Madge Morton's Trust Part 19

No one of the party took the first part of their ghost hunt seriously, but when David reported that the hour was growing late, and that it was now time for them to enter the old house, a different feeling stole over each one of them--a kind of curious foreboding of evil, or unhappiness, or some unexplainable mystery.

"Let's give up and go back, Madge," proposed Phyllis. "The old house is so musty, dark and horrible that it is sure to have rats in it, if nothing worse. I feel that it would be better for all of us not to go in. Suppose we should see something queer? What could we do?"

"Phyllis Alden, the very idea of your suggesting that we turn 'quitters'!" expostulated Madge. "Do you suppose we could face Miss Jenny Ann and the girls if we retreat before we even know there is an enemy? Come on, Miss Betsey; you and I will go on ahead. Let Phil come with David if she likes."

Madge danced up the old, tumbled-down veranda steps, guided by the rays of her lantern. Each one of the women had relit her lantern to enter the deserted house. Once inside they might put them out again. But who could tell what they might stumble against in a house that was supposed never to have been entered in nearly forty years?

Madge pushed at the front door, which hung by a broken hinge, and drew Miss Betsey in after her. "Oh, dear me, isn't it awful?" she whispered.

Not one of the ghost party had spoken in an ordinary voice since the start of their adventure. Somehow their errand, the darkness of the night and their own feelings made whispered tones seem more appropriate.

The four explorers gazed silently at the sight that Madge described as "awful." They had expected to find the "ha'nted house" empty of furniture. Yet in the broad hall there was an open fireplace. On either side of it were great oak arm-chairs. Spider webs hung in beautiful silver festoons from the mantel, with their many-legged spinners caught in their mesh. Gray mice, lean and terrified, scuttled across the dusty floor. A bat flapped blindly overhead.

Miss Betsey caught Madge by the hand. "I can almost see dead people sitting in those dusty chairs," she murmured. "Let us go on upstairs. I wish this thing were over."

The railing had fallen away from the steps, that were covered not only with dust but with a kind of slippery mould, as many winters' rain had fallen down upon them from the holes in the roof. David crawled up first, pulling Madge, Phyllis and Miss Betsey after him. They groped their way to the front bedroom.

"I won't go in there; I shall wait here in the hall," Phil said pettishly. "I can't help thinking of Harry Sears's story about the sick girl in that old house on Cape Cod."

David shoved at the closed door. It was fastened tight. Had the room been locked against intruders for nearly half a century? But ghosts do not hesitate at closed doors. David pushed harder than he knew. The lock on the old door gave way. It fell forward, striking the floor with a terrific crash.

Phyllis screamed with horror, then turned rigid. Not one of the others made a single sound, except that Madge's lantern dropped to the floor at her feet and her light went out.

An old man rose slowly from the side of a tumbled bed. He was so thin, so white, so ethereal that he could not be human. But the four pair of frightened eyes strained past the ghostly old man to a thin wraith that lay on the bed. It was a girl, frail, white and wasted, staring not at the intruders before the fallen door, but at an object that she seemed to see afar off.

Madge's voice caught in her throat. Her knees trembled and she swayed helplessly toward Phil. If only she and Phil could have run from the sight before them! But they stood stupidly still, unable to move. There was absolutely not a ray of light in the ghostly bedroom, save that which came from the reflection of the dark lanterns in the hall. David had jumped back when the door fell before him. But Miss Betsey's tall, thin figure, in her queer, military coat, cast a long black shadow across the old room. Why did not some one speak? Ghosts can not talk and the onlookers were dumb with fear and amazement.

Then the ghost laughed drearily. "You have found me out," it said mournfully. "I have no place, even in this house of darkness. I can not see your faces. But I wonder why you wish to disturb an old man's last retreat?"

For answer, Madge burst into tears. She was nervous and overwrought, and to find that "the ghost" was a real person was more than she could bear.

"We didn't know there was any one living in the house," she faltered.

"We are strangers in this neighborhood. The people about here told us that this old place was haunted, and we came to-night to see if ghosts were real."

"Come in and bring your lights," invited the old gentleman. "There are many kinds of ghosts, child. I will tell you who I am."

The four visitors crowded into the musty room. Phyllis and Madge had their eyes fixed on the girl's figure in the bed. She did not return their look, although the muscles of her face were twitching pathetically.

Miss Betsey Taylor was behaving very curiously. She held her dark lantern up so that its light fell full on the white face of the old man whom they had so rudely disturbed.

"Bless my soul!" she murmured out loud, "it _can't_ be!"

"My name is John Randolph," explained the old gentleman, with a fine stateliness. "My grandchild and I have been living in this deserted house because we had no other home in the world."

"I knew it!" announced Miss Betsey. "Isn't it just like John Randolph!

Would rather bury himself alive than let his friends take care of him.

Southern pride!" sniffed Miss Betsey. "I call it Southern foolishness."

"Madam," answered Mr. Randolph coldly, "I have no friends. I can not see that I have done wrong to any one by hiding away in this old place, that was once the property of my friends. If people have thought of me as a ghost, and I have tried to encourage them in the idea, well, lives that are finished and have no place in the world are but ghosts of the unhappy past."

"Nonsense!" said Miss Betsey vigorously, her black eyes snapping, though she felt a curious lump in her throat. "You were always a sentimentalist, John Randolph. But you can't live on memories. You still are obliged to eat and to breathe G.o.d's fresh air. How do you do it?"

If the broken old man wondered why Miss Betsey Taylor took such an interest in his affairs, he was too courteous to show it.

"An old colored woman, 'Mammy Ellen,' who was a girl in our family when I was a young man, has not forgotten us. She brings us each day such food as she can procure. As for air"--the old man hesitated--"we do not go out in the daytime. I prefer that the people of the neighborhood should think of me as dead. But at night my little grand-daughter and I walk about over the old place."

Madge, Phil and David gasped involuntarily. They had been silent and amazed listeners to the dialogue between the two old people. Now the thought of a girl younger than themselves being shut up all day in this dreadful house, and only being allowed to go out-of-doors at night was too dreadful to contemplate.

"Oh, but surely you can't keep your little grand-daughter shut away from the daylight!" exclaimed impetuous Madge, her face alive with sympathy as she gazed at the thin little form on the bed.

"Daylight and darkness are as one to my little girl," the old gentleman answered quietly, "she is blind."

Madge s.h.i.+vered. Phil went over to the bed and patted the girl's hand softly. But they both longed, with all their hearts, to get away from this house of tragedy. It was strange that Miss Betsey did not offer to go and leave the old man and child to their privacy.

Miss Betsey's black eyes were no longer snapping; they were wet with tears.

"I am coming to take you both away from this place in the morning, John Randolph. If you won't come for your own sake, you must come for the child's. So like a man not to know that that poor baby needs to _feel_ all the more sunlight because she can't _see_ it! And she may even be able to see it some day with proper care." Miss Betsey bent over the child so caressingly that she looked more like a funny old angel in her strange, long cape and her ridiculous hat than a selfish, cross-grained old maid.

"I do not understand your kindness, Madam," returned the old gentleman with courteous curiosity.

"Because I am your friend," answered Miss Betsey curtly. "I'm Betsey Taylor, whom you used to know a great many years ago. You have forgotten me because you have had many interests in your life that have crowded me out. But I--I have remembered," concluded Miss Betsey abruptly. "Good night." She swung her dark lantern and, looking more than ever like a grenadier, led the little procession out.

CHAPTER XX

THE FANCY DRESS PARTY

"Mrs. Preston says we may have a dance before we go back to the houseboat, Eleanor," announced Lillian. The two girls were out under the big grape arbor filling a basket with great bunches of red and purple grapes. "And Madge suggests that we have a surprise dance for the boys the night they get back with the motor launch."

Eleanor laughed happily. "What a perfectly delightful idea! Isn't Mrs.

Preston a dear? We must have been a lot of trouble to her."

Lillian shook her head thoughtfully. "I don't think so," she answered.

"At least, I believe Mrs. Preston has liked the trouble. She says that we have made her feel younger and jollier than she ever expected to feel again in her life. She says that she is awfully fond of each one of us, and that Mr. Preston has never cared as much for a boy since his own son died, many years ago, as he does for David Brewster."

"Lillian," Eleanor's tones were serious, "I think that we ought to change our opinions of David. Somehow, he seems so much nicer recently, since the other boys went away. He is awfully quiet and sad, but I don't believe he is hateful and sullen, as we thought him at first. Poor David!"

Lillian did not reply at once. A sympathetic expression crossed her delicate, high-bred face. "I suppose, Nellie, dear, it must be hard for David to be with fellows who have everything in the world, like the motor launch boys--money and family and friends--when David has nothing."

"Madge declares that David will some day be a great man," rejoined Eleanor. "There he is now over there under the trees with Madge, Phil and little blind Alice. Isn't she a quaint child? She says she loves Madge best of all of us, because she can feel the color in Madge's red hair and cheeks. Miss Betsey is almost jealous of our little captain."

Lillian finished eating a bunch of catawba grapes. "Miss Betsey wants to take that blind child back to Hartford with her. She says that if Alice sees specialists in New York her sight may be restored. And her grandfather has consented to let her go, though I don't see how the old man can bear to give her up. Mr. and Mrs. Preston have asked him to live here with them, but he says he will go into a Confederate home for old Southern soldiers as soon as Alice leaves. Let's go over under the trees with Madge and Phil. We can eat our grapes and talk about the party."

Madge waved a yellow telegram frantically as Nellie and Lillian came toward them. "Tom and the boys will be back with the motor launch the day after to-morrow," she announced. "And that darling, Mrs. Preston, says we can have our dance on that very night, and it's to be a fancy dress party if we like, because she has stores and stores of lovely old-fas.h.i.+oned clothes up in her attic and she won't mind our dressing up in them. So we must drive round the neighborhood this afternoon and deliver our invitations and decide what characters we are to represent and----" Madge gasped for breath, while Phil fanned her violently with a large palm-leaf fan.

"Come right on upstairs to the attic with me," ordered Madge, as soon as she could speak again. "We have no time to waste. We can look at the dresses and then see what characters we wish to represent. David, you can come, too," invited Madge graciously. "You can carry Alice up the steps."