The girls shivered, and Carol shuffled her chair closer to David"s bed.
"Ran himself to death?" suggested David.
"Well, he died," said the Scotchman.
"Is it true?" asked Carol, glancing fearfully through the screen of the porch into the black shadows on the mesa.
"Absolutely true," declared the Scotchman. "I was in the searchin"
party that found him."
"I--I don"t believe in spirits,--I mean haunting spirits," said Carol, stiffening her courage and her backbone by a strong effort.
"How about the ghosts that drove the men out into the graveyards in the Bible and made them cut up all kinds of funny capers, and finally haunted the pigs and drove "em into the lake?" said Barrows slyly.
"They were not ghosts," protested Carol quickly. "Just evil spirits.
They got drowned, you know,--ghosts don"t drown."
"It does not say they got drowned," contradicted Barrows. "My Bible does not say it. The pigs got drowned. And that is what ghosts are,--evil spirits, very evil. They were too slick to get drowned themselves; they just chased the pigs in and then went off haunting somebody else."
Carol turned to David for proof, and David smiled a little.
"Well," he said thoughtfully, "perhaps it does not particularly say the ghosts were drowned. It says they went into the pigs, and the pigs were drowned. It does not say anything about the spirits coming out in advance, though."
Carol and Barrows mutually triumphed over each other, claiming personal vindication.
"Do you believe in ghosts, Mr. Duke?" asked Miss Tucker in a soft respectful voice, as if resolved not to antagonize any chance spirits that might be prowling near.
"Call them psychic phenomena, and I may say that I do," said David.
"How do you explain it, then?" she persisted.
"I explain it by saying it is a phenomenon which can not be explained,"
he evaded cleverly.
"But that doesn"t get us anywhere, does it?" she protested vaguely.
"Does it--does it explain anything?"
"It does not get us anywhere," he agreed; "but it gets me out of the difficulty very nicely."
"I know a good ghost story myself," said Nevius. "It is a dandy. It will make your blood run cold. Once there was a--"
"I do not believe in telling ghost stories," said Miss Landbury.
"There may not be any such thing, and I do not believe there is, but if there should happen to be any, it must annoy them to be talked about."
"You shouldn"t say you don"t believe in them," said Miss Tucker. "At least not on such a dark night. Some self-respecting ghost may resent it and try to get even with you."
Miss Landbury swallowed convulsively, and put her arm around Carol"s waist. The sudden wail of a pack of coyotes wafted in to them, and the girls crouched close together.
"Once there was a man--"
"It is your play, Mr. Barrows," said Miss Landbury. "Let"s finish the game. I am ahead, you remember."
"Wait till I finish my story," said Nevius, grinning wickedly. "It is too good to miss, about curdling blood, and clammy hands, and--"
"Mr. Duke, do you think it is religious to talk about ghosts? Doesn"t it say something in the Bible about avoiding such things, and fighting shy of spirits and soothsayers and things like that?"
"Yes, it does," agreed Nevius, before David could speak. "That"s why I want to tell this story. I think it is my Christian duty. You will sure fight shy of ghosts after you hear this. You won"t even have nerve enough to dream about "em. Once there was a man--"
Carol deliberately removed Miss Landbury"s arm from her waist, and climbed up on the bed beside David. Miss Landbury shuffled as close to the bed as propriety would at all admit, and clutched the blanket with desperate fingers. Miss Tucker got a firm grip on one of Carol"s hands, and after a hesitating pause, ensconced her elbow snugly against David"s Bible lying on the table. Gooding said he felt a draft, and sat on the foot of the cot.
"Once there was a man, and he was in love with two women--oh, yes, Mrs.
Duke, it can be done all right. I have done it myself--yes, two at the same time. Ask any man; they can all do it. Oh, women can"t. They aren"t broad-minded enough. It takes a man,--his heart can hold them all." The girls sniffed, but Nevius would not be side-tracked from his story. "Well, this man loved them both, and they were both worth loving--young, and fair, and wealthy. He loved them distractedly. He loved one because she was soft and sweet and adorable, and he called her Precious. He loved the other because she was talented and brilliant, a queen among women, the center of every throng, and he called her Glory. He loved to kiss the one, and he loved to be proud of the other. They did not know about each other, they lived in different towns. One night the queenly one was giving a toast at a banquet, and the revelers were leaning toward her, drinking in every word of her rich musical voice, marveling at her brilliancy, when suddenly she saw a tiny figure perch on the table in front of her fiance,--yes, he was fianceing them both. The little figure on the table had a sweet, round, dimply face, and wooing lips, and loving eyes. The fiance took her in his arms, and stroked the round pink cheek, and kissed the curls on her forehead. Glory faltered, and tried to brush the mist from before her eyes. She was dreaming,--there was no tiny figure on the table. There could not be. Lover--they both called him Lover; he had a fancy for the name--Lover was gazing up at her with eyes full of pride and admiration. She finished hurriedly and sat down, wiping the moisture from her white brow. "Such a strange thing, Lover," she whispered. "I saw a tiny figure come tripping up to you, and she caressed and kissed you, and ran her fingers over your lips so childishly and--so adoringly, and--" Lover looked startled.
"What!" he e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed. For little Precious had tricks like that.
"Yes, and she had one tiny curl over her left ear, and you kissed it."
"You saw that?" "Yes, just now." She looked at him; he was pale and disturbed. "Have you ever been married, Lover?" she asked. "Never,"
he denied quickly. But he was strangely silent the rest of the evening. The next morning Glory was ill. When he called, they took him up to her room, and he sat beside her and held her hand. "Another strange thing happened," she said. "The little beauty who kissed you at the banquet came up to my bed, and put her arms around me and caressed and fondled me and said she loved me because I was so beautiful, and her little white arms seemed to choke me, and I struggled for breath and floundered out of bed, and she kissed me and said I was a darling and tripped away, and--I fainted.""
"Mr. Nevius, that isn"t nice," protested Miss Landbury.
"Lover said urgent business called him out of town. He would go to Precious. Glory was getting freakish, queer. Precious never had visions. She was not notionate. She just loved him and was content.
So he went to her. She dimpled at him adoringly, and led him out to her bower of roses, and sat on his knee and stroked his eyes with her pink finger tips, and he kissed the little curl over her left ear and thought she was worth a dozen tempestuous Glories. But suddenly she caught her breath and leaned forward. He spoke to her, but she did not hear. Her face was colorless and her white lips were parted fearfully.
For she saw a lovely, radiant, queenly woman, magnificently gowned, the center of a throng of people, and Lover was beside her, his face flushed with pride, his eyes shining with admiration. Her fine voice, like music, held every one spellbound. Precious clasped her tiny hands over her rose-bud ears and shivered. She shut her eyes hard and opened them and--what nonsense! There was no queenly lady, there was no loud, clear, ringing voice. But her ears were tingling. She turned to Lover, trembling.
""How--how--how funny," she said. "I saw a radiant woman talking, and she fascinated all the world, and you were with her, adoring her. Her voice was like music, but so loud, too loud; it crashed in my ears, it deafened me."
"Lover"s brows puckered thoughtfully. "How did she look?" he asked.
""Tall and white, with crimson lips, and black hair ma.s.sed high on her head. And her voice was just like music."
"The next morning Precious was ill. When Lover went to her she clung to him and cried. "The lovely lady," she said," "she came when I was alone, and she said I was a beautiful little doll and she would give me music, music, a world full of music. And her voice was like a bell, and it grew louder and louder, and I thought the world was crashing into the stars, and I screamed and fell on the floor, and when I awoke the music was gone, and--I was so weak and sick."
"Lover decided to go back to Glory until Precious got over this silly whim. But he had no peace. Glory was constantly tormented by the loving Precious. And when he returned to Precious, the splendor of Glory"s voice was with her day and night. He lost his appet.i.te. He could not sleep. So he went off into the woods alone, to fish and hunt a while. But one night as he sat in his tent, he heard a faint, far-off whisper of music,--Glory"s voice. It came nearer and nearer, grew louder and louder, until it crashed in his ears like the clamor of worlds banging into stars, as Precious had said. And then he felt a tender caressing finger on his eyes, and soft warm arms encircled his neck, and soft red lips pressed upon his. Closer drew the encircling arms, more breathlessly the red lips pressed his. He struggled for breath, and fought to tear away the dimpled arms. The music of Glory"s voice rose into unspeakable tumult, the warm pressure of Precious" arms rendered him powerless. He fell insensible, and two days later they found him,--dead."
There was a brief eloquent silence when Nevius finished his story. The girls shivered.
"A true story?" queried David, smiling.
"A true story," said Nevius decidedly.
"Um-hum. Lover was alone in the woods, wasn"t he? How did his friends find out about those midnight spirits that came and killed him?"
The girls brightened. "Yes, of course," chirped Carol. "How did folks find out?"
"Say, be reasonable," begged Nevius. "Spoiling another good story. I say it is a true tale, and I ought to know. I," he shouted triumphantly, "I was Lover."
Hooting laughter greeted him.
"But just the same," contended Barrows, "regardless of the feeble fabrications of senile minds, there are ghosts none the less. The night before we got word of my father"s death, my sister woke up in the night and saw a white shadow in her window,--and a voice,--father"s voice,--said, "Stay with me, Flossie; I don"t want to be alone." She told about it at breakfast, and said it was just five minutes to two o"clock. And an hour later we got a message that father had died at two that night, a thousand miles away."