A PATCH OF SUNSHINE.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 1748, 6 September 1905, Page 6

A PATCH OF SUNSHINE.

(By Channing Po-llock, in the “Metropolitan Magazine.”)

By profession I am a writer of any- : thing from dramas to soap advertisements. I made the stage adaptation of Frank Norris’s novel “The Pit,” and I have turned out quite a considerable amount of magazine fiction. The story which I have chosen to call “The Patch of Sunshine” is not fiction, however. It is the relation of actual fact, or rather of a series of occurrences which transpired while I lived in Washington. - The Capital was my home for more than seven years. I worked there on “The Pest” and on “The Times.” I am best known in Washington. j Xt was in 1900 that, wearying of boarding and apartment houses, I took myseif and what little furniture I owned to an abode in Georgetown. The precise location of this abode I shall not give, for the agent was most courteous to me and I would not willingly injure the property he represents. The dwelling in question had seven rooms and a wide fringe of garden all around it. Constructed of red brick, it was in excellent condition, though it must have been built nearly fifty years ago, and have been unoccupied at least three. There were two white columns at the head of the steps which led to its entrance, and there was a brass knocker on the door itself. Opening this door, one came to- a short passage, from which a flight of stairs stretched toward the top floor. On the left of the- hall was the parlour, and back of that another room which I decided to use as a study and library. Beyond these- were the. dining-room and kitchen, while the bath and the bed chambers were in the second story. It was a charming box of a place, and I was too happy in finding it to ask questions concerning its extended period of vacancy. One curious thing about the house I did not notice—the absence of a window from the apartment I had selected for my study. There was space for a very large window in the west wall, and I was puzzled that none was there. My surprise at the omission increased when I saw the delightful bit of lawn on the other side of the wall 1 , and I spent much time in berating the architect until it occurred to me that the first occupant might have wanted the blank space for his bookcase. I placed my own cases there, letting their backs touch the rather faded paper which had been hung in the room. In the course of a week or two the subject of the window passed out of my mind. The dining-room was generously • supplied, and I had only to draw the curtains between in order to light and air my study. Under these- circumstances a window more or less was not worth thought. Moreover. I was at my office from- noon until long after midnight, and the few hour® spent in my new home were devoted principally to sleeping and eating. I did my own cooking, as I still do when it is possible. The days sped by, each one equally like its predecessor, and. I grew more and more fond of my quarters. They were a little far from my business, but this fact protected me from my friends

and gave me frequent rides in my automobile—a vehicle which less fanciful people were wont to- call the F street car. When summer came around the garden was gay with lilacs and then with wild roses, while my work became so much lighter that- I promised myself whole days at home. The first day that I really was able to spend in the- house was the twentyfifth of June. I remember the date perfectly, because on that night began the difficulties which culminated in my leaving “The Times.” I had just purchased Philip Gilbert Hammerton’s interesting book on “The Intellectual Life,” and I was about to take it into the parlour when my attention was arrested by a great patch of sunshine o-n the floor of my study. The patch was about five feet square, and sc- bright that the figures on my carpet stood out as do the feature® of theatrical- performers in the limelight. It is quite needless to say that I was much taken back. Patches of sunshine are often seen on the floor, but this was a patch of sunshine in a room without a window. I observed another curious circumstance in connection with this remarkable square. Excepting directly above it, the room was dark as there l tofore. The circumambient atmosphere was unilluminated. There was a patch, of sunshine, but no ray. I had been staring at this phenomenon fo-r some minute® when a simple explanation suggested itself. The portiere between the library and the diningroom was drawn, and the latter apartment was flooded with sunshine. Of course, the patch came from there. I smiled at my former amazement, and, procuring my favourite pipe, sat in a chair near the front window and began chatting mentally with Hammerton. I had got as far as the chapter “To a Young Man of Letters Who Worked Excessively,” when a new thought con-' cerning the reflection in the study thrust itself betwixt me and the took. The entrance to the dining-room was not more than two and a half feet in width, while the bright spot on the carpet was at least- twice that wide. The distance between the two points was not sufficiently great to account for this. I laughed at my interest in so ordinary a thing as a patch of sunshine, and, as if in revenge, another fact occurred to me. If the illumination came from the door, why didn’t the spot on the carpet begin at the door ? The intervening stretch of darkness made it seem as though the light were admitted through an aperture several feet above the floor. This combination of corcumstances roused my curiosity to- the highest pitch. I laid) Hammerton oh the table and went into my study. As I did so, I closed the door behind me without affecting the patch of sunshine. Plainly, the light did not come from the parlour. Keeping my eye© on the carpet I walked slowly between the spot and the east wall of the library. I reached the dining-room door and passed it without blotting out any part of the patch. My body had made no shadow whatever. The source of the light must be above my head. Dismissing the whole matter as trivial, I started to return to Hammerton, stepping between the splotch of light and the west wall. I had not taken two steps when I stopped dead still. My lower jaw dropped and my

pipe - clattered to the floor. Beginning at the near edge of the patch of sun. ahine, xhe shadow of my shoulders and head stretched straight across the square before me. My pipe had rolled to the north border of this curious frame and cast no shadow.

Quite naturally, I was startled. Ultimately my surprise gave way to wonder and I made a thorough inspection of the room. The two salient facts of the phenomenon remained undisturbed—the ray of light came through the west wall of tlyp house, and there was no window in the west wall. In the garden I was confronted by the weather-stained bricks of the-dwelling. There was not-a crack through which a gnat might have crawled, much less a bar of- brilliance five feet square. My mind was still busy with the mystery when I received a telephone message requiring my immediate presence at the office. While I was not then aware of the trouble awaiting me, this incident wholly obliterated reflection on the subject of the preceding one. The jingle of a telephone bell is so diametrically opposed to ideas of the supernatural.

I did not return home until three in the morning, from which time until eight I tossed and turned and thought over what had been said to me at “The Times.” The next afternoon, sleeping late, I went to work without once entering my study, and when, two days later, I did go into that apartment, the natch of sunshine was not there. The hour was early, but the sun was high in the heavens, and I could think of no more reason for the absence of the spot on the carpet than I had been able, to conceive fov its sudden appearance. I forgot the- affair altogether. On the seventfceenth of September, I was dismissed from “The Times,” and on the evening of the eighteenth I retired to rest before the “wee sma’ hours ’ for the first time in many years. As was perfectly natural under these conditions, I slept as badly as I had done on the night that my worries bega* , and I distinctly heard the clock in the hall Etrxke ten, eleven, and twelve. The sound of the twelve strokes was accompanied by another sound that rubbed its rough thumb straight down the silk of my nerves and shot me sharply into an upright position in bed. The sound was of a woman sobbing, and it came from the library. I am not a small man, and I have the average stock of courage. Moreover, I an* definitely a materialist, and Ido not believe in ghosts. Notwithstanding these things, I sat perfectly still, shivering as if from the ague and ■with my breath frozen in my throat. 1 wrestled with myself to no avail. I told myself that I was a sane man in a commonplace houses —a house fronting on a public street, and containing a telephone, a bath, and electric lights—but my terror was undiminished. All* the senses of which I am possessed seemed to centre in my ears, and my ears heard two sounds—the steady ticking of the clock in the hall and above that the continual recurrence of whimpering sobs. It was the brassy clash of a street car gong that melted me out of my petrification. I sprang from bed and turned on the light. Then I ran to the head of the stairs and called : “Who’s that?”

Asa there was no answer, I hurried down the steps and into the lower hall. There was a button in the balustrade post, pressure on whiich illuminated every room in the house. This modern device had' been installed by the tenant before me, and as I touched the button, I thanked him with all my soul. In the glare of light resultant anything approaching the mystic’ seemed ridiculous, and, when I went into the parlour, the one thing for which I was unprepared was the continuance of the sounds I thought I had heard. - They did continue. The opening of the door into the parlour made them so distinct that I could detect the catch of the breath which followed every series of whimperings. It was the cry of a child in pain; a monotonous, tripping succession of the sentences of sorrow, each one pnuctuated with a moan. I tiptoed to the study door, placed my hand silently on the knob, and, with a sudden jerk, threw it wide open. The sound of sobbing reached my ears more clearly, and I saw—nothing. At least, I saw nothing out of the common. My books stood in rows against the west wall, my desk occupied the corner made by the north and east walls, my etchings of Carlyle and my drawings of Mrs Fiske and Mrs Patrick Campbell stared at me. By something more than the sense of sight, I knew that I was the only human being in that house. And yet, regularly, unceasingly seemingly from the vacuous centre of the room came the sobs of the woman who was not therG.

I suppose I had been standing in front of my bookcase about five minutes when I was unexpectedly left in the dark. The lights burned blue a second and then went out. The effect on me was precisely what it would have been had the onrushing blackness been icy water. The teeth of my soul chattered. My eyes sought the door at my right, and fell upon the floor in front of me. Where the patch of sunshine had been was a patch of yellow moonlight, and in that moonlight was the shadow of a girl with her head resting on her arms. The girl’s shoulders shook convulsively. She was weeping.

At first, with a determined return to reason, I took the figure to be a distortion of my own shadow. It certainly moved as I moved, but my shadow would have been black, and this was grey. It was not the shadow of a substance, but the shadow of a shadow.

I had been standing with my arms akimbo. Now I dropped them to my side, and the girl before me lay on a bed of moonlight, crying as persistently as ever. I took a step to one side, and she turned otn her couch, the shadow of her hair tossing about her and her bosom heaving as she sobbed. I put my hands to my head, and over the thin shadow of the woman fell another shadow as black # and as distinct as though it had been cast by a calcium. For a second, indeed, I fancied that I was looking at no shadow, but at the gruesome object itself. That object was a coffin. Even as I recognised its shape, I heard a sigh, and light and shadow disappeared. The clock in the hall struck one.

“Yes, I admit I should have told you,” the agent said to me the next morning. “You had no women folks, though, and I hoped I had a tenant who would stick. None of the others remained over a month. “The story P I don’t know much about it. You see, it was nearly forty years ago. I’ve heard that the girl was a cripple and that she loved a man her father forbade her to see. She could not stir from the room, and the servants had orders never to admit the young fellow. One day the.father caught him crawling through the window that used to be in the west wall. He had the window bricked up, and the girl literally grieved herself into the grave. You can see the record of her death if you care to go to the City Hall. She died at 1 o’clock on a morning in September.” That’s all. I have said that I was a materialist and that I do not believe in ghosts. The shape I saw may have been formed by my imagination. But I know that the shadow sobbed. I caught the sound of its weeping in a phonograph which I bought for the purpose on my way home from the real estate agency.