Great American Ghost Stories

by Bill Bowers

  At a late hour one soft, sweet night in early summer, while sojourning for a time among these people, I noticed, far down on a point of land, that rocky and waveworn, makes out into the sea, a strange light, that seemed to be suspended a few feet from the earth. Soft and wavering it was, sometimes dim; but so unmistakably a light, that I was somewhat perplexed, and the next morning I asked my hostess the cause of the strange phenomenon.

  The woman’s countenance changed in an instant, and she assumed a sympathetic, pitying look as she replied, with a wise, uncanny shake of her head, “Why, that is Mistress Marian’s light.” And so she went on and told me this story.

  Away down on the point, where the brown soil of the interior of the island begins to mingle with the white sand along the sea, there was, many years ago, a small cottage, built by a seafaring man, who, with his family, occupied it for a short time. They then removed to a neighboring shore, and the house remained untenanted many months.

  In the course of time two strangers came to the island,—an old man and his little daughter. Venerable indeed was the father, and with his snow-white hair and beard, and his dignified, scholarly bearing, he might have been a king among men. No one seemed to know just when or how they came; they appeared suddenly and unexpectedly, and seemed to find relief in the quietness of the place. As a wandering meteor, travelling through limitless space, finds rest somewhere in God’s great universe, so did these two strangers find a dwelling-place in this secluded spot.

  To the little uninhabited cottage on the point they went, and the simple life of the islanders became their life. They became a part, and still not a part, of the fisher folk. The dignified old man was so unlike any one whom they had ever seen before that they were shy of him; and long though he lived among them, quietly assisting the needy, and lending a helping hand to all, they were never quite at ease with him, though they worshipped him from afar. It was as though he breathed a rarer atmosphere than they, and dwelt above them; and they were content to accept his kindness and to marvel at his greatness.

  Not so the child, with her soft brown eyes and her gentle, winning manner. “A lady born and bred, she is,” the good dames said, one to another, many times. But she was a child, strangely alone, so the motherly arms were opened to her, and the children made this little Marian their playmate.

  They seemed to be people of means,—this father and daughter. The cottage was furnished comfortably, even luxuriously, and many books, some of them in quaint and curious bindings, were about. On the low walls hung several pictures, the like of which the islanders had never seen before; rich rugs covered the bare floors; a piece of rare Eastern embroidery was flung over a low couch; upon an oddly carved shelf were some bits of china, delicate and fragile, as though fashioned from rose leaves; while everywhere in the tiny house were evidences of refinement. From what faraway land the strangers came, or why they sought refuge on the little island, they themselves never said, nor were they ever questioned. The people, with their simple faith and childlike credulity, accepted the fact of their coming as they did all the good things that befell them,—thankful, asking naught.

  So these two lived on in an alien land, their lives replete with the satisfaction that comes from helping others, their desire to do good satisfied by the appreciation with which their efforts were met. Thus the little girl, the dainty Marian, grew to maidenhood, learning much from her father and his books, but more from Nature: of the sea with its wonderful treasures; of the rocks that she loved, gaunt and gray though they were; of flowers and fishes and birds. She learned, too, much of human nature—the kindly side—from the people about her; and their interests she made hers. Every mother on the island felt a deep affection for her, and her young mates were proud to be called her friends. She was a constant surprise to them. The dainty gowns that she fashioned for herself, out of strange fabrics, were marvels; even her language seemed somehow different from theirs; and when a stranger chanced to visit the little building where they gathered on Sundays for worship, “our young lady,” brown-eyed “Mistress Marian,” was always pointed out with secret pride. So she grew to pure and noble womanhood, winning respect and admiration from all.

  The lads of the village were filled with unspeakable delight when she spoke to them in her sweet, low voice. Not one of them but that would have risked his limbs, almost his life, for anything that she wanted,—a wild-flower, a stone, or a bright bit of seaweed. Yet for none of them had she more than a word or a smile, except for tall, manly Phil Anderson. From her childhood she had seemed to set him apart from all others as a hero; and when he came to her out on the rocks one sweet summer night, when the moon was softly shining and the sea was bright with the phosphorescent gleam, and told her of his love for her, she accepted it quietly and trustfully.

  It was a happy summer for the two, passing all too quickly. When autumn came, Phil was to sail with his father on one more voyage—to make his fortune, he said; then he was coming back to marry Marian and to take her away into the great world of which they were never tired of talking.

  So the weeks slipped by. October came. The trees donned their gayest colors; each bush took its own particular, matchless tint, and the breakers dashed high in the cool breeze, as though to speed the parting, which was even then at hand. One bright, cool morning Phil went down to the little house to say good-by. Tremblingly the old man bade the brave young sailor farewell, then sent him out to the rocks—the place of their betrothal—where Marian was waiting. Silently he took her in his strong arms, kissed her soft hair, her forehead and her sweet red lips, then turned and strode quickly away, as though he could not trust his courage longer.

  A year passed, bringing two letters to Marian from her lover, telling her of such success as even his fondest hopes had failed to picture. At the end of the third year, just after another letter had come, telling her that the Watersprite was homeward bound, and happiness seemed in store for her, her father died. For months the old man had been slowly failing, living only in his daughter’s happiness. Now that she did not need him longer, he seemed to lose all power of holding on to his life, and one evening passed quietly away with the setting of the sun.

  The grief of the young girl was well-nigh unbearable. The only bright thing that life seemed to hold for her was the fact that her lover was on his way to her. So she waited anxiously, longingly, expecting tidings every day. But after the third letter no news came.

  As the days lengthened to weeks, and the weeks to months, the islanders were filled with apprehension and forebodings. A gloom settled over the people, which even the lingering Indian summer failed to brighten; and when, one bleak November day, beneath a darkening sky, a strange vessel came into the harbor with tidings that the gallant Watersprite had sunk and every soul on board had perished, it was almost a relief to the anxious watchers. Certainty, though hard to bear, was better than hope deferred.

  Gently did sympathetic friends tell the mournful news to the lonely girl at the point; but dazed and bewildered, she did not seem to comprehend their meaning. For days she lay in a kind of stupor, unheeding everything, even the presence of the kind old dame who watched by her side night and day with tear-dimmed eyes. Only when the waves dashed loudest would the girl stir uneasily, raising her head as though listening for some one’s coming.

  At last she awoke from her long sleep, coming back once more to life and to her senses; but the beautiful hair was as white as the foam that dashed against the rocks she used to love, and the dark eyes looked large and mournful beneath the snowy wealth. As strength slowly came back to her, so also came the firm conviction that her lover was not dead, but would one day return to her. So firm was her faith that she grew cheerful, almost happy. Once more she assumed her duties,—clothing little children, ministering to the sick and aged, helping weary housewives. There was not a person on the island who had not at one time or another felt her kindly influence or her strong, stimulating presence.


  Every night at dusk, after her day’s work was done, she would place a large bright light in the window of the little sitting-room that looked toward the harbor, leaving the curtain drawn aside, so that should he for whom she watched come at night, he would find her still waiting for him. Not a night did she fail in this most important of all her duties. Her light was a bright beacon. Sailors soon learned to know it and look for it, and they never looked in vain; it was always there, steady, clear, unwavering.

  Thus passed several years, when suddenly, mysteriously, without a shadow of warning, Mistress Marian disappeared. As silently as years ago she had entered the life of the fisher folk, so now did she leave it; and as they knew not then whence she came, neither did they know now whither she went.

  There were many conjectures as to her strange disappearance. One old sailor affirmed that one night when he was out fishing he saw a little boat come from the point, bearing a solitary passenger with snow-white hair, who rowed out toward a large ship that could be dimly seen, as through a fog, and was taken on board; then the huge ship quickly vanished. But as this old man was well known to take his black bottle with him on his fishing expeditions, and as no other person could be found who saw the wonderful ship, his story did not gain the credence that its ingenuity deserved. The most of the people inclined to the belief that she had gone back to her father’s relatives; but how, when, or where, not even the old woman who lived with her could tell.

  A decade or two passed, and the old house in its exposed locality grew more and more weatherworn and dilapidated; and finally, one winter, doubtless feeling that its time of usefulness had passed, it succumbed to fate and, during a heavy gale, fell to the ground. Some of the timbers were washed away, others were used for fire-wood by campers and fishermen; so that after a time nothing remained to mark the spot where the cottage had been, save a few damp, moss-covered logs.

  But still in this same place on quiet summer nights during the hot sultry time of July and August,—the time when the Watersprite was said to have perished,—this weird, white, uncertain, trembling light, a few feet from the ground, is at times plainly seen. Not all the scientific explanations of wiser heads can convince the simple villagers that this strange light is any other than Marian’s beacon for her sailor lover, or shake their faith in the plausibility of a story handed down from successive generations.

  The merriest sailing party, rounding the point of a sweet summer night, will become subdued at the sight of the light, while the timid maiden will nestle closer to the skipper at the helm, as she says in awe-struck tones, “See! Mistress Marian’s light is still burning.”

  16

  Consequences

  By Willa Cather

  Born in Virginia, Willa Cather (1873–1947) became a highly successful novelist and short story writer. Her childhood on the Nebraska frontier inspired some of her best-known works, especially O Pioneers! She also worked as an English and Latin teacher in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Beginning in 1906 she was an editor, in New York City, at McClure’s Magazine, which published many of her stories. In 1922, her novel One of Ours won the Pulitzer Prize. “Consequences” first appeared in McClure’s in 1915.

  Henry Eastman, a lawyer, aged forty, was standing beside the Flatiron building in a driving November rainstorm, signaling frantically for a taxi. It was six-thirty, and everything on wheels was engaged. The streets were in confusion about him, the sky was in turmoil above him, and the Flatiron building, which seemed about to blow down, threw water like a mill-shoot. Suddenly, out of the brutal struggle of men and cars and machines and people tilting at each other with umbrellas, a quiet, well-mannered limousine paused before him, at the curb, and an agreeable, ruddy countenance confronted him through the open window of the car.

  “Don’t you want me to pick you up, Mr. Eastman? I’m running directly home now.”

  Eastman recognized Kier Cavenaugh, a young man of pleasure, who lived in the house on Central Park South, where he himself had an apartment.

  “Don’t I?” he exclaimed, bolting into the car. “I’ll risk getting your cushions wet without compunction. I came up in a taxi, but I didn’t hold it. Bad economy. I thought I saw your car down on Fourteenth Street about half an hour ago.”

  The owner of the car smiled. He had a pleasant, round face and round eyes, and a fringe of smooth, yellow hair showed under the rim of his soft felt hat. “With a lot of little broilers fluttering into it? You did. I know some girls who work in the cheap shops down there. I happened to be down-town and I stopped and took a load of them home. I do sometimes. Saves their poor little clothes, you know. Their shoes are never any good.”

  Eastman looked at his rescuer. “Aren’t they notoriously afraid of cars and smooth young men?” he inquired.

  Cavenaugh shook his head. “They know which cars are safe and which are chancy. They put each other wise. You have to take a bunch at a time, of course. The Italian girls can never come along; their men shoot. The girls understand, all right; but their fathers don’t. One gets to see queer places, sometimes, taking them home.”

  Eastman laughed drily. “Every time I touch the circle of your acquaintance, Cavenaugh, it’s a little wider. You must know New York pretty well by this time.”

  “Yes, but I’m on my good behavior below Twenty-third Street,” the young man replied with simplicity. “My little friends down there would give me a good character. They’re wise little girls. They have grand ways with each other, a romantic code of loyalty. You can find a good many of the lost virtues among them.”

  The car was standing still in a traffic block at Fortieth Street, when Cavenaugh suddenly drew his face away from the window and touched Eastman’s arm. “Look, please. You see that hansom with the bony gray horse—driver has a broken hat and red flannel around his throat. Can you see who is inside?”

  Eastman peered out. The hansom was just cutting across the line, and the driver was making a great fuss about it, bobbing his head and waving his whip. He jerked his dripping old horse into Fortieth Street and clattered off past the Public Library grounds toward Sixth Avenue. “No, I couldn’t see the passenger. Someone you know?”

  “Could you see whether there was a passenger?” Cavenaugh asked.

  “Why, yes. A man, I think. I saw his elbow on the apron. No driver ever behaves like that unless he has a passenger.”

  “Yes, I may have been mistaken,” Cavenaugh murmured absent-mindedly. Ten minutes or so later, after Cavenaugh’s car had turned off Fifth Avenue into Fifty-eighth Street, Eastman exclaimed, “There’s your same cabby, and his cart’s empty. He’s headed for a drink now, I suppose.” The driver in the broken hat and the red flannel neck cloth was still brandishing the whip over his old gray. He was coming from the west now, and turned down Sixth Avenue, under the elevated.

  Cavenaugh’s car stopped at the bachelor apartment house between Sixth and Seventh Avenues where he and Eastman lived, and they went up in the elevator together. They were still talking when the lift stopped at Cavenaugh’s floor, and Eastman stepped out with him and walked down the hall, finishing his sentence while Cavenaugh found his latch-key. When he opened the door, a wave of fresh cigarette smoke greeted them. Cavenaugh stopped short and stared into his hallway. “Now how in the devil—!” he exclaimed angrily.

  “Someone waiting for you? Oh, no, thanks. I wasn’t coming in. I have to work to-night. Thank you, but I couldn’t.” Eastman nodded and went up the two flights to his own rooms.

  Though Eastman did not customarily keep a servant he had this winter a man who had been lent to him by a friend who was abroad. Rollins met him at the door and took his coat and hat.

  “Put out my dinner clothes, Rollins, and then get out of here until ten o’clock. I’ve promised to go to a supper to-night. I shan’t be dining. I’ve had a late tea and I’m going to work until ten. You may put out some kumiss and biscuit for me.”

  Rollins took
himself off, and Eastman settled down at the big table in his sitting-room. He had to read a lot of letters submitted as evidence in a breach of contract case, and before he got very far he found that long paragraphs in some of the letters were written in German. He had a German dictionary at his office, but none here. Rollins had gone, and anyhow, the bookstores would be closed. He remembered having seen a row of dictionaries on the lower shelf of one of Cavenaugh’s bookcases. Cavenaugh had a lot of books, though he never read anything but new stuff. Eastman prudently turned down his student’s lamp very low—the thing had an evil habit of smoking—and went down two flights to Cavenaugh’s door.

  The young man himself answered Eastman’s ring. He was freshly dressed for the evening, except for a brown smoking jacket, and his yellow hair had been brushed until it shone. He hesitated as he confronted his caller, still holding the door knob, and his round eyes and smooth forehead made their best imitation of a frown. When Eastman began to apologize, Cavenaugh’s manner suddenly changed. He caught his arm and jerked him into the narrow hall. “Come in, come in. Right along!” he said excitedly. “Right along,” he repeated as he pushed Eastman before him into his sitting-room. “Well I’ll—” he stopped short at the door and looked about his own room with an air of complete mystification. The back window was wide open and a strong wind was blowing in. Cavenaugh walked over to the window and stuck out his head, looking up and down the fire escape. When he pulled his head in, he drew down the sash.

  “I had a visitor I wanted you to see,” he explained with a nervous smile. “At least I thought I had. He must have gone out that way,” nodding toward the window.