The Big Book of Ghost Stories

by Otto Penzler

  “How do you think Mrs. Vanderbridge is looking?” she asked abruptly in a voice that held a breathless note of suspense. Her nervousness and the queer look in her face made me stare at her sharply. This was a house, I was beginning to feel, where everybody, from the mistress down, wanted to question me. Even the silent maid had found voice for interrogation.

  “I think her the loveliest person I’ve ever seen,” I answered after a moment’s hesitation. There couldn’t be any harm in telling her how much I admired her mistress.

  “Yes, she is lovely—everyone thinks so—and her nature is as sweet as her face.” She was becoming loquacious. “I have never had a lady who was so sweet and kind. She hasn’t always been rich, and that may be the reason she never seems to grow hard and selfish, the reason she spends so much of her life thinking of other people. It’s been six years now, ever since her marriage, that I’ve lived with her, and in all that time I’ve never had a cross word from her.”

  “One can see that. With everything she has she ought to be as happy as the day is long.”

  “She ought to be.” Her voice dropped, and I saw her glance suspiciously at the door, which she had closed when she entered. “She ought to be, but she isn’t. I have never seen any one so unhappy as she has been of late—ever since last summer. I suppose I oughtn’t to talk about it, but I’ve kept it to myself so long that I feel as if it was killing me. If she was my own sister, I couldn’t be any fonder of her, and yet I have to see her suffer day after day, and not say a word—not even to her. She isn’t the sort of lady you could speak to about a thing like that.”

  She broke down, and dropping on the rug at my feet, hid her face in her hands. It was plain that she was suffering acutely, and while I patted her shoulder, I thought what a wonderful mistress Mrs. Vanderbridge must be to have attached a servant to her so strongly.

  “You must remember that I am a stranger in the house, that I scarcely know her, that I’ve never so much as laid eyes on her husband,” I said warningly, for I’ve always avoided, as far as possible, the confidences of servants.

  “But you look as if you could be trusted.” The maid’s nerves, as well as the mistress’s, were on edge, I could see. “And she needs somebody who can help her. She needs a real friend—somebody who will stand by her no matter what happens.” Again, as in the room downstairs, there flashed through my mind the suspicion that I had got into a place where people took drugs or drink—or were all out of their minds. I had heard of such houses.

  “How can I help her? She won’t confide in me, and even if she did, what could I do for her?”

  “You can stand by and watch. You can come between her and harm—if you see it.” She had risen from the floor and stood wiping her reddened eyes on the napkin. “I don’t know what it is, but I know it is there. I feel it even when I can’t see it.”

  Yes, they were all out of their minds; there couldn’t be any other explanation. The whole episode was incredible. It was the kind of thing, I kept telling myself, that did not happen. Even in a book nobody could believe it.

  “But her husband? He is the one who must protect her.”

  She gave me a blighting look. “He would if he could. He isn’t to blame—you mustn’t think that. He is one of the best men in the world, but he can’t help her. He can’t help her because he doesn’t know. He doesn’t see it.”

  A bell rang somewhere, and catching up the tea-tray, she paused just long enough to throw me a pleading word, “Stand between her and harm, if you see it.”

  When she had gone I locked the door after her, and turned on all the lights in the room. Was there really a tragic mystery in the house, or were they all mad, as I had first imagined? The feeling of apprehension, of vague uneasiness, which had come to me when I entered the iron doors, swept over me in a wave while I sat there in the soft glow of the shaded electric light. Something was wrong. Somebody was making that lovely woman unhappy, and who, in the name of reason, could this somebody be except her husband? Yet the maid had spoken of him as “one of the best men in the world,” and it was impossible to doubt the tearful sincerity of her voice. Well, the riddle was too much for me. I gave it up at last with a sigh—dreading the hour that would call me downstairs to meet Mr. Vanderbridge. I felt in every nerve and fibre of my body that I should hate him the moment I looked at him.

  But at eight o’clock, when I went reluctantly downstairs, I had a surprise. Nothing could have been kinder than the way Mr. Vanderbridge greeted me, and I could tell as soon as I met his eyes that there wasn’t anything vicious or violent in his nature. He reminded me more than ever of the portrait in the loan collection, and though he was so much older than the Florentine nobleman, he had the same thoughtful look. Of course I am not an artist, but I have always tried, in my way, to be a reader of personality; and it didn’t take a particularly keen observer to discern the character and intellect in Mr. Vanderbridge’s face. Even now I remember it as the noblest face I have ever seen; and unless I had possessed at least a shade of penetration, I doubt if I should have detected the melancholy. For it was only when he was thinking deeply that this sadness seemed to spread like a veil over his features. At other times he was cheerful and even gay in his manner; and his rich dark eyes would light up now and then with irrepressible humour. From the way he looked at his wife I could tell that there was no lack of love or tenderness on his side any more than there was on hers. It was obvious that he was still as much in love with her as he had been before his marriage, and my immediate perception of this only deepened the mystery that enveloped them. If the fault wasn’t his and wasn’t hers, then who was responsible for the shadow that hung over the house?

  For the shadow was there. I could feel it, vague and dark, while we talked about the war and the remote possibilities of peace in the spring. Mrs. Vanderbridge looked young and lovely in her gown of white satin with pearls on her bosom, but her violet eyes were almost black in the candlelight, and I had a curious feeling that this blackness was the colour of thought. Something troubled her to despair, yet I was as positive as I could be of anything I had ever been told that she had breathed no word of this anxiety or distress to her husband. Devoted as they were, a nameless dread, fear, or apprehension divided them. It was the thing I had felt from the moment I entered the house; the thing I had heard in the tearful voice of the maid. One could scarcely call it horror, because it was too vague, too impalpable, for so vivid a name; yet, after all these quiet months, horror is the only word I can think of that in any way expresses the emotion which pervaded the house.

  I had never seen so beautiful a dinner table, and I was gazing with pleasure at the damask and glass and silver—there was a silver basket of chrysanthemums, I remember, in the centre of the table—when I noticed a nervous movement of Mrs. Vanderbridge’s head, and saw her glance hastily towards the door and the staircase beyond. We had been talking animatedly, and as Mrs. Vanderbridge turned away, I had just made a remark to her husband, who appeared to have fallen into a sudden fit of abstraction, and was gazing thoughtfully over his soup-plate at the white and yellow chrysanthemums. It occurred to me, while I watched him, that he was probably absorbed in some financial problem, and I regretted that I had been so careless as to speak to him. To my surprise, however, he replied immediately in a natural tone, and I saw, or imagined that I saw, Mrs. Vanderbridge throw me a glance of gratitude and relief. I can’t remember what we were talking about, but I recall perfectly that the conversation kept up pleasantly, without a break, until dinner was almost half over. The roast had been served, and I was in the act of helping myself to potatoes, when I became aware that Mr. Vanderbridge had again fallen into his reverie. This time he scarcely seemed to hear his wife’s voice when she spoke to him, and I watched the sadness cloud his face while he continued to stare straight ahead of him with a look that was almost yearning in its intensity.

  Again I saw Mrs. Vanderbridge, with her nervous gesture, glance in the direction of the hall, and to my amazem
ent, as she did so, a woman’s figure glided noiselessly over the old Persian rug at the door, and entered the dining-room. I was wondering why no one spoke to her, why she spoke to no one, when I saw her sink into a chair on the other side of Mr. Vanderbridge and unfold her napkin. She was quite young, younger even than Mrs. Vanderbridge, and though she was not really beautiful, she was the most graceful creature I had ever imagined. Her dress was of grey stuff, softer and more clinging than silk, and of a peculiar misty texture and colour, and her parted hair lay like twilight on either side of her forehead. She was not like any one I had ever seen before—she appeared so much frailer, so much more elusive, as if she would vanish if you touched her. I can’t describe, even months afterwards, the singular way in which she attracted and repelled me.

  At first I glanced inquiringly at Mrs. Vanderbridge, hoping that she would introduce me, but she went on talking rapidly in an intense, quivering voice, without noticing the presence of her guest by so much as the lifting of her eyelashes. Mr. Vanderbridge still sat there, silent and detached, and all the time the eyes of the stranger—starry eyes with a mist over them—looked straight through me at the tapestried wall at my back. I knew she didn’t see me and that it wouldn’t have made the slightest difference to her if she had seen me. In spite of her grace and her girlishness I did not like her, and I felt that this aversion was not on my side alone. I do not know how I received the impression that she hated Mrs. Vanderbridge—never once had she glanced in her direction—yet I was aware, from the moment of her entrance, that she was bristling with animosity, though animosity is too strong a word for the resentful spite, like the jealous rage of a spoiled child, which gleamed now and then in her eyes. I couldn’t think of her as wicked any more than I could think of a bad child as wicked. She was merely wilful and undisciplined and—I hardly know how to convey what I mean—selfish.

  After her entrance the dinner dragged on heavily. Mrs. Vanderbridge still kept up her nervous chatter, but nobody listened, for I was too embarrassed to pay any attention to what she said, and Mr. Vanderbridge had never recovered from his abstraction. He was like a man in a dream, not observing a thing that happened before him, while the strange woman sat there in the candlelight with her curious look of vagueness and unreality. To my astonishment not even the servants appeared to notice her, and though she had unfolded her napkin when she sat down, she wasn’t served with either the roast or the salad. Once or twice, particularly when a new course was served, I glanced at Mrs. Vanderbridge to see if she would rectify the mistake, but she kept her gaze fixed on her plate. It was just as if there were a conspiracy to ignore the presence of the stranger, though she had been, from the moment of her entrance, the dominant figure at the table. You tried to pretend she wasn’t there, and yet you knew—you knew vividly that she was gazing insolently straight through you.

  The dinner lasted, it seemed, for hours, and you may imagine my relief when at last Mrs. Vanderbridge rose and led the way back into the drawing-room. At first I thought the stranger would follow us, but when I glanced round from the hall she was still sitting there beside Mr. Vanderbridge, who was smoking a cigar with his coffee.

  “Usually he takes his coffee with me,” said Mrs. Vanderbridge, “but tonight he has things to think over.”

  “I thought he seemed absent-minded.”

  “You noticed it, then?” She turned to me with her straightforward glance, “I always wonder how much strangers notice. He hadn’t been well of late, and he has these spells of depression. Nerves are dreadful things, aren’t they?”

  I laughed. “So I’ve heard, but I’ve never been able to afford them.”

  “Well, they do cost a great deal, don’t they?” She had a trick of ending her sentences with a question, “I hope your room is comfortable, and that you don’t feel timid about being alone on that floor. If you haven’t nerves, you can’t get nervous, can you?”

  “No, I can’t get nervous.” Yet while I spoke, I was conscious of a shiver deep down in me, as if my senses reacted again to the dread that permeated the atmosphere.

  As soon as I could, I escaped to my room, and I was sitting there over a book, when the maid—her name was Hopkins, I had discovered—came in on the pretext of inquiring if I had everything I needed. One of the innumerable servants had already turned down my bed, so when Hopkins appeared at the door, I suspected at once that there was a hidden motive underlying her ostensible purpose.

  “Mrs. Vanderbridge told me to look after you,” she began. “She is afraid you will be lonely until you learn the way of things.”

  “No, I’m not lonely,” I answered. “I’ve never had time to be lonely.”

  “I used to be like that; but time hangs heavy on my hands now. That’s why I’ve taken to knitting.” She held out a grey yarn muffler. “I had an operation a year ago, and since then Mrs. Vanderbridge has had another maid—a French one—to sit up for her at night and undress her. She is always so fearful of overtaxing us, though there isn’t really enough work for two lady’s-maids, because she is so thoughtful that she never gives any trouble if she can help it.”

  “It must be nice to be rich,” I said idly, as I turned a page of my book. Then I added almost before I realized what I was saying, “The other lady doesn’t look as if she had so much money.”

  Her face turned paler if that were possible, and for a minute I thought she was going to faint. “The other lady?”

  “I mean the one who came down late to dinner—the one in the grey dress. She wore no jewels, and her dress wasn’t low in the neck.”

  “Then you saw her?” There was a curious flicker in her face as if her pallor came and went.

  “We were at the table when she came in. Has Mr. Vanderbridge a secretary who lives in the house?”

  “No, he hasn’t a secretary except at his office. When he wants one at the house, he telephones to his office.”

  “I wondered why she came, for she didn’t eat any dinner, and nobody spoke to her—not even Mr. Vanderbridge.”

  “Oh, he never speaks to her. Thank God, it hasn’t come to that yet.”

  “Then why does she come? It must be dreadful to be treated like that, and before the servants, too. Does she come often?”

  “There are months and months when she doesn’t. I can always tell by the way Mrs. Vanderbridge picks up. You wouldn’t know her, she is so full of life—the very picture of happiness. Then one evening she—the Other One, I mean—comes back again, just as she did to-night, just as she did last summer, and it all begins over from the beginning.”

  “But can’t they keep her out—the Other One? Why do they let her in?”

  “Mrs. Vanderbridge tries hard. She tries all she can every minute. You saw her to-night?”

  “And Mr. Vanderbridge? Can’t he help her?”

  She shook her head with an ominous gesture. “He doesn’t know.”

  “He doesn’t know she is there? Why, she was close by him. She never took her eyes off him except when she was staring through me at the wall.”

  “Oh, he knows she is there, but not in that way. He doesn’t know that any one else knows.”

  I gave it up, and after a minute she said in an oppressed voice, “It seems strange that you should have seen her. I never have.”

  “But you know all about her.”

  “I know and I don’t know. Mrs. Vanderbridge lets things drop sometimes—she gets ill and feverish very easily—but she never tells me anything outright. She isn’t that sort.”

  “Haven’t the servants told you about her—the Other One?”

  At this, I thought, she seemed startled. “Oh, they don’t know anything to tell. They feel that something is wrong; that is why they never stay longer than a week or two—we’ve had eight butlers since autumn—but they never see what it is.”

  She stooped to pick up the ball of yarn which had rolled under my chair. “If the time ever comes when you can stand between them, you will do it?” she asked.

  “Bet
ween Mrs. Vanderbridge and the Other One?”

  Her look answered me.

  “You think, then, that she means harm to her?”

  “I don’t know. Nobody knows—but she is killing her.”

  The clock struck ten, and I returned to my book with a yawn, while Hopkins gathered up her work and went out, after wishing me a formal goodnight. The odd part about our secret conferences was that as soon as they were over, we began to pretend so elaborately to each other that they had never been.

  “I’ll tell Mrs. Vanderbridge that you are very comfortable,” was the last remark Hopkins made before she sidled out of the door and left me alone with the mystery. It was one of those situations—I am obliged to repeat this over and over—that was too preposterous for me to believe in even while I was surrounded and overwhelmed by its reality. I didn’t dare face what I thought, I didn’t dare face even what I felt; but I went to bed shivering in a warm room, while I resolved passionately that if the chance ever came to me I would stand between Mrs. Vanderbridge and this unknown evil that threatened her.

  In the morning Mrs. Vanderbridge went out shopping, and I did not see her until the evening, when she passed me on the staircase as she was going out to dinner and the opera. She was radiant in blue velvet, with diamonds in her hair and at her throat, and I wondered again how any one so lovely could ever be troubled.

  “I hope you had a pleasant day, Miss Wrenn,” she said kindly. “I have been too busy to get off any letters, but to-morrow we shall begin early.” Then, as if from an afterthought, she looked back and added, “There are some new novels in my sitting-room. You might care to look over them.”

  When she had gone, I went upstairs to the sitting-room and turned over the books, but I couldn’t, to save my life, force an interest in printed romances, after meeting Mrs. Vanderbridge and remembering the mystery that surrounded her. I wondered if “the Other One,” as Hopkins called her, lived in the house, and I was still wondering this when the maid came in and began putting the table to rights.