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Page 42
"Only when I went in there that afternoon it was not peacocks on a
blue ground; it was great red roses on a yellow ground."
"Why, what do you mean?"
"What I say."
"Did Miss Sophia have it changed?"
"No. I went in there again an hour later and the peacocks were
there."
"You didn't see straight the first time."
"I expected you would say that."
"The peacocks are there now; I saw them just now."
"Yes, I suppose so; I suppose they flew back."
"But they couldn't."
"Looks as if they did."
"Why, how could such a thing be? It couldn't be."
"Well, all I know is those peacocks were gone for an hour that
afternoon and the red roses on the yellow ground were there
instead."
The widow stared at her a moment, then she began to laugh rather
hysterically.
"Well," said she, "I guess I sha'n't give up my nice room for any
such tomfoolery as that. I guess I would just as soon have red
roses on a yellow ground as peacocks on a blue; but there's no use
talking, you couldn't have seen straight. How could such a thing
have happened?"
"I don't know," said Eliza Lippincott; "but I know I wouldn't sleep
in that room if you'd give me a thousand dollars."
"Well, I would," said the widow, "and I'm going to."
When Mrs. Simmons went to the southwest chamber that night she cast
a glance at the bed-hanging and the easy chair. There were the
peacocks on the blue ground. She gave a contemptuous thought to
Eliza Lippincott.
"I don't believe but she's getting nervous," she thought. "I
wonder if any of her family have been out at all."
But just before Mrs. Simmons was ready to get into bed she looked
again at the hangings and the easy chair, and there were the red
roses on the yellow ground instead of the peacocks on the blue.
She looked long and sharply. Then she shut her eyes, and then
opened them and looked. She still saw the red roses. Then she
crossed the room, turned her back to the bed, and looked out at the
night from the south window. It was clear and the full moon was
shining. She watched it a moment sailing over the dark blue in its
nimbus of gold. Then she looked around at the bed hangings. She
still saw the red roses on the yellow ground.
Mrs. Simmons was struck in her most vulnerable point. This apparent
contradiction of the reasonable as manifested in such a commonplace
thing as chintz of a bed-hanging affected this ordinarily
unimaginative woman as no ghostly appearance could have done.
Those red roses on the yellow ground were to her much more ghostly
than any strange figure clad in the white robes of the grave
entering the room.
She took a step toward the door, then she turned with a resolute
air. "As for going downstairs and owning up I'm scared and having
that Lippincott girl crowing over me, I won't for any red roses
instead of peacocks. I guess they can't hurt me, and as long as
we've both of us seen 'em I guess we can't both be getting loony,"
she said.
Mrs. Elvira Simmons blew out her light and got into bed and lay
staring out between the chintz hangings at the moonlit room. She
said her prayers in bed always as being more comfortable, and
presumably just as acceptable in the case of a faithful servant
with a stout habit of body. Then after a little she fell asleep;
she was of too practical a nature to be kept long awake by anything
which had no power of actual bodily effect upon her. No stress of
the spirit had ever disturbed her slumbers. So she slumbered
between the red roses, or the peacocks, she did not know which.
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