November Night Tales

by Henry Chapman Mercer

  He pulled a well-kept bunch out of a pigeon-hole and threw it on the table.

  “Those for the front door and garden gate are painted red, you see. When would you like to go?”

  “Tomorrow afternoon, if it suits you.”

  “Come down, then, and get them. I may go over with you.—But one more word,” he added, as Carrington rose to leave. “You’d better say nothing to anybody about your visit. The present owner, the archbishop, is an easy-going man; but he has had enough defamation of title, and if the newspapers get hold of the thing, there will be more of it. I would be responsible, of course.”

  “His Grace will never hear of it through me,—newspapers or no newspapers,” said Carrington, as warmly thanking his old friend, who had followed him down-stairs, he bade him good-bye.

  v

  How often must we account for the origin of human responsibility in nothing more definite than shifts of chance! Why did Carrington, whose nights were particularly occupied at the time, go to the theatre that evening; and why was it that almost the first person he saw there in the unfamiliar crowd was his friend Westbrook? It happened that the latter, like himself, had chosen to hear on its opening night the fantastic little musical comedy much in vogue later, known as Dolls in Toyland. He had brought his little boy, Archie, with him, and was seated in the pit, near the stage. As the play went on, Carrington noticed the child clinging to his father, apparently terrified at some of the scenic marvels. But as the performance was expected to be a decided juvenile success, he was surprised, at the end of the second act, to meet his friend in the foyer leading the little fellow out of the theatre.

  “Most children would delight in it,” explained Westbrook, “but Archie seems to be frightened. He has nerves. As I see no use in upsetting them, I think I had better take him home. We will postpone the hobgoblins until he gets older.”

  Carrington, who had taken his check at the box office, stepped out onto the pavement.

  “By the way,” said he; “speaking of hobgoblins, how would you like to follow up our investigation on Belbridge Street?”

  “You mean the Haunted House, I suppose,” said Westbrook. “I thought we had given it up as a hopeless case.”

  “Why give it up? I have learned a good deal about it since I saw you, and I have got the keys, or will have them; so, if you choose to meet me there tomorrow at five o’clock, we can look it over together.”

  “It sounds interesting,” admitted Westbrook. “I think I’ll join you,—that is, if my wife has no other plans.”

  “Bring her with you,” suggested Carrington.

  Westbrook laughed. “Quite out of the question. If there is one woman in the world who takes no interest whatever in that sort of thing, I think it’s Clara. She’s not at all romantic, and your dramatic rhapsodies about the place wouldn’t appeal to her at all.”

  Carrington watched the father and his little boy disappear down the street. But he had hardly reached his seat, when he realized that, under the circumstances, the introduction of the talkative Mrs. Westbrook into the proposed ghost hunt had been a mistake. He left the theatre, found a messenger boy at the nearest telegraph office, and, determining to forestall the lady’s gossip and a possible newspaper sensation, wrote the following note:

  Dear Westbrook,

  It occurs to me that you had better not mention our Belbridge Street project to anybody, not even your wife. [He underscored the latter words.] The newspapers are, as you know, hungry for things of this sort, and if they get hold of our plans, I happen to know that the owner of the house would seriously object.

  Yours,

  Charles Carrington.

  “That ought to protect me,” he muttered to himself, as, sealing up the note, he paid for the boy at the window and, after watching him swagger down the street, went back to the theatre, where he became so absorbed in the melodrama that he forgot to criticise it,—as he had intended.

  The next day, he again congratulated himself on his precaution and had dismissed Mrs. Westbrook from his thoughts before the appointed afternoon hour found him approaching the place of meeting, with the keys in his pocket.

  vi

  Carrington was alone. Having heard nothing from Westbrook, and having parted from Dorrance, who was called away at the last moment, he had resigned himself to the somewhat cheerless prospect of a solitary exploration, when, to his agreeable surprise, he caught sight of Westbrook in the distance. The latter was standing near the great house, close to a carriage drawn up under the trees, and, on seeing Carrington, hurried toward him.

  “I suppose you hardly expected me,” said he, as they met; “but here I am; and I have brought Mrs. Westbrook and Archie with me.”

  Carrington had some difficulty in simulating the delight that the unexpected announcement required, but managed to do so.

  “I hope you cautioned her about talking,” he observed anxiously.

  “Yes, but your note came ten minutes too late. When I mentioned the affair to her, for some reason best known to herself, she decided to join us. There she is, you see.”

  As they drew near, the smiling lady, dressed in the height of the autumn style and seated in a handsome phaeton, waved a paper-covered book at them.

  “Don’t be alarmed, Mr. Carrington,” said she, while the latter paid his respects. “I am not going to interfere. George says you are hunting ghosts for your next play, and I thought you would let me wait out here with Archie until you get through. Archie will be a good boy, and stay with his mother, won’t he, dear?”

  The little blue-eyed fellow, whose brown hair had been elaborately curled in the style of the day, was dressed in his best clothes, the miniature kilt, bonnet, and tartan of some of his far-away Scottish ancestors. He had climbed out of the phaeton and caught his father’s hand.

  “How pretty he looks,” said Carrington. “Is that plaid a special pattern?”

  “Yes, the Campbell tartan. His grandmother was a Campbell, you know.”

  “You will have to teach him the sword dance one of these days.”

  “Wouldn’t it be pretty? He’ll sing The Campbells Are Coming for Mr. Carrington, won’t he, Archie? Yes, he must learn that tune. But he hasn’t been very well lately,” added the lady; “and I brought him with us to get the air.”

  Her husband had been looking through the grating of the large iron gate in the brick wall to the left.

  “Why, here is a bench in the garden,” said he. “Don’t sit in the phaeton. Have you a key, Carrington?”

  Carrington stepped across the pavement and tried one of his red keys in the massive lock. It turned easily, and as one wing of the gate swung open, the two men walked in. Mrs. Westbrook had stepped out of the low carriage, with her book, and carrying a red silk cushion under her arm, had followed them, leading her little boy by the hand.

  “This seat looks comfortable,” remarked her husband, gallantly dusting off the bench with his handkerchief while his wife, arranging the cushion to her taste, sat down, gazed curiously about her and up at the side of the closed house as it caught the sun. Yellow butterflies were fluttering across the grass-grown pavement and about the shrubbery and walls of the dilapidated stable, overgrown with luxuriant vines.

  “I wish we had a garden like this, George,” she said. “Think of that wisteria in May, and those box trees and flower-beds,—if they were properly cared for.”

  “There is something here that you don’t get in a modern garden,” observed Carrington with delight. “I hope you have an interesting book.”

  “The Voyage of the Sunbeam.”

  “There’s your sunbeam,” said he as he watched her stoop down and kiss her little Highland boy,—“just beginning his voyage,”—he added, patting the child on the cheek. “Not a cloud in the sky. But he doesn’t realize that yet.”

&nb
sp; Westbrook had gone out to the phaeton, and Carrington pulled the gate toward him from the street. “Now madam, we will lock you in,” said he, and the lady leaned back comfortably on the bench and thanked him.

  Westbrook took another look at the halter and neck-strap of the handsome chestnut horse, then joined Carrington on the marble steps. His red key seemed to work badly; but finally they got the great front door open. Noticing as they entered that a man was looking at them from across the street, they closed and locked the door behind them.

  vii

  They were in a long, narrow hall with a very high ceiling, dimly lit through the transom and a large unshuttered window overlooking the staircase beyond. Corniced doorways opened into the pitch-darkness on the right. But, across the passage opposite, a faint twilight penetrated several large bare rooms, through louvered shutters. A musty smell, with a faint, sweetish tinge as of decaying paint or varnish, hung about the place. The doors were all open, and their footsteps reverberated with loud echoes as Carrington, lighting one of his candles, led on from room to room, into the distant kitchen, back again, and then upstairs into the third story and garret. On the second floor, where the shutters were all louvered and many of the slats broken, the light was better. They saw stuccoed ceilings and cornices, elaborate panellings, and carved marble mantelpieces.

  “Places like this have a wonderful fascination for me,” said Carrington, looking about him with delight and holding high his candle before one of the walled-in mirrors. “Past glories! Think of all those who have been and might still be here.

  ‘Lords that are gone, come back! For you our hearts still yearn;

  The golden days will come again, when you return.’ ”

  In one room, much larger than the rest, apparently overlooking the garden, where a beautiful glass chandelier with innumerable pendants twinkled in the subdued light, they had stopped to notice the wall-paper. Panelled in blending pictures, with floral borders,—one of the marine landscapes, with a smoky volcano in the background,—showed a group of dancing figures under a canopy of palm-trees.

  “What a delightful fancy,” exclaimed Carrington; “those splendid trees—the colors—the motion—the atmosphere! Why can’t they paint drop-curtains like that nowadays?”

  “It looks like Captain Cook at Otahietie,” said Westbrook, laughing; “only rather exaggerated. Those impossible savages with the ostrich plumes might pass for our dancing dolls. But we need more light.”

  He walked across to the large window and, with some effort, pushed up the long-closed sash. The shutter-hooks were easily released, but the bolt was rusted fast, and he had to hammer it out with his cane. At length the two large shutters creaked open. As the southern light filled the room, he heard his wife’s voice from below, stepped forward, and leaned out of the window.

  Mrs. Westbrook, still seated upon the bench, had laid down her novel and was looking up at him from under her plumed hat.

  “I wish you would call Archie,” said she. “He will ruin his clothes in that muddy garden.”

  She pointed to what seemed to be a bundle of colored rags, tied to a stick, propped in a corner of the bench at its other end.

  “Look at that,” she said.

  “What is it?” asked Westbrook. “I can’t make it out.”

  “It is a doll, a hideous battered-up doll that Archie has picked up in the garden. You know what curious fancies he has. He says a little girl gave it to him.”

  “What little girl? There is no little girl down there, is there?”

  “No.”

  “Is there a gate open?”

  “I don’t know. But I wish you would call him.”

  Westbrook called the boy several times, who at last came out of the shrubbery, with his little stockings well blackened at the knees and without his cap.

  “Archie must be a good boy,” said Westbrook, “and stay with his mother. We can’t take him with us again if he behaves like this.”

  Then, as his wife leaned down to scold and kiss her truant, he turned from the window. Leaving it open, he crossed the room to find Carrington, who had finished his examination of the wall-paper and was standing, candle in hand, in one of the dark bedrooms across the hall.

  “What’s the matter over there?” he asked as Westbrook joined him.

  “I was calling Archie. He is spoiling his clothes. It seems he has picked up some sort of a queer-looking bundle. Clara says it’s a doll.”

  “That’s very strange. Where did he get it?”

  “He says a little girl gave it to him.”

  “A little girl!” exclaimed the dramatist. “What do you mean? There were no children down there.”

  “Why not? If there is a gate open, they would get in of course.”

  “Yes,—but a little girl—a little girl—with a doll! How do you account for that? If that’s not the ghost, what is it?”

  “Just what I thought you would say,” laughed Westbrook. “But, in my opinion, it’s pure chance.” Whereupon, without answering his friend further, he left him in the hall and went to close the window. As he did so, his wife called him again.

  She was still sitting on the bench. Archie was apparently playing with the doll, near the corner of the stable.

  “I wish you would come down and let me out,” said she. “I’d rather sit in the phaeton.”

  “Why, what’s the matter?” asked Westbrook impatiently. “I thought you were very comfortable.”

  “So I was,” she returned. “But there’s somebody moving about in that stable. I’m sure of it!”

  “Nonsense, Clara! But just wait a minute. We are nearly done, and coming downstairs now.”

  He closed the shutter and window and joined Carrington.

  “Clara is getting restless,” said he as he followed his friend downstairs. “If you’re satisfied, let’s go. It’s an interesting old place, certainly; but there’s nothing ghostly about it.”

  “The ghosts seem to be in the garden,” said Carrington. “But hold on,—we must see the cellar first.”

  He had relit his candle and was shielding it with his hand in a draught that came up through an open door under the hall staircase.

  Westbrook glanced at the front door, hesitated a moment, then followed Carrington down the dark steps.

  At the basement level another door had been partly closed by a piece of carpet nailed across its top, and as Westbrook’s hat fell off in passing under it, Carrington handed him the candle, and walked ahead.

  He had not been long gone, and Westbrook, after some difficulty with the candle in the draught, had just found his hat, when his friend’s voice rang back through the passage:

  “For Heaven’s sake, Westbrook, come here and look at this!”

  Westbrook, candle in hand, hurried down the corridor.

  The large open basement, with the shutterless windows, which he soon reached, was almost light enough to see objects distinctly. Carrington was staring at a sort of shelf, made of tables, boxes, and planks set on barrels. It followed the walls on three sides.

  There, propped close together against the dingy plaster, an unaccountable array of diminutive figures,—dolls, in various dresses and of many sizes and kinds, startling, repulsive,—seemed to gaze at them from the shadows. The slanting rays of evening, through several breaks in the dimmed glass, here and there brightening the display, showed the havoc of moth and damp upon the tattered costumes, mouldy hair, and glassy-eyed faces rotted into paintless knobs.

  “Good Heavens!” exclaimed Carrington, lifting up one of the larger figures, to quickly set it back again as a cloud of moths fluttered out over his arm. “Who on earth would want to put together such a damnable show as this?”

  “Some janitor’s trick, I suppose,” said Westbrook.

  “There is no ja
nitor. If there were—— Hello! What’s that?”

  A door, which had apparently been standing open at the distant corner of the room, closed with a distinct bang.

  “Come on,” urged Westbrook. “I’ve seen enough of this. Haven’t you?”

  “Just a minute,” said Carrington. “I must look at that door.”

  As he spoke a loud piercing outburst of screams near at hand and several times repeated, filled the whole place with reverberating terror.

  “Good God, it’s Clara!” shouted Westbrook as he sprung back in the direction of the steps.

  “This way,” said Carrington. “That door opens into the garden.”

  They ran to the end of the room. Carrington seized the knob and tried it; but, to his astonishment, the door that had slammed was locked. Without waiting to examine it, the two friends rushed back into the dark passage, mounted the stairs, got the front door open, then, without closing it, ran down the street to the garden gate.

  viii

  By that time a crowd had collected and was looking through the bars. Carrington pushed the mob aside, then squeezed in with his friend. When he had locked the gate behind him, Westbrook was kneeling over his wife. She was stretched on the grass,—motionless. Her hat had fallen off, and her auburn hair lay loose and disheveled. She was breathing, but speechless. The delicate rose tint had left her fair face, which, by a twitching of the forehead and brow, betrayed some unuttered distress.

  “We must find a doctor,” said Westbrook in frightened tones as, after trying in vain to rouse her, he stood up and looked about the garden.

  “But where is Archie?”

  The boy was nowhere in sight. The father called several times at the top of his voice. He waited, but the child gave no sign.

  “He may have gone into the stable,” he said. “I’ll find him. For Heaven’s sake, get a doctor!”