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Page 14
The result proved my discretion. As I was rising from the table
Nixon himself made this remark:
"Mrs. Packard will be glad to see you in her room up-stairs any
time after ten o'clock. Ellen will show you where." Then, as I
was framing a reply, he added in a less formal tone: "I hope you
were not disturbed last night. I told the girls not to be so
noisy."
Now they had been very quiet, so I perceived that he simply
wanted to open conversation.
"I slept beautifully," I assured him. "Indeed, I'm not easily
kept awake. I don't believe I could keep awake if I knew that a
ghost would stalk through my room at midnight."
His eyes opened, and he did just what I had intended him to do,
--met my glance directly.
"Ghosts!" he repeated, edging uneasily forward, perhaps with the
intention of making audible his whisper: "Do you believe in
ghosts?"
I laughed easily and with a ringing merriment, like the
light-hearted girl I should be and am not.
"No," said I, "why should I? But I should like to. I really
should enjoy the experience of coming face to face with a wholly
shadowless being."
He stared and now his eyes told nothing. Mechanically I moved to
go, mechanically he stepped aside to give me place. But his
curiosity or his interest would not allow him to see me pass out
without making another attempt to understand me. Stammering in
his effort to seem indifferent, he dropped this quiet observation
just as I reached the door.
"Some people say, or at least I have heard it whispered in the
neighborhood, that this house is haunted. I've never seen
anything, myself."
I forced myself to give a tragic start (I was half ashamed of my
arts), and, coming back, turned a purposely excited countenance
toward him.
"This house!" I cried. "Oh, how lovely! I never thought I
should have the good fortune of passing the night in a house that
is really haunted. What are folks supposed to see? I don't know
much about ghosts out of books."
This nonplussed him. He was entirely out of his element. He
glanced nervously at the door and tried to seem at his ease;
perhaps tried to copy my own manner as he mumbled these words:
"I've not given much attention to the matter, Miss. It's not
long since we came here and Mrs. Packard don't approve of our
gossiping with the neighbors. But I think the people have
mostly been driven away by strange noises and by lights which no
one could explain, flickering up over the ceilings from the halls
below. I don't want to scare you, Miss--"
"Oh, you won't scare me."
"Mrs. Packard wouldn't like me to do that. She never listens to
a word from us about these things, and we don't believe the half
of it ourselves; but the house does have a bad name, and it's the
wonder of everybody that the mayor will live in it."
"Sounds?" I repeated. "Lights?"--and laughed again. "I don't
think I shall bother myself about them!" I went gaily out.
It did seem very puerile to me, save as it might possibly account
in some remote way for Mrs. Packard's peculiar mental condition.
Up-stairs I found Ellen. She was in a talkative mood, and this
time I humored her till she had told me all she knew about the
house and its ghostly traditions. This all had come from a
servant, a nurse who had lived in the house before. Ellen herself,
like the butler, Nixon, had had no personal experiences to relate,
though the amount of extra wages she received had quite prepared
her for them. Her story, or rather the nurse's story, was to the
following effect.
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