Amanda crossed the room, opened with a straining motion of her thin back and shoulders one of the west windows, and threw back the blind. Then the room revealed itself an apartment full of an aged and worn but no less valid state. Pieces of old mahogany swelled forth; a peacock-patterned chintz draped the bedstead. This chintz also covered a great easy chair which had been the favourite seat of the former occupant of the room. The closet door stood ajar. Amanda noticed that with wonder. There was a glimpse of purple drapery floating from a peg inside the closet. Amanda went across and took down the garment hanging there. She wondered how her sister had happened to leave it when she cleaned the room. It was an old loose gown which had belonged to her aunt. She took it down, shuddering, and closed the closet door after a fearful glance into its dark depths. It was a long closet with a strong odour of lovage. The Aunt Harriet had had a habit of eating lovage and had carried it constantly in her pocket. There was very likely some of the pleasant root in the pocket of the musty purple gown which Amanda threw over the easy chair.
Amanda perceived the odour with a start as if before an actual presence. Odour seems in a sense a vital part of a personality. It can survive the flesh to which it has clung like a persistent shadow, seeming to have in itself something of the substance of that to which it pertained. Amanda was always conscious of this fragrance of lovage as she tidied the room. She dusted the heavy mahogany pieces punctiliously after she had opened the bed as her sister had directed. She spread fresh towels over the wash-stand and the bureau; she made the bed. Then she thought to take the purple gown from the easy chair and carry it to the garret and put it in the trunk with the other articles of the dead woman’s wardrobe which had been packed away there; BUT THE PURPLE GOWN WAS NOT ON THE CHAIR!
Amanda Gill was not a woman of strong convictions even as to her own actions. She directly thought that possibly she had been mistaken and had not removed it from the closet. She glanced at the closet door and saw with surprise that it was open, and she had thought she had closed it, but she instantly was not sure of that. So she entered the closet and looked for the purple gown. IT WAS NOT THERE!
Amanda Gill went feebly out of the closet and looked at the easy chair again. The purple gown was not there! She looked wildly around the room. She went down on her trembling knees and peered under the bed, she opened the bureau drawers, she looked again in the closet. Then she stood in the middle of the floor and fairly wrung her hands.
“What does it mean?” she said in a shocked whisper.
She had certainly seen that loose purple gown of her dead Aunt Harriet’s.
There is a limit at which self-refutation must stop in any sane person. Amanda Gill had reached it. She knew that she had seen that purple gown in that closet; she knew that she had removed it and put it on the easy chair. She also knew that she had not taken it out of the room. She felt a curious sense of being inverted mentally. It was as if all her traditions and laws of life were on their heads. Never in her simple record had any garment not remained where she had placed it unless removed by some palpable human agency.
Then the thought occurred to her that possibly her sister Sophia might have entered the room unobserved while her back was turned and removed the dress. A sensation of relief came over her. Her blood seemed to flow back into its usual channels; the tension of her nerves relaxed.
“How silly I am,” she said aloud.
She hurried out and downstairs into the kitchen where Sophia was making cake, stirring with splendid circular sweeps of a wooden spoon a creamy yellow mass. She looked up as her sister entered.
“Have you got it done?” said she.
“Yes,” replied Amanda. Then she hesitated. A sudden terror overcame her. It did not seem as if it were at all probable that Sophia had left that foamy cake mixture a second to go to Aunt Harriet’s chamber and remove that purple gown.
“Well,” said Sophia, “if you have got that done I wish you would take hold and string those beans. The first thing we know there won’t be time to boil them for dinner.
Amanda moved toward the pan of beans on the table, then she looked at her sister.
“Did you come up in Aunt Harriet’s room while I was there?” she asked weakly.
She knew while she asked what the answer would be.
“Up in Aunt Harriet’s room? Of course I didn’t. I couldn’t leave this cake without having it fall. You know that well enough. Why?”
“Nothing,” replied Amanda.
Suddenly she realized that she could not tell her sister what had happened, for before the utter absurdity of the whole thing her belief in her own reason quailed. She knew what Sophia would say if she told her. She could hear her.
“Amanda Gill, have you gone stark staring mad?”
She resolved that she would never tell Sophia. She dropped into a chair and begun shelling the beans with nerveless fingers. Sophia looked at her curiously.
“Amanda Gill, what on earth ails you?” she asked.
“Nothing,” replied Amanda. She bent her head very low over the green pods.
“Yes, there is, too! You are as white as a sheet, and your hands are shaking so you can hardly string those beans. I did think you had more sense, Amanda Gill.”
“I don’t know what you mean, Sophia.”
“Yes, you do know what I mean, too; you needn’t pretend you don’t. Why did you ask me if I had been in that room, and why do you act so queer?”
Amanda hesitated. She had been trained to truth. Then she lied.
“I wondered if you’d noticed how it had leaked in on the paper over by the bureau, that last rain,” said she.
“What makes you look so pale then?”
“I don’t know. I guess the heat sort of overcame me.”
“I shouldn’t think it could have been very hot in that room when it had been shut up so long,” said Sophia.
She was evidently not satisfied, but then the grocer came to the door and the matter dropped.
For the next hour the two women were very busy. They kept no servant. When they had come into possession of this fine old place by the death of their aunt it had seemed a doubtful blessing. There was not a cent with which to pay for repairs and taxes and insurance, except the twelve hundred dollars which they had obtained from the sale of the little house in which they had been born and lived all their lives. There had been a division in the old Ackley family years before. One of the daughters had married against her mother’s wish and had been disinherited. She had married a poor man by the name of Gill, and shared his humble lot in sight of her former home and her sister and mother living in prosperity, until she had borne three daughters; then she died, worn out with overwork and worry.
The mother and the elder sister had been pitiless to the last. Neither had ever spoken to her since she left her home the night of her marriage. They were hard women.
The three daughters of the disinherited sister had lived quiet and poor, but not actually needy lives. Jane, the middle daughter, had married, and died in less than a year. Amanda and Sophia had taken the girl baby she left when the father married again. Sophia had taught a primary school for many years; she had saved enough to buy the little house in which they lived. Amanda had crocheted lace, and embroidered flannel, and made tidies and pincushions, and had earned enough for her clothes and the child’s, little Flora Scott.
Their father, William Gill, had died before they were thirty, and now in their late middle life had come the death of the aunt to whom they had never spoken, although they had often seen her, who had lived in solitary state in the old Ackley mansion until she was more than eighty. There had been no will, and they were the only heirs with the exception of young Flora Scott, the daughter of the dead sister.
Sophia and Amanda thought directly of Flora when they knew of the inheritance.
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�It will be a splendid thing for her; she will have enough to live on when we are gone,” Sophia said.
She had promptly decided what was to be done. The small house was to be sold, and they were to move into the old Ackley house and take boarders to pay for its keeping. She scouted the idea of selling it. She had an enormous family pride. She had always held her head high when she had walked past that fine old mansion, the cradle of her race, which she was forbidden to enter. She was unmoved when the lawyer who was advising her disclosed to her the fact that Harriet Ackley had used every cent of the Ackley money.
“I realize that we have to work,” said she, “but my sister and I have determined to keep the place.”
That was the end of the discussion. Sophia and Amanda Gill had been living in the old Ackley house a fortnight, and they had three boarders: an elderly widow with a comfortable income, a young congregationalist clergyman, and the middle-aged single woman who had charge of the village library. Now the school-teacher from Acton, Miss Louisa Stark, was expected for the summer, and would make four.
Sophia considered that they were comfortably provided for. Her wants and her sister’s were very few, and even the niece, although a young girl, had small expenses, since her wardrobe was supplied for years to come from that of the deceased aunt. There were stored away in the garret of the Ackley house enough voluminous black silks and satins and bombazines to keep her clad in somber richness for years to come.
Flora was a very gentle girl, with large, serious blue eyes, a seldom-smiling, pretty mouth, and smooth flaxen hair. She was delicate and very young—sixteen on her next birthday.
She came home soon now with her parcels of sugar and tea from the grocer’s. She entered the kitchen gravely and deposited them on the table by which her Aunt Amanda was seated stringing beans. Flora wore an obsolete turban-shaped hat of black straw which had belonged to the dead aunt; it set high like a crown, revealing her forehead. Her dress was an ancient purple-and-white print, too long and too large except over the chest, where it held her like a straight waistcoat.
“You had better take off your hat, Flora,” said Sophia. She turned suddenly to Amanda. “Did you fill the water-pitcher in that chamber for the schoolteacher?” she asked severely. She was quite sure that Amanda had not filled the water-pitcher.
Amanda blushed and started guiltily. “I declare, I don’t believe I did,” said she.
“I didn’t think you had,” said her sister with sarcastic emphasis.
“Flora, you go up to the room that was your Great-aunt Harriet’s, and take the water-pitcher off the wash-stand and fill it with water. Be real careful, and don’t break the pitcher, and don’t spill the water.”
“In THAT chamber?” asked Flora. She spoke very quietly, but her face changed a little.
“Yes, in that chamber,” returned her Aunt Sophia sharply. “Go right along.”
Flora went, and her light footstep was heard on the stairs. Very soon she returned with the blue-and-white water-pitcher and filled it carefully at the kitchen sink.
“Now be careful and not spill it,” said Sophia as she went out of the room carrying it gingerly.
Amanda gave a timidly curious glance at her; she wondered if she had seen the purple gown.
Then she started, for the village stagecoach was seen driving around to the front of the house. The house stood on a corner.
“Here, Amanda, you look better than I do; you go and meet her,” said Sophia. “I’ll just put the cake in the pan and get it in the oven and I’ll come. Show her right up to her room.”
Amanda removed her apron hastily and obeyed. Sophia hurried with her cake, pouring it into the baking-tins. She had just put it in the oven, when the door opened and Flora entered carrying the blue water-pitcher.
“What are you bringing down that pitcher again for?” asked Sophia.
“She wants some water, and Aunt Amanda sent me,” replied Flora.
Her pretty pale face had a bewildered expression.
“For the land sake, she hasn’t used all that great pitcherful of water so quick?”
“There wasn’t any water in it,” replied Flora.
Her high, childish forehead was contracted slightly with a puzzled frown as she looked at her aunt.
“Wasn’t any water in it?”
“No, ma’am.”
“Didn’t I see you filling the pitcher with water not ten minutes ago, I want to know?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“What did you do with that water?”
“Nothing.”
“Did you carry that pitcherful of water up to that room and set it on the washstand?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Didn’t you spill it?”
“No, ma’am.”
“Now, Flora Scott, I want the truth! Did you fill that pitcher with water and carry it up there, and wasn’t there any there when she came to use it?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Let me see that pitcher.” Sophia examined the pitcher. It was not only perfectly dry from top to bottom, but even a little dusty. She turned severely on the young girl. “That shows,” said she, “you did not fill the pitcher at all. You let the water run at the side because you didn’t want to carry it upstairs. I am ashamed of you. It’s bad enough to be so lazy, but when it comes to not telling the truth—”
The young girl’s face broke up suddenly into piteous confusion, and her blue eyes became filmy with tears.
“I did fill the pitcher, honest,” she faltered, “I did, Aunt Sophia. You ask Aunt Amanda.”
“I’ll ask nobody. This pitcher is proof enough. Water don’t go off and leave the pitcher dusty on the inside if it was put in ten minutes ago. Now you fill that pitcher full quick, and you carry it upstairs, and if you spill a drop there’ll be something besides talk.”
Flora filled the pitcher, with the tears falling over her cheeks. She sniveled softly as she went out, balancing it carefully against her slender hip. Sophia followed her.
“Stop crying,” said she sharply; “you ought to be ashamed of yourself. What do you suppose Miss Louisa Stark will think. No water in her pitcher in the first place, and then you come back crying as if you didn’t want to get it.”
In spite of herself, Sophia’s voice was soothing. She was very fond of the girl. She followed her up the stairs to the chamber where Miss Louisa Stark was waiting for the water to remove the soil of travel. She had removed her bonnet, and its tuft of red geraniums lightened the obscurity of the mahogany dresser. She had placed her little beaded cape carefully on the bed. She was replying to a tremulous remark of Amanda’s, who was nearly fainting from the new mystery of the water-pitcher, that it was warm and she suffered a good deal in warm weather.
Louisa Stark was stout and solidly built. She was much larger than either of the Gill sisters. She was a masterly woman inured to command from years of school-teaching. She carried her swelling bulk with majesty; even her face, moist and red with the heat, lost nothing of its dignity of expression.
She was standing in the middle of the floor with an air which gave the effect of her standing upon an elevation. She turned when Sophia and Flora, carrying the water-pitcher, entered.
“This is my sister Sophia,” said Amanda tremulously.
Sophia advanced, shook hands with Miss Louisa Stark and bade her welcome and hoped she would like her room. Then she moved toward the closet. “There is a nice large closet in this room—the best closet in the house. You might have your trunk—” she said, then she stopped short.
The closet door was ajar, and a purple garment seemed suddenly to swing into view as if impelled by some wind.
“Why, here is something left in this closet,” Sophia said in a mortified tone. “I thought all those things had been taken away.”
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nbsp; She pulled down the garment with a jerk, and as she did so Amanda passed her in a weak rush for the door.
“I am afraid your sister is not well,” said the school-teacher from Acton. “She looked very pale when you took that dress down. I noticed it at once. Hadn’t you better go and see what the matter is? She may be going to faint.”
“She is not subject to fainting spells,” replied Sophia, but she followed Amanda.
She found her in the room which they occupied together, lying on the bed, very pale and gasping. She leaned over her.
“Amanda, what is the matter; don’t you feel well?” she asked.
“I feel a little faint.”
Sophia got a camphor bottle and began rubbing her sister’s forehead.
“Do you feel better?” she said.
Amanda nodded.
“I guess it was that green apple pie you ate this noon,” said Sophia. “I declare, what did I do with that dress of Aunt Harriet’s? I guess if you feel better I’ll just run and get it and take it up garret. I’ll stop in here again when I come down. You’d better lay still. Flora can bring you up a cup of tea. I wouldn’t try to eat any supper.”
Sophia’s tone as she left the room was full of loving concern. Presently she returned; she looked disturbed, but angrily so. There was not the slightest hint of any fear in her expression.
The Fifth Ghost Story Megapack 25 Classic Haunts Page 22
