The Ghost Story Megapack: 25 Classic Tales by Masters Read online

  “I am sorry that you should indulge in such weakness, Miss Chrighton.” That was all she said; but when I saw her in the drawing-room after breakfast, she had established herself in a window that commanded a view of the long winding drive leading to the front of the Abbey. From this point she could not fail to see anyone approaching the house. She sat there all day; everyone else was more or less busy with arrangements for the evening, or at any rate occupied with an appearance of business; but Julia Tremaine kept her place by the window, pleading a headache as an excuse for sitting still, with a book in her hand, all day, yet obstinately refusing to go to her room and lie down when her mother entreated her to do so.

  “You will be fit for nothing tonight, Julia,” Mrs. Tremaine said almost angrily. “You have been looking ill for ever so long, and today you are as pale as a ghost.”

  I knew that she was watching for him; and I pitied her with all my heart, as the day wore itself out and he did not come.

  We dined earlier than usual, played a game or two of billiards after dinner, made a tour of inspection through the bright rooms, lit with wax-candles only, and odorous with exotics; and then came a long interregnum devoted to the arts and mysteries of the toilet; while maids flitted to and fro laden with frilled muslin petticoats from the laundry, and a faint smell of singed hair pervaded the corridors. At ten o’clock the band were tuning their violins, and pretty girls and elegant-looking men were coming slowly down the broad oak staircase, as the roll of fast-coming wheels sounded louder without, and stentorian voices announced the best people in the county.

  I have no need to dwell long upon the details of that evening’s festival. It was very much like other balls—a brilliant success, a night of splendour and enchantment for those whose hearts were light and happy, and who could abandon themselves utterly to the pleasure of the moment; a far-away picture of fair faces and bright-hued dresses, a wearisome kaleidoscopic procession of form and colour for those whose minds were weighed down with the burden of a hidden care.

  For me the music had no melody, the dazzling scene no charm. Hour after hour went by; supper was over, and the waltzers were enjoying those latest dances which always seem the most delightful, and yet Edward Chrighton had not appeared amongst us.

  There had been innumerable enquiries about him, and Mrs. Chrighton had apologized for his absence as best she might. Poor soul, I well knew that his non-return was now a source of poignant anxiety to her, although she greeted all her guests with the same gracious smile, and was able to talk gaily and well upon every subject. Once, when she was sitting alone for a few minutes, watching the dancers, I saw the smile fade from her face, and a look of anguish come over it. I ventured to approach her at this moment, and never shall I forget the look which she turned towards me.

  “My son, Sarah!” she said in a low voice. “Something has happened to my son!”

  I did my best to comfort her; but my own heart was growing heavier and heavier, and my attempt was a very poor one.

  Julia Tremaine had danced a little at the beginning of the evening, to keep up appearances, I believe, in order that no one might suppose that she was distressed by her lover’s absence; but after the first two or three dances she pronounced herself tired, and withdrew to a seat amongst the matrons. She was looking very lovely in spite of her extreme pallor, dressed in white tulle, a perfect cloud of airy puffings, and with a wreath of ivy-leaves and diamonds crowning her pale golden hair.

  The night waned, the dancers were revolving in the last waltz, when I happened to look towards the doorway at the end of the room. I was startled by seeing a man standing there, with his hat in his hand, not in evening costume; a man with a pale anxious-looking face, peering cautiously into the room. My first thought was of evil; but in the next moment the man had disappeared, and I saw no more of him.

  I lingered by my cousin Fanny’s side till the rooms were empty. Even Sophy and Aggy had gone off to their own apartments, their airy dresses sadly dilapidated by a night’s vigorous dancing. There were only Mr. and Mrs. Chrighton and myself in the long suite of rooms, where the flowers were drooping and the wax-lights dying out one by one in the silver sconces against the walls.

  “I think the evening went off very well,” Fanny said, looking rather anxiously at her husband, who was stretching himself and yawning with an air of intense relief.

  “Yes, the affair went off well enough. But Edward has committed a terrible breach of manners by not being here. Upon my word, the young men of the present day think of nothing but their own pleasures. I suppose that something especially attractive was going on at Wycherly today, and he couldn’t tear himself away.”

  “It is so unlike him to break his word,” Mrs. Chrighton answered. “You are not alarmed, Frederick? You don’t think that anything has happened—any accident?”

  “What should happen? Ned is one of the best riders in the county. I don’t think there’s any fear of his coming to grief.”

  “He might be ill.”

  “Not he. He’s a young Hercules. And if it were possible for him to be ill—which it is not—we should have had a message from Wycherly.”

  The words were scarcely spoken when Truefold the old butler stood by his master’s side, with a solemn anxious face.

  “There is a—a person who wishes to see you, sir,” he said in a low voice, “alone.”

  Low as the words were, both Fanny and myself heard them.

  “Someone from Wycherly?” she exclaimed. “Let him come here.”

  “But, madam, the person most particularly wished to see master alone. Shall I show him into the library, sir? The lights are not out there.”

  “Then it is someone from Wycherly,” said my cousin, seizing my wrist with a hand that was icy cold. “Didn’t I tell you so, Sarah? Something has happened to my son. Let the person come here, Truefold, here; I insist upon it.”

  The tone of command was quite strange in a wife who was always deferential to her husband, in a mistress who was ever gentle to her servants.

  “Let it be so, Truefold,” said Mr. Chrighton. “Whatever ill news has come to us we will hear together.”

  He put his arm round his wife’s waist. Both were pale as marble, both stood in stony stillness waiting for the blow that was to fall upon them.

  The stranger, the man I had seen in the doorway, came in. He was curate of Wycherly church, and chaplain to Sir Francis Wycherly; a grave middle-aged man. He told what he had to tell with all kindness, with all the usual forms of consolation which Christianity and an experience of sorrow could suggest. Vain words, wasted trouble. The blow must fall, and earthly consolation was unable to lighten it by a feather’s weight.

  There had been a steeplechase at Wycherly—an amateur affair with gentlemen riders—on that bright New Year’s day, and Edward Chrighton had been persuaded to ride his favourite hunter Pepperbox. There would be plenty of time for him to return to Chrighton after the races. He had consented; and his horse was winning easily, when, at the last fence, a double one, with water beyond, Pepperbox baulked his leap and went over head-foremost, flinging his rider over a hedge into a field close beside the course, where there was a heavy stone roller. Upon this stone roller Edward Chrighton had fallen, his head receiving the full force of the concussion. All was told. It was while the curate was relating the fatal catastrophe that I looked round suddenly, and saw Julia Tremaine standing a little way behind the speaker. She had heard all; she uttered no cry, she showed no signs of fainting, but stood calm and motionless, waiting for the end.

  I know not how that night ended: there seemed an awful calm upon us all. A carriage was got ready, and Mr. and Mrs. Chrighton started for Wycherly to look upon their dead son. He had died while they were carrying him from the course to Sir Francis’s house. I went with Julia Tremaine to her room and sat with her while the winter morning dawned slowly upon
us—a bitter dawning.

  * * * *

  I have little more to tell. Life goes on, though hearts are broken. Upon Chrighton Abbey there came a dreary time of desolation. The master of the house lived in his library, shut from the outer world, buried almost as completely as a hermit in his cell. I have heard that Julia Tremaine was never known to smile after that day. She is still unmarried and lives entirely at her father’s country house; proud and reserved in her conduct to her equals, but a very angel of mercy and compassion amongst the poor of the neighbourhood. Yes; this haughty girl, who once declared herself unable to endure the hovels of the poor, is now a Sister of Charity in all but the robe. So does a great sorrow change the current of a woman’s life.

  I have seen my cousin Fanny many times since that awful New Year’s night; for I have always the same welcome at the Abbey. I have seen her calm and cheerful, doing her duty, smiling upon her daughter’s children, the honoured mistress of a great household; but I know that the mainspring of life is broken, that for her there hath passed a glory from the earth, and that upon all the pleasures and joys of this world she looks with the solemn calm of one for whom all things are dark with the shadow of a great sorrow.

  THE HAUNTED MILL, by Jerome K. Jerome

  Well, you all know my brother-in-law, Mr. Parkins (began Mr. Coombes, taking the long clay pipe from his mouth, and putting it behind his ear; we did not know his brother-in-law, but we said we did, so as to save time), and you know of course that he once took a lease of an old mill in Surrey, and went to live there.

  Now you must know that, years ago, this very mill had been occupied by a wicked old miser, who died there, leaving—so it was rumoured—all his money hidden somewhere about the place.

  Naturally enough, everyone who had since come to live at the mill had tried to find the treasure; but none had ever succeeded, and the local wiseacres said that nobody ever would, unless the ghost of the miserly miller should, one day, take a fancy to one of the tenants, and disclose to him the secret of the hiding-place.

  My brother-in-law did not attach much importance to the story, regarding it as an old woman’s tale, and, unlike his predecessors, made no attempt whatever to discover the hidden gold.

  “Unless business was very different then from what it is now,” said my brother-in-law, “I don’t see how a miller could very well have saved anything, however much a miser he might have been: at all events, not enough to make it worth the trouble of looking for it”

  Still, he could not altogether get rid of the idea of that treasure.

  One night he went to bed. There was nothing very extraordinary about that, I admit. He often did go to bed of a night. What was remarkable, however, was that exactly as the clock of the village church chimed the last stroke of twelve, my brother-in-law woke up with a start, and felt himself quite unable to go to sleep again.

  Joe (his Christian name was Joe) sat up in bed, and looked around.

  At the foot of the bed something stood very still, wrapped in shadow.

  It moved into the moonlight, and then my brother-in-law saw that it was a figure of a wizened little old man, in knee-breeches and a pig-tail.

  In an instant the story of the hidden treasure and the old miser flashed across his mind.

  “He’s come to show me where it’s hid,” thought my brother-in-law; and he resolved that he would not spend all this money on himself, but would devote a small percentage of it towards doing good to others.

  The apparition moved towards the door: my brother-in-law put on his trousers and followed it.

  The ghost went downstairs into the kitchen, glided over and stood in front of the hearth, sighed and disappeared.

  Next morning, Joe had a couple of bricklayers in, and made them haul out the stove and pull down the chimney, while he stood behind with a potato-sack in which to put the gold.

  They knocked down half the wall, and never found so much as a four-penny bit. My brother-in-law did not know what to think.

  The next night the old man appeared again, and again led the way into the kitchen. This time, however, instead of going to the fireplace, it stood more in the middle of the room, and sighed there.

  “Oh, I see what he means now,” said my brother-in-law to himself; “it’s under the floor. Why did the old idiot go and stand up against the stove, so as to make me think it was up the chimney?”

  They spent the next day in taking up the kitchen floor; but the only thing they found was a three-pronged fork, and the handle of that was broken.

  On the third night, the ghost reappeared, quite unabashed, and for a third time made for the kitchen. Arrived there, it looked up at the ceiling and vanished.

  “Umph! he don’t seem to have learned much sense where he’s been to,” muttered Joe, as he trotted back to bed; “I should have thought he might have done that first.”

  Still, there seemed no doubt now where the treasure lay, and the first thing after breakfast they started pulling down the ceiling. They got every inch of the ceiling down, and they took up the boards of the room above.

  They discovered about as much treasure as you would expect to find in an empty quart-pot.

  On the fourth night, when the ghost appeared, as usual, my brother-in-law was so wild that he threw his boots at it; and the boots passed through the body, and broke a looking-glass.

  On the fifth night, when Joe awoke, as he always did now at twelve, the ghost was standing in a dejected attitude, looking very miserable. There was an appealing look in its large sad eyes that quite touched my brother-in-law.

  “After all,” he thought, “perhaps the silly chap’s doing his best. Maybe he has forgotten where he really did put it, and is trying to remember. I’ll give him another chance.”

  The ghost appeared grateful and delighted at seeing Joe prepare to follow him, and led the way into the attic, pointed to the ceiling, and vanished.

  “Well, he’s hit it this time, I do hope,” said my brother-in-law; and next day they set to work to take the roof off the place.

  It took them three days to get the roof thoroughly off, and all they found was a bird’s nest; after securing which they covered up the house with tarpaulins, to keep it dry.

  You might have thought that would have cured the poor fellow of looking for treasure. But it didn’t.

  He said there must be something in it all, or the ghost would never keep coming as it did; and that, having gone so far, he would go on to the end, and solve the mystery, cost what it might.

  Night after night, he would get out of his bed and follow that spectral old fraud about the house. Each night, the old man would indicate a different place; and, on each following day, my brother-in-law would proceed to break up the mill at the point indicated, and look for the treasure. At the end of three weeks, there was not a room in the mill fit to live in. Every wall had been pulled down, every floor had been taken up, every ceiling had had a hole knocked in it. And then, as suddenly as they had begun, the ghost’s visits ceased; and my brother-in-law was left in peace, to rebuild the place at his leisure.

  What induced the old image to play such a silly trick upon a family man and a ratepayer? Ah! That’s just what I cannot tell you.

  Some said that the ghost of the wicked old man had done it to punish my brother-in-law for not believing in him at first; while others held that the apparition was probably that of some deceased local plumber and glazier, who would naturally take an interest in seeing a house knocked about and spoilt. But nobody knew anything for certain.

  THE LOST GHOST, by Mary E. Wilkins Freeman

  Mrs. John Emerson, sitting with her needlework beside the window, looked out and saw Mrs. Rhoda Meserve coming down the street, and knew at once by the trend of her steps and the cant of her head that she meditated turning in at her gate. She also knew by a certain something about her gener
al carriage—a thrusting forward of the neck, a bustling hitch of the shoulders—that she had important news. Rhoda Meserve always had the news as soon as the news was in being, and generally Mrs. John Emerson was the first to whom she imparted it. The two women had been friends ever since Mrs. Meserve had married Simon Meserve and come to the village to live.

  Mrs. Meserve was a pretty woman, moving with graceful flirts of ruffling skirts; her clear-cut, nervous face, as delicately tinted as a shell, looked brightly from the plumy brim of a black hat at Mrs. Emerson in the window. Mrs. Emerson was glad to see her coming. She returned the greeting with enthusiasm, then rose hurriedly, ran into the cold parlour and brought out one of the best rocking-chairs. She was just in time, after drawing it up beside the opposite window, to greet her friend at the door.

  “Good-afternoon,” said she. “I declare, I’m real glad to see you. I’ve been alone all day. John went to the city this morning. I thought of coming over to your house this afternoon, but I couldn’t bring my sewing very well. I am putting the ruffles on my new black dress skirt.”

  “Well, I didn’t have a thing on hand except my crochet work,” responded Mrs. Meserve, “and I thought I’d just run over a few minutes.”

  “I’m real glad you did,” repeated Mrs. Emerson. “Take your things right off. Here, I’ll put them on my bed in the bedroom. Take the rocking-chair.”

  Mrs. Meserve settled herself in the parlour rocking-chair, while Mrs. Emerson carried her shawl and hat into the little adjoining bedroom. When she returned Mrs. Meserve was rocking peacefully and was already at work hooking blue wool in and out.

  “That’s real pretty,” said Mrs. Emerson.