The sound of footsteps and the rustle of the silk dress became more and more clearly audible as "it" drew ever nearer. We could tell the second at which "it" passed from the last step on to the corridor which led past our half-open door. Then there was a thrilling moment or two, when the tip-tap of shoes, and the swish of silk on the linoleum was quite loud, but the footsteps never halted. They always swept past the half-closed door, and went on into a small room beyond, which was used for storing boxes. Then dead silence fell again.
In those days we never heard the word "ghost" mentioned, yet I cannot recollect thinking of "silk dress" as anything but a visitor from the other world. We talked of "it" freely in the household, but probably because we expressed no fear, no one seemed in the least interested. On wakeful nights we occupied ourselves in waiting for "it," and on wet nights we could not hear "it" clearly because the rain pattered so loudly on a large skylight outside our door. What interested us enormously was the fact that we never heard "it" descend again. How "it" got down in order to mount once more was a great puzzle.
"Rumpus" was quite another matter, quite another order of manifestation. "Rumpus" always began when we were sound asleep, and "Rumpus" always wide awakened us. "They" came at longer intervals, about every ten days, whilst "it" came on most nights. During the summer mornings in the North, when one could often read a book in the light of a one a. m. dawn, "they" were very interesting, because when "their" hour, five a. m., arrived the room was flooded with sunshine. In winter mornings, when the room was in black darkness, we were merely bored, and cross at being roused, and we simply lay still and endured "them" till they had quite finished. But in the summer mornings we always sat up in bed and intently watched something we never saw.
When "Rumpus" roused us brusquely from our slumbers it was by means of a demoniac pandemonium. The room was in possession of "them," and "they" crashed, and banged, and tossed about the furniture in the most reckless fashion. Crash went the wardrobe, bang went one chair after another, hurtling across the room. Crash went wardrobe back into its place again, clang went the fire-irons. Rushing collisions, and rappings on the window-panes, thuds on the floor, rattlings and clatterings of crockery, jingling of brass, creakings and groanings of expostulation from the old sofa, clanking of the fireguard, a veritable tornado of noise, enough surely to awaken the dead, yet out of the living it only awakened—us. No one else in the house ever heard it, and our vivid descriptions were, perhaps, naturally attributed to nightmare.
We, of course, knew that it was nothing of the sort. We were, indeed, very wide awake during the ten to fifteen minutes the pandemonium continued, and our eyes were kept darting from side to side following the track of the noises, as they grew in volume and intensity. Creak, groan, crash! No mistaking the spot where that deafening sound came from. That was the old mahogany wardrobe being hurled face downwards on the floor, but whilst our eyes were riveted on its statuesque and utter immobility jingle, clank, from the fender, where the fire-irons commenced to jig. A wildly confused uproar over all the room, then boom, thud, beneath us, and our beds shivered convulsively, and sent thrills of wild excitement coursing through our nerves.
Suddenly the tumult would cease. The mystery lay in the fact that we never saw anything move, though we distinctly heard everything moving, and could feel our beds reel beneath us.
I have no explanations to offer of those happenings. They are very clearly fixed in my objective memory, and when we were both grown up, and had finally left that house my brother used often to say to me, "Do you remember 'Silk Dress' and 'Rumpus'?"
Such recollections crowd back upon me now, with many other images of childhood. No sooner do I recollect one than another emerges like a shining cloud from below the horizon. Where have they been lying hidden during all those flying years? They have dwelt deep down in the eternal memory, the heart of God which beats in all humanity. Within that heart are stored æonic treasures. They lie ever in wait to be bidden arise and cross the threshold.