The next morning when I got up I found my bracelet was gone, and I was upset by it, and disappointed, because I had wanted to wear it down to Mr. Kempwood’s. I decided to ask Madam Jumel to return it again, although the recollection of the way it came back before made me so frightened that my palms grew damp, even though my hands were cold. But I did want it. Even at that time I had made up my mind I would win. For Madam Jumel had given it to us; it was ours, and she had no right to make everyone miserable.
So--at about three-thirty I went over to the Jumel Mansion. I asked which room Madam Jumel slept in, this time, and they told me. I went up to stand at the door. Some visitors went past me talking of the room where Lafayette had slept and of Washington’s bedroom, but neither Washington nor Lafayette interested me that day.
“You know,” I whispered, “it isn’t fair. You gave it to her, and since you did----” And then I stopped, for one of the curators came by and heard me.
“Absorbing the habit from one of the old mistresses?” he asked. I didn’t know what he meant, and he explained. It seemed Madam Jumel’s mind had wavered as she grew older, and she did strange things, among them--talking to herself of the great people she had entertained and the power she had been.
“Absolutely mad,” said the gentleman, whom I had come to know well in those few visits. “Why, she employed a lot of French refugees who were out of work and would take any--starving, I suppose--brought them up here, and drilled them as her army. Boys who were fishing on the other side of the river would look up to see the old woman heading a little crowd of ragged men, who carried sticks for guns. She always rode a horse, sitting erect, and now and again they said she would turn proudly to survey her troops. . . . She was a queer one. . . . They say”--he paused and looked in the room--“that she haunts this room. I don’t believe in such things, but her relatives who lived here afterward (three families, they were) swore that she came back to rap so hard that the walls shook. . . . They all quarrelled, and none spoke to each other; but having no money, while they waited for the will to be settled, they lived here; the Nelson Chase family, the Will Chase family, and the Pérys. The Chases were her nephews, Mrs. Péry her niece. Mademoiselle Nitschke, the governess of small Mathilde Péry, did not believe in ghosts, but--one night even she was convinced. . . . You’ll find all that story in a book called ‘The Jumel Mansion,’ which Mr. William Henry Shelton, whom you have seen here, wrote.”
I hunted Mr. Shelton, and he showed me this. I won’t quote it entire, but only in part. It is in his book, as Mademoiselle Nitschke told it.
“I came to live at the Mansion three years after Madam Jumel died, or about 1868. My room was on the third floor. . . . After a little time I was moved down to the Lafayette Room, to be nearer Mrs. Péry, who was in nightly terror of the ghost of Madam Jumel, which, she claimed, came with terrible rappings between twelve and one o’clock, or about midnight.
“Mrs. Péry would come to my room in the night in great excitement to escape the ghost. . . . One night she insisted on my coming to their bedroom and awaiting the ghost. I had always told them there was no such thing as a ghost.
“On that particular night the trouble began as early as seven o’clock in the evening. They had just come up from supper when Mrs. Péry rushed into the hall, trembling with fright and calling: ‘Mademoiselle!’ . . . At about that same time, probably hearing cries, Mr. Péry came up the stairs from the kitchen where he had been toasting cheese. He disliked to sleep in the room in question, claiming that Madam Jumel had come to the side of his bed in white. . . .”
And she described it quite a while. Mademoiselle Nitschke said it was a very quiet September night and hardly a leaf stirred. . . . She said they all sat in absolute silence, and things seemed to grow even more still as midnight approached. . . . And when it came, a loud rap, such as a wooden mallet might make, came directly under Mr. Péry’s chair--“From which,” she said, “he leaped as if he had been shot. . . .” And I, for one, don’t blame him. . . . Well, then Mademoiselle, who must have been very brave, asked if Madam Jumel desired prayers said for her, and Madam replied with three knocks, which is knock-language for yes.