“Remember Bluebeard’s wife!” said Miss Deborah.
“One may as well perish by the sword as by famine!” I answered.
Still she said nothing, and at last I rose with a melo-dramatic sigh and departed. As I reached the door she called me and pointed to the chair I had vacated. “I never was hard-hearted,” she said. “Sit down, and if we are to perish, may we at least perish together.” And then, in very few words, she communicated what she knew of Captain Diamond’s secret. “He was a very high-tempered old man, and though he was very fond of his daughter, his will was law. He had picked out a husband for her, and given her due notice. Her mother was dead, and they lived alone together. The house had been Mrs. Diamond’s own marriage portion; the Captain, I believe, hadn’t a penny. After his marriage they had come to live there, and he had begun to work the farm. The poor girl’s lover was a young man with whiskers from Boston. The Captain came in one evening and found them together; he collared the young man, and hurled a terrible curse at the poor girl. The young man cried that she was his wife, and he asked her if it was true. She said, No! Thereupon Captain Diamond, his fury growing fiercer, repeated his imprecation, ordered her out of the house, and disowned her forever. She swooned away, but her father went raging off and left her. Several hours later, he came back and found the house empty. On the table was a note from the young man telling him that he had killed his daughter, repeating the assurance that she was his own wife, and declaring that he himself claimed the sole right to commit her remains to earth. He had carried the body away in a gig! Captain Diamond wrote him a dreadful note in answer, saying that he didn’t believe his daughter was dead, but that, whether or no, she was dead to him. A week later, in the middle of the night, he saw her ghost. Then, I suppose, he was convinced. The ghost re-appeared several times, and finally began regularly to haunt the house. It made the old man very uncomfortable, for little by little his passion had passed away, and he was given up to grief. He determined at last to leave the place, and tried to sell it or rent it; but meanwhile the story had gone abroad, the ghost had been seen by other persons, the house had a bad name, and it was impossible to dispose of it. With the farm, it was the old man’s only property, and his only means of subsistence; if he could neither live in it nor rent it he was beggared. But the ghost had no mercy, as he had had none. He struggled for six months, and at last he broke down. He put on his old blue cloak and took up his staff, and prepared to wander away and beg his bread. Then the ghost relented, and proposed a compromise. ‘Leave the house to me!’ it said; ‘I have marked it for my own. Go off and live elsewhere. But to enable you to live, I will be your tenant, since you can find no other. I will hire the house of you and pay you a certain rent.’ And the ghost named a sum. The old man consented, and he goes every quarter to collect his rent!”
I laughed at this recital, but I confess I shuddered too, for my own observation had exactly confirmed it. Had I not been witness of one of the Captain’s quarterly visits, had I not all but seen him sit watching his spectral tenant count out the rent-money, and when he trudged away in the dark, had he not a little bag of strangely gotten coin hidden in the folds of his old blue cloak? I imparted none of these reflections to Miss Deborah, for I was determined that my observations should have a sequel, and I promised myself the pleasure of treating her to my story in its full maturity. “Captain Diamond,” I asked, “has no other known means of subsistence?”
“None whatever. He toils not, neither does he spin—his ghost supports him. A haunted house is valuable property!”
“And in what coin does the ghost pay?”
“In good American gold and silver. It has only this peculiarity—that the pieces are all dated before the young girl’s death. It’s a strange mixture of matter and spirit!”
“And does the ghost do things handsomely; is the rent large?”
“The old man, I believe, lives decently, and has his pipe and his glass. He took a little house down by the river; the door is sidewise to the street, and there is a little garden before it. There he spends his days, and has an old colored woman to do for him. Some years ago, he used to wander about a good deal, he was a familiar figure in the town, and most people knew his legend. But of late he has drawn back into his shell; he sits over his fire, and curiosity has forgotten him. I suppose he is falling into his dotage. But I am sure, I trust,” said Miss Deborah in conclusion, “that he won’t outlive his faculties or his powers of locomotion, for, if I remember rightly, it was part of the bargain that he should come in person to collect his rent.”
We neither of us seemed likely to suffer any especial penalty for Miss Deborah’s indiscretion; I found her, day after day, singing over her work, neither more nor less active than usual. For myself, I boldly pursued my observations. I went again, more than once, to the great graveyard, but I was disappointed in my hope of finding Captain Diamond there. I had a prospect, however, which afforded me compensation. I shrewdly inferred that the old man’s quarterly pilgrimages were made upon the last day of the old quarter. My first sight of him had been on the 31st of December, and it was probable that he would return to his haunted home on the last day of March. This was near at hand; at last it arrived. I betook myself late in the afternoon to the old house on the cross-road, supposing that the hour of twilight was the appointed season. I was not wrong. I had been hovering about for a short time, feeling very much like a restless ghost myself, when he appeared in the same manner as before, and wearing the same costume. I again concealed myself, and saw him enter the house with the ceremonial which he had used on the former occasion. A light appeared successively in the crevice of each pair of shutters, and I opened the window which had yielded to my importunity before. Again I saw the great shadow on the wall, motionless and solemn. But I saw nothing else. The old man re-appeared at last, made his fantastic salaam before the house, and crept away into the dusk.
One day, more than a month after this, I met him again at Mount Auburn. The air was full of the voice of Spring; the birds had come back and were twittering over their Winter’s travels, and a mild west wind was making a thin murmur in the raw verdure. He was seated on a bench in the sun, still muffled in his enormous mantle, and he recognized me as soon as I approached him. He nodded at me as if he were an old Bashaw giving the signal for my decapitation, but it was apparent that he was pleased to see me.
“I have looked for you here more than once,” I said. “You don’t come often.”
“What did you want of me?” he asked.
“I wanted to enjoy your conversation. I did so greatly when I met you here before.”
“You found me amusing?”
“Interesting!” I said.
“You didn’t think me cracked?”
“Cracked?—My dear sir—!” I protested.
“I’m the sanest man in the country. I know that is what insane people always say; but generally they can’t prove it. I can!”
“I believe it,” I said. “But I am curious to know how such a thing can be proved.”
He was silent awhile.
“I will tell you. I once committed, unintentionally, a great crime. Now I pay the penalty. I give up my life to it. I don’t shirk it; I face it squarely, knowing perfectly what it is. I haven’t tried to bluff it off; I haven’t begged off from it; I haven’t run away from it. The penalty is terrible, but I have accepted it. I have been a philosopher!”
“If I were a Catholic, I might have turned monk, and spent the rest of my life in fasting and praying. That is no penalty; that is an evasion. I might have blown my brains out—I might have gone mad. I wouldn’t do either. I would simply face the music, take the consequences. As I say, they are awful! I take them on certain days, four times a year. So it has been these twenty years; so it will be as long as I last It’s my business; it’s my avocation. That’s the way I feel about it. I call that reasonable!”
�
�Admirably so!” I said. “But you fill me with curiosity and with compassion.”
“Especially with curiosity,” he said, cunningly.
“Why,” I answered, “if I know exactly what you suffer I can pity you more.”
“I’m much obliged. I don’t want your pity; it won’t help me. I’ll tell you something, but it’s not for myself; it’s for your own sake.” He paused a long time and looked all round him, as if for chance eavesdroppers. I anxiously awaited his revelation, but he disappointed me. “Are you still studying theology?” he asked.
“Oh, yes,” I answered, perhaps with a shade of irritation. “It’s a thing one can’t learn in six months.”
“I should think not, so long as you have nothing but your books. Do you know the proverb, ‘A grain of experience is worth a pound of precept??’ I’m a great theologian.”
“Ah, you have had experience,” I murmured sympathetically.
“You have read about the immortality of the soul; you have seen Jonathan Edwards and Dr. Hopkins chopping logic over it, and deciding, by chapter and verse, that it is true. But I have seen it with these eyes; I have touched it with these hands!” And the old man held up his rugged old fists and shook them portentously. “That’s better!” he went on; “but I have bought it dearly. You had better take it from the books—evidently you always will. You are a very good young man; you will never have a crime on your conscience.”
I answered with some juvenile fatuity, that I certainly hoped I had my share of human passions, good young man and prospective Doctor of Divinity as I was.
“Ah, but you have a nice, quiet little temper,” he said. “So have I—now! But once I was very brutal—very brutal. You ought to know that such things are. I killed my own child.”
“Your own child?”
“I struck her down to the earth and left her to die. They could not hang me, for it was not with my hand I struck her. It was with foul and damnable words. That makes a difference; it’s a grand law we live under! Well, sir, I can answer for it that her soul is immortal. We have an appointment to meet four times a year, and then I catch it!”
“She has never forgiven you?”
“She has forgiven me as the angels forgive! That’s what I can’t stand—the soft, quiet way she looks at me. I’d rather she twisted a knife about in my heart—O Lord, Lord, Lord!” and Captain Diamond bowed his head over his stick, and leaned his forehead on his crossed hands.
I was impressed and moved, and his attitude seemed for the moment a check to further questions. Before I ventured to ask him anything more, he slowly rose and pulled his old cloak around him. He was unused to talking about his troubles, and his memories overwhelmed him. “I must go my way,” he said; “I must be creeping along.”
“I shall perhaps meet you here again,” I said.
“Oh, I’m a stiff-jointed old fellow,” he answered, “and this is rather far for me to come. I have to reserve myself. I have sat sometimes a month at a time smoking my pipe in my chair. But I should like to see you again.” And he stopped and looked at me, terribly and kindly. “Some day, perhaps, I shall be glad to be able to lay my hand on a young, unperverted soul. If a man can make a friend, it is always something gained. What is your name?”
I had in my pocket a small volume of Pascal’s “Thoughts,” on the fly-leaf of which were written my name and address. I took it out and offered it to my old friend. “Pray keep this little book,” I said. “It is one I am very fond of, and it will tell you something about me.”
He took it and turned it over slowly, then looking up at me with a scowl of gratitude, “I’m not much of a reader,” he said; “but I won’t refuse the first present I shall have received since—my troubles; and the last. Thank you, sir!” And with the little book in his hand he took his departure.
I was left to imagine him for some weeks after that sitting solitary in his arm-chair with his pipe. I had not another glimpse of him. But I was awaiting my chance, and on the last day of June, another quarter having elapsed, I deemed that it had come. The evening dusk in June falls late, and I was impatient for its coming. At last, toward the end of a lovely summer’s day, I revisited Captain Diamond’s property. Everything now was green around it save the blighted orchard in its rear, but its own immitigable grayness and sadness were as striking as when I had first beheld it beneath a December sky. As I drew near it, I saw that I was late for my purpose, for my purpose had simply been to step forward on Captain Diamond’s arrival, and bravely ask him to let me go in with him. He had preceded me, and there were lights already in the windows. I was unwilling, of course, to disturb him during his ghostly interview, and I waited till he came forth. The lights disappeared in the course of time; then the door opened and Captain Diamond stole out. That evening he made no bow to the haunted house, for the first object he beheld was his fair-minded young friend planted, modestly but firmly, near the door-step. He stopped short, looking at me, and this time his terrible scowl was in keeping with the situation.
“I knew you were here,” I said. “I came on purpose.”
He seemed dismayed, and looked round at the house uneasily.
“I beg your pardon if I have ventured too far,” I added, “but you know you have encouraged me.”
“How did you know I was here?”
“I reasoned it out. You told me half your story, and I guessed the other half. I am a great observer, and I had noticed this house in passing. It seemed to me to have a mystery. When you kindly confided to me that you saw spirits, I was sure that it could only be here that you saw them.”
“You are mighty clever,” cried the old man. “And what brought you here this evening?”
I was obliged to evade this question.
“Oh, I often come; I like to look at the house—it fascinates me.”
He turned and looked up at it himself. “It’s nothing to look at outside.” He was evidently quite unaware of its peculiar outward appearance, and this odd fact, communicated to me thus in the twilight, and under the very brow of the sinister dwelling, seemed to make his vision of the strange things within more real.
“I have been hoping,” I said, “for a chance to see the inside. I thought I might find you here, and that you would let me go in with you. I should like to see what you see.”
He seemed confounded by my boldness, but not altogether displeased. He laid his hand on my arm. “Do you know what I see?” he asked.
“How can I know, except as you said the other day, by experience? I want to have the experience. Pray, open the door and take me in.”
Captain Diamond’s brilliant eyes expanded beneath their dusky brows, and after holding his breath a moment, he indulged in the first and last apology for a laugh by which I was to see his solemn, visage contorted. It was profoundly grotesque, but it was perfectly noiseless. “Take you in?” he softly growled. “I wouldn’t go in again before my time’s up for a thousand times that sum.” And he thrust out his hand from the folds of his cloak and exhibited a small agglommeration of coin, knotted into the corner of an old silk pocket-handkerchief. “I stick to my bargain no less, but no more!”
“But you told me the first time I had the pleasure of talking with you that it was not so terrible.”
“I don’t say it’s terrible—now. But it’s damned disagreeable!”
This adjective was uttered with a force that made me hesitate and reflect. While I did so, I thought I heard a slight movement of one of the window-shutters above us. I looked up, but everything seemed motionless. Captain Diamond, too, had been thinking; suddenly he turned toward the house. “If you will go in alone,” he said, “you are welcome.”
“Will you wait for me here?”
“Yes, you will not stop long.”
“But the house is pitch dark. When you go you have lights.”
He
thrust his hand into the depths of his cloak and produced some matches. “Take these,” he said. “You will find two candlesticks with candles on the table in the hall. Light them, take one in each hand and go ahead.”
“Where shall I go?”
“Anywhere—everywhere. You can trust the ghost to find you.”
I will not pretend to deny that by this time my heart was beating. And yet I imagine I motioned the old man with a sufficiently dignified gesture to open the door. I had made up my mind that there was in fact a ghost. I had conceded the premise. Only I had assured myself that once the mind was prepared, and the thing was not a surprise, it was possible to keep cool. Captain Diamond turned the lock, flung open the door, and bowed low to me as I passed in. I stood in the darkness, and heard the door close behind me. For some moments, I stirred neither finger nor toe; I stared bravely into the impenetrable dusk. But I saw nothing and heard nothing, and at last I struck a match. On the table were two old brass candlesticks rusty from disuse. I lighted the candles and began my tour of exploration.
A wide staircase rose in front of me, guarded by an antique balustrade of that rigidly delicate carving which is found so often in old New England houses. I postponed ascending it, and turned into the room on my right. This was an old-fashioned parlor, meagerly furnished, and musty with the absence of human life. I raised my two lights aloft and saw nothing but its empty chairs and its blank walls. Behind it was the room into which I had peeped from without, and which, in fact, communicated with it, as I had; supposed, by folding doors. Here, too, I found myself confronted by no menacing specter. I crossed the hall again, and visited the rooms on the other side; a dining-room in front, where I might have written my name with my finger in the deep dust of the great square table; a kitchen behind with its pots and pans eternally cold. All this was hard and grim, but it was not formidable. I came back into the hall, and walked to the foot of the staircase, holding up my candles; to ascend required a fresh effort, and I was scanning the gloom above. Suddenly, with an inexpressible sensation, I became aware that this gloom was animated; it seemed to move and gather itself together. Slowly—I say slowly, for to my tense expectancy the instants appeared ages—it took the shape of a large, definite figure, and this figure advanced and stood at the top of the stairs. I frankly confess that by this time I was conscious of a feeling to which I am in duty bound to apply the vulgar name of fear. I may poetize it and call it Dread, with a capital letter; it was at any rate the feeling that makes a man yield ground. I measured it as it grew, and it seemed perfectly irresistible; for it did not appear to come from within but from without, and to be embodied in the dark image at the head of the staircase. After a fashion I reasoned—I remember reasoning. I said to myself, “I had always thought ghosts were white and transparent; this is a thing of thick shadows, densely opaque.” I reminded myself that the occasion was momentous, and that if fear were to overcome me I should gather all possible impressions while my wits remained. I stepped back, foot behind foot, with my eyes still on the figure and placed my candles on the table. I was perfectly conscious that the proper thing was to ascend the stairs resolutely, face to face with the image, but the soles of my shoes seemed suddenly to have been transformed into leaden weights. I had got what I wanted; I was seeing the ghost. I tried to look at the figure distinctly so that I could remember it, and fairly claim, afterward, not to have lost my self-possession. I even asked myself how long it was expected I should stand looking, and how soon I could honorably retire. All this, of course, passed through my mind with extreme rapidity, and it was checked by a further movement on the part of the figure. Two white hands appeared in the dark perpendicular mass, and were slowly raised to what seemed to be the level of the head. Here they were pressed together, over the region of the face, and then they were removed, and the face was disclosed. It was dim, white, strange, in every way ghostly. It looked down at me for an instant, after which one of the hands was raised again, slowly, and waved to and fro before it. There was something very singular in this gesture; it seemed to denote resentment and dismissal, and yet it had a sort of trivial, familiar motion. Familiarity on the part of the haunting Presence had not entered into my calculations, and did not strike me pleasantly. I agreed with Captain Diamond that it was “damned disagreeable.” I was pervaded by an intense desire to make an orderly, and, if possible, a graceful retreat. I wished to do it gallantly, and it seemed to me that it would be gallant to blow out my candles. I turned and did so, punctiliously, and then I made my way to the door, groped a moment and opened it. The outer light, almost extinct as it was, entered for a moment, played over the dusty depths of the house and showed me the solid shadow.
The Sixth Ghost Story Megapack: 25 Classic Ghost Stories Page 18
