Five nights at the Five Pines

by Harriet A. Gaul

I had thought so much about Mattie that it seemed to me she was perfectly apparent in her motives and sane in her actions.

“To each one who takes his own life there must be five who go to the brink of death and, looking over its fearful abyss, retreat again and let their bark drift on the tide without them. It has never been demonstrated that people who take their lives in their own hands do better with it than God. The wreckage of one’s life is mostly caused by self. Mattie was the sort of person who does not take any sinful initiative, but to whom life is a whiphandle. The crimes of those around her made her what she was. In other circumstances she would have been what is known as ‘a good woman.’ The old mother who refused to let them marry might have had enough determination to have committed suicide if she had wanted to, but not Mattie. Or the New Captain might have taken his own life, for he took Mattie’s life and spoiled it, and her son’s—and willed her home away from her in his evil legacy after he had no further use for it himself.”

Jasper motioned for me not to speak so loud.

“Do you still believe—about the boy—what you told me coming from the train?”

“More than ever,” I answered sadly.

We did not want to question Mattie. We felt that the repose due her spirit was as important as that which must resuscitate her weakened body, if she was ever to be a normal human being again. And so for months, all the time that we were getting ready for winter on the cape, we learned nothing more about her story.

The walking up and down of the first three nights was self-evident, as was the bending wall and the swinging mirror; the aura had been created by her natural need for light and the fact that her only lantern happened to be red. That I had only seen the aura on the night I read the occult magazine was not her responsibility; she must have always had the lantern with her when she went up to the secret room. It was the boy who arrived with the message from the judge that tempted me outside, where I happened to see the red light shining through the skylight. The séance was more readily understandable when one day Mattie happened to mention casually that she was afraid to go to the spring for water because once, when she was masquerading, she had met a colored man there late at night who asked her questions. The rogue had not known who she was, but he had doubtless followed her and guessed enough to piece out a plausible spirit for his control to interpret at the séance.

It was not until one quiet evening the following winter, when we three sat in front of the blazing fire in the captain’s chimney, as was our custom, that Mattie brought up the subject of the fifth night. We had been snow-bound for a week, and the white frost sparkled on the crust of the drifts when I opened the door upon the starlight and let in Mattie’s cat. The creature had been hunting fish too long on the icy shore and was stiff with cold, despairing in its dumb way of regaining our hospitality before it froze to death on the doorstep. It bounded into the house like a bad omen, as it had done that day before the hurricane, and dashed through the kitchen and into Mattie’s arms, leaping upon her before she could straighten herself up in her chair and shake off her fireside doze. She tumbled the cat back to the hearth and looked at it reproachfully.

“That’s the way you done, Jezebel, that night you seen me through the crack in the door,” she said. “You jumped at me as I was carrying my lantern down them steep steps and knocked me over. I had hardly time”—she turned to us with her wistful crinkled smile—“to get back down through the trap-door. I thought sure you would catch me.”

“I didn’t try,” said I, and Jasper laid down his book and leaned forward intently to listen. “I thought it part of the manifestations—the way that the New Captain murdered his son.”