Classic Ghost Stories

by Wilkie Collins

  The Invisible Presence read my thought. I felt my lips touched, as my husband’s lips used to touch them when he kissed me. And that was my answer. A thought came to me again. I would have said, if I could have spoken: “Are you here to take me to the better world?”

  I waited. Nothing that I could feel touched me.

  I was conscious of thinking once more. I would have said, if I could have spoken: “Are you here to protect me?”

  I felt myself held in a gentle embrace, as my husband’s arms used to hold me when he pressed me to his breast. And that was my answer.

  The touch that was like the touch of his lips, lingered and was lost; the clasp that was like the clasp of his arms, pressed me and fell away. The garden-scene resumed its natural aspect. I saw a human creature near, a lovely little girl looking at me.

  At that moment, when I was my own lonely self again, the sight of the child soothed and attracted me. I advanced, intending to speak to her. To my horror I suddenly ceased to see her. She disappeared as if I had been stricken blind.

  And yet I could see the landscape round me; I could see the heaven above me. A time passed—only a few minutes, as I thought—and the child became visible to me again; walking hand-in-hand with her father. I approached them; I was close enough to see that they were looking at me with pity and surprise. My impulse was to ask if they saw anything strange in my face or my manner. Before I could speak, the horrible wonder happened again. They vanished from my view.

  Was the Invisible Presence still near? Was it passing between me and my fellow-mortals; forbidding communication, in that place and at that time?

  It must have been so. When I turned away in my ignorance, with a heavy heart, the dreadful blankness which had twice shut out from me the beings of my own race, was not between me and my dog. The poor little creature filled me with pity; I called him to me. He moved at the sound of my voice, and followed me languidly; not quite awakened yet from the trance of terror that had possessed him.

  Before I had retired by more than a few steps, I thought I was conscious of the Presence again. I held out my longing arms to it. I waited in the hope of a touch to tell me that I might return. Perhaps I was answered by indirect means? I only know that a resolution to return to the same place, at the same hour, came to me, and quieted my mind.

  The morning of the next day was dull and cloudy; but the rain held off I set forth again to the Gardens.

  My dog ran on before me into the street—and stopped: waiting to see in which direction I might lead the way. When I turned towards the Gardens, he dropped behind me. In a little while I looked back. He was following me no longer; he stood irresolute. I called to him. He advanced a few steps—hesitated—and ran back to the house.

  I went on by myself. Shall I confess my superstition? I thought the dog’s desertion of me a bad omen.

  Arrived at the tree, I placed myself under it. The minutes followed each other uneventfully. The cloudy sky darkened. The dull surface of the grass showed no shuddering consciousness of an unearthly creature passing over it.

  I still waited, with an obstinacy which was fast becoming the obstinacy of despair. How long an interval elapsed, while I kept watch on the ground before me, I am not able to say. I only know that a change came.

  Under the dull gray light I saw the grass move—but not as it had moved, on the day before. It shrivelled as if a flame had scorched it. No flame appeared. The brown underlying earth showed itself winding onward in a thin strip—which might have been a footpath traced in fire. It frightened me. I longed for the protection of the Invisible Presence; I prayed for a warning of it, if danger was near.

  A touch answered me. It was as if a hand unseen had taken my hand— had raised it, little by little—had left it, pointing to the thin brown path that wound towards me under the shrivelled blades of grass.

  I looked to the far end of the path.

  The unseen hand closed on my hand with a warning pressure: the revelation of the coming danger was near me—I waited for it; I saw it.

  The figure of a man appeared, advancing towards me along the thin brown path. I looked in his face as he came nearer. It showed me dimly the face of my husband’s brother—John Zant.

  The consciousness of myself as a living creature left me. I knew nothing; I felt nothing; I was dead.

  When the torture of revival made me open my eyes, I found myself on the grass. Gentle hands raised my head, at the moment when I recovered my senses. Who had brought me to life again? Who was taking care of me?

  I looked upward, and saw—bending over me—John Zant.

  THERE the manuscript ended.

  Some lines had been added on the last page; but they had been so carefully erased as to be illegible. These words of explanation appeared below the cancelled sentences:

  “I had begun to write the little that remains to be told, when it struck me that I might, unintentionally, be exercising an unfair influence on your opinion. Let me only remind you that I believe absolutely in the supernatural revelation which I have endeavoured to describe. Remember this—and decide for me what I dare not decide for myself.”

  There was no serious obstacle in the way of compliance with this request.

  Judged from the point of view of the materialist, Mrs. Zant might no doubt be the victim of illusions (produced by a diseased state of the nervous system), which have been known to exist—as in the celebrated case of the bookseller, Nicolai, of Berlin—without being accompanied by derangement of the intellectual powers. But Mr. Rayburn was not asked to solve any such intricate problem as this. He had been merely instructed to read the manuscript, and to say what impression it had left on him of the mental condition of the writer; whose doubt of herself had been, in all probability, first suggested by remembrance of the illness from which she had suffered—brain-fever.

  Under these circumstances, there could be little difficulty in forming an opinion. The memory which had recalled, and the judgment which had arranged, the succession of events related in the narrative revealed a mind in full possession of its resources.

  Having satisfied himself so far, Mr. Rayburn abstained from considering the more serious question suggested by what he had read.

  At any time, his habits of life and his ways of thinking would have rendered him unfit to weigh the arguments, which assert or deny supernatural revelation among the creatures of earth. But his mind was now so disturbed by the startling record of experience which he had just read, that he was only conscious of feeling certain impressions—without possessing the capacity to reflect on them. That his anxiety on Mrs. Zant’s account had been increased, and that his doubts of Mr. John Zant had been encouraged, were the only practical results of the confidence placed in him of which he was thus far aware. In the ordinary exigencies of life a man of hesitating disposition, his interest in Mrs. Zant’s welfare, and his desire to discover what had passed between her brother-in-law and herself, after their meeting in the Gardens, urged him into instant action. In half an hour more, he had arrived at her lodgings. He was at once admitted.

  8

  Mrs. Zant was alone, in an imperfectly lit room. “I hope you will excuse the bad light,” she said; “my head has been burning as if the fever had come back again. Oh, don’t go away! After what I have suffered, you don’t know how dreadful it is to be alone.”

  The tone of her voice told him that she had been crying. He at once tried the best means of setting the poor lady at ease, by telling her of the conclusion at which he had arrived, after reading her manuscript. The happy result showed itself instantly: her face brightened, her manner changed; she was eager to hear more.

  “Have I produced any other impression on you?” she asked.

  He understood the allusion. Expressing sincere respect for her own convictions, he told her honestly that he was not prepared to enter on the obscure and terrible question of supernatural interposition. Grateful for the tone in which he had answered her, she wisely and delicately changed the subject
.

  “I must speak to you of my brother-in-law,” she said. “He has told me of your visit; and I am anxious to know what you think of him. Do you like Mr. John Zant?”

  Mr. Rayburn hesitated.

  The care-worn look appeared again in her face. “If you had felt as kindly towards him as he feels towards you,” she said, “I might have gone to St. Sallins with a lighter heart.”

  Mr. Rayburn thought of the supernatural appearances, described at the close of her narrative. “You believe in that terrible warning,” he remonstrated; “and yet, you go to your brother-in-law’s house!”

  “I believe,” she answered, “in the spirit of the man who loved me in the days of his earthly bondage. I am under his protection. What have I to do but to cast away my fears, and to wait in faith and hope? It might have helped my resolution if a friend had been near to encourage me.” She paused and smiled sadly. “I must remember,” she resumed, “that your way of understanding my position is not my way. I ought to have told you that Mr. John Zant feels needless anxiety about my health. He declares that he will not lose sight of me until his mind is at ease. It is useless to attempt to alter his opinion. He says my nerves are shattered—and who that sees me can doubt it? He tells me that my only chance of getting better is to try change of air and perfect repose—how can I contradict him? He reminds me that I have no relation but himself, and no house open to me but his own—and God knows he is right!”

  She said those last words in accents of melancholy resignation, which grieved the good man whose one merciful purpose was to serve and console her. He spoke impulsively with the freedom of an old friend.

  “I want to know more of you and Mr. John Zant, than I know now,” he said. “My motive is a better one than the mere curiosity. Do you believe that I feel a sincere interest in you?”

  “With my whole heart.”

  That reply encouraged him to proceed with what he had to say. “When you recovered from your fainting-fit,” he began, “Mr. John Zant asked questions, of course?”

  “He asked what could possibly have happened, in such a quiet place as Kensington Gardens, to make me faint.”

  “And how did you answer?”

  “Answer? I couldn’t even look at him!”

  “You said nothing?”

  “Nothing. I don’t know what he thought of me; he might have been surprised, or he might have been offended.”

  “Is he easily offended?” Mr. Rayburn asked.

  “Not in my experience of him.”

  “Do you mean your experience of him before your illness?”

  “Yes. Since my recovery, his engagements with country patients have kept him away from London. I have not seen him since he took these lodgings for me. But he is always considerate. He has written more than once to beg that I will not think him neglectful, and to tell me (what I knew already through my poor husband) that he has no money of his own, and must live by his profession.”

  “In your husband’s lifetime, were the two brothers on good terms?”

  “Always. The one complaint I ever heard my husband make of John Zant was that he didn’t come to see us often enough, after our marriage. Is there some wickedness in him which we have never suspected? It may be—but how can it be? I have every reason to be grateful to the man against whom I have been supernaturally warned! His conduct to me has been always perfect. I can’t tell you what I owe to his influence in quieting my mind, when a dreadful doubt arose about my husband’s death.”

  “Do you mean doubt if he died a natural death?”

  “Oh, no! no! He was dying of rapid consumption—but his sudden death took the doctors by surprise. One of them thought that he might have taken an overdose of his sleeping drops, by mistake. The other disputed this conclusion, or there might have been an inquest in the house. Oh, don’t speak of it any more! Let us talk of something else. Tell me when I shall see you again.”

  “I hardly know. When do you and your brother-in-law leave London?”

  “To-morrow.” She looked at Mr. Rayburn with a piteous entreaty in her eyes; she said timidly: “Do you ever go to the seaside, and take your dear little girl with you?”

  The request, at which she had only dared to hint, touched on the idea which was at that moment in Mr. Rayburn’s mind.

  Interpreted by his strong prejudice against John Zant, what she had said of her brother-in-law filled him with forebodings of peril to herself; all the more powerful in their influence, for this reason—that he shrank from distinctly realising them. If another person had been present at the interview, and had said to him afterwards: “That man’s reluctance to visit his sister-in-law, while her husband was living, is associated with a secret sense of guilt which her innocence cannot even imagine: he, and he alone, knows the cause of her husband’s sudden death: his feigned anxiety about her health is adopted as the safest means of enticing her into his house”—if those formidable conclusions had been urged on Mr. Rayburn, he would have felt it his duty to reject them, as unjustifiable aspersions on an absent man. And yet, when he took leave that evening of Mrs. Zant, he had pledged himself to give Lucy a holiday at the seaside; and he had said, without blushing, that the child really deserved it, as a reward for general good conduct and attention to her lessons!

  9

  Three days later, the father and daughter arrived towards evening at St. Sallins-on-Sea. They found Mrs. Zant at the station.

  The poor woman’s joy, on seeing them, expressed itself like the joy of a child. “Oh, I am so glad! so glad!” was all she could say when they met. Lucy was half-smothered with kisses, and was made supremely happy by a present of the finest doll she had ever possessed. Mrs. Zant accompanied her friends to the rooms which had been secured at the hotel. She was able to speak confidentially to Mr. Rayburn, while Lucy was in the balcony hugging her doll, and looking at the sea.

  The one event that had happened during Mrs. Zant’s short residence at St. Sallins, was the departure of her brother-in-law that morning, for London. He had been called away to operate on the feet of a wealthy patient who knew the value of his time: his housekeeper expected that he would return to dinner.

  As to his conduct towards Mrs. Zant, he was not only as attentive as ever—he was almost oppressively affectionate in his language and manner. There was no service that a man could render which he had not eagerly offered to her. He declared that he already perceived an improvement in her health; he congratulated her on having decided to stay in his house; and (as a proof, perhaps, on his sincerity) he had repeatedly pressed her hand. “Have you any idea what all this means?” she said simply.

  Mr. Rayburn kept his idea to himself. He professed ignorance; and asked next what sort of person the housekeeper was.

  Mrs. Zant shook her head ominously.

  “Such a strange creature,” she said, “and in the habit of taking such liberties, that I begin to be afraid she is a little crazy.”

  “Is she an old woman?”

  “No—only middle-aged. This morning, after her master had left the house, she actually asked me what I thought of my brother-in-law! I told her, as coldly as possible, that I thought he was very kind. She was quite insensible to the tone in which I had spoken; she went on from bad to worse. ‘Do you call him the sort of man who would take the fancy of a young woman?’ was her next question. She actually looked at me (I might have been wrong; and I hope I was) as if the ‘young woman’ she had in her mind was myself! I said, ‘I don’t think of such things, and I don’t talk about them.’ Still, she was not in the least discouraged; she made a personal remark next: ‘Excuse me—but you do look wretchedly pale.’ I thought she seemed to enjoy the defect in my complexion; I really believe it raised me in her estimation. ‘We shall get on better in time,’ she said; ‘I’m beginning to like you.’ She walked out humming a tune. Don’t you agree with me? Don’t you think she’s crazy?”

  “I can hardly give an opinion until I have seen her. Does she look as if she might have been a pretty
woman at one time of her life?”

  “Not the sort of pretty woman whom I admire!”

  Mr. Rayburn smiled. “I was thinking,” he resumed, “that this person’s odd conduct may perhaps be accounted for. She is probably jealous of any young lady who is invited to her master’s house—and (till she noticed your complexion) she began by being jealous of you.”

  Innocently at a loss to understand how she could become an object of the housekeeper’s jealousy, Mrs. Zant looked at Mr. Rayburn in astonishment. Before she could give expression to her feeling of surprise, there was an interruption—a welcome interruption. A waiter entered the room, and announced a visitor; described as “a gentleman.”

  Mrs. Zant at once rose to retire.

  “Who is the gentleman?” Mr. Rayburn asked—detaining Mrs. Zant as he spoke.

  A voice which they both recognised answered gaily, from the outer side of the door:

  “A friend from London.”

  10

  “Welcome to St. Sallins!” cried Mr. John Zant. “I knew that you were expected, my dear sir, and I took my chance of finding you at the hotel.” He turned to his sister-in-law, and kissed her hand with an elaborate gallantry worthy of Sir Charles Grandison himself. “When I reached home, my dear, and heard that you had gone out, I guessed that your object was to receive our excellent friend. You have not felt lonely while I have been away? That’s right! that’s right!” He looked towards the balcony, and discovered Lucy at the open window, staring at the magnificent stranger. “Your little daughter, Mr. Rayburn? Dear child! Come, and kiss me.”