The trouble at Pinelands A detective story
filmy, lacy robe, and her fine black hair, which lay across one
shoulder, in a braid thicker than my wrist, fell down the front of her
negligee, right to her knees.
She groped for my arm and clutched it tight. Neither of us thought of
making a light. Perhaps we both feared what that light might reveal.
“Let’s go down to Aunt Mary’s room,” she whispered. “She’ll be scared to
death, poor thing! I’m scared, my own self, and just think of her, not
able even to move!”
A plump, delicious little thing, she huddled close against me. I felt
her tender body tremble and put an arm across one shoulder.
“Come along, child,” said I. “But give me a hand on the stairs here,
because my rheumatism is pretty bad to-night. What was it?”
Dorothy cuddled my arm. “Poor dear!” she whispered. “Careful of that
step; we’re just at the turn. Why, it was the Poltergeist.”
“Huh?” I stopped short, repeating the outlandish word. “Poltergeist?
What’s that?”
“Why, that scream and everything. It comes every few nights lately, only
I never said anything about it outside, because it upsets Aunt Mary so.
She won’t have me even mention it to Lewis, let alone any other body;
just says such things oughtn’t to be talked about. After I showed her
the broken dishes she----Oh-h-h!”
She broke off, gripping my arm tighter still, pressing close against me,
to the detriment of my sorer shoulder; then she made a quaint little
sound, a sort of whispered scream.
I stared violently, too; for there was a ghostly rustling in the lower
hall, just by our knees, and something dim and white and shapeless
seemed to whip past us and disappear. I say seemed; for it was too dark
to be sure, and I stretched out my hand toward it and felt nothing. It
might have been pure fancy, a breath of air through the hall, a mouse
scurrying along the wall.
“There, Dotty!” I whispered. “It wasn’t anything--and, besides, it’s
gone. See?”
“I know,” she agreed doubtfully. “I know it wasn’t anything, and Peter
always says so, too. He watched two nights to make sure; only he went to
sleep both times. But it scares me just the same.”
By now we had groped our way to Aunt Mary’s room. She slept on the
ground floor, being, as I may have said, paralyzed from the waist down.
Her nurse, Miss Christie, slept in a little chamber which opened off of
her patient’s room.
We listened, our heads close together, pressed against the closed door;
presently we heard the sound of heavy breathing--a ladylike snore.
“That’s Miss Christie,” whispered Dorothy. “It didn’t wake her up. Uncle
George, she is the sleepingest thing! She makes me mad sometimes, she’s
so placid.”
I heard the creak of springs, as some one moved in bed, and a weak, sad,
patient voice called:
“Is any one there?”
“It’s me, aunty,” replied Dorothy. “We came to see if you were all
right. Did you hear it?”
In the room beyond us the bed creaked again, as if some one struggled to
sit up in it. Then Aunt Mary’s voice:
“Miss Christie!”
No answer.
A sigh. Then louder, but still patiently, sweetly: “Miss Christie!
Nurse!”
“Aw-ugh!” A yawn, a sleepy murmur, and then, when Aunt Mary had called
once more: “Yes, Miss McGregor, I’m comin’! Ho-hum!”
Bare feet plumped to the floor and padded out toward us; I could fancy
the nurse digging her fists into sleep-blurred eyes.
“Wha’s a matter?”
“Snap on the lights, please; now help me to sit up. Hand me that shawl.
Open the door, please; Dorothy’s out there.”
A line of light showed at our feet, along the threshold. We heard a
bustle within, and presently the door opened. I hesitated a moment, half
blinded by the sudden light. Yet I saw the retreating figure of the
nurse, dumpy and shapeless in a bath robe, her head an aureole of
tousled blond hair. She vanished into her own alcove room, and I heard
her drop upon the bed, with one more yawn, followed, without appreciable
pause, by gentle snores.
Dorothy turned to me. The blue of her negligee matched her sea-blue
eyes, and her soft black hair was a cloud about her dimpled face, still
delicately flushed with sleep. Light and company had quite restored her
courage; she laughed at me merrily.
“Come along in, Uncle George! You look lovely. No? Well, just a minute,
then.”
She turned to her aunt. The old lady was propped high with pillows, a
beautiful old Paisley shawl wrapped about her thin shoulders. Her
snow-white hair was dressed exactly as for a ball. She was a wonderful
old lady, always precise and well groomed, in spite of her invalidism.
Her black eyes were bright, but her thin, patrician face bore a look of
patient sadness. She stretched out a slender hand.
“There, child! What is it?”
“Why--why, aunty, you know! Didn’t you hear it?”
Aunt Mary sighed. “Yes, Dorothy, dear, but these are things best not
spoken about.”
“Did it wake you up?”
“No, child. I haven’t been asleep. Shift that pillow, please; the pain
is worse to-night.” She sighed again, with sad, upturned eyes. “It seems
as if I had enough to bear, without that. But it’s all for the best, no
doubt. I must be patient!” She had the sweet, resigned expression of
some aged saint. “I was just getting quieted down, too. There, child,
run back to bed. So sorry you were disturbed, Mr. Uhlman,” she told me
over her niece’s shoulder. “This child is fanciful--nervous.”
“Did I disturb you, too, Aunt Mary?” Dorothy’s voice was remorseful.
“But I thought you’d be frightened, dear.”
Aunt Mary made a little deprecatory gesture. “Why? I’m not afraid of
spirits, my child; I’ll be with them soon enough. Go now, but call Miss
Christie first. I want her to change my pillows.”
She closed her eyes, sighed wearily, then spoke again to me, where I
stood in the dark hall.
“You mustn’t mind what you heard, Mr. Uhlman. It’s nothing--merely a
materialization. Trivial spirits can’t harm us.”
We were dismissed. As Dorothy closed the door very gently, I heard Aunt
Mary say: “Raise me a little more, Miss Christie. And another pillow,
please. My head’s very bad again. This has upset me.” She sighed
plaintively. Both tone and words were of an angelic resignation; I could
not understand Dorothy’s manner.
For, now that we were alone in the dark hall, she gritted her little,
even teeth together. “Darn!” I heard her mutter.
“What is it, child?”
“Oh, nothing! Aunt Mary’s on another rampage. Wish I’d left her alone,
but you never know how to take her.”
“My dear!” I reproved. “You oughtn’t to speak of your aunt so. She has a
hard time, poor lady!”
Dorothy laughed shortly. “So do I! Oh, I know you think I’m horrid, but
you just stick around and see for yourself.”
I sighed. The young are intolerant of invalidism. “But about the other
thing, Dorothy--the scream we heard, and all that? What did you mean by
‘Poltergeist?’”
The girl shook her head. “Come away, Uncle George. She’ll hear us. Never
mind that now. Oh”--as I persisted--“that’s what Aunt Mary calls
‘manifestations,’ screams at night, broken dishes, things missing from
the pantry, and all that. She wrote to some learned society about it,
and they said it was a Poltergeist, a little, malicious ghost that plays
tricks like that. They wanted to send somebody here to investigate.
Come, we’ve got to get out of here; Aunt Mary has ears like a lynx. In
the morning she’ll tell how our talking kept her awake all night long.
Come on, Uncle George, do! Never mind the ghost. I hear enough about
that; Aunt Mary talks of it to me for hours on end, when she’s in the
right humor. She’s a great spiritualist, you know.”
In silence she bustled me back to my room. One would have thought that
she was actually afraid of that sweet, patient old saint, her Aunt Mary.
CHAPTER II
BOBWHITE
I went back to bed, but not to sleep. The moon had set, and the pitch
dark of the old house intensified all my foolish fancies. Over and over
I went through the round of morbid thought: my nephew’s marriage, the
bleak, friendless future that awaited me; this dismal old barracks,
pervaded by the sinister odor of honeysuckle; the faint, mysterious
creakings and stirrings of its ancient walls. I caught myself listening,
breathless, for a repetition of that awful screech; I vowed that nothing
should induce me to spend another night in the haunted place. I paid
Dorothy and her aunt the meed of a tremendous admiration because they
accepted this Poltergeist so calmly.
Sleep stood far off from me, while the night dragged inexorably on, and
the deep-toned grandfather clock on the landing tolled out hour after
hour. At last I felt the first subtle changes of coming dawn.
From somewhere a fugitive breeze, the merest vagrant breath of air,
stirred in the solemn pines, so that they whispered. The leaves of the
honeysuckle vines at my window moved, and the heavy scent of their
flowers poured in more strongly. The air seemed cleaner, cooler. One
could not say that it was lighter, but the darkness grew more bearable.
And then, little by little, the east faded, turned gray, lavender, pink;
then it began to flush with the first, faint, exquisite tints that
precede sunrise.
I sighed deep and turned over. My weary, strained limbs relaxed. Now
that the night was gone, and daylight began to be a promise almost
fulfilled, ghosts troubled me no longer, nor did sad thoughts have power
to haunt me. “Joy cometh in the morning,” the psalmist said. To me came
peace at least, and I settled to rest.
My lids were heavy with that delicious languor which welcomes sleep
after a long, troubled night; an insistent whistling, right under my
window, roused me.
I sat up, muttering angrily. Some milkman, no doubt, or some furnace
boy, wooing the cook. There it was again; a fine hour for love-making!
Would she never wake up? Confound all cooks and their swains!
Then my delightful drowse fled away, leaving me wide awake, my last hope
of slumber gone. I knew that this was no amorous milkman, whose racket
might be hushed by well-directed abuse.
“Bob_white_! Bob_white_!”
I held an aching head between my hands. That insistent two-toned
whistle, repeated again and again, in maddening iteration, came from no
man, but a bird--the “bobwhite,” the quail of North Carolina, which some
misguided idiots would have protected as a songbird!
But now it was full light, and, I suppose, something after five o’clock.
With a dispirited sigh I arose and began to dress slowly. I had made
more of a sacrifice than I realized when I offered, in my innocence, to
spend the night at Fort House.
I shaved and dressed leisurely, to the accompaniment of bobwhite’s
continual clamor; at last I descended the wide stairs silently, lest I
wake others. I heard no stir from Dorothy’s room; she, no doubt, was
well used to the song of quail. As I may have said, Fort House stood
apart and alone in its grove of pines, and wild quail might well nest in
the tangle of scrub oaks behind it. They sang under her window every
morning, I suppose, so that Dorothy heard them no longer. But I rejoiced
privately that the house I shared with my nephew, Lewis Parker, stood
close to its neighbors and far off from wild birds and, I hoped, wilder
ghosts.
But, as I reached the ground floor and tiptoed past Aunt Mary’s door, I
had proof that bobwhite had disturbed others beside myself. For all her
long stay in this house, Miss McGregor was not yet used to the outcry of
quail, it appeared.
“Miss Christie!” I heard. “Miss Christie! Dear me, has she gone to sleep
again? Miss Christie!”
A sleepy murmur from the inner room.
“Miss Christie! Get dressed, please, and go out. See if you can’t drive
that wretched bird away; I can’t stand it any longer!”