Part 24 (1/2)

”Well, to be sure! They've been traveling a long time, haven't they? And how is his health now?”

”Oh, he is very well indeed. You will be glad not to have the trouble of those carpenters, Cerissa? Pulling down old houses is dirty work.”

”Oh, dear! I wouldn't mind the dirt. Anything to get rid of that old rat's nest on top of the kitchen chamber. I hate to have such out of the way places on my mind. I can't get around to do every single thing, and it's years--years, Mrs. Bogardus, since I could get a woman to do a half-day's cleaning up there in broad daylight!”

Mrs. Bogardus stared. What was the woman talking about!

”I call it a regular eyesore on the looks of the house besides. And it keeps all the old stories alive.”

”What stories?”

”Why, of course your father wasn't out of his head--we all know that--when he built that upstairs room and slep' there and locked himself in every night of his life. It was only on one point he was a little warped: the fear of bein' robbed. A natural fear, too,--an old man over eighty livin' in such a lonesome place and known to be well off. But--you'll excuse my repeating the talk--but the story goes now that he re'ly went insane and was confined up there all the last years of his life. And that's why the windows have got bars acrost them.

Everybody notices it, and they ask questions. It's real embarra.s.sin', for of course I don't want to discuss the family.”

”Who asks questions?” Mrs. Bogardus's eyes were hard to meet when her voice took that tone.

”Why, the city folks out driving. They often drive in the big gate and make the circle through the grounds, and they're always struck when they see that tower bedroom with windows like a prison. They say, 'What's the story about that room, up there?'”

”When people ask you questions about the house, you can say you did not live here in the owner's time and you don't know. That's perfectly simple, isn't it?”

”But I do know! Everybody knows,” said Cerissa hotly. ”It was the talk of the whole neighborhood when that room was put up; and I remember how scared I used to be when mother sent me over here of an errand.”

Mrs. Bogardus rose and shook out her skirts. ”Will Chauncey bring my horse when it stops raining? By the way, did you get the furniture down that was in that room, Cerissa?--the old secretary? I am going to have it put in order for Mr. Paul's room. Old furniture is the fas.h.i.+on now, you know.”

Cerissa caught her breath nervously. ”Mrs. Bogardus--I couldn't do a thing about it! I wanted Chauncey to tell you. All last week I tried to get a woman, or a man, to come and help me clear out that place, but just as soon as they find out what's wanted--'You'll have to get somebody else for that job,' they say.”

”What is the matter with them?”

”It's the room, Mrs. Bogardus; if I was you--I'm doing now just as I'd be done by--I would not take Mrs. Paul Bogardus up into that room--not even in broad daylight; not if it was my son's wife, in the third month of her being a wife.”

”Well, upon my word!” said Mrs. Bogardus, smiling coldly. ”Do you mean to say these women are afraid to go up there?”

”It was old Mary Hornbeck who started the talk. She got what she called her 'warning' up there. And the fact is, she was a corpse within six months from that day. Chauncey and me, we used to hear noises, but old houses are full of noises. We never thought much about it; only, I must say I never had any use for that part of the house. Chauncey keeps his seeds and tools in the lower room, and some of the winter vegetables, and we store the parlor stove in there in summer.”

”Well, about this 'warning'?” Mrs. Bogardus interrupted.

”Yes! It was three years ago in May, and I remember it was some such a day as this--showery and broken overhead, and Mary disappointed me; but she came about noon, and said she'd put in half a day anyhow. She got her pail and house-cloths; but she wasn't gone not half an hour when down she come white as a sheet, and her mouth as dry as chalk. She set down all of a shake, and I give her a drink of tea, and she said: 'I wouldn't go up there again, not for a thousand dollars.' She unlocked the door, she said, and stepped inside without thinkin'. Your father's old rocker with the green moreen cus.h.i.+ons stood over by the east window, where he used to sit. She heard a creak like a heavy step on the floor, and that empty chair across the room, as far as from here to the window, begun to rock as if somebody had just rose up from them cus.h.i.+ons. She watched it till it stopped. Then she took another step, and the step she couldn't see answered her, and the chair begun to rock again.”

”Was that all?”

”No, ma'am; that wasn't all. I don't know if you remember an old wall clock with a bra.s.s ball on top and bra.s.s scrolls down the sides and a painted gla.s.s door in front of the pendulum with a picture of a castle and a lake? The paint's been wore off the gla.s.s with cleaning, so the pendulum shows plain. That clock has not been wound since we come to live here. I don't believe a hand has touched it since the night he was carried feet foremost out of that room. But Mary said she could count the strokes go tick, tick, tick! She listened till she could have counted fifty, for she was struck dumb, and just as plain as the clock before her face she could see the minute-hand and the pendulum, both of 'em dead still. Now, how do you account for that!

”I told Chauncey about it, and he said it was all foolishness. Do all I could he would go up there himself, that same evening. But he come down again after a while, and he was almost as white as Mary. 'Did you see anything?' I says. 'I saw what Mary said she saw,' says he, 'and I heard what she heard.' But no one can make Chauncey own up that he believes it was anything supernatural. 'There is a reason for everything,' he says.

'The miracles and ghosts of one generation are just school-book learning to the next; and more of a miracle than the miracles themselves.'”

”Chauncey shows his sense,” Mrs. Bogardus observed.

”He was real disturbed, though, I could see; and he told me particular not to make any talk about it. I never have opened the subject to a living soul. But when Mary died, within six months, folks repeated what she had been saying about her 'warning.' The 'death watch' she called it. We can't all of us control our feelings about such things, and she was a lonely widow woman.”

”Well, do you believe that ticking is going on up there now?” asked Mrs.

Bogardus.