Great American Ghost Stories

by Bill Bowers

  The little Secretary was about to retreat; but as he looked once more toward the haunted house a dim light appeared in the crack of a closed window, and presently old Jean Poquelin came, dragging his chair, and sat down close against the shining cranny. He spoke in a low, tender tone in the French tongue, making some inquiry. An answer came from within. Was it the voice of a human? So unnatural was it—so hollow, so discordant, so unearthly—that the stealthy listener shuddered again from head to foot, and when something stirred in some bushes near by—though it may have been nothing more than a rat—and came scuttling through the grass, the little Secretary actually turned and fled. As he left the enclosure he moved with bolder leisure through the bushes; yet now and then he spoke aloud: “Oh, oh! I see, I understand!” and shut his eyes in his hands.

  How strange that henceforth little White was the champion of Jean Poquelin! In season and out of season—wherever a word was uttered against him—the Secretary, with a quiet, aggressive force that instantly arrested gossip, demanded upon what authority the statement or conjecture was made; but as he did not condescend to explain his own remarkable attitude, it was not long before the disrelish and suspicion which had followed Jean Poquelin so many years fell also upon him.

  It was only the next evening but one after his adventure that he made himself a source of sullen amazement to one hundred and fifty boys, by ordering them to desist from their wanton hallooing. Old Jean Poquelin, standing and shaking his cane, rolling out his long-drawn maledictions, paused and stared, then gave the Secretary a courteous bow and started on. The boys, save one, from pure astonishment, ceased but a ruffianly little Irish lad, more daring than any had yet been, threw a big hurtling clod, that struck old Poquelin between the shoulders and burst like a shell. The enraged old man wheeled with uplifted staff to give chase to the scampering vagabond; and—he may have tripped, or he may not, but he fell full length. Little White hastened to help him up, but he waved him off with a fierce imprecation and staggering to his feet resumed his way homeward. His lips were reddened with blood.

  Little White was on his way to the meeting of the Board. He would have given all he dared spend to have staid away, for he felt both too fierce and too tremulous to brook the criticisms that were likely to be made.

  “I can’t help it, gentlemen; I can’t help you to make a case against the old man, and I’m not going to.”

  “We did not expect this disappointment, Mr. White.”

  “I can’t help that, sir. No, sir; you had better not appoint any more investigations. Somebody’ll investigate himself into trouble. No, sir; it isn’t a threat, it is only my advice, but I warn you that whoever takes the task in hand will rue it to his dying day—which may be hastened, too.”

  The President expressed himself “surprised.”

  “I don’t care a rush,” answered little White, wildly and foolishly. “I don’t care a rush if you are, sir. No, my nerves are not disordered; my head’s as clear as a bell. No, I’m not excited.” A Director remarked that the Secretary looked as though he had waked from a nightmare.

  “Well, sir, if you want to know the fact, I have; and if you choose to cultivate old Poquelin’s society you can have one, too.”

  “White,” called a facetious member, but White did not notice. “White,” he called again.

  “What?” demanded White, with a scowl.

  “Did you see the ghost?”

  “Yes, sir; I did,” cried White, hitting the table, and handing the President a paper which brought the Board to other business.

  The story got among the gossips that somebody (they were afraid to say little White) had been to the Poquelin mansion by night and beheld something appalling. The rumor was but a shadow of the truth, magnified and distorted as is the manner of shadows. He had seen skeletons walking, and had barely escaped the clutches of one by making the sign of the cross.

  Some madcap boys with an appetite for the horrible plucked up courage to venture through the dried marsh by the cattle-path, and come before the house at a spectral hour when the air was full of bats. Something which they but half saw—half a sight was enough—sent them tearing back through the willow-brakes and acacia bushes to their homes, where they fairly dropped down, and cried:

  “Was it White?”

  “No—yes—nearly so—we can’t tell—but we saw it.” And one could hardly doubt, to look at their ashen faces, that they had, whatever it was.

  “If that old rascal lived in the country we come from,” said certain Américains, “he’d have been tarred and feathered before now, wouldn’t he, Sanders?”

  “Well, now he just would.”

  “And we’d have rid him on a rail, wouldn’t we?”

  “That’s what I allow.”

  “Tell you what you could do.” They were talking to some rollicking Creoles who had assumed an absolute necessity for doing something. “What is it you call this thing where an old man marries a young girl, and you come out with horns and”—

  “Charivari?” asked the Creoles.

  “Yes, that’s it. Why don’t you shivaree him?” Felicitous suggestion.

  Little White, with his wife beside him, was sitting on their doorsteps on the sidewalk, as Creole custom had taught them, looking toward the sunset. They had moved into the lately-opened street. The view was not attractive on the score of beauty. The houses were small and scattered, and across the flat commons, spite of the lofty tangle of weeds and bushes, and spite of the thickets of acacia, they needs must see the dismal old Poquelin mansion, tilted awry and shutting out the declining sun. The moon, white and slender, was hanging the tip of its horn over one of the chimneys.

  “And you say,” said the Secretary, “the old black man has been going by here alone? Patty, suppose old Poquelin should be concocting some mischief; he don’t lack provocation; the way that clod hit him the other day was enough to have killed him. Why, Patty, he dropped as quick as that! No wonder you haven’t seen him. I wonder if they haven’t heard something about him up at the drug-store. Suppose I go and see.”

  “Do,” said his wife.

  She sat alone for half an hour, watching that sudden going out of the day peculiar to the latitude.

  “That moon is ghost enough for one house,” she said, as her husband returned. “It has gone right down the chimney.”

  “Patty,” said little White, “the drug-clerk says the boys are going to shivaree old Poquelin to-night. I’m going to try to stop it.”

  “Why, White,” said his wife, “you’d better not. You’ll get hurt.”

  “No, I’ll not.”

  “Yes, you will.”

  “I’m going to sit out here until they come along. They’re compelled to pass right by here.”

  “Why, White, it may be midnight before they start; you’re not going to sit out here till then.”

  “Yes, I am.”

  “Well, you’re very foolish,” said Mrs. White in an undertone, looking anxious, and tapping one of the steps with her foot.

  They sat a very long time talking over little family matters.

  “What’s that?” at last said Mrs. White.

  “That’s the nine-o’clock gun,” said White, and they relapsed into a long-sustained, drowsy silence.

  “Patty, you’d better go in and go to bed,” said he at last.

  “I’m not sleepy.”

  “Well, you’re very foolish,” quietly remarked little White, and again silence fell upon them.

  “Patty, suppose I walk out to the old house and see if I can find out any thing.”

  “Suppose,” said she, “you don’t do any such—listen!”

  Down the street arose a great hubbub. Dogs and boys were howling and barking; men were laughing, shouting, groaning, and blowing horns, whooping, and clanking cow-bells, whinnying, and howling, and rattling pots and pans.

 
“They are coming this way,” said little White. “You had better go into the house, Patty.”

  “So had you.”

  “No. I’m going to see if I can’t stop them.”

  “Why, White!”

  “I’ll be back in a minute,” said White, and went toward the noise.

  In a few moments the little Secretary met the mob. The pen hesitates on the word, for there is a respectable difference, measurable only on the scale of the half century, between a mob and a charivari. Little White lifted his ineffectual voice. He faced the head of the disorderly column, and cast himself about as if he were made of wood and moved by the jerk of a string. He rushed to one who seemed, from the size and clatter of his tin pan, to be a leader. “Stop these fellows, Bienvenu, stop them just a minute, till I tell them something.” Bienvenu turned and brandished his instruments of discord in an imploring way to the crowd. They slackened their pace, two or three hushed their horns and joined the prayer of little White and Bienvenu for silence. The throng halted. The hush was delicious.

  “Bienvenu,” said little White, “don’t shivaree old Poquelin to-night; he’s—”

  “My fwang,” said the swaying Bienvenu, “who tail you I goin’ to chahivahi somebody, eh? Yon sink bickause I make a little playfool wiz zis tin pan zat I am dhonk?”

  “Oh, no, Bienvenu, old fellow, you’re all right. I was afraid you might not know that old Poquelin was sick, you know, but you’re not going there, are you?”

  “My fwang, I vay soy to tail you zat you ah dhonk as de dev’. I am shem of you. I ham ze servan’ of ze publique. Zese citoyens goin’ to wickwest Jean Poquelin to give to the Ursuline’ two hondred fifty dolla’—”

  “Hé quoi!” cried a listener, “Cinq cent piastres, oui!”

  “Oui!” said Bienvenu, “and if he wiffuse we make him some lit’ musique; ta-ra ta!” He hoisted a merry hand and foot, then frowning, added: “Old Poquelin got no bizniz dhink s’much w’isky.”

  “But, gentlemen,” said little White, around whom a circle had gathered, “the old man is very sick.”

  “My faith!” cried a tiny Creole, “we did not make him to be sick. W’en we have say we going make le charivari, do you want that we hall tell a lie? My faith! ’sfools!”

  “But you can shivaree somebody else,” said desperate little White.

  “Oui” cried Bienvenu, “et chahivahi Jean-ah Poquelin tomo’w!”

  “Let us go to Madame Schneider!” cried two or three, and amid huzzas and confused cries, among which was heard a stentorian Celtic call for drinks, the crowd again began to move.

  “Cent piastres pour l’hôpital de charité!”

  “Hurrah!”

  “One hongred dolla’ for Charity Hospital!”

  “Hurrah!”

  “Whang!” went a tin pan, the crowd yelled, and Pandemonium gaped again.

  They were off at a right angle.

  Nodding, Mrs. White looked at the mantle-clock.

  “Well, if it isn’t away after midnight.”

  The hideous noise down street was passing beyond earshot. She raised a sash and listened. For a moment there was silence. Some one came to the door.

  “Is that you, White?”

  “Yes.” He entered. “I succeeded, Patty.”

  “Did you?” said Patty, joyfully.

  “Yes. They’ve gone down to shivaree the old Dutchwoman who married her step-daughter’s sweetheart. They say she has got to pay a hundred dollars to the hospital before they stop.”

  The couple retired, and Mrs. White slumbered. She was awakened by her husband snapping the lid of his watch.

  “What time?” she asked.

  “Half-past three. Patty, I haven’t slept a wink. Those fellows are out yet. Don’t you hear them?”

  “Why, White, they’re coming this way!”

  “I know they are,” said White, sliding out of bed and drawing on his clothes, “and they’re coming fast. You’d better go away from that window, Patty. My! what a clatter!”

  “Here they are,” said Mrs. White, but her husband was gone. Two or three hundred men and boys pass the place at a rapid walk straight down the broad, new street, toward the hated house of ghosts. The din was terrific. She saw little White at the head of the rabble brandishing his arms and trying in vain to make himself heard; but they only shook their heads laughing and hooting the louder, and so passed, bearing him on before them.

  Swiftly they pass out from among the houses, away from the dim oil lamps of the street, out into the broad starlit commons, and enter the willowy jungles of the haunted ground. Some hearts fail and their owners lag behind and turn back, suddenly remembering how near morning it is. But the most part push on, tearing the air with their clamor.

  Down ahead of them in the long, thicket-darkened way there is—singularly enough—a faint, dancing light. It must be very near the old house; it is. It has stopped now. It is a lantern, and is under a well-known sapling which has grown up on the wayside since the canal was filled. Now it swings mysteriously to and fro. A goodly number of the more ghost-fearing give up the sport; but a full hundred move forward at a run, doubling their devilish howling and banging.

  Yes; it is a lantern, and there are two persons under the tree. The crowd draws near—drops into a walk; one of the two is the old African mute; he lifts the lantern up so that it shines on the other; the crowd recoils; there is a hush of all clangor, and all at once, with a cry of mingled fright and horror from every throat, the whole throng rushes back, dropping every thing, sweeping past little White and hurrying on, never stopping until the jungle is left behind, and then to find that not one in ten has seen the cause of the stampede, and not one of the tenth is certain what it was.

  There is one huge fellow among them who looks capable of any villany. He finds something to mount on, and, in the Creole patois, calls a general halt. Bienvenu sinks down, and, vainly trying to recline gracefully, resigns the leadership. The herd gather round the speaker; he assures them that they have been outraged. Their right peaceably to traverse the public streets has been trampled upon. Shall such encroachments be endured? It is now daybreak. Let them go now by the open light of day and force a free passage of the public highway!

  A scattering consent was the response, and the crowd, thinned now and drowsy, straggled quietly down toward the old house. Some drifted ahead, others sauntered behind, but every one, as he again neared the tree, came to a stand-still. Little White sat upon a bank of turf on the opposite side of the way looking very stern and sad. To each new-comer he put the same question:

  “Did you come here to go to old Poquelin’s?”

  “Yes.”

  “He’s dead.” And if the shocked hearer started away he would say: “Don’t go away.”

  “Why not?”

  “I want you to go to the funeral presently.”

  If some Louisianian, too loyal to dear France or Spain to understand English, looked bewildered, some one would interpret for him; and presently they went. Little White led the van, the crowd trooping after him down the middle of the way. The gate, that had never been seen before unchained, was open. Stern little White stopped a short distance from it; the rabble stopped behind him. Something was moving out from under the veranda. The many whisperers stretched upward to see. The African mute came very slowly toward the gate, leading by a cord in the nose a small brown bull, which was harnessed to a rude cart. On the flat body of the cart, under a black cloth, were seen the outlines of a long box.

  “Hats off, gentlemen,” said little White, as the box came in view, and the crowd silently uncovered.

  “Gentlemen,” said little White, “here come the last remains of Jean Marie Poquelin, a better man, I’m afraid, with all his sins,—yes a better—a kinder man to his blood—a man of more self-forgetful goodness—than all of you put together will ever dare to be.”


  There was a profound hush as the vehicle came creaking through the gate; but when it turned away from them toward the forest, those in front started suddenly. There was a backward rush, then all stood still again staring one way; for there, behind the bier, with eyes cast down and labored step, walked the living remains—all that was left—of little Jacques Poquelin, the long-hidden brother—a leper, as white as snow.

  Dumb with horror, the cringing crowd gazed upon the walking death. They watched, in silent awe, the slow cortège creep down the long, straight road and lessen on the view, until by and by it stopped where a wild, unfrequented path branched off into the undergrowth toward the rear of the ancient city.

  “They are going to the Terre aux Lépreux,” said one in the crowd. The rest watched them in silence.

  The little bull was set free; the mute, with the strength of an ape, lifted the long box to his shoulder. For a moment more the mute and the leper stood in sight, while the former adjusted his heavy burden; then, without one backward glance upon the unkind human world, turning their faces toward the ridge in the depths of the swamp known as the Leper’s Land, they stepped into the jungle, disappeared, and were never seen again.

  15

  Mistress Marian’s Light

  By Gertrude Morton

  So far as is known, “Mistress Marian’s Light,” published in The New England Magazine in 1889, when she resided in Aurora, Maine, is Gertrude Morton’s (?–?) only published work. This seems surprising, given the author’s evident talent and skill. It is also possible that “Gertrude Morton” is a pseudonym.

  Far down the Maine coast, in one of the many harbors of that good old State, is a picturesque little island inhabited by simple fisher folk. Generation after generation has been born, lived, and died in this same island village, yet all the people seem to retain the customs and quaint ways of fifty years ago; from the old, weather-worn sailor, to the youngest child among them, they seem, to an unusual degree, guileless and simple and kindly, while to the stranger within their gates their goodness is unlimited. It is like a reminiscence of bygone days to partake of their generous hospitality.