CEYLON BUILDING.
The hall was empty; all was still. The grim old portraits were there—like shadow people they were all.
She left the sitting-room door open, and moved silently and cautiously along toward Peter’s room. She tried Peter’s door. A great sense of relief came to her; it was unlocked. She opened it slowly, but a draught blew out the light. Terrified at this, she glided to Peter’s bed and seized the boy by the hair, gasping, “Peter, Peter, there’s a man in the house! Get up, get up! there’s a man in the house!” She shook him with a nervous energy, and repeated in stage-like whispers the words. She then vanished out of the room.
Peter awoke at the first touch of the rude hand, and his heart seemed to stop, and his blood to turn to frozen streams, as he saw an awful white spectre standing over his bed, and felt its bony fingers in his hair. Penelope flashed upon him. It surely was the ghost of Penelope; she had got away from the other world this time, surely, despite his reason and philosophy. He looked around wildly, saw the shadow of the old ox-saddle that adorned this room as a curiosity,—and Penelope, awful Penelope.
Penelope’s final shake of his great shoulders nearly put a period to his unromantic history. A chill like death came over him, and he fully believed that his last moments had come. The gasped words, “There’s a man in the house—get up!” were something of a relief. “A man!” If he would only appear! Then he beheld the unearthly white figure vanish through the door. It surely was Penelope. She had gone; and oh, if the man, if any man, would come!
He lay petrified for a moment, and then thought of the old smoke chamber. His decision was immediate. He leaped up, drew the dark patchwork coverlid around him, and darted upstairs. Past loom, hatchel, and spinning-wheel, he made his way to the iron door, leaped into the smoke chamber, closed the door behind him, and sank down in a heap, with a most decided resolution to leave the house in the morning forever, “true as preachin’.” He drew the industrial coverlid around him, leaving only an opening for his eyes.
Aunt Prudence went back to her room, and locked the door tremblingly, and waited for Peter’s step. But no Peter came. Her suspense grew unbearable again. Suddenly she too thought of the old smoke chamber, and drawing her ghostly robe again around her, she went into the hall, and silently and very cautiously made her dark way up the stairs. She too, past loom, hatchel, and spinning-wheel, found her way to the iron door, and pulling it open, prepared to enter the dark grated chamber.
If ever a mind was supped full of horror, it was Peter’s when he heard a noise at the iron door, and beheld the supposed ghost of Penelope Royall, tall and avengeful, standing before him. He uttered a pitiful shriek, slid through the iron bars, and dropped down the chimney into the fireplace. There he recovered himself at once, leaped up with a bound, fled from the house, and almost flew toward the town.
But Aunt Prudence? Shocked on finding the supposed robber in the old smoke chamber, she too fled precipitately for the outside door, turning over the spinning-wheel in her flight. Once into the open air, she made equal speed toward the slumbering village.
She did not see the form of Peter in advance of her; but he paused a moment for breath, and saw the supposed form of Penelope pursuing him, “all in white.” It stimulated his resolution to gain the town. It was a mile or more from the Mount Hope farms to the old village, and Peter fleeing from the ghost, and Aunt Prudence from the robber, went over this distance in a very brief part of the midnight hour.
“The Bristol clock struck the hour of twelve. An out-of-town Christmas Eve party were returning home at this late hour on foot, and on the skirts of the village were surprised by Peter, wrapped in his odd blanket. The merry-makers knew him well, laughed, and plied him with questions.
“The ghost!” he shrieked, as soon as he could recover his voice, and pointed to the hill. “Penelope!”
The astonished young people looked in the direction in which Peter had pointed. There surely was a tall white form that seemed to have wings and to come half flying toward them through the air. They had heard of such things, but had never seen one before. Had they numbered but two or three, they would have fled; but there were some ten or twelve in the party, and they waited the coming of the strange apparition.
“’Tis me she’s after—Penelope—’tis me,” screamed Peter. “The Lord have mercy upon me! My time is come now, true as preachin’.”
The white figure was soon before them. It no sooner reached the place than it sunk down upon the earth.
“Take me home with you; there’s a robber in the house!”
A ghost and a robber!
“It’s Aunt Prudence Wardwell,” said one of the young men, after a pause, on hearing such a midnight tale. “Why, Aunt Prudence, what is the matter?”
“Protect me—take me home, somewhere. Oh, there’s a robber in the house,—a robber!”
“Here’s Peter,” said the young man. “I thought he lived with you.”
“Peter?” gasped the woman all in white.
“Yes. Here, Peter, what does this mean?”
“I—I—thought, oh, I thought, Aunt Prudence, that you was a ghost. I did, true as preachin’.”
“How did you get here, Peter? Oh, there’s a robber in the house. Did you hear me when I called you? I saw him enter by the window,—saw him with my own eyes, Peter. He’s hid in the old smoke chamber. Oh, Peter, where shall we go, oh! oh!”
It was all clear to Peter now, painfully clear; the cloud had lifted.
“It was me, Aunty.”
“What?” Aunt Prudence’s tall form rose slowly.
“It was me who got into the house by the window.”
“You?”
“Yes—I must confess—I run away and went to the town to the festival. I did—I must confess—true as preachin’.”
“You?”
“Yes.”
“Oh, Peter, let’s go home. What two dreadful-looking objects we are! I ain’t afraid of ghosts.”
“And I ain’t afraid of no robbers, nor no such. What a time we’ve made of it!—and the folks will all laugh at us too. Let’s go home. That’s the place for us, true as preachin’.”
The Robber and Ghost, two spectral figures, departed, with a great sense of relief, but with many reserved opinions. Peter never received the present of the bountiful bag, but neither ghosts nor robbers were ever known to trouble the Royall house again. It became a very quiet place, and Peter Fayerweather settled down there to his pastoral and domestic duties, and really fulfilled Aunt Prudence’s hopes of him, his thrifty farming doing real credit to the beautiful and historic Mount Hope Lands.[4]
[4]Originally published in Harper’s Weekly.
MANUFACTURES BUILDING.
CHAPTER XII.
THE FOLK-LORE MEETINGS AT THE ART PALACE.
MONG the things that especially interested the Marlowes in the Manufacturing and Liberal Arts Building, was the German Exhibition of toys, and the Hans Christian Anderson room, in the Danish department. The Liberal Arts Building seemed to be the representative world, the exhibition of the very best that the human mind can accomplish under a single roof.