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Page 44
When daylight came she crept back to the southwest chamber and
hurriedly got some clothes in which to dress herself. It took all
her resolution to enter the room, but nothing unusual happened
while she was there. She hastened back to her old chamber, dressed
herself and went down to breakfast with an imperturbable face. Her
colour had not faded. When asked by Eliza Lippincott how she had
slept, she replied with an appearance of calmness which was
bewildering that she had not slept very well. She never did sleep
very well in a new bed, and she thought she would go back to her
old room.
Eliza Lippincott was not deceived, however, neither were the Gill
sisters, nor the young girl, Flora. Eliza Lippineott spoke out
bluntly.
"You needn't talk to me about sleeping well," said she. "I know
something queer happened in that room last night by the way you
act."
They all looked at Mrs. Simmons, inquiringly--the librarian with
malicious curiosity and triumph, the minister with sad incredulity,
Sophia Gill with fear and indignation, Amanda and the young girl
with unmixed terror. The widow bore herself with dignity.
"I saw nothing nor heard nothing which I trust could not have been
accounted for in some rational manner," said she.
"What was it?" persisted Eliza Lippincott.
"I do not wish to discuss the matter any further," replied Mrs.
Simmons shortly. Then she passed her plate for more creamed
potato. She felt that she would die before she confessed to the
ghastly absurdity of that nightcap, or to having been disturbed by
the flight of peacocks off a blue field of chintz after she had
scoffed at the possibility of such a thing. She left the whole
matter so vague that in a fashion she came off the mistress of the
situation. She at all events impressed everybody by her coolness
in the face of no one knew what nightly terror.
After breakfast, with the assistance of Amanda and Flora, she moved
back into her old room. Scarcely a word was spoken during the
process of moving, but they all worked with trembling haste and
looked guilty when they met one another's eyes, as if conscious of
betraying a common fear.
That afternoon the young minister, John Dunn, went to Sophia Gill
and requested permission to occupy the southwest chamber that
night.
"I don't ask to have my effects moved there," said he, "for I could
scarcely afford a room so much superior to the one I now occupy,
but I would like, if you please, to sleep there to-night for the
purpose of refuting in my own person any unfortunate superstition
which may have obtained root here."
Sophia Gill thanked the minister gratefully and eagerly accepted
his offer.
"How anybody with common sense can believe for a minute in any such
nonsense passes my comprehension," said she.
"It certainly passes mine how anybody with Christian faith can
believe in ghosts," said the minister gently, and Sophia Gill felt
a certain feminine contentment in hearing him. The minister was a
child to her; she regarded him with no tincture of sentiment, and
yet she loved to hear two other women covertly condemned by him and
she herself thereby exalted.
That night about twelve o'clock the Reverend John Dunn essayed to
go to his nightly slumber in the southwest chamber. He had been
sitting up until that hour preparing his sermon.
He traversed the hall with a little night-lamp in his hand, opened
the door of the southwest chamber, and essayed to enter. He might
as well have essayed to enter the solid side of a house. He could
not believe his senses. The door was certainly open; he could look
into the room full of soft lights and shadows under the moonlight
which streamed into the windows. He could see the bed in which he
had expected to pass the night, but he could not enter. Whenever
he strove to do so he had a curious sensation as if he were trying
to press against an invisible person who met him with a force of
opposition impossible to overcome. The minister was not an
athletic man, yet he had considerable strength. He squared his
elbows, set his mouth hard, and strove to push his way through into
the room. The opposition which he met was as sternly and mutely
terrible as the rocky fastness of a mountain in his way.
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