Twenty-Five Ghost Stories
had to content myself until the morrow came.
Nancy Black was an old friend from my girlhood, who had owned large
property in the town, and lived all alone in a spacious stone house
directly opposite my home, and who, when dying, had left me the sole
legatee of her property.
When morning came I took the keys, and, with my maid, went over to
Nancy’s house. It had never been disturbed since her death, which was
sudden and somewhat singular, and the furniture remained just as she
left it when taken to her last resting place. We went to the room Nancy
had directed. I bade Sarah take up the carpet, and, sure enough, there
was a plank with a knot-hole in it; so I sent her from the room, and
lifted the plank myself, and there, between the two joints, rested a
long box, the lid not fastened. Opening it, I was horrified to see two
skeletons--those of an infant and of a woman, small in stature and
delicate frame. In a moment it flashed before me that I saw all that
remained of Nancy Black’s young sister, a girl of seventeen, who had
left home somewhat mysteriously years ago, and had died while absent--at
least, that was the version Nancy had given of her absence, and no one
had dreamed of doubting it, her tale was so naturally told.
Left orphans when Lucy was only two years and Nancy eighteen, she had
devoted her life to the care of this young girl, and when she found her
sister had fallen, she, in her pride of name and position, had destroyed
mother and child, that her shame might not be known, and had lived all
those dreary years in that house with her fearful secret.
Round the box, heaped up on every side, were money and jewels, and a
parchment scroll among them had written on it: “Lucy’s share of our
father’s estate.” I carried out Nancy’s wishes to the letter, for I now
firmly believed that she had come to me herself that night. To avoid
scandal resting on the dead, I took our clergyman into my confidence,
and with his assistance had the remains buried quietly in consecrated
ground. The money and jewels were given to the poor, and the old
building I turned into a home for destitute females; and morning and
night, as I kneel in prayer, I pray forgiveness to rest upon Nancy Black
and peace to her troubled soul.
A FIGHT WITH A GHOST.
BY Q. E. D.
“No, I never believed much in ghosts,” said the doctor. “But I was
always rather afraid of them.”
“Have you ever seen one?” asked one of the other men.
The doctor took his cigar out of his mouth and contemplated the ash for
a moment or two before replying. “I have had some rather startling
experiences,” he said, after a pause, during which the rest of us
exchanged glances, for the doctor has seen many things and is not averse
to talking about them in congenial company. “Would you care about
hearing one of them? It gives me the cold shivers now to speak of it.”
We nodded, and the doctor, taking a sip as an antidote to the shivers,
began:
“You remember George Carson, who played for the ‘Varsity some years ago;
big chap, with a light mustache? Well, I saw a good deal of him before
he married, while he was reading for the bar in town. It was just after
he became engaged to Miss Stonor, who is now Mrs. Carson, that he asked
me to go down to a place which his people had taken in the country. Miss
Stonor was to be there and he wanted me to meet her. I could not go down
for Christmas Day, as I had promised to be with my people. But as I had
been working a bit too hard, and wanted a few days’ rest, I decided to
run down for a few days about the New Year.
“Woodcote was a pleasant enough place to look at. There were two packs
of hounds within easy distance, and it was not far enough from a station
to cut you off completely from the morning papers. The Carsons had been
lucky, I thought, in coming across such a good house at such a moderate
figure. For, as George told me, the owner had been obliged to go abroad
for his health, and was anxious not to leave the place empty all the
winter. It was an old house, with big gables and preposterous corners
all over the place, and you couldn’t walk ten paces along any of the
passages without tumbling up or down stairs. But it had been patched
from time to time and, among other improvements, a big billiard-room had
been built out at the back. A country house in the winter without a
billiard-room, when the frost stops hunting, is just--well, not even a
gilded prison. The party was a small one; besides George and his father
and mother, there were only a couple of Misses Carson, who, being
somewhere in the early teens, didn’t count, and Miss Stonor, who, of
course, counted a good deal, and, lastly, myself.
“Miss Stonor ought to have been happy, for George Carson, besides being
an excellent fellow all around, was by no means a bad match, being an
only son with considerable expectations. But, somehow or other, she did
not strike me as looking either very well or very happy. She gave me the
impression of having something on her mind, which made her alternately
nervous and listless. George, I fancied, noticed it, and was puzzled by
it, for I caught him several times watching her with an anxious and
inquiring look, but, as I was not there as a doctor, of course it was no
business of mine, though I discovered the reason before I left Woodcote.
“The second night after my arrival--we had been playing, I remember, a
family pool; the rest had gone upstairs to bed--George and I adjourned
to a sort of study, which he had arranged upstairs, for a final smoke
and a chat before turning in. The study was next to his bedroom, and
parted off from it by curtains. As we were settling down I missed my
pipe, and remembered that I had laid it down in the billiard-room. On
principle I never smoke another man’s pipe, so I lit a candle, the house
being in darkness, and started away in search of my own. The house
looked awfully weird by the flickering light of a solitary candle, and
the stairs creaked in a particularly gruesome way behind me, just for
all the world as though someone were following at my heels. I found my
pipe where I had expected in the billiard-room, and came back in perhaps
a little more hurry than was absolutely necessary. Which, perhaps,
explains why I stumbled in the uncertain light over a couple of
unforeseen stairs, and dropped my candle. Of course it went out, but
after a little groping I found it. Having no matches with me I was
obliged to feel my way along the banisters, for it was so dark that I
could not see my hand in front of me. And as I slowly advanced, sliding
my hand along the broad balustrade at my side, it suddenly slid over
something cold and clammy, which was not balustrade at all; for,
stopping dead, and closing my fingers round it for an instant, I felt
that I was holding another hand, a skinny, bony hand, which writhed
itself slowly from my grasp. And though I could hear nothing and see
nothing, I was yet conscious that something was brushing past me and
going up the stairs.
“‘Hi--what’s that? Who are you?’ I called.
“There was no answer.
“I admit that I was in a regular funk. I must have shown it in my face.
“‘What’s the matter?’ asked George, as I blundered into his study.
“‘Oh, nothing,’ I answered; ‘dropped my candle and lost the way.’
“‘But who were you talking to?’
“‘I was only swearing at the candle,’ I replied.
“‘Oh! I thought perhaps you had seen--somebody,’ replied George.
“Somehow I did not like to tell him the truth, for fear he would laugh
at my nervousness. But I determined to keep an eye on my liver, and take
a couple of weeks’ complete rest. That night I woke up several times
with the feeling of that confounded hand under my own--a clammy hand
which writhed as my fingers closed upon it.
“The next morning after breakfast I was in the billiard-room practicing
strokes while Carson was over at the stables. Presently the door opened,
and Miss Stonor looked in.
“‘Come in,’ I said; ‘George will be back from the stables in a few
minutes. Meanwhile we can have fifty up.’
“‘I wanted to speak to you,’ she said.
“She was looking very tired and ill, and I began to think I should not
have an uninterrupted holiday after all.
“‘Do you believe in ghosts?’ she asked, having closed the door and come
up to the table, where she stood leaning with both her hands upon it.
“‘No,’ I replied, missing an easy carrom as I remembered my experience
of last night, ‘but I believe in fancy.’
“‘And, supposing then that a person fancied he saw things, is there any
remedy?’
“‘What do you mean, Miss Stonor?’ I replied, looking at her in some
surprise. ‘Do you mean that you fancy----’
“I stopped, for Miss Stonor turned away, sat down on one of the
easy-chairs by the wall, and burst into tears.
“‘Oh! please help me’ she sobbed; ‘I believe I am going mad.’
“I laid down my cue and went over to her.
“‘Look here, Miss Stonor,’ I said, taking her hand, which was hot and
feverish, ‘I am a doctor, and a friend of George. Now tell me all about
it, and I’ll do my best to set it right.’
“She was in a more or less hysterical condition, and her words were
freely punctuated by sobs. But gradually I managed to elicit from her
that nearly every night since she came to Woodcote she had been awakened
in some mysterious way, and had seen a horrible face looking at her from
over the top of a screen which stood by the door of her bedroom. As soon
as she moved the face disappeared, which convinced her that the
apparition existed only in her imagination. That seemed to distress her
even more than if she had believed it to be a genuine ghost, for she
thought her brain was giving way.
“I told her that she was only suffering from a very common symptom of
nervous disorder, as indeed it was, and promised to send a groom into
the village to get a prescription made up for her. And, having made me
promise to breathe no word to anyone on the subject, more especially to
George, she went away relieved. Nevertheless, I was not quite certain
that I had made a correct diagnosis of the case. You see I had been
rather upset myself not many hours before. George was longer than I
expected at the stable, and I was just going to find him when at the
door I met Mrs. Carson.
“‘Can you spare me one moment?’ she said, as I held open the door for
her. ‘I wanted to find you alone.’
“‘Certainly, Mrs. Carson, with pleasure; an hour, if you wish,’ I
replied.
“‘It is so convenient, you know, to have a doctor in the house,’ she
said, with a nervous laugh. ‘Now I want you to prescribe me a sleeping
draught. My nerves are rather out of order, and--I don’t sleep as I
should.’
“‘Ah,’ I said, ‘do you see faces--and such like things when you wake?’
“‘How do you know?’ she asked quickly.
“‘Oh, I inferred from the other symptoms. We doctors have to observe all
kinds of little things.’
“‘Well, of course, I know it is only fancy; but it is just as bad as if
it were real. I assure you it is making me quite ill; and I didn’t like
to mention it to Mr. Carson or to George. They would think I was losing
my head.’
“I gave Mrs. Carson the same prescription as I had written for Miss
Stonor, though by that time the conviction had grown upon me that there
was something wrong which could not be cured by medicine. However, I
decided to say nothing to George about the matter at present. For I
could hardly utilize the confidence which had been placed in me by Miss
Stonor and Mrs. Carson. And my own experience of the night before would
scarcely have appeared convincing to him. But I determined that on the
next day--which was Sunday--I would invent an excuse for staying at home
from church and make some explorations in the house. There was obviously
some mystery at work which wanted clearing up.