Then I heard a voice say, “If he is dead, I can never forgive myself; I was to blame.”
Another replied, “He is not dead, I know we can save him if only we reach the hospital in time. Drive like hell, cocher! twenty francs for you, if you get there in three minutes.”
Then there was night again, and nothingness, until I suddenly awoke and stared around. I lay in a hospital ward, very white and sunny, some yellow fleurs-de-lis stood beside the head of the pallet, and a tall sister of mercy sat by my side.
To tell the story in a few words, I was in the Hotel Dieu, where the men had taken me that fearful night of the twelfth of June. I asked for Fargeau or Duchesne, and by and by the latter came, and sitting beside the bed told me all that I did not know.
It seems that they had sat, each in his room, hour after hour, hearing nothing, very much bored, and disappointed. Soon after two o’clock Fargeau, who was in the next room, called to me to ask if I was awake. I gave no reply, and, after shouting once or twice, he took his lantern and came to investigate. The door was locked on the inside! He instantly called d’Ardeche and Duchesne, and together they hurled themselves against the door. It resisted. Within they could hear irregular footsteps dashing here and there, with heavy breathing. Although frozen with terror, they fought to destroy the door and finally succeeded by using a great slab of marble that formed the shelf of the mantel in Fargeau’s room. As the door crashed in, they were suddenly hurled back against the walls of the corridor, as though by an explosion, the lanterns were extinguished, and they found themselves in utter silence and darkness.
As soon as they recovered from the shock, they leaped into the room and fell over my body in the middle of the floor. They lighted one of the lanterns, and saw the strangest sight that can be imagined. The floor and walls to the height of about six feet were running with something that seemed like stagnant water, thick, glutinous, sickening. As for me, I was drenched with the same cursed liquid. The odor of musk was nauseating. They dragged me away, stripped off my clothing, wrapped me in their coats, and hurried to the hospital, thinking me perhaps dead. Soon after sunrise d’Ardeche left the hospital, being assured that I was in a fair way to recovery, with time, and with Fargeau went up to examine by daylight the traces of the adventure that was so nearly fatal. They were too late. Fire engines were coming down the street as they passed the Academie. A neighbor rushed up to d’Ardeche: “O Monsieur! what misfortune, yet what fortune! It is true la Bouche d’Enfer – I beg pardon, the residence of the lamented Mlle. de Tartas – was burned, but not wholly, only the ancient building. The wings were saved, and for that great credit is due the brave firemen. Monsieur will remember them, no doubt.”
It was quite true. Whether a forgotten lantern, overturned in the excitement, had done the work, or whether the origin of the fire was more supernatural, it was certain that “the Mouth of Hell” was no more. A last engine was pumping slowly as d’Ardeche came up; half a dozen limp, and one distended, hose stretched through the porte cochère, and within only the facade of Francis I remained, draped still with the black stems of the wisteria. Beyond lay a great vacancy, where thin smoke was rising slowly. Every floor was gone, and the strange halls of Mlle. Blaye de Tartas were only a memory.
With d’Ardeche I visited the place last year, but in the stead of the ancient walls was then only a new and ordinary building, fresh and respectable; yet the wonderful stories of the old Bouche d’Enfer still lingered in the Quarter, and will hold there, I do not doubt, until the Day of Judgment.
The Southwest Chamber
Mary Eleanor Freeman
Prospectus
Address:
Ackley Mansion, near Acton, New England, USA.
Property:
Circa nineteenth-century house. Large, vaunted rooms, with fine bay windows and decorated in exquisite style. A new chamber extension offers additional accommodation.
Viewing Date:
Summer, 1903.
Agent:
Mary Eleanor Freeman (1852–1930) was born in Randolph, Massachusetts, and while working as secretary to the author and physician, Oliver Wendell Holmes, began writing poetry and novels with a strong New England regional flavour. When the supernatural caught her interest, the result was a group of short stories which combined domestic realism with supernaturalism and these have proved very influential. Several of the tales are about the persistence of strong emotions in supernatural terms – such as “The Shadow on the Wall” and “The Lost Ghost” – but none are more dramatic than “The Southwest Chamber” about the ghost of a grim old aunt whose viciousness and hatred manifests itself as a force of evil.
“That school-teacher from Acton is coming to-day,” said Miss Sophia Gill. “I have decided to put her in the southwest chamber.”
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. 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 while ago,” faltered Amanda.
“Well,” said Sophia, “of all the silly notions! If you are going to pick out rooms where nobody has died you’ll have your hands full. I don’t believe there’s a room or a bed in this house that somebody hasn’t passed away in.”
“Well, I suppose I am silly to think of it, and she’d better go in there,” said Amanda.
“I know she had. Now I guess you’d better go 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.
Nobody knew how this elderly woman with the untrammelled imagination of a child dreaded to enter the southwest chamber, and yet she could not have told why she had the dread. She had occupied rooms which had been once tenanted by persons now dead. 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 were closed, the blinds also. The room was in a film of green gloom. The furniture loomed out vaguely. The white counterpane on the bed showed like a blank page.
Amanda crossed the room, opened one of the 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. The closet door stood ajar. There was a glimpse of purple drapery floating from a peg inside. 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 odor of lovage. Aunt Harriet had had a habit of eating lovage and had carried it constantly in her pocket.
Amanda received the odor with a start as if before an actual presence. She was always conscious of this fragrance of lovage as she tidied the room. She spread fresh towels over the washstand and the bureau; she made the bed. Then she thought to take the purple gown from the easy chair where she had just thrown it 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.
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.
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. Sophia 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.
“Did you come up in Aunt Harriet’s room while I was there?” she asked weakly.
“Of course I didn’t. Why?”
“Nothing,” replied Amanda.
Suddenly she realized that she could not tell her sister what had happened. She knew what Sophia would say if she told her. She dropped into a chair and began shelling the beans with nerveless fingers.
For the next hour or two the 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. 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 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 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.
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.
Flora, their niece, was a very gentle girl, rather pretty, with large, serious blue eyes, a seldom smiling 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.
“Flora,” said Sophia, “you go up to the room that was your Greataunt Harriet’s and take the water-pitcher off the washstand and fill it with water.”
“In that chamber?” asked Flora. Her face changed a little.
“Yes, in that chamber,” returned her Aunt Sophia sharply. “Go right along.”
Flora went. 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.
Then the village stage-coach was seen driving round 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. “Show her right up to her room.”
Amanda removed her apron hastily and obeyed. Sophia hurried with her cake. 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.
“For the land sake! She hasn’t used all that great pitcher full 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.
“Didn’t I see you filling the pitcher with water not ten minutes ago, I want to know?”
“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 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. “You ask Aunt Amanda.”
“I’ll ask nobody. The 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 quick, and 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 snivelled softly as she went out, balancing it carefully against her slender hip. Sophia followed her up the stairs to the chamber where Miss Louisa Stark was waiting for the water to remove the soil of travel.
Louisa Stark was stout and solidly built. 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 –” 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.
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 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 asked.
Amanda nodded.
“I guess if you feel better I’ll just get that dress of Aunt Harriet’s and take it up garret.”
Sophia hurried out, but soon returned.
“I want to know,” she said, looking sharply and quickly around, “if I brought that purple dress in here? 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.”
Sophia’s mouth was set; her eyes upon her sister’s scared, agitated face were full of hard challenge.
The Mammoth Book of Haunted House Stories (Mammoth Books) Page 14