"My advice is that you have your daughter sleep with you, after hearing your story. Try whether she can see this face."
"You do not think she would?"
"I think she would not. My dear friend, if I were a medical man, I could tell you facts which you are little aware of—anecdotes of the strange tricks that our nerves play with us;—of delusions so like reality—"
"Do you think I have not considered that?" exclaimed the poor lady. "Mr. Gurney, I did not think that you would try to persuade me out of my senses, when I tell you, that four times I have seen in daylight, and when wide awake, and in perfect health, what I have said."
Mr. Gurney was very gentle; but, as he said, what could he suggest but indigestion, or some such cause of nervous disturbance? Yet his heart smote him when his old friend laid her forehead again the mantle-piece, and cried heartily.
He did all he could. He tried indefatigably, though in vain, to persuade her to let her daughter share the spectacle: and he went, the same day, when Miss Wharton was out for her walk, and the servants were at dinner, to examine the house. He made no discovery. The gratings of the under-ground cellars were perfect. The attics had no trap-doors; and the house had no parapet. The chimneys were too high and narrow for any one to get in at the top. No window or door was ever found unfastened in the morning. Mrs. Wharton did not think she could engage for courage enough to get out of bed, or to look beyond the curtains. Nor could she promise not to draw her curtains. The face had never appeared within them; and they seemed a sort of protection where there was no other.
Without having made any promises, she went so far as to start up in bed, the next time she saw the face. The eyes winked horribly at her; the head nodded—and was gone. The beating of her heart prevented her hearing any thing that time; but once or twice during the autumn she fancied she heard a light and swift footstep in the passage. She always left her room-door open, for the sake of the same sort of feeling of security that most people crave when they shut and bolt theirs. If this was a ghost, bolts would not keep it out; and she could fly the more easily through the open door if her terror should become too great to be endured alone. For the first time, she now burned a night-light in her chamber, as the nights lengthened, and not a dim, flickering rush candle, but a steady wax-light. She knew that her daughter wondered at the strange extravagance; but she could not bear darkness, or a very feeble light, when the thing might be behind the curtain.
Throughout October the visits were almost nightly. In the first week in November they suddenly ceased, and so many weeks passed away without a return, that Mrs. Wharton began to be a little alarmed about her own wits, and to ask herself whether, after all, it was not possible that this was a trick of the nerves. One night in January, that doubt, at least, was settled; for there, at the same bed-post, was the same face. Mrs. Wharton was now, after this interval, subdued at once. She had borne, for half-a-year, her pastor's suspicions of her digestion and of her wisdom, and now, she really wanted sympathy. She let him tell her daughter (let him, rather than tell it herself, because he could make light of it, and she could not); and she gladly agreed to let her daughter sleep with her. For long, she gained nothing by it. During the whole fortnight that the visits now continued, Miss Wharton never once saw the face. She tried to wake the moment her mother touched her; she tried to keep awake; but she never saw the face: and after that fortnight, it did not come again till April.
One bright May dawn, she saw it. Her mother pulled her wrist, and, she waked up to a sight which burned itself in upon her brain. She suppressed a shriek at the moment; but she could not tell Mr. Gurney of it afterward, without tears. She wanted that day to leave the house immediately; but the thought of her mother's long-suffering with this horror, the consideration of the serious consequences of declaring themselves ghost-seers in the town, and of the disastrous effect upon their property, and of the harmlessness of the ghost, induced her to summon up her courage, and bear on. She did more. When a little inured, she one night sprang out of bed, rushed round the foot of it, and out upon the landing. The stairs were still dim in the dawn; but she was confident that she saw something moving there—passing down to the hall. As soon as she could make the servants attend her, she told them she believed somebody was in the house; and all the four women—two ladies and two maids—went, armed with pokers and shovels, and examined the whole house. They found nothing, neither in the chimneys, nor under the beds, nor in any closet—nothing, from cellar to attic. And when the maids had recovered a little, they agreed what a tiresome and wearying thing it was when ladies took fancies. This was only their first night of disturbance. Miss Wharton called them up three times more; and then she gave the matter up. The servants thought her strangely altered, and wished she might not be going to be ill.
Thus matters went on for some years. The oddest thing was the periodicity of the visits. In winter they were rare; but there was generally a short series in or about January, after which they ceased till the end of March, or the beginning of April. They went on through nearly the whole summer, with one or two intervals of about a fortnight. The servants never suspected even the existence of the mystery. Their ladies never mentioned it; and no article was ever displaced at night. The ladies became in time so accustomed to the appearance as to bear it almost without uneasiness. It occurred to them sometimes, how odd it was to be living under the weight of such a mystery; and they were silent when ghosts were talked about, and felt and looked very serious when they were laughed at: but their alarm had subsided. The Thing never did them any harm; and they had now got merely to open drowsy eyes, to see if it was there; and to drop asleep the moment it was there no longer. This may seem strange to those who have not (and also to those who have) seen ghosts; but we none of us know what we may come to; and these two ladies reached the point of turning their heads on their pillows, without much beating of the heart, under the gibbering of a hideous ghost.