Man, Women and Ghosts by Elizabeth Stuart Phelps Ward - HTML preview

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across the hall. While I was searching the room my wife called loudly to

me, and I ran back.

"It is on the mantel now," she said. "It struck the mantel just after

you left; then the ceiling, three times, very loud; then the mantel

again,--don't you hear?"

I heard distinctly; moreover, the mantel shook a little with the

concussion. I took out the fire-board and looked up the chimney; I took

out the register and looked down the furnace-pipe; I ransacked the

garret and the halls; finally, I examined Miss Fellows's door,--it was

locked as I had left it, upon the outside; and that locked door was the

only means of egress from the room, unless the occupant fancied that of

jumping from a two-story window upon a broad flight of stone steps.

I came thoughtfully back across the hall; an invisible trip-hammer

appeared to hit the floor beside me at every step; I attempted to step

aside from it, over it, away from it; but it followed me, pounding into

my room.

"Wind?" suggested Allis. "Plaster cracking? Fancies?

Dreams? Blind

headaches?--I should like to know which you have decided upon?"

Quiet fell upon the house after that for an hour, and I was dropping

into my first nap, when there came a light tap upon the door. Before I

could reach it, it had grown into a thundering blow.

"Whatever it is I'll have it now!" I whispered, turned the latch without

noise, and flung the door wide into the hall. It was silent, dark, and

cold. A little glimmer of moonlight fell in and showed me the figures

upon the carpet, outlined in a frosty bar. No hand or hammer, human or

superhuman, was there.

Determined to investigate matters a little more thoroughly, I asked my

wife to stand upon the inside of the doorway while I kept watch upon the

outside. We took our position, and I closed the door between us.

Instantly a series of furious blows struck the door; the sound was such

as would be made by a stick of oaken wood. The solid door quivered under

it.

"It's on your side!" said I.

"No, it's on yours!" said she.

"You're pounding yourself to fool me," cried I.

"You're pounding yourself to frighten me," sobbed she.

And we nearly had a quarrel. The sound continued with more or less

intermission till daybreak. Allis fell asleep, but I spent the time in

appropriate reflections.

Early in the morning I removed the button from Miss Fellows's door. She

never knew anything about it.

I believe, however, that I had the fairness to exculpate her in my

secret heart from any trickish connection with the disturbances of that

night.

"Just keep quiet about this little affair," I said to my wife; "we shall

come across an explanation in time, and may never have any more of it."

We kept quiet, and for five days so did "the spirits,"

as Miss Fellows

was pleased to pronounce the trip-hammers.

The fifth day I came home early, as it chanced, from the office. Miss

Fellows was writing letters in the parlor. Allis, upstairs, was sorting

and putting away the weekly wash. I came into the room and sat down by

the register to watch her. I always liked to watch her sitting there on

the floor with the little heaps of linen and cotton stuff piled like

blocks of snow about her, and her pink hands darting in and out of the

uncertain sleeves that were just ready to give way in the gathers,

trying the stockings' heels briskly, and testing the buttons with a

little jerk.

She laid aside some under-clothing presently from the rest. "It will

not be needed again this winter," she observed, "and had better go into

the cedar closet." The garments, by the way, were marked and numbered in

indelible ink. I heard her run over the figures in a busy, housekeeper's

undertone, before carrying them into the closet. She locked the closet

door, I think, for I remember the click of the key. If I remember

accurately, I stepped into the hall after that to light a cigar, and

Alison flitted to and fro with her clothes, dropping the baby's little

white stockings every step or two, and anathematizing them

daintily--within orthodox bounds, of course. In about five minutes she

called me; her voice was sharp and alarmed.

"Come quick! O Fred, look here! All those clothes that I locked into the

cedar closet are out here on the bed!"

"My dear wife," I blandly observed, as I sauntered into the room, "too

much of Gertrude Fellows hath made thee mad. Let _me_

see the clothes!"

She pointed to the bed. Some white clothing lay upon it, folded in an

ugly way, to represent a corpse, with crossed hands.

"Is it meant for a joke, Alison? You did it yourself, I suppose!"

"Fred! I have not touched it with the tip of my little finger!"

"Gertrude, then?"

"Gertrude is in the parlor writing."

So she was. I called her up. She looked surprised and troubled.

"It must have been Bridget," I proceeded, authoritatively, "or Tip."

"Bridget is out walking with Tip and the baby. Jane is in the kitchen

making pies."

"At any rate these are not the clothes which you locked into the closet,

however they came here."

"The very same, Fred. See, I noticed the numbers 6 upon the stockings, 2

on the night-caps, and--"

"Give me the key," I interrupted.

She gave me the key. I went to the cedar closet and tried the door. It

was locked. I unlocked it, and opened the drawer in which my wife

assured me that the clothes had lain. Nothing was to be seen in it but

the linen towel which neatly covered the bottom. I lifted it and shook

it. The drawer was empty.

"Give me those clothes, if you please."

She brought them to me. I made in my diary a careful memorandum of their

naming and numbering; placed the articles myself in the drawer,--an

upper drawer, so that there could be no mistake in identifying it;

locked the drawer, put the key in my pocket; locked the door of the

closet, put the key in my pocket; locked the door of the room in which

the closet was, and put that key in my pocket.

We sat down then in the hall, all of us; Allis and Gertrude to fill the

mending-basket, I to smoke and consider. I saw Tip coming home with his

nurse presently, and started to go down and let him in, when a faint

scream from my wife arrested me. I ran past Miss Fellows, who was

sitting on the stairs, and into my room. Allis, going in to put away

Tip's little plaid aprons, had stopped, rather pale, upon the threshold.

Upon the bed lay some clothing, folded, as before, in rude, hideous

imitation of the dead.

I took each article in turn, and compared the name and number with the

names and numbers in my diary. They were identical throughout. I took

the clothes, took the three keys from my pocket, unlocked the

"cedar-room" door, unlocked the closet door, unlocked the upper drawer,

and looked in. The drawer was empty.

To say that from this time I failed to own--to myself, if not to other

people--that some mysterious influence, inexplicable by common or

scientific causes, was at work in my house, would be to accuse myself of

more obstinacy than even I am capable of. I propounded theory after

theory, and gave it up. I arrived at conclusion upon conclusion, and

threw them aside. Finally, I held my peace, ceased to talk of "rats,"

kept my mind in a state of passive vacancy, and narrowly and quietly

watched the progress of affairs.

From the date of that escapade with the underclothes confusion reigned

in our corner of Nemo's Avenue. That night neither my wife nor myself

closed an eye, the house so resounded and re-echoed with the blows of

unseen hammers, fists, logs, and knuckles.

Miss Fellows, too, was pale with her vigils, looked troubled, and

proposed going home. This I peremptorily vetoed, determined if the woman

had any connection, honest or otherwise, with the mystery, to ferret it

out.

The following day, just after dinner, I was writing in the library, when

a child's cry of fright and pain startled me. It seemed to come from the

little yard behind the house, and I hurried thither to behold a singular

sight. There was one apple-tree in the yard,--an old, stunted, crooked

thing; and in that tree I found my son and heir, Tip, tied fast with a

small stout rope. "Tied" does not express it; he was gagged, manacled,

twisted, contorted, wound about, crossed and recrossed, held without a

chance of motion, scarcely of breath.

"You never tied yourself up here, child?" I asked, as I cut the knots.

The question certainly was unnecessary. No juggler could have bound

himself in such a fashion; scarcely, then, a four-years'

child. To my

continued, clear, and gentle inquiries, the boy replied, persistently

and consistently, that nobody tied him there,--"not Cousin Gertrude, nor

Bridget, nor the baby, nor mamma, nor Jane, nor papa, nor the black

kitty"; he was "just tooken up all at once into the tree, and that was

all there was about it." He "s'posed it must have been God, or something

like that, did it."

Poor Tip had a hard time of it. Two days after that, while his mother

and I sat discussing the incident, and the child was at play upon the

floor, he suddenly threw himself at full length, writhing with pain, and

begging to "have them pulled out quick!"

"Have _what_ pulled out?" exclaimed his terrified mother. She took the

child into her lap, and found that he was stuck over from head to foot

with large white pins.

"We haven't so many large pins in all the house," she said as soon as he

was relieved.

As she spoke the words thirty or forty _small_ pins pierced the boy.

Where they came from no one could see. How they came there no one knew.

We looked, and there they were, and Tip was crying and writhing as

before.

For the remainder of that winter we had scarcely a day of quiet. The

rumor that "the Hotchkisses had rented a haunted house"

leaked out and

spread abroad. The frightened servants gave warning, and other

frightened servants took their place, to leave in turn.

My wife was her

own cook and nursery-maid a quarter of the time. The disturbances varied

in character with every week, assuming, as time went on, an importunity

which, had we not quietly settled it in our own minds

"not to be beaten

by a noise," would have driven us from the house.

Night after night the mysterious fingers rapped at the windows, the

doors, the floors, the walls. Day after day uncomfortable tricks were

sprung upon us by invisible agencies. We became used to the noises, so

that we slept through them easily; but many of the phenomena were so

strikingly unpleasant, and so singularly unsuited to the ordinary

conditions of human happiness and housekeeping, that we scarcely

became--as one of our excellent deacons had a cheerful habit of

exhorting us to become--"resigned."

Upon one occasion we had invited a small and select number of friends to

dine. It was to be rather a _recherché_ affair for Nemo's Avenue, and my

wife had spared no painstaking to suit herself with her table. We had

had a comparatively quiet house the night before, so that our cook, who

had been with us three days, consented to remain till our guests had

been provided for. The soup was good, the pigeons better, the bread was

_not_ sour, and Allis looked hopeful, and inclined to trust Providence

for the gravies and dessert.

It was just as I had begun to carve the beef that I observed my wife

suddenly pale, and a telegram from her eyes turned mine in the direction

of General Popgun, who sat at her right hand. My sensations "can better

be imagined than described" when I saw General Popgun's fork, untouched

by any human hand, dancing a jig on his plate. He grasped it and laid it

firmly down. As soon as he released his hold it leaped from the table.

"Really--aw--very singular phenomena," began the General; "very

singular! I was not prepared to credit the extraordinary accounts of

spiritual manifestations in this house, but--aw--Well, I must say--"

Instantly it was Pandemonium at that dinner-table. Dr.

Jump's knife,

Mrs. M'Ready's plate, and Colonel Hope's tumbler sprang from their

places. The pigeons flew from the platter, the caster rattled and

rolled, the salt-cellars bounded to and fro, and the gravies, moved by

some invisible disturber, spattered all over Mrs. Elias P. Critique's

_moire antique_.

Mortified and angered beyond endurance, I for the first time addressed

the spirits,--wrenched for the moment into a profound belief that they

must be spirits indeed.

"Whatever you are, and wherever you are," I shouted, bringing my hand

down hard upon the table, "go out of this room and let us alone!"

The only reply was a furious mazourka of all the dishes on the table. A

gentleman present, who had, as he afterward told us, studied the subject

of spiritualism somewhat, very sceptically and with unsatisfactory

results, observed the performance keenly, and suggested that I should

try a gentler method of appeal. Whatever the agent was,-

-and what it was

he had not yet discovered,--he had noticed repeatedly that the quiet

modes of meeting it were most effective.

Rather amused, I spoke more softly, addressing the caster, and

intimating in my blandest manner that I and my guests would feel under

obligations if we could have the room to ourselves till after we had

dined. The disturbance gradually ceased, and we had no more of it that

day.

A morning or two after Alison chanced to leave half a dozen teaspoons

upon the sideboard in the breakfast-room; they were of solid silver, and

quite thick. She was going to rub them herself, I believe, and went into

the china-closet, which opens from the room, for the silver-soap. The

breakfast-room was left vacant, and it was vacant when she returned to

it, and she insists, with a quiet conviction which it is hardly

reasonable to doubt, that no human being did or could have entered the

room without her knowledge. When she came back to the sideboard every

one of those spoons lay there _bent double_. She showed them to me when

I came home at noon. Had they been pewter toys they could not have been

more completely twisted out of shape than they were. I took them without

any remarks (I began to feel as if this mystery were assuming

uncomfortable proportions), put them away, just as I found them, into a

small cupboard in the wall of the breakfast-room, locked the cupboard

door with the only key in the house which fitted it, put the key in my

inner vest pocket, and meditatively ate my dinner.

About half an hour afterward a neighbor dropped in to groan over the

weather and see the baby, and Allis chanced to mention the incident of

the spoons.

"Really, Mrs. Hotchkiss!" said the lady, with a slight smile, and that

indefinite, quickly smothered change of eye which signifies, "I don't

believe a word of it!" "Are you sure that there is not a mistake

somewhere, or a little mental hallucination? The story is very

entertaining, but--I beg your pardon--I should be interested to see

those spoons."

"Your curiosity shall be gratified, madam," I said, a little testily;

and taking the key from my pocket, I led her to the cupboard and

unlocked the door. I found those spoons as straight, smooth, and fair as

ever spoons had been;--not a dent, not a wrinkle, not a bend nor untrue

line could we discover anywhere upon them.

"_Oh!_" said our visitor, significantly.

That lady, be it recorded, then and thenceforward spared no pains to

found and strengthen throughout Nemo's Avenue the theory that "the

Hotchkisses were getting up all that spiritual nonsense to force their

landlord into lower rents. And such respectable people too! It did seem

a pity, didn't it?"

One night I was alone in the library. It was late; about half-past

eleven, I think. The brightest gas jet was lighted, so that I could see

to every portion of the small room. The door was shut.

There was no

furniture but the book-cases, my table, and chair; no sliding: doors or

concealed corners; no nook or cranny in which any human creature could

lurk unseen by me; and I say that I was alone.

I had been writing to a confidential friend a somewhat minute account

of the disturbances in my house, which were now of about six weeks'

duration. I had begged him to come and observe them for himself, and help

me out with a solution,--I myself was at a loss for a reasonable one.

There certainly seemed to be evidence of superhuman agency; but I was

hardly ready yet to commit myself thoroughly to that view of the matter,

and--

In the middle of that sentence I laid down my pen. A consciousness,

sudden and distinct, came to me that I was not alone in that bright

little silent room. Yet to mortal eyes alone I was. I pushed away my

writing and looked about. The warm air was empty of outline; the

curtains were undisturbed; the little recess under the library table

held nothing but my own feet; there was no sound but the ordinary

rap-rapping on the floor, to which I had by this time become so

accustomed that often it passed unnoticed. I rose and examined the room

thoroughly, until quite satisfied that I was its only visible occupant;

then sat down again. The rappings had meantime become loud and

impatient.

I had learned that very week from Miss Fellows the spiritual alphabet

with which she was in the habit of "communicating with her dead mother."

I had never asked her, nor had she proposed, to use it herself for my

benefit. I had meant to try all other means of investigation before

resorting to it. Now, however being alone, and being perplexed and

annoyed by my sense of having invisible company, I turned and spelled

out upon the table, so many raps to a letter till the question was

complete:--

"_What do you want of me?_"

Instantly the answer came rapping back:--

"_Stretch down your hand._"

I put my fingers under the table, and I felt, as indubitably as I ever

felt a touch in my life, the grasp of a _warm, human hand_.

I added to the broken paragraph in the letter to my friend a brief

account of the occurrence, and reiterated my entreaties that he would

come at his earliest convenience to my house. He was an Episcopal

clergyman, by the way, and I considered that his testimony would uphold

my fast-sinking character for veracity among my townspeople. I began to

have an impression that this dilemma in which I found myself was a

pretty serious one for a man of peaceable disposition and honest

intentions to be in.

About this time I undertook to come to a little better understanding

with Miss Fellows. I took her away alone, and having tried my best not

to frighten the life out of her by my grave face, asked her seriously

and kindly to tell me whether she supposed herself to have any

connection with the phenomena in my house. To my surprise she answered

promptly that she thought she had. I repressed a whistle, and "asked for

information."

"The presence of a medium renders easy what would otherwise be

impossible," she replied. "I offered to go away, Mr.

Hotchkiss, in the

beginning."

I assured her that I had no desire to have her go away at present, and

begged her to proceed.

"The Influences in the house are strong, as I have said before," she

continued, looking through me and beyond me with her vacant eyes.

"Something is wrong. They are never at rest. I hear them. I feel them. I

see them. They go up and down the stairs with me. I find them in my

room. I see them gliding about. I see them standing now, with their

hands almost upon your shoulders."

I confess to a kind of chill that crept down my backbone at these words,

and to having turned my head and stared hard at the book-cases behind

me.

"But they--I mean something--rapped one night before you came," I

suggested.

"Yes, and they might rap after I was gone. The simple noises are not

uncommon in places where there are no better means of communication. The

extreme methods of expression, such as you have witnessed this winter,

are, I doubt not, practicable only when the system of a medium is

accessible. They write all sorts of messages for you.

You would ridicule

them. I do not repeat them. You and Cousin Alison do not see, hear, feel

as I do. We are differently made. There are lying spirits and true, good

spirits and bad. Sometimes the bad deceive and distress me, but

sometimes--sometimes my mother comes."

She lowered her voice reverently, and I was fain to hush the laugh upon

my lips. Whatever the thing might prove to be to me, it was daily

comfort to the nervous, unstrung, lonely woman, whom to suspect of

trickery I began to think was worse than stupidity.

From the time of my midnight experience in the library I allowed myself

to look a little further into the subject of

"communications." Miss

Fellows wrote them out at my request whenever they

"came" to her.

Writers on Spiritualism have described the process so frequently, that

it is unnecessary for me to dwell upon it at length. The influences took

her unawares in the usual manner. In the usual manner her arm--to all

appearance the passive instrument of some unseen, powerful

agency--jerked and glided over the paper, writing in curious, scrawly

characters, never in her own neat little old-fashioned hand, messages of

which, on coming out from the "trance" state, she would have-no memory;

of many of which at any time she could have had no comprehension. These

messages assumed every variety of character from the tragic to the

ridiculous, and a large portion of them had no point whatever.

One day Benjamin West desired to give me lessons in oil-painting. The

next, my brother Joseph, dead now for ten years, asked forgiveness for

his share in a little quarrel of ours which had embittered a portion of

his last days,--of which, by the way, I am