The Confession Read online

settled into more rigid lines. I glanced along the pew. Willie'sface wore a calm and slightly somnolent expression. But Maggie, in herfar end--she is very high church and always attends--Maggie's eyes wereglued almost fiercely to Miss Emily's back. And just then Miss Emilyherself stirred, glanced up at the window, and turning slightly,returned Maggie's glance with one almost as malevolent. I have hesitatedover that word. It seems strong now, but at the time it was the one thatcame into my mind.

  When it was over, it was hard to believe that it had happened. And evennow, with everything else clear, I do not pretend to explain Maggie'sattitude. She knew, in some strange way. But she did not know that sheknew--which sounds like nonsense and is as near as I can come to gettingit down in words.

  Willie left that night, the 16th, and we settled down to quiet days,and, for a time, to undisturbed nights. But on the following Wednesday,by my journal, the telephone commenced to bother me again. Generallyspeaking, it rang rather early, between eleven o'clock and midnight. Buton the following Saturday night I find I have recorded the hour as 2 a.m.

  In every instance the experience was identical. The telephone never rangthe second time. When I went downstairs to answer it--I did not alwaysgo--there was the buzzing of the wire, and there was nothing else. Itwas on the twenty-fourth that I had the telephone inspected and reportedin normal condition, and it is possibly significant that for three daysafterward my record shows not a single disturbance.

  But I do not regard the strange calls over the telephone as so importantas my attitude to them. The plain truth is that my fear of the callsextended itself in a few days to cover the instrument, and more thanthat, to the part of the house it stood in. Maggie never had this, nordid she recognize it in me. Her fear was a perfectly simple althoughuncomfortable one, centering around the bedrooms where, in each bed,she nightly saw dead and gone Bentons laid out in all the decorum of thebest linen.

  On more than one evening she came to the library door, with anexpression of mentally looking over her shoulder, and some such dialoguewould follow:

  "D'you mind if I turn the bed down now, Miss Agnes?"

  "It's very early."

  "S'almost eight." When she is nervous she cuts verbal corners.

  "You know perfectly well that I dislike having the beds disturbed untilnine o'clock, Maggie."

  "I'm going out."

  "You said that last night, but you didn't go."

  Silence.

  "Now, see here, Maggie, I want you to overcome this feeling of--" Ihesitated--"of fear. When you have really seen or heard something, itwill be time enough to be nervous."

  "Humph!" said Maggie on one of these occasions, and edged into the room.It was growing dusk. "It will be too late then, Miss Agnes. And anotherthing. You're a brave woman. I don't know as I've seen a braver. But Inotice you keep away from the telephone after dark."

  The general outcome of these conversations was that, to avoid argument,I permitted the preparation of my room for the night at an earlier andyet earlier hour, until at last it was done the moment I was dressed fordinner.

  It is clear to me now that two entirely different sorts of fear actuatedus. For by that time I had to acknowledge that there was fear in thehouse. Even Delia, the cook, had absorbed some of Maggie's terror;possibly traceable to some early impressions of death which connectedthem-selves with a four-post bedstead.

  Of the two sorts of fear, Delia's and Maggie's symptoms were subjective.Mine, I still feel, were objective.

  It was not long before the beginning of August, and during a lull inthe telephone matter, that I began to suspect that the house was beingvisited at night.

  There was nothing I could point to with any certainty as having beendisturbed at first. It was a matter of a book misplaced on the table, ofmy sewing-basket open when I always leave it closed, of a burnt match onthe floor, whereas it is one of my orderly habits never to leave burntmatches around. And at last the burnt match became a sort of clue, for Isuspected that it had been used to light one of the candles that sat inholders of every sort, on the top of the library shelves.

  I tried getting up at night and peering over the banisters, but withoutresult. And I was never sure as to articles that they had been moved.I remained in that doubting and suspicious halfway ground that is worsethan certainty. And there was the matter of motive. I could not get awayfrom that. What possible purpose could an intruder have, for instance,in opening my sewing-basket or moving the dictionary two inches on thecenter table?

  Yet the feeling persisted, and on the second of August I find this entryin my journal:

  Right-hand brass, eight inches; left-hand brass, seven inches;carved-wood--Italian--five and three quarter inches each; old glass onmantelpiece--seven inches. And below this, dated the third: Last night,between midnight and daylight, the candle in the glass holder on theright side of the mantel was burned down one and one-half inches.

  I should, no doubt, have set a watch on my nightly visitor after makingthis discovery--and one that was apparently connected with it--nothingless than Delia's report that there were candle-droppings over theborder of the library carpet. But I have admitted that this is a studyin fear, and a part of it is my own.

  I was afraid. I was afraid of the night visitor, but, more than that,I was afraid of the fear. It had become a real thing by that time,something that lurked in the lower back hall waiting to catch me by thethroat, to stop my breath, to paralyze me so I could not escape. I neverwent beyond that point.

  Yet I am not a cowardly woman. I have lived alone too long for that. Ihave closed too many houses at night and gone upstairs in the dark to beafraid of darkness. And even now I can not, looking back, admit thatI was afraid of the darkness there, although I resorted to the weakexpedient of leaving a short length of candle to burn itself out in thehall when I went up to bed.

  I have seen one of Willie's boys waken up at night screaming with aterror he could not describe. Well, it was much like that with me,except that I was awake and horribly ashamed of myself.

  On the fourth of August I find in my journal the single word "flour."It recalls both my own cowardice at that time, and an experiment I made.The telephone had not bothered us for several nights, and I began tosuspect a connection of this sort: when the telephone rang, there was nonight visitor, and vice versa. I was not certain.

  Delia was setting bread that night in the kitchen, and Maggie wasreading a ghost story from the evening paper. There was a fine siftingof flour over the table, and it gave me my idea. When I went up to bedthat night, I left a powdering of flour here and there on the lowerfloor, at the door into the library, a patch by the table, and--goingback rather uneasily--one near the telephone.

  I was up and downstairs before Maggie the next morning. The patchesshowed trampling. In the doorway they were almost obliterated, as bythe trailing of a garment over them, but by the fireplace there were twoprints quite distinct. I knew when I saw them that I had expected themarks of Miss Emily's tiny foot, although I had not admitted it before.But these were not Miss Emily's. They were large, flat, substantial, andone showed a curious marking around the edge that--It was my own! Themarking was the knitted side of my bedroom slipper. I had, so far asI could tell, gone downstairs, in the night, investigated the candles,possibly in darkness, and gone back to bed again.

  The effect of the discovery on me was--well undermining. In all theuneasiness of the past few weeks I had at least had full confidence inmyself. And now that was gone. I began to wonder how much of the thingsthat had troubled me were real, and how many I had made for myself.

  To tell the truth, by that time the tension was almost unbearable. Mynerves were going, and there was no reason for it. I kept telling myselfthat. In the mirror I looked white and anxious, and I had a senseof approaching trouble. I caught Maggie watching me, too, and on theseventh I find in my journal the words: "Insanity is often only aformless terror."

  On the Sunday morning following that I found three burnt matches inthe library fireplace, and on
e of the candles in the brass holders wasalmost gone. I sat most of the day in that room, wondering what wouldhappen to me if I lost my mind. I knew that Maggie was watching me, andI made one of those absurd hypotheses to myself that we all do at times.If any of the family came, I would know that she had sent for them, andthat I was really deranged! It had been a long day, with a steady summerrain that had not cooled the earth, but only set it steaming. The airwas like hot vapor, and my hair clung to my moist forehead. At aboutfour o'clock Maggie started chasing a fly with a folded newspaper. Shefollowed it about the lower floor from room to room, making little harshnoises in her throat when she missed it. The sound of the soft thud ofthe paper on walls and furniture seemed suddenly more than I could bear.

  "For heaven's sake!" I cried. "Stop that noise, Maggie." I felt asthough my eyes were starting from