The Phantom Coach

by Michael Sims

  Sophia Gill stood with her hands fast in the dough, regarding her. Her own face paled slowly and reluctantly, her mouth stiffened.

  “What? I don’t quite understand what you mean, Miss Stark,” said she.

  “My clothes are not in the closet in my room and it is full of things which do not belong to me,” said Louisa Stark.

  “Bring me that flour,” said Sophia sharply to the young girl, who obeyed, casting timid, startled glances at Miss Stark as she passed her. Sophia Gill began rubbing her hands clear of the dough. “I am sure I know nothing about it,” she said with a certain tempered asperity. “Do you know anything about it, Flora?”

  “Oh, no, I don’t know anything about it, Aunt Sophia,” answered the young girl, fluttering.

  Then Sophia turned to Miss Stark. “I’ll go upstairs with you, Miss Stark,” said she, “and see what the trouble is. There must be some mistake.” She spoke stiffly with constrained civility.

  “Very well,” said Miss Stark with dignity. Then she and Miss Sophia went upstairs. Flora stood staring after them.

  Sophia and Louisa Stark went up to the southwest chamber. The closet door was shut. Sophia threw it open, then she looked at Miss Stark. On the pegs hung the school-teacher’s own garments in ordinary array.

  “I can’t see that there is anything wrong,” remarked Sophia grimly.

  Miss Stark strove to speak but she could not. She sank down on the nearest chair. She did not even attempt to defend herself. She saw her own clothes in the closet. She knew there had been no time for any human being to remove those which she thought she had seen and put hers in their places. She knew it was impossible. Again the awful horror of herself overwhelmed her.

  “You must have been mistaken,” she heard Sophia say.

  She muttered something, she scarcely knew what. Sophia then went out of the room. Presently she undressed and went to bed. In the morning she did not go down to breakfast, and when Sophia came to inquire, requested that the stage be ordered for the noon train. She said that she was sorry, but was ill, and feared lest she might be worse, and she felt that she must return home at once. She looked ill, and could not take even the toast and tea which Sophia had prepared for her. Sophia felt a certain pity for her, but it was largely mixed with indignation. She felt that she knew the true reason for the school-teacher’s illness and sudden departure, and it incensed her.

  “If folks are going to act like fools we shall never be able to keep this house,” she said to Amanda after Miss Stark had gone; and Amanda knew what she meant.

  Directly the widow, Mrs. Elvira Simmons, knew that the school-teacher had gone and the southwest room was vacant, she begged to have it in exchange for her own. Sophia hesitated a moment; she eyed the widow sharply. There was something about the large, roseate face worn in firm lines of humour and decision which reassured her.

  “I have no objection, Mrs. Simmons,” said she, “if—”

  “If what?” asked the widow.

  “If you have common sense enough not to keep fussing because the room happens to be the one my aunt died in,” said Sophia bluntly.

  “Fiddlesticks!” said the widow, Mrs. Elvira Simmons.

  That very afternoon she moved into the southwest chamber. The young girl Flora assisted her, though much against her will.

  “Now I want you to carry Mrs. Simmons’s dresses into the closet in that room and hang them up nicely, and see that she has everything she wants,” said Sophia Gill. “And you can change the bed and put on fresh sheets. What are you looking at me that way for?”

  “Oh, Aunt Sophia, can’t I do something else?”

  “What do you want to do something else for?”

  “I am afraid.”

  “Afraid of what? I should think you’d hang your head. No; you go right in there and do what I tell you.”

  Pretty soon Flora came running into the sitting-room where Sophia was, as pale as death, and in her hand she held a queer, old-fashioned frilled nightcap.

  “What’s that?” demanded Sophia.

  “I found it under the pillow.”

  “What pillow?”

  “In the southwest room.”

  Sophia took it and looked at it sternly.

  “It’s Great-aunt Harriet’s,” said Flora faintly.

  “You run down street and do that errand at the grocer’s for me and I’ll see that room,” said Sophia with dignity. She carried the nightcap away and put it in the trunk in the garret where she had supposed it stored with the rest of the dead woman’s belongings. Then she went into the southwest chamber and made the bed and assisted Mrs. Simmons to move, and there was no further incident.

  The widow was openly triumphant over her new room. She talked a deal about it at the dinner-table.

  “It is the best room in the house, and I expect you all to be envious of me,” said she.

  “And you are sure you don’t feel afraid of ghosts?” said the librarian.

  “Ghosts!” repeated the widow with scorn. “If a ghost comes I’ll send her over to you. You are just across the hall from the southwest room.”

  “You needn’t,” returned Eliza Lippincott with a shudder. “I wouldn’t sleep in that room, after—” she checked herself with an eye on the minister.

  “After what?” asked the widow.

  “Nothing,” replied Eliza Lippincott in an embarrassed fashion.

  “I trust Miss Lippincott has too good sense and too great faith to believe in anything of that sort,” said the minister.

  “I trust so, too,” replied Eliza hurriedly.

  “You did see or hear something—now what was it, I want to know?” said the widow that evening when they were alone in the parlour. The minister had gone to make a call.

  Eliza hesitated.

  “What was it?” insisted the widow.

  “Well,” said Eliza hesitatingly, “if you’ll promise not to tell.”

  “Yes, I promise; what was it?”

  “Well, one day last week, just before the school-teacher came, I went in that room to see if there were any clouds. I wanted to wear my gray dress, and I was afraid it was going to rain, so I wanted to look at the sky at all points, so I went in there, and—”

  “And what?”

  “Well, you know that chintz over the bed, and the valance, and the easy chair; what pattern should you say it was?”

  “Why, peacocks on a blue ground. Good land, I shouldn’t think any one who had ever seen that would forget it.”

  “Peacocks on a blue ground, you are sure?”

  “Of course I am. Why?”

  “Only when I went in there that afternoon it was not peacocks on a blue ground; it was great red roses on a yellow ground.”

  “Why, what do you mean?”

  “What I say.”

  “Did Miss Sophia have it changed?”

  “No. I went in there again an hour later and the peacocks were there.”

  “You didn’t see straight the first time.”

  “I expected you would say that.”

  “The peacocks are there now; I saw them just now.”

  “Yes, I suppose so; I suppose they flew back.”

  “But they couldn’t.”

  “Looks as if they did.”

  “Why, how could such a thing be? It couldn’t be.”

  “Well, all I know is those peacocks were gone for an hour that afternoon and the red roses on the yellow ground were there instead.”

  The widow stared at her a moment, then she began to laugh rather hysterically.

  “Well,” said she, “I guess I sha’n’t give up my nice room for any such tomfoolery as that. I guess I would just as soon have red roses on a yellow ground as peacocks on a blue; but there’s no use talking, you couldn’t have seen straight. How could such a thing have happened?”

  “I don’t know,” said Eliza Lippincott; “but I know I wouldn’t sleep in that room if you’d give me a thousand dollars.”

  “Well, I would,” said the w
idow, “and I’m going to.”

  When Mrs. Simmons went to the southwest chamber that night she cast a glance at the bed-hanging and the easy chair. There were the peacocks on the blue ground. She gave a contemptuous thought to Eliza Lippincott.

  “I don’t believe but she’s getting nervous,” she thought. “I wonder if any of her family have been out at all.”

  But just before Mrs. Simmons was ready to get into bed she looked again at the hangings and the easy chair, and there were the red roses on the yellow ground instead of the peacocks on the blue. She looked long and sharply. Then she shut her eyes, and then opened them and looked. She still saw the red roses. Then she crossed the room, turned her back to the bed, and looked out at the night from the south window. It was clear and the full moon was shining. She watched it a moment sailing over the dark blue in its nimbus of gold. Then she looked around at the bed hangings. She still saw the red roses on the yellow ground.

  Mrs. Simmons was struck in her most vulnerable point. This apparent contradiction of the reasonable as manifested in such a commonplace thing as chintz of a bed-hanging affected this ordinarily unimaginative woman as no ghostly appearance could have done. Those red roses on the yellow ground were to her much more ghostly than any strange figure clad in the white robes of the grave entering the room.

  She took a step toward the door, then she turned with a resolute air. “As for going downstairs and owning up I’m scared and having that Lippincott girl crowing over me, I won’t for any red roses instead of peacocks. I guess they can’t hurt me, and as long as we’ve both of us seen ’em I guess we can’t both be getting loony,” she said.

  Mrs. Elvira Simmons blew out her light and got into bed and lay staring out between the chintz hangings at the moonlit room. She said her prayers in bed always as being more comfortable, and presumably just as acceptable in the case of a faithful servant with a stout habit of body. Then after a little she fell asleep; she was of too practical a nature to be kept long awake by anything which had no power of actual bodily effect upon her. No stress of the spirit had ever disturbed her slumbers. So she slumbered between the red roses, or the peacocks, she did not know which.

  But she was awakened about midnight by a strange sensation in her throat. She had dreamed that some one with long white fingers was strangling her, and she saw bending over her the face of an old woman in a white cap. When she waked there was no old woman, the room was almost as light as day in the full moonlight, and looked very peaceful; but the strangling sensation at her throat continued, and besides that, her face and ears felt muffled. She put up her hand and felt that her head was covered with a ruffled nightcap tied under her chin so tightly that it was exceedingly uncomfortable. A great qualm of horror shot over her. She tore the thing off frantically and flung it from her with a convulsive effort as if it had been a spider. She gave, as she did so, a quick, short scream of terror. She sprang out of bed and was going toward the door, when she stopped.

  It had suddenly occurred to her that Eliza Lippincott might have entered the room and tied on the cap while she was asleep. She had not locked her door. She looked in the closet, under the bed; there was no one there. Then she tried to open the door, but to her astonishment found that it was locked—bolted on the inside. “I must have locked it, after all,” she reflected with wonder, for she never locked her door. Then she could scarcely conceal from herself that there was something out of the usual about it all. Certainly no one could have entered the room and departed locking the door on the inside. She could not control the long shiver of horror that crept over her, but she was still resolute. She resolved that she would throw the cap out of the window. “I’ll see if I have tricks like that played on me, I don’t care who does it,” said she quite aloud. She was still unable to believe wholly in the supernatural. The idea of some human agency was still in her mind, filling her with anger.

  She went toward the spot where she had thrown the cap—she had stepped over it on her way to the door—but it was not there. She searched the whole room, lighting her lamp, but she could not find the cap. Finally she gave it up. She extinguished her lamp and went back to bed. She fell asleep again, to be again awakened in the same fashion. That time she tore off the cap as before, but she did not fling it on the floor as before. Instead she held to it with a fierce grip. Her blood was up.

  Holding fast to the white flimsy thing, she sprang out of bed, ran to the window which was open, slipped the screen, and flung it out; but a sudden gust of wind, though the night was calm, arose and it floated back in her face. She brushed it aside like a cobweb and she clutched at it. She was actually furious. It eluded her clutching fingers. Then she did not see it at all. She examined the floor, she lighted her lamp again and searched, but there was no sign of it.

  Mrs. Simmons was then in such a rage that all terror had disappeared for the time. She did not know with what she was angry, but she had a sense of some mocking presence which was silently proving too strong against her weakness, and she was aroused to the utmost power of resistance. To be baffled like this and resisted by something which was as nothing to her straining senses filled her with intensest resentment.

  Finally she got back into bed again; she did not go to sleep. She felt strangely drowsy, but she fought against it. She was wide awake, staring at the moonlight, when she suddenly felt the soft white strings of the thing tighten around her throat and realized that her enemy was again upon her. She seized the strings, untied them, twitched off the cap, ran with it to the table where her scissors lay and furiously cut it into small bits. She cut and tore, feeling an insane fury of gratification.

  “There!” said she quite aloud. “I guess I sha’n’t have any more trouble with this old cap.”

  She tossed the bits of muslin into a basket and went back to bed. Almost immediately she felt the soft strings tighten around her throat. Then at last she yielded, vanquished. This new refutal of all laws of reason by which she had learned, as it were, to spell her theory of life, was too much for her equilibrium. She pulled off the clinging strings feebly, drew the thing from her head, slid weakly out of bed, caught up her wrapper and hastened out of the room. She went noiselessly along the hall to her own old room: she entered, got into her familiar bed, and lay there the rest of the night shuddering and listening, and if she dozed, waking with a start at the feeling of the pressure upon her throat to find that it was not there, yet still to be unable to shake off entirely the horror.

  When daylight came she crept back to the southwest chamber and hurriedly got some clothes in which to dress herself. It took all her resolution to enter the room, but nothing unusual happened while she was there. She hastened back to her old chamber, dressed herself and went down to breakfast with an imperturbable face. Her colour had not faded. When asked by Eliza Lippincott how she had slept, she replied with an appearance of calmness which was bewildering that she had not slept very well. She never did sleep very well in a new bed, and she thought she would go back to her old room.

  Eliza Lippincott was not deceived, however, neither were the Gill sisters, nor the young girl, Flora. Eliza Lippincott spoke out bluntly.

  “You needn’t talk to me about sleeping well,” said she. “I know something queer happened in that room last night by the way you act.”

  They all looked at Mrs. Simmons, inquiringly—the librarian with malicious curiosity and triumph, the minister with sad incredulity, Sophia Gill with fear and indignation, Amanda and the young girl with unmixed terror. The widow bore herself with dignity.

  “I saw nothing nor heard nothing which I trust could not have been accounted for in some rational manner,” said she.

  “What was it?” persisted Eliza Lippincott.

  “I do not wish to discuss the matter any further,” replied Mrs. Simmons shortly. Then she passed her plate for more creamed potato. She felt that she would die before she confessed to the ghastly absurdity of that nightcap, or to having been disturbed by the flight of peacocks off a blue fi
eld of chintz after she had scoffed at the possibility of such a thing. She left the whole matter so vague that in a fashion she came off the mistress of the situation. She at all events impressed everybody by her coolness in the face of no one knew what nightly terror.

  After breakfast, with the assistance of Amanda and Flora, she moved back into her old room. Scarcely a word was spoken during the process of moving, but they all worked with trembling haste and looked guilty when they met one another’s eyes, as if conscious of betraying a common fear.

  That afternoon the young minister, John Dunn, went to Sophia Gill and requested permission to occupy the southwest chamber that night.

  “I don’t ask to have my effects moved there,” said he, “for I could scarcely afford a room so much superior to the one I now occupy, but I would like, if you please, to sleep there to-night for the purpose of refuting in my own person any unfortunate superstition which may have obtained root here.”

  Sophia Gill thanked the minister gratefully and eagerly accepted his offer.

  “How anybody with common sense can believe for a minute in any such nonsense passes my comprehension,” said she.

  “It certainly passes mine how anybody with Christian faith can believe in ghosts,” said the minister gently, and Sophia Gill felt a certain feminine contentment in hearing him. The minister was a child to her; she regarded him with no tincture of sentiment, and yet she loved to hear two other women covertly condemned by him and she herself thereby exalted.

  That night about twelve o’clock the Reverend John Dunn essayed to go to his nightly slumber in the southwest chamber. He had been sitting up until that hour preparing his sermon.

  He traversed the hall with a little night-lamp in his hand, opened the door of the southwest chamber, and essayed to enter. He might as well have essayed to enter the solid side of a house. He could not believe his senses. The door was certainly open; he could look into the room full of soft lights and shadows under the moonlight which streamed into the windows. He could see the bed in which he had expected to pass the night, but he could not enter. Whenever he strove to do so he had a curious sensation as if he were trying to press against an invisible person who met him with a force of opposition impossible to overcome. The minister was not an athletic man, yet he had considerable strength. He squared his elbows, set his mouth hard, and strove to push his way through into the room. The opposition which he met was as sternly and mutely terrible as the rocky fastness of a mountain in his way.