All day long the sky had been overcast by low, dark leaden-hued clouds; the rain had fallen in dull drizzle; and when the vailed sun sunk beneath the horizon, the darkness of night was added to the darkness of clouds.
A dismal night! dismal without, and even more dismal within!
The three old guardians of the premises lived in the left wing of the house, which corresponded exactly with the right wing once occupied on the first floor by the unfortunate Rosa Blondelle with her child and nurse, and on the second floor by Sybil Berners and her maid.
The old women had chosen the left wing partly because it had always been occupied by Miss Tabby, who used the lower floor for housekeeper"s room and store-room, and the second floor as a bedchamber and linen closet, but _chiefly_ because it was the furthest removed from the right wing, the scene of the murder, and now the rumored resort of ghosts.
On this dismal but eventful Hallow Eve of which I now write, the three old women, their early tea over, were gathered around the fire in the lower room of this left wing.
It was a long, low room, with a broad fireplace in the lower end. It was furnished in very plain country style. The walls were colored with a red ochre wash somewhat duller than paint. The windows had blinds made of cheap flowered wall paper. The floor was covered with a plaid woolen carpet, the work of old Mrs. Winterose"s wheel and loom. A corner cupboard with gla.s.s doors, through which could be seen rows of blue delf dishes and piles of white tea-cups and saucers, occupied the corner on the right of the fireplace; the old-fashioned, coffin-like, tall eight-day clock stood in the corner on the left-hand side. Flag-bottomed wooden chairs flanked the walls. At the upper end of the room stood an old-time chest of drawers. On the right-hand corner of this end, a door opened upon a flight of stairs leading to the floor above. On the left-hand corner a door opened into a back room, with a little back porch, vine covered.
There was a large spinning-wheel near the stair door, and at it the young ward of Mrs. Winterose stood spinning.
Before the fire stood a plain deal table, and on it a bra.s.s candlestick supporting one tallow candle, that gave but a dim light to the three old ladies who sat before the dull, smouldering green wood fire and worked.
Old Mrs. Winterose occupied her arm-chair, between the end of the table and the fireside near the corner cupboard. She was carding rolls of white wool for the spinner.
Miss Libby sat at the other end of the table, reeling off blue yarn from broaches that had just been drawn off the spindle.
Miss Tabby was squeezed into the chimney corner next her sister, knitting a gray stocking.
There was a deep silence, broken only by the sighing of the wind through the leafless trees without, the pattering of the rain against the windows, the whirr of the spinning-wheel at the foot of the stairs, the simmering of the green logs that refused to blaze, and the audible snivelling of Miss Tabby.
The silence grew so oppressive that Miss Tabby, like the child in the Quaker meeting, felt that she must speak, or sob, or suffocate.
"Hallow Eve again," she sighed, "it have come round once more since that awful night, which I shall never be rid on seeing it before me--no, not if I live to be as old as Methusalah! And oh, what gloomy weather!
How the wind do moan and the rain do pour "round the old house! Just like heaving sighs and steaming tears! And as for me, I never feel like nothing but sighs and tears myself whenever this most doleful night comes round again."
And suiting the action to the word, the speaker drew a deep breath and wiped her eyes.
"Tabby, you"re always a whimpering. When "tan"t about one thing "tis about another. Seems to me a woman of your age, turned fifty, ought to have more sense!" sharply commented old Mrs. Winterose, as she took a roll of wool from her card and placed it softly on a pile of others that lay upon the table.
"I can"t help of it, mother. I can"t, indeed. Whenever this most doleful night do come round again, I feel that low sperreted I don"t know what to do. And it is just such a night as that night was. Everything so miserable, outside and in. The wind moaning and the rain drizzling out there, and in here the fire not burning, but just smouldering and smoking as if it was low-sperreted too!" sighed Miss Tabby.
"I"ll soon raise the fire"s sperrits," said the old lady, briskly rising and seizing the poker, and giving the logs a good lunge and lift, that sent up a shower of sparks and a sheet of flame, lighting the whole room with the brightness of day.
The effect was as transient as it was brilliant, however. The sparks expired in their upward flight, and the flame died down again, leaving the logs simmering as before.
"There, now, you see how it is, mother. The very fire feels the time,"
sighed Miss Tabby.
"Fiddle! it is only because the wood is green. I"ll cure that too. I"ll make lame-legged Joe gather a heap of pine cones, that will burn the greenest wood as ever sulked on a hearth," chirped the blithe old lady, as she set the poker in its place.
And then she went to the back door of the back room, and standing on the covered porch, called out:
"Joe, Joe, fetch in a basket of pine cones to make the fire burn!"
A rumbling noise a little resembling a human voice was heard in the distance, and the old lady shut the door, returned to her seat, and resumed her reeling.
"I--don"t feel to think it is the firewood, mother; I--I think it is the souls," slowly and solemnly announced Miss Libby, who had not spoken before.
"The _what_? What in patience are _you_ talking about, Libby?" severely demanded the old lady, as she briskly wound off her yarn.
"The _souls_, mother, the souls--the souls that do wander about without rest on this awful night."
"Well, I do think," gravely began the aged woman, laying down the ball she was winding, and taking off her spectacles, that she might speak with the more impressiveness, "I do really think, of all the foolish women in this foolish world, my two daughters is the foolishest! Here"s Tabby always whimpering about the sorrowful things in _this_ world, and Libby always whispering about the supernatural things in t"other! If you had both on you married twenty or thirty years ago, you wouldn"t be so full of whimsies now! But, Libby, as the oldest of the two, and a woman nigh sixty years of age, you really ought to set a better example to your sister."
And having delivered this little lecture, old Mrs. Winterose replaced her spectacles on her nose, and resumed her reeling.
"It"s all very well for you to talk that a way, mother, and it"s all very right; but for all that, you _know_ as how the old folks _do_ say, as on this awful night, of all the nights in the year, the "churchyards yawn and the graves give up their dead," and the unsheltered souls do wander restlessly over the earth; and though we may not see them, they come in at our doors and stand beside us or hover over us all the night.
Ugh! It do make me feel as if ice water was a trickling down my backbone only to think of it! For what if as how _her_ soul was a wandering about here now!" continued Miss Libby, solemnly clasping her hands and rolling up her pale-blue eyes. "Yes! what if as how _her_ soul was a wandering about here now--_here_, where, all unprepared to go, on just such a dismal Hallow Eve as this, it was wiolently druv out"n her body! Ah!
good land! what was that?" suddenly exclaimed Miss Libby, breaking off with a half-suppressed scream.
"It was nothing but Gem"s wheel stopping suddenly, as her thread snapped, you goose," said the old lady.
"Ah! but it sounded just like an awful groan, as it might be an echo of _her_ dying groan as her soul fled from the body, and revived by memory, if so be she should be walking now," shuddered Miss Libby.
"And surely, if any soul ever _did_ wander over the earth anywhere, at any time, her soul, of all souls, would wander in this place of all places, on this night of all nights, when she--"
"Hush, for Heaven"s dear sake, both of you!" exclaimed the old lady.
"Tabby is so sentimental and Libby is so superst.i.tious, that what with the snivelling of one of you and the shuddering of the other, and the talking of both, I should get the horrors myself if it weren"t for Gem, my bright Gem there, humming a tune to her humming wheel!" said the old lady, with an affectionate glance towards the young girl. "And I wonder," she added, "what has become of Joe? I shouldn"t wonder if the poor fellow had gone out to the pine woods to collect the cones. But now, Tabby and Libby, let me hear no more of your snivelling and shivering."
"But I can"t help of it, mother. I should die if I didn"t cry. Hallow Eve, especially a dark, drizzly, windy, dreary Hallow Eve like this, always brings back that awful night so vividly again. I seem to see it all again. I seem to see my child, raging and burning like the Spirit of Fire she called herself. I seem to hear that piercing shriek that woke up all the house. I seem to meet that flying form in the flowing white dress, and with the scared and pallid face. I seem to feel the hot blood flowing down upon my hands and face, as I caught her in my arms and tried to stop her, when she broke from me and fled screaming into the library, and threw herself upon Lyon Berners" breast, dying. How can I help it? How can I help it?" cried Miss Tabby with a burst of tears.
"It is her spirit a hovering over you, and impressing on you, Tabitha,"
solemnly whispered Miss Libby.
"I shouldn"t wonder! no, I shouldn"t wonder the least in the world,"
a.s.sented Miss Tabby, with a serious nod of her head.
"And remember, Tabby, that her murderer is still at large, and her spirit cannot rest until that murderer is brought to justice," whispered Miss Libby.
"Ah, but who was her murderer? Surely Elizabeth Winterose, _you_ do not dare to hint as it was my darling, that beautiful and n.o.ble lady who was so nearly executed for the crime she never could have committed?"
demanded Miss Tabby, with awful gravity.
"Tabitha Winterose, you know I don"t," answered Miss Libby, in solemn indignation.
"I"m glad to hear you say so, for she never did it, nor yet could have done it, though she had cause enough, poor dear! cause enough to go raving mad with jealousy, and to hate her rival unto death, if ever a lady had. But she never was that poor woman"s death, though well the woman might have deserved it at her hands. But she never did it! No, she never did it!" reiterated Miss Tabby, with many vain repet.i.tions, as she wiped her faded blue eyes.
"And if Rosa Blondelle"s spirit cannot rest in her grave, it an"t so much because her rale murderer is at large, as it is because Sybil Berners, her benefactress, as she wronged so ungratefully when she was alive, is now falsely accused of her death," whispered Miss Libby.
"Yes, and, would a been just as falsely executed for it too, if she hadn"t a been reskeed on that dreadful night of the flood. And where is she now? Where is the last of the Berners now? An exile and a wanderer over the face of the earth! A fugitive from justice, they call her! "A fugitive from justice!" when all she needs to make her happy in this world, if she still lives in it, is jest simple justice. Oh! I shall never, never, forget that awful night of the storm and flood, when with her infant of a few hours old, which they had waited for it to be born before they meant to murder her, she was suddenly s.n.a.t.c.hed out of the flooded prison and carried away from sight, as if the waters had swallowed her! And that was the second horrible Hallow Eve of my life!"
sobbed Miss Tabby.
"Hush! hush! why harp upon the horrors that happened so many years ago?
"What"s done is done," and can"t be undone," urged the old lady.
"I know it, mother; but it is some sort o" relief to talk--it keeps me from thinking too deep about--"