We stood at the dormer-window and looked out on the dark bay, where the little boats, at anchor, were rocking so gently and so unaware, until we had won a measure of that quiet which we had been searching for, and then we said a thankful and a wishful prayer for our new life in this house before we blew out the candle. We thought that it was the most intimate spot that any one had ever chosen for a home and that this was the first of many evenings that we would stand there in the window together, looking out to star-rise on the sea.
As a matter of fact, we never stood there together again.
Jasper was so exhausted that he went to sleep without turning over, but I was too tired to shut my eyes. I stared into the darkness until it became vivid, and when the cold October moonlight checkered the walls, through the small-paned windows, the little room was alive again.
There were five doors. The walls had been painted a dark blue, and each of these doors shot out into significance like the white marble slabs of a tomb. None of them would stay shut. Their iron latches clicked with every stray gust of the night, and first one and then another would swing gently open. I gave up trying to close them and let them bang as they would. They had rattled for a hundred years; why not one night more? On the inside of the room two doors marked either side of a blind white chimney-shelf, one of them opening into the upper hall and the other into a small hall bedroom. On the outer wall opposite, two small doors opened into closets under the eaves, and between them a third topped the kitchen-stairs, which pitched down steeply, like a ship’s companionway. The wooden bed, with high painted headboard decorated with a medallion of carnations, stood against the back wall, facing the dormer-window. The bureau and the wash-stand matched its faded blue, and the chair-backs held gold spread-eagles, half obliterated. In one corner was an old sea-chest with rope handles. I got up out of bed to see what was in it. There was nothing.
All of the stories of the sea that I had ever heard came drifting back to me, borne in upon the waves of moonlight. Things half heard and never understood became more true than reality. A clock far away struck a long hour.
I was looking at the five white doors and the bright window and thinking that the wall at the head of the bed was the only blank wall in the room, when I felt as if I were being pushed. Or as if the headboard were gradually bending. Certainly, the bed was coming down on me!
I sat up quickly and watched. The high wooden headboard bulged. As I looked it sprang back into place again. This was repeated.
I tried to call out.
The headboard bowed once more. I sprang up and pushed it back with my bare hands and beat upon it.
“Jasper!”