by Bill Bowers
“I’m going to wait,” said Rebecca grimly.
The two women sat down again, and Mrs. Dent took up her embroidery.
“Is there any sewing I can do for her?” Rebecca asked finally in a desperate way. “If I can get her sewing along some—”
Mrs. Dent arose with alacrity and fetched a mass of white from the closet. “Here,” she said, “if you want to sew the lace on this nightgown. I was going to put her to it, but she’ll be glad enough to get rid of it. She ought to have this and one more before she goes. I don’t like to send her away without some good underclothing.”
Rebecca snatched at the little white garment and sewed feverishly.
That night she wakened from a deep sleep a little after midnight and lay a minute trying to collect her faculties and explain to herself what she was listening to. At last she discovered that it was the then popular strains of “The Maiden’s Prayer” floating up through the floor from the piano in the sitting-room below. She jumped up, threw a shawl over her nightgown, and hurried downstairs trembling. There was nobody in the sitting-room; the piano was silent. She ran to Mrs. Dent’s bedroom and called hysterically:
“Emeline! Emeline!”
“What is it?” asked Mrs. Dent’s voice from the bed. The voice was stern, but had a note of consciousness in it.
“Who—who was that playing ‘The Maiden’s Prayer’ in the sitting-room, on the piano?”
“I didn’t hear anybody.”
“There was some one.”
“I didn’t hear anything.”
“I tell you there was some one. But—there ain’t anybody there.”
“I didn’t hear anything.”
“I did—somebody playing ‘The Maiden’s Prayer’ on the piano. Has Agnes got home? I want to know.”
“Of course Agnes hasn’t got home,” answered Mrs. Dent with rising inflection. “Be you gone crazy over that girl? The last boat from Porter’s Falls was in before we went to bed. Of course she ain’t come.”
“I heard—”
“You were dreaming.”
“I wasn’t; I was broad awake.”
Rebecca went back to her chamber and kept her lamp burning all night.
The next morning her eyes upon Mrs. Dent were wary and blazing with suppressed excitement. She kept opening her mouth as if to speak, then frowning, and setting her lips hard. After breakfast she went upstairs, and came down presently with her coat and bonnet.
“Now, Emeline,” she said, “I want to know where the Slocums live.”
Mrs. Dent gave a strange, long, half-lidded glance at her. She was finishing her coffee.
“Why?” she asked.
“I’m going over there and find out if they have heard anything from her daughter and Agnes since they went away. I don’t like what I heard last night.”
“You must have been dreaming.”
“It don’t make any odds whether I was or not. Does she play ‘The Maiden’s Prayer’ on the piano? I want to know.”
“What if she does? She plays it a little, I believe. I don’t know. She don’t half play it, anyhow; she ain’t got an ear.”
“That wasn’t half played last night. I don’t like such things happening. I ain’t superstitious, but I don’t like it. I’m going. Where do the Slocums live?”
“You go down the road over the bridge past the old grist mill, then you turn to the left; it’s the only house for half a mile. You can’t miss it. It has a barn with a ship in full sail on the cupola.”
“Well, I’m going. I don’t feel easy.”
About two hours later Rebecca returned. There were red spots on her cheeks. She looked wild. “I’ve been there,” she said, “and there isn’t a soul at home. Something has happened.”
“What has happened?”
“I don’t know. Something. I had a warning last night. There wasn’t a soul there. They’ve been sent for to Lincoln.”
“Did you see anybody to ask?” asked Mrs. Dent with thinly concealed anxiety.
“I asked the woman that lives on the turn of the road. She’s stone deaf. I suppose you know. She listened while I screamed at her to know where the Slocums were, and then she said, ‘Mrs. Smith don’t live here.’ I didn’t see anybody on the road, and that’s the only house. What do you suppose it means?”
“I don’t suppose it means much of anything,” replied Mrs. Dent coolly. “Mr. Slocum is conductor on the railroad, and he’d be away anyway, and Mrs. Slocum often goes early when he does, to spend the day with her sister in Porter’s Falls. She’d be more likely to go away than Addie.”
“And you don’t think anything has happened?” Rebecca asked with diminishing distrust before the reasonableness of it.
“Land, no!”
Rebecca went upstairs to lay aside her coat and bonnet. But she came hurrying back with them still on.
“Who’s been in my room?” she gasped. Her face was pale as ashes.
Mrs. Dent also paled as she regarded her.
“What do you mean?” she asked slowly.
“I found when I went upstairs that—little nightgown of—Agnes’s on—the bed, laid out. It was—laid out. The sleeves were folded across the bosom, and there was that little red rose between them. Emeline, what is it? Emeline, what’s the matter? Oh!”
Mrs. Dent was struggling for breath in great, choking gasps. She clung to the back of a chair. Rebecca, trembling herself so she could scarcely keep on her feet, got her some water.
As soon as she recovered herself Mrs. Dent regarded her with eyes full of the strangest mixture of fear and horror and hostility.
“What do you mean talking so?” she said in a hard voice.
“It is there.”
“Nonsense. You threw it down and it fell that way.”
“It was folded in my bureau drawer.”
“It couldn’t have been.”
“Who picked that red rose?”
“Look on the bush,” Mrs. Dent replied shortly.
Rebecca looked at her; her mouth gaped. She hurried out of the room. When she came back her eyes seemed to protrude. (She had in the meantime hastened upstairs, and come down with tottering steps, clinging to the banisters.)
“Now I want to know what all this means?” she demanded.
“What what means?”
“The rose is on the bush, and it’s gone from the bed in my room! Is this house haunted, or what?”
“I don’t know anything about a house being haunted. I don’t believe in such things. Be you crazy?” Mrs. Dent spoke with gathering force. The colour flashed back to her cheeks.
“No,” said Rebecca shortly. “I ain’t crazy yet, but I shall be if this keeps on much longer. I’m going to find out where that girl is before night.”
Mrs. Dent eyed her.
“What be you going to do?”
“I’m going to Lincoln.”
A faint triumphant smile overspread Mrs. Dent’s large face.
“You can’t,” said she; “there ain’t any train.”
“No train?”
“No; there ain’t any afternoon train from the Falls to Lincoln.”
“Then I’m going over to the Slocums’ again to-night.”
However, Rebecca did not go; such a rain came up as deterred even her resolution, and she had only her best dresses with her. Then in the evening came the letter from the Michigan village which she had left nearly a week ago. It was from her cousin, a single woman, who had come to keep her house while she was away. It was a pleasant unexciting letter enough, all the first of it, and related mostly how she missed Rebecca; how she hoped she was having pleasant weather and kept her health; and how her friend, Mrs. Greenaway, had come to stay with her since she had felt lonesome the first night in the house; how she hoped Rebecca would have no objections to this, altho
ugh nothing had been said about it, since she had not realized that she might be nervous alone. The cousin was painfully conscientious, hence the letter. Rebecca smiled in spite of her disturbed mind as she read it, then her eye caught the postscript. That was in a different hand, purporting to be written by the friend, Mrs. Hannah Greenaway, informing her that the cousin had fallen down the cellar stairs and broken her hip, and was in a dangerous condition, and begging Rebecca to return at once, as she herself was rheumatic and unable to nurse her properly, and no one else could be obtained.
Rebecca looked at Mrs. Dent, who had come to her room with the letter quite late; it was half-past nine, and she had gone upstairs for the night.
“Where did this come from?” she asked.
“Mr. Amblecrom brought it,” she replied.
“Who’s he?”
“The postmaster. He often brings the letters that come on the late mail. He knows I ain’t anybody to send. He brought yours about your coming. He said he and his wife came over on the ferry-boat with you.”
“I remember him,” Rebecca replied shortly. “There’s bad news in this letter.”
Mrs. Dent’s face took on an expression of serious inquiry.
“Yes, my Cousin Harriet has fallen down the cellar stairs—they were always dangerous—and she’s broken her hip, and I’ve got to take the first train home to-morrow.”
“You don’t say so. I’m dreadfully sorry.”
“No, you ain’t sorry!” said Rebecca, with a look as if she leaped. “You’re glad. I don’t know why, but you’re glad. You’ve wanted to get rid of me for some reason ever since I came. I don’t know why. You’re a strange woman. Now you’ve got your way, and I hope you’re satisfied.”
“How you talk.”
Mrs. Dent spoke in a faintly injured voice, but there was a light in her eyes.
“I talk the way it is. Well, I’m going to-morrow morning, and I want you, just as soon as Agnes Dent comes home, to send her out to me. Don’t you wait for anything. You pack what clothes she’s got, and don’t wait even to mend them, and you buy her ticket. I’ll leave the money, and you send her along. She don’t have to change cars. You start her off, when she gets home, on the next train!”
“Very well,” replied the other woman. She had an expression of covert amusement.
“Mind you do it.”
“Very well, Rebecca.”
Rebecca started on her journey the next morning. When she arrived, two days later, she found her cousin in perfect health. She found, moreover, that the friend had not written the postscript in the cousin’s letter. Rebecca would have returned to Ford Village the next morning, but the fatigue and nervous strain had been too much for her. She was not able to move from her bed. She had a species of low fever induced by anxiety and fatigue. But she could write, and she did, to the Slocums, and she received no answer. She also wrote to Mrs. Dent; she even sent numerous telegrams, with no response. Finally she wrote to the postmaster, and an answer arrived by the first possible mail. The letter was short, curt, and to the purpose. Mr. Amblecrom, the postmaster, was a man of few words, and especially wary as to his expressions in a letter.
“Dear madam,” he wrote, “your favour rec’ed. No Slocums in Ford’s Village. All dead. Addie ten years ago, her mother two years later, her father five. House vacant. Mrs. John Dent said to have neglected stepdaughter. Girl was sick. Medicine not given. Talk of taking action. Not enough evidence. House said to be haunted. Strange sights and sounds. Your niece, Agnes Dent, died a year ago, about this time.
“Yours truly,
“THOMAS AMBLECROM.”
Sources
“The Crime of Micah Rood” by Elia W. Peattie, originally published in Cosmopolitan Magazine, Schlicht & Field, New York, January 1888.
Elia W. Peattie with her son
“The Devil and Tom Walker” by Washington Irving, originally published in Tales of a Traveller by Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. (Irving’s pseudonym), H. C. Cary & I. Lee, Philadelphia, 1824.
Washington Irving, circa 1855
“An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge” by Ambrose Bierce, originally published in the San Francisco Examiner, July 13, 1890.
Ambrose Bierce
“The Snow-Image: A Childish Miracle” by Nathaniel Hawthorne, first published in The Snow-Image, and Other Twice-Told Tales by Nathaniel Hawthorne, Ticknor, Reed & Fields, Boston, 1852.
Nathaniel Hawthorne, 1851
“A Ghost of the Sierras” by Bret Harte, first published in The Writings of Bret Harte: Tales of the Argonauts, Houghton, Mifflin & Company, Boston, 1876.
Bret Harte, 1872
“The Lady’s Maid’s Bell” by Edith Wharton, first published in Scribner’s Magazine, New York, November 1902.
Edith Wharton
“A Ghost Story” by Mark Twain, first published in Mark Twain’s Sketches, New and Old, American Publishing Company, Hartford, CT, 1875.
Mark Twain, 1867
“The Night Call” by Henry van Dyke, first published in The Unknown Quantity by Henry van Dyke, Harper & Brothers, New York, 1913.
Henry van Dyke, 1920
“Tom Toothacre’s Ghost Story” by Harriet Beecher Stowe, first published in Sam Lawson’s Oldtown Fireside Stories by Harriet Beecher Stowe, Houghton, Mifflin & Company, Boston, 1871.
Harriet Beecher Stowe, 1880
“A Strange Story from the Coast” by Rebecca Harding Davis, first published in Lippincott’s Monthly Magazine: A Popular Journal of General Literature, Philadelphia, January 1879.
Rebecca Harding Davis
“The Woman at Seven Brothers” by Wilbur Daniel Steele, first published in Harper’s Magazine, New York, December 1908.
Wilbur Daniel Steele
“The Furnished Room” by O. Henry, first published in the New York Sunday World magazine, August 14, 1904.
William Sydney Porter, pseudonym O. Henry
“The Cross-Roads” by Amy Lowell, first published in A Dome of Many- Coloured Glass, MacMillan Company, New York, 1916.
“Jean-ah Poquelin” by George Washington Cable, first published in Old Creole Days: A Story of Creole Life by George Washington Cable, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1879.
George Washington Cable, 1898
“Mistress Marian’s Light” by Gertrude Morton, first published in New England Magazine, Boston, 1889.
The cover of New England Magazine
“Consequences” by Willa Cather, first published in McClure’s Magazine, New York, November 1915.
Willa Cather
“The Tell-Tale Heart” by Edgar Allan Poe, first published in The Pioneer: A Literary and Critical Magazine, J. R. Lowell and R. Carter, Editors and Proprietors, Leland & Whiting, Boston, January–March 1843.
Edgar Allan Poe
“The Wind in the Rose-Bush” by Mary E. Wilkins Freeman, first published in The Wind in the Rose-Bush and Other Stories of the Supernatural, Doubleday, Page & Company, New York, 1902.
Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
Amy Lowell, 1916
Acknowledgments
Regardless whose name appears on the cover, every book is a collaborative effort involving many hands, and this little volume is no exception. My heartfelt thanks:
To Keith Wallman at Lyons Press, who has guided this project with professionalism, patience, and good humor.
To production editor Lynn Zelem, whose skill and good humor have made the review process for copy and page proofs smooth and painless.
To my former colleague, longtime friend, and editor and writer par excellence Tom McCarthy, for valuable help and advice.
To Nick Lyons, for first opening the doors i
nto the wonderful world of publishing. If not for Nick, none of this would ever have happened.
And, last but certainly not least, to Eileen, without whom none of this would be possible.
About the Editor
Bill Bowers is a freelance editor and writer. He lives in rural New England with his wife and longtime collaborator, Eileen Bowers.