“It was all in gray,” she reported, “but with something white wrapped about the head. It is very strange!”
Still we held our peace. My father’s will was law, and he counselled discretion.
“We will await further developments,” he said, oracularly.
Looking back, I think it strange that the example of his cool fearlessness so far wrought upon me that I would not allow the mystery to prey upon my spirits, or to make me afraid to go about the house as I had been wont to do. Once my father broke the reserve we maintained, even to each other, by asking if I would like to exchange my sleeping-room for another.
“Why should I?” I interrogated, trying to laugh. “We are not sure where she goes after she leaves it. It is something to know that she is no longer there.”
Mea had to be taken into confidence after she burst into the drawing-room at twilight, one evening, and shut the door, setting her back against it and trembling from head to foot. She was as white as a sheet, and when she spoke, it was in a whisper. Something had chased her down-stairs, she declared. The hall-lamp was burning, and she could see, by looking over her shoulder, that the halls and stairs were empty but for her terrified self. But Something—Somebody—in high-heeled shoes, that went “Tap! tap! tap!” on the oaken floor and staircase, was behind her from the time she left the upper chamber where she had been dressing, until she reached the parlor door. Her nerves were not as stout as mine, perhaps, but she was no coward, and she was not given to foolish imaginations. When we told her what had been seen, she took a more philosophical view of the situation than I was able to do.
“Bodiless things can’t hurt bodies!” she opined, and readily joined our secret circle.
Were we, as a family, as I heard a woman say when we were not panic-stricken at the rumored approach of yellow-fever, “a queer lot, taken altogether”? I think so, sometimes.
The crisis came in February of that same winter.
My sister Alice and a young cousin who was near her age—fourteen—were sent off to bed a little after nine one evening, that they might get plenty of “beauty sleep.” Passing the drawing-room door, which was ajar, they were tempted to enter by the red gleam of the blazing fire of soft coal. Nobody else was there to enjoy it, and they sat them down for a school-girlish talk, prolonged until the far-off cry “All’s well!” of the sentinel at the “Barrack” on Capitol Square told the conscience-smitten pair that it was ten o’clock. Going into the hall, they were surprised to find it dark. We found afterward that the servant whose duty it was to fill the lamp had neglected it, and it had burned out. It was a brilliant moonlight night, and the great window on the lower landing of the staircase was unshuttered. The arched door dividing the two halls was open, and from the doorway of the parlor they had a full view of the stairs. The moonbeams flooded it half-way up to the upper landing; and from the dark hall they saw a white figure moving slowly down the steps. The mischievous pair instantly jumped to the conclusion that one of “the boys”—my brothers—was on his way, en déshabillé, to get a drink of water from the pitcher that always stood on a table in the reception-room, or main hall. To get it, he must pass within a few feet of them, and they shrank back into the embrasure of the door behind them, pinching each other in wicked glee to think how they would tease the boy about the prank next morning. Down the stairs it moved, without sound, and slowly, the concealed watchers imagined, listening for any movement that might make retreat expedient. They said, afterward, that his nightgown trailed on the stairs, also that he might have had something white cast over his head. These things did not strike them as singular while they watched his progress, so full were they of the fun of the adventure.