The Second Ghost Story Megapack

by Various Writers

  “Is Addie Slocum her intimate friend?”

  “Intimate as any.”

  “Maybe we can have her come out to see Agnes when she’s living with me,” said Rebecca, wistfully. “I suppose she’ll be likely to be homesick at first.”

  “Most likely,” answered Mrs. Dent.

  “Does she call you mother?” Rebecca asked.

  “No, she calls me Aunt Emeline,” replied the other woman, shortly. “When did you say you were going home?”

  “In about a week, I thought, if she can be ready to go so soon,” answered Rebecca with a surprised look.

  She reflected that she would not remain a day longer than she could help after such an inhospitable look and question.

  “Oh, as far as that goes,” said Mrs. Dent, “it wouldn’t make any difference about her being ready. You could go home whenever you felt that you must, and she could come afterward.”

  “Alone?”

  “Why not? She’s a big girl now, and you don’t have to change cars.”

  “My niece will go home when I do, and not travel alone; and if I can’t wait here for her, in the house that used to be her mother’s and my sister’s home, I’ll go and board somewhere,” returned Rebecca with warmth.

  “Oh, you can stay here as long as you want to. You’re welcome,” said Mrs. Dent.

  Then Rebecca started. “There she is!” she declared in a trembling, exultant voice. Nobody knew how she longed to see the girl.

  “She isn’t as late as I thought she’d be,” said Mrs. Dent, and again that curious, subtle change passed over her face, and again it settled into that stony impassiveness.

  Rebecca stared at the door, waiting for it to open. “Where is she?” she asked, presently.

  “I guess she’s stopped to take off her hat in the entry,” suggested Mrs. Dent.

  Rebecca waited. “Why don’t she come? It can’t take her all this time to take off her hat.”

  For answer Mrs. Dent rose with a stiff jerk and threw open the door.

  “Agnes!” she called. “Agnes!” Then she turned and eyed Rebecca. “She ain’t there.”

  “I saw her pass the window,” said Rebecca in bewilderment.

  “You must have been mistaken.”

  “I know I did,” persisted Rebecca.

  “You couldn’t have.”

  “I did. I saw first a shadow go over the ceiling, then I saw her in the glass there”—she pointed to a mirror over the sideboard opposite—“and then the shadow passed the window.”

  “How did she look in the glass?”

  “Little and light-haired, with the light hair kind of tossing over her forehead.”

  “You couldn’t have seen her.”

  “Was that like Agnes?”

  “Like enough; but of course you didn’t see her. You’ve been thinking so much about her that you thought you did.”

  “You thought you did.”

  “I thought I saw a shadow pass the window, but I must have been mistaken. She didn’t come in, or we would have seen her before now. I knew it was too early for her to get home from Addie Slocum’s, anyhow.”

  When Rebecca went to bed Agnes had not returned. Rebecca had resolved that she would not retire until the girl came, but she was very tired, and she reasoned with herself that she was foolish. Besides, Mrs. Dent suggested that Agnes might go to the church social with Addie Slocum. When Rebecca suggested that she be sent for and told that her aunt had come, Mrs. Dent laughed meaningly.

  “I guess you’ll find out that a young girl ain’t so ready to leave a sociable, where there’s boys, to see her aunt,” said she.

  “She’s too young,” said Rebecca, incredulously and indignantly.

  “She’s sixteen,” replied Mrs. Dent; “and she’s always been great for the boys.”

  “She’s going to school four years after I get her before she thinks of boys,” declared Rebecca.

  “We’ll see,” laughed the other woman.

  After Rebecca went to bed, she lay awake a long time listening for the sound of girlish laughter and a boy’s voice under her window; then she fell asleep.

  The next morning she was down early. Mrs. Dent, who kept no servants, was busily preparing breakfast.

  “Don’t Agnes help you about breakfast?” asked Rebecca. “No, I let her lay,” replied Mrs. Dent, shortly.

  “What time did she get home last night?”

  “She didn’t get home.”

  “What?”

  “She didn’t get home. She stayed with Addie. She often does.”

  “Without sending you word?”

  “Oh, she knew I wouldn’t worry.”

  “When will she be home?”

  “Oh, I guess she’ll be along pretty soon.”

  Rebecca was uneasy, but she tried to conceal it, for she knew of no good reason for uneasiness. What was there to occasion alarm in the fact of one young girl staying overnight with another? She could not eat much breakfast. Afterward she went out on the little piazza, although her hostess strove furtively to stop her.

  “Why don’t you go out back of the house? It’s real pretty—a view over the river,” she said.

  “I guess I’ll go out here,” replied Rebecca. She had a purpose—to watch for the absent girl.

  Presently Rebecca came hustling into the house through the sitting room, into the kitchen where Mrs. Dent was cooking.

  “That rose-bush!” she gasped.

  Mrs. Dent turned and faced her.

  “What of it?”

  “It’s a-blowing.”

  “What of it?”

  “There isn’t a mite of wind this morning.”

  Mrs. Dent turned with an inimitable toss of her fair head. “If you think I can spend my time puzzling over such nonsense as—” she began, but Rebecca interrupted her with a cry and a rush to the door.

  “There she is now!” she cried.

  She flung the door wide open, and curiously enough a breeze came in and her own gray hair tossed, and a paper blew off the table to the floor with a loud rustle, but there was nobody in sight.

  “There’s nobody here,” Rebecca said.

  She looked blankly at the other woman, who brought her rolling-pin down on a slab of pie crust with a thud.

  “I didn’t hear anybody,” she said, calmly.

  “I saw somebody pass that window!”

  “You were mistaken again.”

  “I know I saw somebody.”

  “You couldn’t have. Please shut that door.”

  Rebecca shut the door. She sat down beside the window and looked out on the autumnal yard, with its little curve of footpath to the kitchen door.

  “What smells so strong of roses in this room?” she said, presently. She sniffed hard.

  “I don’t smell anything but these nutmegs.”

  “It is not nutmeg.”

  “I don’t smell anything else.”

  “Where do you suppose Agnes is?”

  “Oh, perhaps she has gone over the ferry to Porter’s Falls with Addie. She often does. Addie’s got an aunt over there, and Addie’s got a cousin, a real pretty boy.”

  “You suppose she’s gone over there?”

  “Mebbe. I shouldn’t wonder.”

  “When should she be home?”

  “Oh, not before afternoon.”

  Rebecca waited with all the patience she could muster. She kept reassuring herself, telling herself that it was all natural, that the other woman could not help it, but she made up her mind that if Agnes did not return that afternoon she should be sent for.

  When it was four o’clock she started up with resolution. She had been furtively watching the onyx clock on the sitting-room mantel; she had timed herself. She had said that if Agnes was not home by that time she should demand that she be sent for. She rose and stood before Mrs. Dent, who looked up coolly from her embroidery.

  “I’ve waited just as long as I’m going to,” she said. “I’ve come ’way from Michigan to see my own siste
r’s daughter and take her home with me. I’ve been here ever since yesterday—twenty-four hours—and I haven’t seen her. Now I’m going to. I want her sent for.”

  Mrs. Dent folded her embroidery and rose.

  “Well, I don’t blame you,” she said. “It is high time she came home. I’ll go right over and get her myself.”

  Rebecca heaved a sigh of relief. She hardly knew what she had suspected or feared, but she knew that her position had been one of antagonism if not accusation, and she was sensible of relief.

  “I wish you would,” she said, gratefully, and went back to her chair, while Mrs. Dent got her shawl and her little white head-tie. “I wouldn’t trouble you, but I do feel as if I couldn’t wait any longer to see her,” she remarked, apologetically.

  “Oh, it ain’t any trouble at all,” said Mrs. Dent as she went out. “I don’t blame you; you have waited long enough.”

  Rebecca sat at the window watching breathlessly until Mrs. Dent came stepping through the yard alone. She ran to the door and saw, hardly noticing it this time, that the rose-bush was again violently agitated, yet with no wind evident elsewhere.

  “Where is she?” she cried.

  Mrs. Dent laughed with stiff lips as she came up the steps over the terrace. “Girls will be girls,” said she. “She’s gone with Addie to Lincoln. Addie’s got an uncle who’s conductor on the train, and lives there, and he got ’em passes, and they’re goin’ to stay to Addie’s Aunt Margaret’s a few days Mrs. Slocum said Agnes didn’t have time to come over and ask me before the train went, but she took it on herself to say it would be all right, and—”

  “Why hadn’t she been over to tell you?” Rebecca was angry, though not suspicious. She even saw no reason for her anger.

  “Oh, she was putting up grapes. She was coming over just as soon as she got the black off her hands. She heard I had company, and her hands were a sight. She was holding them over sulphur matches.”

  “You say she’s going to stay a few days?” repeated Rebecca, dazedly.

  “Yes; till Thursday, Mrs. Slocum said.”

  “How far is Lincoln from here?”

  “About fifty miles. It’ll be a real treat to her. Mrs. Slocum’s sister is a real nice woman.”

  “It is goin’ to make it pretty late about my goin’ home.”

  “If you don’t feel as if you could wait, I’ll get her ready and send her on just as soon as I can,” Mrs. Dent said, sweetly.

  “I’m going to wait,” said Rebecca, grimly.

  The two women sat down again, and Mrs. Dent took up her embroidery.

  “Is there any sewing I can do for her?” Rebecca asked, finally, in a desperate way. “If I can get her sewing along some—”

  Mrs. Dent arose with alacrity and fetched a mass of white from the closet. “Here,” she said, “if you want to sew the lace on this nightgown. I was going to put her to it, but she’ll be glad enough to get rid of it. She ought to have this and one more before she goes. I don’t like to send her away without some good underclothing.”

  Rebecca snatched at the little white garment and sewed feverishly.

  That night she wakened from a deep sleep a little after midnight and lay a minute trying to collect her faculties and explain to herself what she was listening to. At last she discovered that it was the then popular strains of “The Maiden’s Prayer” floating up through the floor from the piano in the sitting room below. She jumped up, threw a shawl over her nightgown, and hurried downstairs trembling. There was nobody in the sitting room: the piano was silent. She ran to Mrs. Dent’s bedroom and called hysterically:

  “Emeline! Emeline!”

  “What is it?” asked Mrs. Dent’s voice from the bed. The voice was stern, but had a note of consciousness in it.

  “Who—who was that playing ‘The Maiden’s Prayer’ in the sitting room, on the piano?”

  “I didn’t hear anybody.”

  “There was some one.”

  “I didn’t hear anything.”

  “I tell you there was some one. But—there ain’t anybody there.”

  “I didn’t hear anything.”

  “I did—somebody playing ‘The Maiden’s Prayer’ on the piano. Has Agnes got home? I want to know.”

  “Of course Agnes hasn’t got home,” answered Mrs. Dent with rising inflection. “Be you gone crazy over that girl? The last boat from Porter’s Falls was in before we went to bed. Of course she ain’t come.”

  “I heard—”

  “You were dreaming.”

  “I wasn’t; I was broad awake.”

  Rebecca went back to her chamber and kept her lamp burning all night.

  The next morning her eyes upon Mrs. Dent were wary and blazing with suppressed excitement. She kept opening her mouth as if to speak, then frowning, and setting her lips hard. After breakfast she went upstairs, and came down presently with her coat and bonnet.

  “Now, Emeline,” she said, “I want to know where the Slocums live.”

  Mrs. Dent gave a strange, long, half-lidded glance at her. She was finishing her coffee.

  “Why?” she asked.

  “I’m going over there and find out if they have heard anything from her daughter and Agnes since they went away. I don’t like what I heard last night.”

  “You must have been dreaming.”

  “It don’t make any odds whether I was or not. Does she play ‘The Maiden’s Prayer’ on the piano? I want to know.”

  “What if she does? She plays it a little, I believe. I don’t know. She don’t half play it, anyhow; she ain’t got an ear.”

  “That wasn’t half played last night. I don’t like such things happening. I ain’t superstitious, but I don’t like it. I’m going. Where do the Slocums live?”

  “You go down the road over the bridge past the old grist mill, then you turn to the left; it’s the only house for half a mile. You can’t miss it. It has a barn with a ship in full sail on the cupola.”

  “Well, I’m going. I don’t feel easy.”

  About two hours later Rebecca returned. There were red spots on her cheeks. She looked wild. “I’ve been there,” she said, “and there isn’t a soul at home. Something has happened.”

  “What has happened?”

  “I don’t know. Something. I had a warning last night. There wasn’t a soul there. They’ve been sent for to Lincoln.”

  “Did you see anybody to ask?” asked Mrs. Dent with thinly concealed anxiety.

  “I asked the woman that lives on the turn of the road. She’s stone deaf. I suppose you know. She listened while I screamed at her to know where the Slocums were, and then she said, ‘Mrs. Smith don’t live here.’ I didn’t see anybody on the road, and that’s the only house. What do you suppose it means?”

  “I don’t suppose it means much of anything,” replied Mrs. Dent, coolly. “Mr. Slocum is conductor on the railroad, and he’d be away, anyway, and Mrs. Slocum often goes early when he does, to spend the day with her sister in Porter’s Falls. She’d be more likely to go away than Addie.”

  “And you don’t think anything has happened?” Rebecca asked with diminishing distrust before the reasonableness of it.

  “Land, no!”

  Rebecca went upstairs to lay aside her coat and bonnet. But she came hurrying back with them still on.

  “Who’s been in my room?” she gasped. Her face was pale as ashes.

  Mrs. Dent also paled as she regarded her.

  “What do you mean?” she asked, slowly.

  “I found when I went upstairs that—little nightgown of—Agnes’s on—the bed, laid out. It was—laid out. The sleeves were folded across the bosom, and there was that little red rose between them. Emeline, what is it? Emeline, what’s the matter? Oh!”

  Mrs. Dent was struggling for breath in great, choking gasps. She clung to the back of a chair. Rebecca, trembling herself so she could scarcely keep on her feet, got her some water.

  As soon as she recovered herself Mrs. Dent regarded her with ey
es full of the strangest mixture of fear and horror and hostility. “What do you mean talking so?” she said in a hard voice.

  “It is there.”

  “Nonsense. You threw it down and it fell that way.”

  “It was folded in my bureau drawer.”

  “It couldn’t have been.”

  “Who picked that red rose?”

  “Look on the bush,” Mrs. Dent replied shortly.

  Rebecca looked at her; her mouth gaped. She hurried out of the room. When she came back her eyes seemed to protrude. (She had in the meantime hastened upstairs, and come down with tottering steps, clinging to the banister.)

  “Now I want to know what all this means?” she demanded.

  “What what means?”

  “The rose is on the bush, and it’s gone from the bed in my room! Is this house haunted, or what?”

  “I don’t know anything about a house being haunted. I don’t believe in such things. Be you crazy?” Mrs. Dent spoke with gathering force. The color flashed back to her cheeks.

  “No,” said Rebecca, shortly, “I ain’t crazy yet, but I shall be if this keeps on much longer. I’m going to find out where that girl is before night.”

  Mrs. Dent eyed her. “What be you going to do?”

  “I’m going to Lincoln.”

  A faint triumphant smile overspread Mrs. Dent’s large face.

  “You can’t,” said she; “there ain’t any train.”

  “No train?”

  “No; there ain’t any afternoon train from the Falls to Lincoln.”

  “Then I’m going over to the Slocums’ again to-night.”

  However, Rebecca did not go; such a rain came up as deterred even her resolution, and she had only her best dresses with her. Then in the evening came the letter from the Michigan village which she had left nearly a week ago. It was from her cousin, a single woman, who had come to keep her house while she was away. It was a pleasant unexciting letter enough, all the first of it, and related mostly how she missed Rebecca; how she hoped she was having pleasant weather and kept her health; and how her friend, Mrs. Greenaway, had come to stay with her since she had felt lonesome the first night in the house; how she hoped Rebecca would have no objections to this, although nothing had been said about it, since she had not realized that she might be nervous alone. The cousin was painfully conscientious, hence the letter. Rebecca smiled in spite of her disturbed mind as she read it; then her eye caught the postscript. That was in a different hand, purporting to be written by the friend, Mrs. Hannah Greenaway, informing her that the cousin had fallen down the cellar stairs and broken her hip, and was in a dangerous condition, and begging Rebecca to return at once, as she herself was rheumatic and unable to nurse her properly, and no one else could be obtained.