Twenty-Five Ghost Stories
graceful figure as she stood draped in a red shawl, her veil floating
around her.
“How beautiful it is! But does it not make you feel a little
melancholy?” said she, extending her hand toward the dark horizon, which
was lighted a little by the last rays of the sun.
The afternoon wind blew violently, and sighed through the stunted trees
that grew around the stone cromlechs; not a dwelling nor a human being
was in sight. We hastened to get down, and silently retraced our steps
to the carriage.
“We must hurry,” said Albert; “the sky is threatening, and we shall have
scarcely time to reach home before night.”
We carefully wrapped the robes around his wife. She tied the veil around
her face, and the horses started into a rapid trot. It was growing dark;
the scenery around us was bare and desolate; clumps of fir trees here
and there and furze bushes formed the only vegetation. We began to feel
the cold, for the wind blew with fury; the only sound we heard was the
steady trot of the horses and the sharp clear tinkle of their bells.
Suddenly I felt the heavy grasp of a hand upon my shoulder. I turned my
head quickly. A horrible apparition presented itself before my eyes. In
the empty place at my side sat a hideous woman. I tried to cry out; the
phantom placed her fingers upon her lips to impose silence upon me. I
could not utter a sound. The woman was clothed in white linen; her head
was cowled; her face was overspread with a corpse-like pallor, and in
place of eyes were ghastly black cavities.
I sat motionless, overcome by terror.
The ghost suddenly stood up and leaned over the young wife. She
encircled her with her arms, and lowered her hideous head as if to kiss
her forehead.
“What a wind!” cried Madame Albert, turning precipitately toward me. “My
veil is torn.”
As she turned I felt the same infernal pressure on my shoulder, and the
place occupied by the phantom was empty. I looked out to the right and
left--the road was deserted, not an object in sight.
“What a dreadful gale!” said Madame Albert. “Did you feel it? I cannot
explain the terror that seized me; my veil was torn by the wind as if by
an invisible hand; I am trembling still.”
“Never mind,” said Albert, smiling; “wrap yourself up, my dear; we will
soon be warming ourselves by a good fire at home. I am starving.”
A cold perspiration covered my forehead; a shiver ran through me; my
tongue clove to the roof of my mouth, and I could not articulate a
sound; a sharp pain in my shoulder was the only sensible evidence that I
was not the victim of an hallucination. Putting my hand upon my aching
shoulder, I felt a rent in the cloak that was wrapped around me. I
looked at it; five perfectly distinct holes--visible traces of the grip
of the horrible phantom. I thought for a moment that I should die or
that my reason should leave me; it was, I think, the most dreadful
moment of my life.
Finally I became more calm; this nameless agony had lasted for some
minutes; I do not think it is possible for a human being to suffer more
than I did during that time. As soon as I had recovered my senses, I
thought at first I would tell my friends all that had passed, but
hesitated, and finally did not, fearing that my story would frighten
Madame Albert, and feeling sure my friend would not believe me. The
lights of the little city revived me, and gradually the oppression of
terror that overwhelmed me became lighter.
So soon as we reached home, Madame Albert untied her veil; it was
literally in shreds. I hoped to find my clothes whole and prove to
myself that it was all imagination. But no, the cloth was torn in five
places, just where the fingers had seized my shoulder. There was no
mark, however, upon my flesh, only a dull pain.
I returned to Paris the next day, where I endeavored to forget the
strange adventure; or at least when I thought of it, I would force
myself to think it an hallucination.
The day after my return I received a letter from my friend Albert. It
was edged with black. I opened it with a vague fear.
His wife had died the day of my return.
FROM THE TOMB.
TRANSLATED FROM THE FRENCH OF DE MAUPASSANT BY E. C. WAGGENER.
The guests filed slowly into the hotel’s great dining-hall and took
their places, the waiters began to serve them leisurely, to give the
tardy ones time to arrive and to save themselves the bother of bringing
back the courses; and the old bathers, the yearly habitues, with whom
the season was far advanced, kept a close watch on the door each time it
opened, hoping for the coming of new faces.
New faces! the single distraction of all pleasure resorts. We go to
dinner chiefly to canvass the daily arrivals, to wonder who they are,
what they do and what they think. A restless desire seems to have taken
possession of us, a longing for pleasant adventures, for friendly
acquaintances, perhaps, for possible lovers. In this elbow-to-elbow life
our unknown neighbors become of paramount importance. Curiosity is
piqued, sympathy on the alert and the social instinct doubly active.
We have hatreds for a week, friendships for a month, and view all men
with the special eyes of watering-place intimacy. Sometimes during an
hour’s chat after dinner, under the trees of the park, where ripples a
healing spring, we discover men of superior intellect and surprising
merit, and a month later have wholly forgotten these new friends, so
charming at first sight.
There, too, more specially than elsewhere, serious and lasting ties are
formed. We see each other every day, we learn to know each other very
soon, and in the affection that springs up so rapidly between us there
is mingled much of the sweet abandon of old and tried intimates. And
later on, how tender are the memories cherished of the first hours of
this friendship, of the first communion in which the soul came to light,
of the first glances that questioned and responded to the secret
thoughts and interrogatories the lips have not dared yet to utter, of
the first cordial confidence and delicious sensation of opening one’s
heart to someone who has seemed to lay bare to you his own! The very
dullness of the hours, as it were, the monotony of days all alike, but
renders more complete the rapid budding and blooming of friendship’s
flower.
That evening, then, as on every evening, we awaited the appearance of
unfamiliar faces.
There came only two, but very peculiar ones, those of a man and a
woman--father and daughter. They seemed to have stepped from the pages
of some weird legend; and yet there was an attraction about them, albeit
an unpleasant one, that made me set them down at once as the victims of
some fatality.
The father was tall, spare, a little bent, with hair blanched white; too
white for his still young countenance, and in his manner and about his
person the sedate austerity of carriage that bespeaks the Puritan. The
daughter was, possibly, some twenty-four or twenty-five years of age.
She was very slight, emaciated, her exceedingly pale countenance bearing
a languid, spiritless expression; one of those people whom we sometimes
encounter, apparently too weak for the cares and tasks of life, too
feeble to move or do the things that we must do every day. Nevertheless
the girl was pretty, with the ethereal beauty of an apparition. It was
she, undoubtedly, who came for the benefit of the waters.
They chanced to be placed at table immediately opposite to me; and I was
not long in noticing that the father, too, had a strange affection,
something wrong about the nerves it seemed. Whenever he was going to
reach for anything, his hand, with a jerky twitch, described a sort of
fluttering zig-zag, before he was able to grasp what he was after. Soon,
the motion disturbed me so much, I kept my head turned in order not to
see it. But not before I had also observed that the young girl kept her
glove on her left hand while she ate.
Dinner ended, I went out as usual for a turn in the grounds belonging to
the establishment. A sort of park, I might say, stretching clear to the
little station of Auvergne, Chatel-Guyon, nestling in a gorge at the
foot of the high mountain, from which flowed the sparkling, bubbling
springs, hot from the furnace of an ancient volcano. Beyond us there,
the domes, small extinct craters--of which Chatel-Guyon is the starting
point--raised their serrated heads above the long chain; while beyond
the domes came two distinct regions, one of them, needle-like peaks, the
other of bold, precipitous mountains.
It was very warm that evening, and I contented myself with pacing to and
fro under the rustling trees, gazing at the mountains and listening to
the strains of the band, pouring from the Casino, situated on a knoll
that overlooked the grounds.
Presently, I perceived the father and daughter coming toward me with
slow steps. I bowed to them in that pleasant Continental fashion with
which one always salutes his hotel companions. The gentleman halted at
once.
“Pardon me, sir,” said he, “but may I ask if you can direct us to a
short walk, easy and pretty, if possible?”
“Certainly,” I answered, and offered to lead them myself to the valley
through which the swift river flows--a deep, narrow cleft between two
great declivities, rocky and wooded.
They accepted, and as we walked, we naturally discussed the virtue of
the mineral waters. They had, as I had surmised, come there on his
daughter’s account.
“She has a strange malady,” said he, “the seat of which her physicians
cannot determine. She suffers from the most inexplicable nervous
symptoms. Sometimes they declare her ill of a heart disease; sometimes
of a liver complaint; again of a spinal trouble. At present they
attribute it to the stomach--that great motor and regulator of the
body--this Protean disease of a thousand forms, a thousand modes of
attack. It is why we are here. I, myself, think it is her nerves. In any
case it is sad.”
This reminded me of his own jerking hand.
“It may be hereditary,” said I, “your own nerves are a little disturbed,
are they not?”
“Mine?” he answered, tranquilly. “Not at all, I have always possessed
the calmest nerves.” Then, suddenly, as if bethinking himself:
“For this,” touching his hand, “is not nerves, but the result of a
shock, a terrible shock that I suffered once. Fancy it, sir, this child
of mine has been buried alive!”
I could find nothing to say, I was dumb with surprise.
“Yes,” he continued, “buried alive; but hear the story, it is not long.
For some time past Juliette had seemed affected with a disordered action
of the heart. We were finally certain that the trouble was organic and
feared the worst. One day it came, she was brought in lifeless--dead.
She had fallen dead while walking in the garden. Physicians came in
haste, but nothing could be done. She was gone. For two days and nights
I watched beside her myself, and with my own hands placed her in her
coffin, which I followed to the cemetery and saw placed in the family
vault. This was in the country, in the province of Lorraine.
“It had been my wish, too, that she should be buried in her jewels,
bracelets, necklace and rings, all presents that I had given her, and in
her first ball dress. You can imagine, sir, the state of my heart in
returning home. She was all that I had left, my wife had been dead for
many years. I returned, in truth, half mad, shut myself alone in my room
and fell into my chair dazed, unable to move, merely a miserable,
breathing wreck.
“Soon my old valet, Prosper, who had helped me place Juliette in her
coffin and lay her away for her last sleep, came in noiselessly to see
if he could not induce me to eat. I shook my head, answering nothing. He
persisted:
“‘Monsieur is wrong; this will make him ill. Will monsieur allow me,