had suddenly occurred to her that Eliza Lippincott might have entered
the room and tied on the cap while she was asleep.  She had not locked
her door.  She looked in the closet, under the bed; there was no one
there.  Then she tried to open the door, but to her astonishment found
that it was locked--bolted on the inside. "I must have locked it, after
all," she reflected with wonder, for she never locked her door.  Then
she could scarcely conceal from herself that there was something out of
the usual about it all. Certainly no one could have entered the room and
departed locking the door on the inside.  She could not control the long
shiver of horror that crept over her, but she was still resolute.  She
resolved that she would throw the cap out of the window.  "I'll see if I
have tricks like that played on me, I don't care who does it," said she
quite aloud.  She was still unable to believe wholly in the
supernatural.  The idea of some human agency was still in her mind,
filling her with anger.

She went toward the spot where she had thrown the cap--she had stepped
over it on her way to the door--but it was not there.  She searched the
whole room, lighting her lamp, but she could not find the cap.  Finally
she gave it up.  She extinguished her lamp and went back to bed.  She
fell asleep again, to be again awakened in the same fashion.  That time
she tore off the cap as before, but she did not fling it on the floor as
before.  Instead she held to it with a fierce grip.  Her blood was up.

Holding fast to the white flimsy thing, she sprang out of bed, ran to
the window which was open, slipped the screen, and flung it out; but a
sudden gust of wind, though the night was calm, arose and it floated
back in her face.  She brushed it aside like a cobweb and she clutched
at it.  She was actually furious.  It eluded her clutching fingers.
Then she did not see it at all.  She examined the floor, she lighted her
lamp again and searched, but there was no sign of it.

Mrs. Simmons was then in such a rage that all terror had disappeared for
the time.  She did not know with what she was angry, but she had a sense
of some mocking presence which was silently proving too strong against
her weakness, and she was aroused to the utmost power of resistance.  To
be baffled like this and resisted by something which was as nothing to
her straining senses filled her with intensest resentment.

Finally she got back into bed again; she did not go to sleep.  She felt
strangely drowsy, but she fought against it.  She was wide awake,
staring at the moonlight, when she suddenly felt the soft white strings
of the thing tighten around her throat and realized that her enemy was
again upon her.  She seized the strings, untied them, twitched off the
cap, ran with it to the table where her scissors lay and furiously cut
it into small bits.  She cut and tore, feeling an insane fury of
gratification.

"There!" said she quite aloud.  "I guess I sha'n't have any more trouble
with this old cap."

She tossed the bits of muslin into a basket and went back to bed. Almost
immediately she felt the soft strings tighten around her throat.  Then
at last she yielded, vanquished.  This new refutal of all laws of reason
by which she had learned, as it were, to spell her theory of life, was
too much for her equilibrium.  She pulled off the clinging strings
feebly, drew the thing from her head, slid weakly out of bed, caught up
her wrapper and hastened out of the room.  She went noiselessly along
the hall to her own old room: she entered, got into her familiar bed,
and lay there the rest of the night shuddering and listening, and if she
dozed, waking with a start at the feeling of the pressure upon her
throat to find that it was not there, yet still to be unable to shake
off entirely the horror.

When daylight came she crept back to the southwest chamber and hurriedly
got some clothes in which to dress herself.  It took all her resolution
to enter the room, but nothing unusual happened while she was there.
She hastened back to her old chamber, dressed herself and went down to
breakfast with an imperturbable face.  Her colour had not faded.  When
asked by Eliza Lippincott how she had slept, she replied with an
appearance of calmness which was bewildering that she had not slept very
well.  She never did sleep very well in a new bed, and she thought she
would go back to her old room.

Eliza Lippincott was not deceived, however, neither were the Gill
sisters, nor the young girl, Flora.  Eliza Lippineott spoke out bluntly.

"You needn't talk to me about sleeping well," said she.  "I know
something queer happened in that room last night by the way you act."

They all looked at Mrs. Simmons, inquiringly--the librarian with
malicious curiosity and triumph, the minister with sad incredulity,
Sophia Gill with fear and indignation, Amanda and the young girl with
unmixed terror.  The widow bore herself with dignity.

"I saw nothing nor heard nothing which I trust could not have been
accounted for in some rational manner," said she.

"What was it?" persisted Eliza Lippincott.

"I do not wish to discuss the matter any further," replied Mrs. Simmons
shortly.  Then she passed her plate for more creamed potato.  She felt
that she would die before she confessed to the ghastly absurdity of that
nightcap, or to having been disturbed by the flight of peacocks off a
blue field of chintz after she had scoffed at the possibility of such a
thing.  She left the whole matter so vague that in a fashion she came
off the mistress of the situation.  She at all events impressed
everybody by her coolness in the face of no one knew what nightly
terror.

After breakfast, with the assistance of Amanda and Flora, she moved back
into her old room.  Scarcely a word was spoken during the process of
moving, but they all worked with trembling haste and looked guilty when
they met one another's eyes, as if conscious of betraying a common fear.

That afternoon the young minister, John Dunn, went to Sophia Gill and
requested permission to occupy the southwest chamber that night.

"I don't ask to have my effects moved there," said he, "for I could
scarcely afford a room so much superior to the one I now occupy, but I
would like, if you please, to sleep there to-night for the purpose of
refuting in my own person any unfortunate superstition which may have
obtained root here."

Sophia Gill thanked the minister gratefully and eagerly accepted his
offer.

"How anybody with common sense can believe for a minute in any such
nonsense passes my comprehension," said she.

"It certainly passes mine how anybody with Christian faith can believe
in ghosts," said the minister gently, and Sophia Gill felt a certain
feminine contentment in hearing him.  The minister was a child to her;
she regarded him with no tincture of sentiment, and yet she loved to
hear two other women covertly condemned by him and she herself thereby
exalted.

That night about twelve o'clock the Reverend John Dunn essayed to go to
his nightly slumber in the southwest chamber.  He had been sitting up
until that hour preparing his sermon.

He traversed the hall with a little night-lamp in his hand, opened the
door of the southwest chamber, and essayed to enter.  He might as well
have essayed to enter the solid side of a house.  He could not believe
his senses.  The door was certainly open; he could look into the room
full of soft lights and shadows under the moonlight which streamed into
the windows.  He could see the bed in which he had expected to pass the
night, but he could not enter.  Whenever he strove to do so he had a
curious sensation as if he were trying to press against an invisible
person who met him with a force of opposition impossible to overcome.
The minister was not an athletic man, yet he had considerable strength.
He squared his elbows, set his mouth hard, and strove to push his way
through into the room.  The opposition which he met was as sternly and
mutely terrible as the rocky fastness of a mountain in his way.

For a half hour John Dunn, doubting, raging, overwhelmed with spiritual
agony as to the state of his own soul rather than fear, strove to enter
that southwest chamber.  He was simply powerless against this uncanny
obstacle.  Finally a great horror as of evil itself came over him.  He
was a nervous man and very young.  He fairly fled to his own chamber and
locked himself in like a terror- stricken girl.

The next morning he went to Miss Gill and told her frankly what had
happened, and begged her to say nothing about it lest he should have
injured the cause by the betrayal of such weakness, for he actually had
come to believe that there was something wrong with the room.

"What it is I know not, Miss Sophia," said he, "but I firmly believe,
against my will, that there is in that room some accursed evil power at
work, of which modern faith and modern science know nothing."

Miss Sophia Gill listened with grimly lowering face.  She had an inborn
respect for the clergy, but she was bound to hold that southwest chamber
in the dearly beloved old house of her fathers free of blame.

"I think I will sleep in that room myself to-night," she said, when the
minister had finished.

He looked at her in doubt and dismay.

"I have great admiration for your faith and courage, Miss Sophia," he
said, "but are you wise?"

"I am fully resolved to sleep in that room to-night," said she
conclusively.  There were occasions when Miss Sophia Gill could put on a
manner of majesty, and she did now.

It was ten o'clock that night when Sophia Gill entered the southwest
chamber.  She had told her sister what she intended doing and had been
proof against her tearful entreaties.  Amanda was charged not to tell
the young girl, Flora.

"There is no use in frightening that child over nothing," said Sophia.

Sophia, when she entered the southwest chamber, set the lamp which she
carried on the bureau, and began moving about the rooms pulling down the
curtains, taking off the nice white counterpane of the bed, and
preparing generally for the night.

As she did so, moving with great coolness and deliberation, she became
conscious that she was thinking some thoughts that were foreign to her.
She began remembering what she could not have remembered, since she was
not then born: the trouble over her mother's marriage, the bitter
opposition, the shutting the door upon her, the ostracizing her from
heart and home.  She became aware of a most singular sensation as of
bitter resentment herself, and not against the mother and sister who had
so treated her own mother, but against her own mother, and then she
became aware of a like bitterness extended to her own self.  She felt
malignant toward her mother as a young girl whom she remembered, though
she could not have remembered, and she felt malignant toward her own
self, and her sister Amanda, and Flora.  Evil suggestions surged in her
brain--suggestions which turned her heart to stone and which still
fascinated her.  And all the time by a sort of double consciousness she
knew that what she thought was strange and not due to her own volition.
She knew that she was thinking the thoughts of some other person, and
she knew who.  She felt herself possessed.

But there was tremendous strength in the woman's nature.  She had
inherited strength for good and righteous self-assertion, from the evil
strength of her ancestors.  They had turned their own weapons against
themselves.  She made an effort which seemed almost mortal, but was
conscious that the hideous thing was gone from her.  She thought her own
thoughts.  Then she scouted to herself the idea of anything supernatural
about the terrific experience.  "I am imagining everything," she told
herself.  She went on with her preparations; she went to the bureau to
take down her hair.  She looked in the glass and saw, instead of her
softly parted waves of hair, harsh lines of iron-gray under the black
borders of an old- fashioned head-dress.  She saw instead of her smooth,
broad forehead, a high one wrinkled with the intensest concentration of
selfish reflections of a long life; she saw instead of her steady blue
eyes, black ones with depths of malignant reserve, behind a broad
meaning of ill will; she saw instead of her firm, benevolent mouth one
with a hard, thin line, a network of melancholic wrinkles.  She saw
instead of her own face, middle-aged and good to see, the expression of
a life of honesty and good will to others and patience under trials, the
face of a very old woman scowling forever with unceasing hatred and
misery at herself and all others, at life, and death, at that which had
been and that which was to come.  She saw instead of her own face in the
glass, the face of her dead Aunt Harriet, topping her own shoulders in
her own well- known dress!

Sophia Gill left the room.  She went into the one which she shared with
her sister Amanda.  Amanda looked up and saw her standing there.  She
had set the lamp on a table, and she stood holding a handkerchief over
her face.  Amanda looked at her with terror.

"What is it?  What is it, Sophia?" she gasped.

Sophia still stood with the handkerchief pressed to her face.

"Oh, Sophia, let me call somebody.  Is your face hurt?  Sophia, what is
the matter with your face?" fairly shrieked Amanda.

Suddenly Sophia took the handkerchief from her face.

"Look at me, Amanda Gill," she said in an awful voice.

Amanda looked, shrinking.

"What is it?  Oh, what is it?  You don't look hurt.  What is it,
Sophia?"

"What do you see?"

"Why, I see you."

"Me?"

"Yes, you.  What did you think I would see?"

Sophia Gill looked at her sister.  "Never as long as I live will I tell
you what I thought you would see, and you must never ask me," said she.

"Well, I never will, Sophia," replied Amanda, half weeping with terror.

"You won't try to sleep in that room again, Sophia?"

"No," said Sophia; "and I am going to sell this house."

By: Mary Wilkins