Chapter VIII: A Haunted House

Mabin was taken so thoroughly by surprise, on seeing the wild self-abandonment of her unhappy companion, that for a few minutes she stood staring at the crouching figure on the floor like one only half-awake.

Was this really Mrs. Dale, this haggard, panting creature with the hoarse voice, the twitching hands, the wide eyes full of unspeakable terror. Mabin’s sympathy was ready, but at first she did not dare to offer it. Such terrible anguish, such paralyzing fear, as that from which the miserable woman was suffering, was something surely beyond her poor powers of comfort! And even as the girl advanced timidly a step nearer to her grief-stricken friend, there flashed into her mind the horrible question: What must this secret be which was locked in the widow’s breast, that could throw her into such paroxysms of abject terror? For, not unnaturally, Mabin came to the conclusion that the vision which had alarmed Mrs. Dale was one of the results of the remorse from which she owned that she was suffering.

“Don’t! Don’t sob like that! You will make yourself ill; you will indeed. There is nothing, there is nobody here to frighten you,” said the girl at last, drawing a little closer to the crouching figure, but not yet daring to touch her, or to speak in a tone louder than a whisper.

At the first sound of her voice, Mrs. Dale had started, and raised her head quickly, turning to the girl’s view a face so much altered, so drawn, so old-looking, that she hardly recognized the features of the lovely widow. Then, when the voice ceased, she glanced round the room again, with the same hunted, anxious look as before.

“Nothing--nobody to frighten me!” she repeated in a shaking voice. “No, of course not, of course not. How silly I have been! I am afraid I frightened you, dear,--with my dreams, my silly fancies!”

She struggled, as if worn out and exhausted by her emotion, to gain her feet. Timidly, gently, Mabin helped her to rise.

“I’m very glad I was here,” answered Mabin, in kindly tones that sent a shiver of grateful recognition through her agitated companion. “Do you feel better now?”

“Yes, oh, yes, I am all right. I am not ill. I am so much ashamed of myself for disturbing you. I don’t know how to apologize,” answered Mrs. Dale, trying bravely to speak in her usual tone, but glancing at the door and then back to the windows as she uttered the words: “It must have been a dream, of course, that frightened me.”

And then, quite suddenly, she broke down again, and slipping from the supporting arm of her young companion, she threw herself into the wicker arm-chair, and burst into a passion of tears. Uncertain what to do, Mabin, in her sympathy and kindness, did exactly the right thing. She drew another chair besides the wicker one, sat down in it, and putting her right arm round Mrs. Dale’s shoulder, and holding the poor lady’s trembling fingers in her own, remained in perfect silence until the first ebullition of violent grief had passed away.

“I shall never forget your kindness, child, never,” said Mrs. Dale, when, as suddenly as it had begun, her passion of tears ended. “You have saved me from going mad--yes, mad. I--I must leave you now, or you won’t get any rest.”

She rose as she spoke; but Mabin saw that the panic of terror which had been upon her at her entrance was regaining its hold upon her as she approached the door. With her fingers on the handle she stopped, and seemed once more to grow rigid with fear.

Mabin was by her side in an instant.

“Stay here,” she said. “You will have the dream again perhaps, if you go away by yourself.”

At these words a shiver ran through Mrs. Dale, and she faltered.

“It must have been that gloomy room!” she said at last in a whisper. “And the effect of her visit! But it will kill me if it comes again!” Suddenly she turned to Mabin. “May I lie on the sofa until the morning?” she asked piteously. “I won’t disturb you. I feel as if I should be safe from--it--in here with you?”

The wistful pleading in her eyes brought the tears to Mabin’s.

“Of course you must stay,” she cried heartily. “And I do hope you will get to sleep, and not have any more dreams.”

Very quietly Mrs. Dale lay down on the couch between the windows, and drawing the sofa blanket over her, and refusing any other covering, she closed her eyes. Mabin knew that this apparent tranquillity was assumed only, and she placed herself on the bed in such a position that she could watch her friend, while appearing to be herself asleep.

Before many minutes had passed, she saw, from between half-closed eyelashes, that Mrs. Dale was sitting up, and bending her head in a listening attitude. And presently the slender figure with its white dressing-gown slipped softly off the sofa, and hurried on tiptoe across the floor to the door. There it knelt down and listened again. And after a few minutes Mrs. Dale turned the key in the lock and crept back, not to the couch, but to the arm-chair.

Mabin shut her eyes and tried to disentangle the knot of strange ideas that filled her brain:

What was the nature of the secret which weighed on the conscience of Mrs. Dale? Why was she kept in luxury by the very woman who tried to make her life unbearable, to cut her off from every human friend? What was the strange tie between the hard, elderly woman and the impulsive, volatile young one? What was the vision which had caused her so much distress? And, above all, why, if it was only a vision, did she try to keep it away by locking the door?

And why--and why--? More questions surged up into her tired brain; but Mabin forgot them as they rose. She fell asleep.

When she awoke in the morning it was to find that some one was knocking at the door, and then she heard the housemaid’s voice announcing that it was eight o’clock. She sprang up, and looked toward the sofa, but there was no one but herself in the room.

Surely, she thought, the strange visit of the night must have been a dream? The rug on the sofa was neatly folded, just as it had been when she came up to bed last night. Not a sign was to be seen of any intrusion during the night.

Even when she went downstairs and met Mrs. Dale in the hall, there was little to tell of the experience of the hours of darkness. Perhaps the pretty widow looked a little paler than usual, but in every other respect she was the same airy, impulsive creature, now smiling, now looking sad, as she had been before the dreadful visit of the lady whom irreverent Mabin called “the cat.”

It was not indeed until breakfast was over and they had gone out into the garden to cut some flowers while the dew was on them, that either of the ladies made any reference to the events of the night.

Mrs. Dale, with one daintily shod foot in a flower-bed, was stretching out her hands toward a bush of sweet-peas, when, without turning her head, she said:

“I am in great trouble about you, Mabin.”

“Are you? Why, Mrs. Dale?”

“I don’t quite know what to do with you. If I send you to Mrs. Bonnington, I shall have to tell some shocking tarradiddle about the drains having come up, or the roof having given way, and she will be sure to find me out and to pry, and to give both of us what the old women call ‘much unpleasantness.’ And if I send you on to Geneva, I don’t know whether they will be glad to see you when you arrive.”

“And I’m sure they won’t,” said Mabin heartily. “And there is one other objection to sending me anywhere, and that is that I won’t go.”

Mrs. Dale dropped her sweet-peas, and turned round. Her eyes were full of sudden tears.

“Nonsense, child!” she said sharply, but in a querulous tone which betrayed her emotion, “nonsense! It was decided yesterday afternoon that you were to go. You know it was.”

“You decided that I was to go. _I_ didn’t. And--” instinctively she dropped her voice--“And something that happened last night--in the night, made _me_ decide not to go. There!”

“But, my dear----”

“No, Mrs. Dale, I’m not to be ‘got round.’ You’ve chosen to take me upon your shoulders, so now you must just keep me. Ha, ha! You didn’t know I had so much determination, did you?”

But Mrs. Dale could scarcely speak. Now for the first time that morning Mabin realized that the scene of the night had really taken place, for the emotion aroused by this little bit of talk had brought back into Mrs. Dale’s blue eyes a faint reproduction of the wild terror she had shown when she came to the girl’s room. When she had recovered her voice, the lady in black, pale, hoarse, shaken with her agitation, stammered out these words:

“My dear girl, it is beautiful of you to offer to stay. But I cannot let you. You ought never to have come. I was mad, wicked to let you come; and my madness and my wickedness I must bear alone.”

How strange these words seemed in the broad daylight, Mabin thought! By the weak glimmer of the night-light Mrs. Dale’s wild looks and words had seemed fantastic, weird. But the broad sunlight seemed to give the nameless horror which hung about the poor little lady in black a reality as vivid as it was painful. But with this feeling there came also into the heart of the young girl a great tenderness toward the suffering woman, who was haunted by the shadow of her own past. So she smiled, and with a pretty, half-shy look in her eyes, said:

“You told me I saved you from going mad. So I mean to stay. And I mean to sleep in the same room with you, so that you shall not be frightened any more.”

Mrs. Dale shook her head.

“I can’t let you do that,” said she. “I don’t sleep very well, and sometimes I start up and cry out. I should frighten you.”

“Then we will exchange rooms,” said Mabin.

By the look of joy and relief which flashed over Mrs. Dale’s face at this suggestion, Mabin saw that she had conquered.

“But--won’t you be afraid?” asked the widow in a troubled voice.

“What! Of a ghost, a vision? Or of having bad dreams? No, not a bit.”

Mrs. Dale glanced gratefully at the young face, with its look of robust Philistine scorn of phantoms.

“It is a temptation,” she murmured. “For, after all, I know, I _know_ that it was only a dream, a horrible dream. And there is no fear that the dream will come to _you_.”

“And if it did,” retorted Mabin stoutly, “it wouldn’t frighten me. I’m too ‘stodgy;’ I have no imagination.”

Mrs. Dale smiled sadly.

“You are right,” she said. “If you did have the same dream, it would have no terrors for you. Your conscience is clear.”

“And my digestion good,” added Mabin lightly, as she picked up the fallen flowers and put them in her basket.

There was no doubt that her refusal to go had taken a load of melancholy from the shoulders of her hostess, who sent the young girl out for a walk as soon as the gathering of the flowers was over, and charged her not to go far enough to tire her still weak ankle.

Mabin, with a book and a sunshade, sauntered slowly down the hill to the nearest gap in the cliff, and went down the steep descent to the sands. This was no paradise of nursemaids and babies, but a solitary nook beloved by quiet maiden ladies and sentimental couples. With rash disregard of the danger of sitting under a chalk cliff, Mabin found a seat on a rock worn smooth by the sea, opened her book and began--_not_ to read.

The circumstances to which she found herself were far too interesting for her to be able to give herself up to the milder excitements of fiction. She sat with her open book on her lap and her eyes staring out at the sea, which was vividly blue in the strong sunshine, when she became suddenly conscious of a footstep she knew in her immediate neighborhood.

Although she affected to be surprised when Rudolph appeared before her, she had known that he was approaching, and her heart began to beat very fast. He looked down at her between the spikes of her sunshade, pretending to be afraid to speak to her.

“Good-morning,” said she at last.

“I was wondering whether I dared say the same thing!”

“Dared?”

“Yes. After your treatment of me last night, I felt nervous.”

“My treatment of you! What treatment?”

“Why were you so unkind? Or mustn’t I ask why?”

“You may ask, of course. But I can’t give you any answer, because I didn’t know that I was unkind.”

“I wish I could believe that.”

“Well, if you won’t believe it, I have nothing to say.”

Rudolph was silent a few minutes. Then with a burst of explosive energy, he made up his mind.

“No!” he cried so loudly that Mabin started, and threw himself down on the sand beside her, “I will not be daunted. I will encase myself in double snub-proof armor plates, and I will try to teach her that to be dignified it is not necessary to be unkind--and--yes, I will say it--absolutely rude.”

Mabin became crimson, and the tears started to her eyes. She had not meant to be rude, but undoubtedly her behavior had laid her open to this accusation.

“I am stupid, clumsy; I am rude without meaning it,” she said in a tone of such excessive humility and penitence that it was impossible to doubt her sincerity. “I am very sorry. But you shouldn’t take any notice of what I do or say. Nobody does at home. When I am more awkward and tiresome than usual, they always say: ‘Oh, it’s only Mabin!’ And then nobody minds.”

“Ah, well, I can’t quite feel like that--that it’s only Mabin. When one likes a person, and wants to be good friends, very good friends with that person, just as one used to be when that person and one’s self were little things in short frocks and knickerbockers, it is very disheartening to find that person so determined to be--er--to be--er--so reserved that when one sits beside that person as I did last night, you know, she will only let one see so much of her right ear as to practically turn her back to one!”

“I didn’t!”

“You did though. And it is what you were doing again just now until the horror of hearing the truth made you turn around to fly at me! You did turn your back upon me last night, Miss Rose, and you hurt my feelings.”

“Indeed, you did not seem to be hurt. You seemed to be enjoying yourself very much!”

“Well, so I was in a way. But I should have enjoyed myself much more if you had been as nice as you were in the garden.”

Mabin heaved a deep sigh.

“It’s no use expecting me to be nice,” she said in a voice of despair, “I can only manage it so very seldom.”

“Well, could you hold out some signal, such as by wearing a particular flower, or color, or some especial knot of ribbon, to let one know when one may speak to you without being snubbed?”

“No, I couldn’t,” retorted Mabin with great fierceness, but with a twinkle of fun in her gray eyes, which gave greater hopes than her words did. “It is of no use for me to promise more than I can perform. You had much better look upon me as a decidedly disagreeable person, with rare moments of proper behavior.”

“Proper behavior, then, means niceness? I’m glad you think it proper to be nice to me!” said Rudolph. “I perceive that I’ve lighted upon one of the ‘rare moments,’ and I’m going to take advantage of it,” he added, as he came a little nearer to her, and looked up in her face with a glance of amusement and admiration which made her blush a little. “I’m going to make you talk to me, and amuse me, as you were told to do last night.”

“No! It was _you_ who were told to amuse me!”

“Was it? Well, we’ll take it in turn then. Do you remember how I taught you cricket?”

“Yes, oh yes.”

“And what a rage you used to be in when you were caught out?”

“Yes,” answered Mabin, “I remember; but I don’t want to talk about cricket. I want to tell you something. Mrs. Dale has a fancy that ‘The Towers’ is haunted.”

And she related the adventure of the previous night, and her intention of changing rooms with her hostess.

Rudolph listened gravely, and there was a pause when she had finished before he made any comment. Then he said abruptly:

“You are not nervous, are you, Mabin? I know you used to have no end of pluck.”

“Well, I haven’t any less than I ever had.”

“Well, if you do change rooms, you have got to be prepared to see the ghost yourself.”

“You make me feel rather--rather creepy! What do you really think I shall see?”

“A face at the window probably. The face of the spy from your house. What else can she have seen?”

Mabin considered a moment.

“I’ll risk it!” she cried at last. “I shan’t go to bed at all. I shall sit up and watch.”

“I wish you would. We should find out something if you had the strength of mind to do that.”

Not without a wild beating of the heart, Mabin undertook the task of holding the strange night-watch, without saying a word to Mrs. Dale of her intention.

“She thinks she only had a dreadful dream, you know,” said Mabin.

“Well,” replied Rudolph, “I want to know what sort of dream you will have.”

He had to admire the courage she showed in undertaking a task which was, as she expressed it, “rather shuddery,” but when he left her at the gate of “The Towers” she was still steadfast in her intention.

It was not until after dinner that evening that Mrs. Dale introduced the young girl to the apartment she was to occupy that night. Mabin was astonished at its dinginess, its gloominess, contrasting so strongly as they did with the fresh prettiness of the room which had been prepared for herself.

It was a large square room, with a mouldy old-fashioned wall-paper, on which unnatural pink roses climbed up a succession of thin hop poles. The pictures were groups of trees, done with the pencil in the woolly early Victorian manner, and stiff bouquets, in water-color, of conventional early Victorian flowers. The bed, which was hung with green curtains, occupied an undue space; and Mabin felt that, in the weird circumstances of her tenancy of the room, she would have died rather than sleep in that funereal erection.

When Mrs. Dale had kissed her and bade her good-night, after receiving Mabin’s assurance that she did not feel in the least nervous, the young girl felt a strong inclination to follow her friend out of the room, and to implore her to find her some other sleeping-place.

By a valiant effort, however, she conquered this weakness, and made a careful survey of her surroundings. In the first place, the windows and their fastenings had to be examined. They were carefully secured, and were both so high above the ground that it would have been impossible for an intruder to reach them without a ladder.

There were three doors; and at first Mabin was inclined to regard this as a disquieting circumstance. But on finding that two of them were unused, locked, and without a key, and that there was a bolt on the door by which she had entered, she began to feel more at ease.

Exchanging her frock for a dressing-gown, and providing herself with a book, she placed herself in an arm-chair which stood near the fireplace, which, although shabby, was sufficiently comfortable, and, putting her candles on a small table beside her, settled herself to read. Her book was a novel of an excellent type, not too clever to be charming, not so commonplace as to be dull. Much to her own surprise, she got interested, and forgot, or almost forgot, the vague fears which kept her in the arm-chair instead of in bed.

She was in the very heart of the book, and her candles had burnt low in their sockets, when a sound, a very slight sound, behind her back, caused the blood almost to freeze in her veins.

It was a soft, stealthy tread.

Looking round, half paralyzed with terror, she saw that the door was ajar, and that creeping softly round toward the inside handle was the long, thin hand of a man.