Thus in many ways I had been brought into this tragical affair much more intimately than I liked, and I could not keep my mind away from it. The day itself added to the gloom that fell upon me. The storm had steadily increased in violence since early morning; rain fell in torrents, and the wind roared and whined alternately about the house; the heavy clouds that passed close overhead cast upon the earth a series of shifting shadows as their substance thickened or thinned under the rending force of the gale—if the Powers of Darkness ever walk abroad by day, they could hardly find an occasion more eerie and fitting than this. Yet no such suggestion occurred to me:—I could hear the rattle of dishes in the kitchen and the voice of my wife in song as she attended to her household duties; I lighted my pipe as another means of affording the companionship that I somehow craved, and for an hour or so applied myself assiduously to the task in hand.
I was seated facing the window, my back to the open door that led into the hall. Suddenly, and without the slightest warning, I heard behind me a long and dismal groan. "A-a-ah!"—thus it came; a woman's voice, apparently, and with an indescribable but certain accent in it of mental or physical pain. It is no exaggeration to say that this awful and ghastly sound froze me where I sat; I could feel my hair move upon my scalp, and a chill, as though I had been dashed with ice-water, ran up and down my spine. For a moment an inexpressible horror possessed me—then I felt my blood, which seemed on the instant to have stopped in its course, flow again in my veins, and with a mighty effort I arose and faced the open door. There was nothing there—nor in the dim hall, into which I shortly ventured:—I removed my slippers and silently explored every room; still nothing to be seen, and the only sound the splash of rain, and of the wind that sobbed and muttered around the house. I crept to the kitchen and peeped in cautiously:—my wife was quietly engaged in her work, and I was glad to think that she had heard nothing. Indeed, her undisturbed demeanor encouraged the opinion I had begun to form, that some peculiar effect of the wind in the open fireplace or the chimney of my room was responsible for the sound I had heard.
Yet I was by no means satisfied with this explanation:—the cry was too human, the distress it evidenced too poignant, to be thus counterfeited, and as I returned to my bench, it was with full expectation that I should hear it again. I was not disappointed. In a few moments it came, more distinct and lugubrious than before, and seemingly within the very room itself; and as I whirled about to confront I knew not what, the groan was repeated, coming from the empty air before me and dying away in an unutterably sad and plaintive sigh.
I made another swift and noiseless survey of the house, but it was as resultless as before, and regained my room much shaken, I will confess, but still unwilling to admit that the sounds could not be referred to natural causes. But I found no solution that convinced me. I might have attributed their first occurrence to hallucination, but the second hearing weakened that hypothesis—the groan and the following sigh were inimitably those of an old woman, who was either at the point of death or overwhelmed with distress of mind and body. This resemblance was absolute, and I sat for some time revolving the strange thing in my mind. I thought of relating my experience to my wife, but feared to alarm her, and finally went back to my birds.
Almost immediately there came for the third time that ghastly wail and sigh—so close to my ear that, had any living person uttered them, his face must almost have touched my own. I am not ashamed to say that the effect upon me was so unmanning and terrible that I uttered a cry of horror and fell backward with the chair I sat in, and lay sprawling on the floor. At the same instant I heard my wife scream from the kitchen; and as I gathered myself up and ran to her, I saw her standing with her back against the wall, staring with horrified eyes, and with a look of repulsion and fear upon her face, at something invisible to me, on the other side of the room. I rushed to her and grasped her hands:—they were cold as ice, and her fixed and rigid gaze into what to me was emptiness, frightened me beyond measure.
"In heaven's name," I cried, "what is it?"
"It is Deeming's mother," she answered, in a whisper I could hardly hear.
"Deeming's mother!"—I echoed her words:—"How do you know it is Deeming's mother?"
"I saw her with him in his cell at the jail," she replied.
"Then what he said was true, that his mother comes back to trouble him?"