Part 7 (1/2)
”Betty, open the door leading into the hall.”
The child did as she was directed, and, coming back, brought up a low chair, and rested her head on her grandmother's knee.
”Listen,” Mrs. Wedge said again.
They were all perfectly quiet, and a timid step could be distinctly heard on the stair; it came up to the landing, and, after hesitating a moment, seemed to pa.s.s into the room into which no one was to look. The little girl s.h.i.+vered, and was lifted into her grandmother's lap, where she hid away in the folds of her dress.
Dorris was familiar with this step on the stair, for he had heard it frequently, and at night the thought had often occurred to him that some one was in the house, going quietly from one room to another. A great many times he had taken the light, and looked into every place from the cellar to the attic, but he found nothing, and discovered nothing, except that when in the attic he heard the strange, m.u.f.fled, and ghostly noises in the rooms he had just left.
”It is not a ghost to frighten you,” Mrs. Wedge said, looking at her employer, ”but the spirit of an unhappy woman come back from the grave.
Whenever the house is quiet, the step can always be heard on the stair, but I have never regarded it with horror, though I have been familiar with it for a great many years. I rather regard it as a visit from an old friend; and before you came I often sat alone in this room after dark, listening to the footsteps.
”Jerome Dudley, who built The Locks, was a young man of great intelligence, energy, and capacity; but his wife was lacking in these qualities. Perhaps I had better say that he thought so, for I never express an opinion of my own on the subject, since they were both my friends. I may say with propriety, however, that they were unsuited to each other, and that both knew and admitted it, and accepted their marriage as the blight of their lives. Differently situated, she would have been a useful woman; but she was worse than of no use to Jerome Dudley, as he was contemptible in many ways towards her in spite of his capacity for being a splendid man under different circ.u.mstances.
”The world is full of such marriages, I have been told; so I had sympathy for them both, and was as useful to them as I could be. When I came here as housekeeper, I knew at once that they were living a life of misery, for they occupied different rooms, and were never together except at six o'clock dinner.
”Mr. Dudley always went to his business in the morning before his wife was stirring, and did not return again until evening; and, after despatching his dinner, he either went back to his work, or into his own room, from which he did not emerge until morning. He was not a gloomy man, but he was dissatisfied with his wife, and felt that she was a drawback rather than a help to him.
”The management of the house was turned over to me completely, and when I presided at the table in the morning, he was always good-natured and respectful, (though he was always out of humor when his wife was in the same room with him) and frequently told me of his successes, and he had a great many, for he was a money-making man; but I am sure he never spoke of them to his wife. His household affairs he discussed only with me, and the fact that I remained in his service until I entered yours should be taken as evidence that I gave satisfaction.”
Dorris bowed respectfully to Mrs. Wedge in a.s.sent, and she proceeded,--
”Mrs. Dudley spent her time in her own room in an indolent way that was common to her, doing nothing except to look after her little girl, who was never strong. The child was four years old when I came, and the father lavished all his affection upon it. He had the reputation of being a hard, exacting man in his business, and gave but few his confidence, which I think was largely due to his unsatisfactory home; and I have heard him say that but two creatures in all the world seemed to understand him--the child, and myself. It was a part of my duty to carry the child to its father's room every night before putting it to bed; and though I usually found him at a desk surrounded with business papers, he always had time to kiss its pretty lips if asleep, or romp with it if awake.
”While the mother cheerfully turned over the household affairs to me entirely, she was jealous of the child, and constantly worried and fretted with reference to it. The father believed that his daughter was not well cared for, in spite of the mother's great affection, for she humored it to its disadvantage; and I have sometimes thought that the child was sick a great deal more than was necessary. From being shut up in a close room too much, it was tender and delicate, and when the door was open, it always went romping into the hall until brought back again, which resulted in a cold and a spell of sickness. This annoyed Mr.
Dudley, and from remarks he occasionally made to me I knew he believed that if the little girl should die, the mother would be to blame.
”'It would be better if she had no mother,' he was in the habit of saying. When children are properly managed, they become a comfort; but if a foolish sentiment is indulged in, the affections of the parents are needlessly lacerated, and they become a burden. I say this with charity, and I have become convinced of it during my long life. Little Dudley was managed by the mother with so much mistaken affection that she was always a care and a burden. Instead of going to bed at night, and sleeping peacefully until morning, as children should, she was always wakeful, fretful, and ill, and Mr. Dudley's rest was disturbed so much that I thought he had some excuse for his bad humor; for nothing is so certain as that all this was unnecessary. The child was under no restraint, and was constantly doing that which was not good for her, and though her mother protested, she did nothing else.
”Because the father complained of being disturbed at all hours of the night, the mother accused him of heartlessness and of a lack of affection, but he explained this to me by saying that he only protested because his child was not cared for as it should be; because that which was intended as a blessing became an irksome responsibility, and because he was in constant dread for its life.
”Whether the mother was to blame or not will perhaps never be known; but it is certain that the child died after a lingering illness, and the father was in a pitiful state from rage and grief. He did not speak to his wife during the illness, or after the death, which she must have accepted as an accusation that she was somehow responsible; for she soon took to her bed, and never left it alive except to wearily climb the stairs at twelve o'clock every night, to visit the child's deserted room,--the room next to this, and into which no one is permitted to look. Her bed was on the lower floor, in the room back of the parlor, and every night at twelve o'clock, which was the hour the child died, she wrapped the coverings about her, and went slowly up the stairs, clinging to the railing with pitiful weakness with one hand, and carrying the lamp with the other.
”I frequently tried to prevent her doing this; but she always begged so piteously that I could not resist the appeal. She imagined, poor soul, that she heard the child calling her, and she always asked me not to accompany her.
”One night she was gone such a long time that at last I followed, and found her dead, kneeling beside her child's empty crib, and the light out. Mr. Dudley was very much frightened and distressed; and I think the circ.u.mstance hastened his departure from Davy's Bend, which occurred a few weeks later. He has never been in the house since.
”It is said that once a year--on the third of May--at exactly twelve o'clock at night, a light appears in the lower room, which soon goes out, and appears in the hall. A great many people have told me that they have seen the light, and that it grows dimmer in the lower hall, and brighter in the upper, until it disappears in the room where the empty crib still stands, precisely as if it were carried by some one climbing the stair. It soon disappears from the upper room, and is seen no more until another year rolls round. I have never seen the light, but I have often heard the step. Sometimes it is silent for months together, but usually I hear it whenever I am in the main house at night. Just before there is a death in the town, or the occurrence of any serious accident, it goes up and down with unvarying persistency; but there is a long rest after the death or the accident foretold has occurred.”
When Mrs. Wedge had ceased talking, there was perfect silence in the room again, and the footsteps were heard descending the stair.
Occasionally there was a painful pause, but they soon went on again, and were heard no more.
”Poor Helen,” Mrs. Wedge said, wiping her eyes, ”how reluctantly she leaves the little crib.”
Mrs. Wedge soon followed the ghost of poor Helen down the stair, carrying Betty in her arms; and as Dorris stood on the landing lighting them down, he thought, as they pa.s.sed into the shadow in the lower hall, that poor Helen had found her child, and was leaving the house forever, content to remain in her grave at last.
CHAPTER VIII.