THE PORTENT OF THE SHADOW.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 1775, 14 March 1906, Page 7

THE PORTENT OF THE SHADOW.

(By E. Nesbit.)

This is not an artistically rounded off ghost story, and nothing is explained in it; and there seems to 'be no reason why any of it should have happened. But that is no reason why it should not bo told. Yon must have noticed that all the real ghost stories you ever come close to are like this in these respects; no explanation, no logical coherence. Here is the story. There were three of us —and another. But sho had fainted suddenly at the second extra of the Christinas Dance, and had been put to bed in the dressing room next to the room which we three shared. It had been one of these jolly old-fashioned dances, where nearly everybody stays the night and the big oountry liouso is stretched to its utmost containing power; guests harbouring on sofas, couches, settles and even mattresses on floors. Some of the young men, I believe, slept on the ■ great dining table. We had talked of our partners, as girls will, and then the stillness of the manor house, broken only by the whisper of the wind in the cedar brandhes and the scraping of then - lean fingers against our window panes, had pricked us to such'a luxurious confidence in our surroundings of bright chintz and oandlefiame and firelight that wo had dared to talk of ghosts—in which, said wo all, we did not believe one bit. We bad told the story of the phantom coach, and the horribly strange bed, and the lady in the sacque, and the house in Berkeley Square. We none of us believed in ghosts, but my heart, at least, seemed to leap to my throat and choke me there, tap came to our door —a tan faint, but not to be mistaken. ' “Who’s there?” said the youngest of us, craning a lean neck toward the door. It opened slowly—and I give you my word the instant of suspense that followed is still reckoned among my life’s least confident moments. Almost at onoo the door opened fully, and Miss E'astwich, my aunt’s housekeeper, companion, and general standby, looked in on us.

We all said “come in,” but she stood there. She was, at all normal hours, the most silent woman I have ever known. stood and looked at us, and shivered a little. So. did we—for in those dam* oorridon were not warm-

ed by hot water pipes, and the air from the door was keen.

“I. saw your light,” she said at last, “and I thought it was late for you to be up—after all this gaiety. I thought perhaps •” Her glance turned toward the door of the dressing room. - “No,” I said, “she’s fast asleep.” I should have added a “good night,” hut tho youngest of us forestalled my speech. She did not know Miss Eastwidh as we others did; did not know how’ her persistent silence had built a wall around her, a wall that no one dared to break down with the commonplaces of talk or tlhe littlenesses of mere human relationship. Miss Eastwi’ch’s silence had taught us to treat her as a machine, and as other than a machine we never dreamed of treating her. But the youngest of us had seen Miss .Eastwich fern the first time that day. She was young and crude and ill-balanced, and the victim of' blind, ca.lf-like impulse. She was also an heiress of a rich tallow chandler, but that has nothing to do with this part of the story. She jumped up from the hearthrug, her unsuitably rich silk lace trimmed dressing gown falling back from her lean neck, and ran to the door and put an arm around Miss Eastwich’s prim li.sse encircled Peek. I gasped. I should as soon have dared to embrace Cleopatra’s Needle. “Come in,” said the youngest of us, “come in and get warm. There’s lots of oocoa left.” She drew Miss Eastwich in and shut the door.

The vivid light of pleasure in the housekeeper’s pale eyes went through my heart like a knife. It would have been so easy to put an arm around her neck if one had only thought she wanted it. But it was not I who had thought that, and, indeed, my arm might not have brought the light 'invoked by the lean arm of the youngest of us.

“Now,” the youngest went on, eagerly, “you shall have the very biggest, nicest chair, and the cocoa pot’s here on tiho hob, as hot as hot, and we’ve all been telling ghost stories, only we don’t believe in them a hit, and when you get warm you ought to tell one, too.”

Miss Bastwicli, that model of decorum and decently dono duties, tell a ghost story! The child was mad! “You’re sure I’m not in your way?” Miss E'astwich said, stretching her hands to the blaze. I wondered whether housekeepers have fires in their rooms, even at Christmas time. “Not a bit.” I said it, and I hope I said it as warmly as I felt it. “I —Miss Bastwicli —I’d have asked you to come in other times—only I didn’t think you’d care for girl’s chatter.” The third girl, who was really of no account, and that’s why I have not said anything about her before, poured oocoa for our guest. I put my fleecy Madeira shawl round her shoulders. I could, not think of anything eke to do for her, and I suddenly found myself wishing deseprately to do something. The smile she gave us was quite pretty. Peoplo can smile prettily at forty or fifty, or even later, though girls don’t realise this. It occurred to me, and thiis was another knife thrust, that I had never seen Miss Bastwicli smile—a real smile—before. The pale smiles of dutiful acquiescence were not of the same blood as this dimpling, happy, transfiguring look.

“This is very pleasant,” she said, and it seemed to me that I had never before heard her real voice. It did not please me to think that at the cost of cocoa and fire and my arms round her neck I might have heard this new voice, any time these six years. “We’ve been, telling ghost stories,” I said; “the worst of it is we don’t believe in ghosts. No one any one knows has ever seen one.”

“It’s always what somebody told somebody who told somebody, you

knew,” said the youngest of us. “And you can’t ’believe that, you?” “What the soldier said is not evidence,” said Miss Eastwich. Will it be believed that the little Dicken’s quotation pierced me more keenly than the new smile or the new voice? “And all the ghost stories -are bo beautifully rounded off —a murder committed on the spot—or a hidden treasure or a warning—l think that makes them harder to believe. The most horrid ghost story I ever heard was one that was quite silly.”

“Tell it.” “I can’t—it doesn’t sound anything to tell. Miss Eastwich ought to tell one.”

“Oh, do!” said the youngest of us, and Tier saltcellars loomed dark as she stretched her neck eagerly and laid on entreating arm on our guest’s knee. “The only thing that I ever knew of was —was hearsay,” she said slowly, “at least half of it was.”

I knew she would tell her story, and. I knew she had never before told, it, and I knew she was only telling it now be cause she -was proud, and this seemed the only way to pay 'for the fire and tho cccoa and the laying that thin arm round her neck.

“Don’t tell it,” I said suddenly, “I know you’d rather not,”

“I dare say it would bore you,” she said meekly, and the youngest of us, who, after all, did not understand everything, glared resentfully at me. “We should just love it,” she said, “do tell us. Never mind if it isn’t a real proper fixed up story. I’m certain anything you think ghostly would be quite too beautifully horrid for anything?” Miss Bastwicli finished her ooooa and readied up to set her oup on the mantelpiece. “It can’t do any harm,” she said half to herself; “they don’t believe in ghosts and it wasn’t exactly a ghost, either. And they’re all over twenty—they’ne not babies.” There was a breathing time of hush and expeotancy. The fire crackled and the gas suddenly flared higher because the billiard lights had been put out. We heard the steps and voices of the men going along the cor-

ridors. r “It is really hardly worth telling,” Miss Bastwicli said doubtfully, shading her faded lace from the fire with her thin hand-

We all said, “Go on; oh, go on, dod” “Weil she said “twenty years ago, and more than that, I had two friends, and I loved them more than anything in the world. And they married each other.”

She paused, and I knew just in what way She had loved each of them. The youngest of us said: “How awfully nice for you ! Do go on.” She patted the youngest’s shoulder, and I was glad that I had understood what the youngest of all hadn’t. She went on.

“ Well, after they were married I didn’t see much of them for a year or two, and then lie wrote and asked me to come and stay, because his wife was ill, and I should cheer her up, and cheer him up as well, for it was a gloomy house, and he himself ’was growing gloomy, too.” I knew as she spoke that she had every line of that letter by heart. “Well, I went. The address was in Lee, near London, and in those days there were streets and streets of new villa houses growing up around old brick mansions standing in their own gi ounds, with red walls around, you. know, and a sort of flavour of coaching days and post chaises and Blackheath highwaymen about them. He had said ll0 r u . se was gloomy , and it was called I he Firs, and I imagined my cab going through a dark, winding shrubbery and di awing up in front of those sedate old square houses. Instead, we drew up m front of a large,' smart villa with iron railings, gay, encaustic tiles leading from the iron gate to the stained

glass panelled door, and for shrubbery only a few stunted cyprossos and aouibas in the tiiny front garden. But inside it was all warm and welcoming. He met me at the door.” She was gazing into the fire, and I knew she had forgotten us. But the youngest girl of all still thought that it was to us she was telling her story. “He met one at the door,” she said again, “and thanked me for conning, and asked me to forgive the past.” “What past?” asked the high priestess of the inapropos, the youngest of all-

“Oh, I suppose he meant because they hadn’t invited me 'before, or something,” said Miss Eastwich, worriedly. ‘TBut it’s a very dull story, I find, after all. and •”

“Do go on,” I said. Then I kicked the youngest of us, and got up tea rearrange Miss Eastwibh’s shawl, and said in blatant dumb show, over the shawled shoulders:

“Shut up, you little idiot!” After another silence the housekeeper’s new voice went on: “They were very glad to see me, and I was very glad to be there. _ You girls now have such troops of friends, but these two were all I had, all I had ever had. Mabel wasn’t exactly ill, only weak and excitable. I thought he seemed more ill than she did. She went to hed early, and before she went she asked me to keep him company through his last pipe, so we went into the. dining room and sat in the two arm chairs on each side of the fireplace; They were covered with green leather, I remember. There , were bronze groups of horses and a black marble clock on the mantelpiece—all wedding presents. Ho poured out some whisky for himself, but he hardly touched it. He sat looking into the fire. At Tast I said: “ What’s wrong ? Mabel looks as gwell as you could expect.’ “He said, ‘Yes, but I don’t know from one day to another that she won’t begin to notice something wrong. That’s why I wanted you to come. You were always so sensible and strong minded, and Mabel’s like a little bird, or a flower.’ . “I said, ‘Yes, of course,’ and waited for him to go on. I thought he must be in debt or in trouble of some sort. So I just waited. Presently he said: “ ‘Margaret, this is a very peculiar house.’ He always called me Margaret; you see, we’d been such old friends. I told him I thought the house was very pretty and fresh and homelike, only a little too new, but that fault would mend with time. He said: “ ‘lt is new; that’s just it. We’re the first people who’ve ever lived in it. If it were an old house, Margaret, I Should think it was haunted.’ “I asked if he had seen anything. *No,’ he said, ‘not yet.’ “ ‘Heard then ?’ said I. “ ‘No, nor heard either,’ he said, “but there’s a sort of feeling, I can’t dlescribe it. I’ve seen nothing and I’ve heard nothing, but I’ve been so near to seeing and hearing! Just not, that’s all. And something follows me about—only when I turn round there’s never anything but my shadow. And I always feel that I shall see the thing, or hear it, next minute; but I never do, net quite, it’s always just not visible.’ “I thought he’d been working rather hard, and I tried to cheer him up by making light of all this. ‘lt was just nerves,’ I~said. Then, he said he had thought I could help him, and did I think anyone he had Avronged ooukl have laid a curse on him. and did I believe in curses? I said I didn’t, and the only person anyone could have said he had Avronged forgave him freely, I knew, if there was anything to forgive. So I told him this, too.”

It was I, not the youngest of us, who knew the name of that person wronged and forgiving. “So then I said due ought to take (Mabel away from the house and have a complete change.’ But he said, ‘No, Mabel had got everything in order, and he could never manage to get her away just now without explaining everything, and, above all,’ he said, ‘she mustn’t guess there’s anything wrong. I dare say I shall not feel quite such a lunatic now you’re here.’ “So we said ‘Good night.’ ” # “Ls that all the story said the third girl, striving to convey that even as it stood it was a good story. “That is only the beginning,” said Miss Eastwich. “Whenever I was alone with 'him, he used to tell me the same

thing over and over again, and at first, when. I began to notice things, I tried to think that it was hi® talk that had upset my nerves. The odd' thing was that it wasn’t only at night—but in broad daylight, and particularly on the stairs and passages. On the staircase the feeling used to be so awful that I have had to bite my lips till they bled, to keep myself from running up the stair® at full speed. Only I knew if I did I should go mad at the top. There was always something behind me—exactly as he had said—something that one could just not see. And a sound that one could just not hear. There was a long corridor at the top of the house. _ I have sometimes almost seen something—you know how one sees things without looking—but if I turned round it seemed as if the thing dropped and melted into my shadow. There was a little wi'ndoAV at the end of the corridor. _ “Downstairs there was another corridor, something like it, with a cup»board at one end and the kitchen at the other. One night I went down into the kitchen to warm some milk for Mabel. The servants had gone to bed. As I stood by the fire waiting for tile milk to boil I glanced through the open door and along the passage. I never oould keep my eyes on A\ r hat I Avas doing in that house. The cupboard door was partly open; they used to keep empty bottles and things in it. And as I looked I knew that now it was not going to be ‘almost’ any more. Yet I said ‘Mabel?’ not because I thought it could be Mabel who Avas crouching down there, half in and half out of the cupboard. The thing Avas grey at first and then it was black. And Avhen I whispered ‘Mabel’ it seemed to sink down till it lay like a pool of ink on the floor, and then its edges drew in, and it seemed to flow, like ink, Avhen you tilt up the paper you have spilt it on, and it flowed into the cupboard till it was all gathered into the shadoAV there. I saAV it quite plainly. The 1 gas Avas full on i’n the kitchen. I screamed aloud, hut even then I’m thankful to say I had enough sense to upset the boiling milk, so that Avhen he came downstairs three steps at a time I had the excuse for my scream of a scalded hand. The explanation satisfied Mabel, but,next night he said: “‘Why didn’t you tell me? It Avas that cupboard. All the horror of the house comes out of that. Tell me, have you seen anything yet? Or is it only the nearly seeing and nearly hearing still?’ “I said, You must tell me first Avhat you’ve seen.’ He told me, and hie eyes Avandered as he spoke to the shadows by the curtains., and I turned up all three gaslights, and lit the candles on the mantelpiece. Then avg looked at each other and said Ave Avere both mad, and thanked God that Mabel at least Avas sane. For what he had seen was what I had seen. “After that I hated to be alone Avith a shadow, because at any moment I might see something that Avould crouch and sink and lie like a black pool and then sloAvly draw itself into the shadow that was nearest. Often that shadow was my own. The thing came first at night, but afterwards there Avas no hour safe from it. I saw it at dawn, and at noon, in the dusk and in the firelight, and always it crouched and sank, and Avas a pool that flowed into some shadoAV and became part of it. And ahvays I saAV i't with a straining of the eye®, a pricking and aching. It seemed as though I could only just see it, as if my sight to see it had to b© strained to the uttermost. And still the sound was in the house, the sound that I could just not hear. At last one morning early I did hear it. It Avas close behind me, and it was only a sigh. It Avas worse than the thing that crept among the shadows. “I don’t know how I bore it. I couldn’t have borne it if I hadn’t been so fond of them both. But I knew in my heart that if he had no one to whom he could speak openly he would go mad, or tell Mabel. His Avas not a very strong character. Very sweet and kind and gentle, but not strong. He was always easily led. So I stayed on and bore up, and Ave were very cheerful and made little jokes and tried to be amusing when Mabel Avas with us. But when Ave were alone Ave did not try to be amusing. “And sometimes a day or two would go by without our seeing or bearing anything, and we should perhaps have fancied that we had fancied what Ave had seen and heard, only there Avas always the feeling of there being something about the house that one could just not hear and not see. Sometimes we used to try not to talk about it, but Generally we talked of nothing else at all. And the Aveeks Avent by, and Mabel’s baby was born. The nuvxe am the doctor said that both mother and child were doing Avell. He and I sat late in the dining room that night. Wo had neither of us seen or heaid vve .i frvi . three days —our anxiety Avas lessened. We talked that ll the moment she 'v as fit to he moled he should take her away to the sea, and I should, superintend the moring of their furniture into the neAV house he had already chosen. He wa gayer than I had seen him since his marriage—almost like his old sell.

When I said ‘good night’ to him. he said a lot of things about my having been a comfort to them both. I hadn’t done anything much, of course, brat still I am gLad he said that. “Then I went upstairs—almost for the first time without that feeling of something following me. I listened at Mabel’s door. Everything was quiet. I went on toward any own room, and in an instant I felt that there was something behind me. I turned. It was crouching there; it sank, and the black fluidness of it seemed to be sucked under the door of Mabel’s room. “I went back. I opened the door a listening indh. Ali was still. And then I heard a sigh—close behind me. I opened the door and Avent in. The nurse and the baby Avere asleep. Mabel was asleep too; she looked so pretty, like a tired child—the baby Avas cuddled up into one of her arms, with its tiny head against her side. I prayed then that Mabel might never know the terrors that he and I had knoAvn —that those little ears might never hear any but pretty sounds, those dear eye® never see any but pretty sights. I dad not dare to pray for a long time after that. Because my prayer Avas answered. She never saw, never heard anything more in this avotM. And now I could do nothing more for him or for her. . “When they had put her in her coffin I lighted wax candles round her, and laid the horrible white flowers that people will send near her and then I saw he had folloAved me. I took his hand; to lead him away. “At the door Ave both turned. It seemed to u® that we heard a sigh. He Avould have sprung to her side, in I don’t know what mad, glad hope. But at that instant we both srav it. Between us and the coffin, first grey, then black, it crouched an instant, then sank and liquefied, and Avas gathered together and drawn till it ran into Hie nearest shadow. And' the nearest shadow Avas the shadoAV of Mabel’s coffin. I left the next day. His mother came. She had never liked me.” Miss Eastwich paused. I think she had quite forgotten us. “Didn’t you see him agan ?” asked the youngest of all. “Only once,” Miss Eastwich answered, “and something black couched then between him and me. But it Avas only his second Avife crying beside his coffin. It’s not a cheerful story, is it? And it doesn’t lead: anywhere. I>e never told anyone else. I think it Avas seeing his daughter that brought it all back. ’ She looked toward the dressing room door. “Mabel’s baby,” said the youngest of all. “Yes, and exactly like Mabel, only with his eyes.” The youngest of all had Miss Eastwich’s hands and Avas petting them. Suddenly the woman wrenched her hands aAvay and stood at her gaunt height, hands clenched, eyes straining. She Avas looking at something that Ave could not see, and I know now Avhat the man in the Bible meant Avhen he said “the hair of my flesh stood up— —”

What she saw seemed not quite to reach the height of the dressing room door handle. Her eyes following it doAvn, doAvn, Avidened and Avidened. Mine followed them, and all the nerves of my eyes seemed strained to the ut-

termost —and I almost saw —or did X quite see? I can’t be certain. But we all heard the long-dirawn, quivering sigh. And to each of us it seemed to be breathed just behind each. It was I who caught up the candle—it dropped wax all over my trembling hands—it was I who was dragged by Miss Eastwich to the side of the girl who had fainted during the second extra. But it was the youngest of all whose lean arms wore around the housekeeper when we turned away, and that have been around her many a time •since* m fclic new liome slie keeps house for the youngest of us all.

The doctor who came in the morning said that Mabel’s daughter had died of heart disease, which she inherited from her mother. It was that that had made her faint during the,second extra. But I have sometimes wondered whether she may not have inherited something from her father. I have never been able forget the look on her dead face.—“ Black and White.”