"the only objection i have to ghost stories," said young sanford, "is from a literary point of view. they're so badly done, you know."
"in what way?" said the clerk of the hotel, settling back in his office chair, and smiling at young sanford and the circle of men who had come down for their keys from the billiard-room.
"well, in this way. i'm not considering the little harmless stories where the heroes are only frightened, or even those where their heads are grey in the morning. i'm thinking of those where they never live to tell the awful tale, you know; the ones in which they tell their friends to come if they call, and then they never call; the ones in which, although they scream and scream, nobody hears them.
"and yet the old trembling man who points them to the haunted room knows perfectly well that five men have entered that room on five nineteenths of[192] october, and never come out alive. yet he only warns them, or at most only beseeches them not to go in. he has no police force—not that police could seriously harm the ghosts, but somehow they never appear to the police; he does not arrange with the victim's friend to burst in the door at twelve-thirty, anyhow, whether they are summoned or not; he doesn't—but then, what do any of them do that they might be expected to? and all this forced condition of things so that the ghost may have all the evening to work quietly in. do you mean to tell me that if i were frightened to the extent of grey hair in the morning, i couldn't scream loud enough to be heard any distance?"
this speech drew nods of approval from several of the men. "i've thought of that, too," said the clerk. in a dark corner behind the stove sat a man, hunched over his knees, silent, and apparently unknown to any of the others. at this point he looked up, cleared his throat, and said in a strange, husky voice:
"do you really suppose that that is anything else than nonsense?" young sanford flushed.[193] "sir"—he began. the other continued in his rough, thick voice:
"do you suppose they don't try to scream? do you suppose they don't think they're screaming?"
a little silence of discomfort fell on the circle. there was something disagreeably suggestive in the question. suddenly the man spoke again.
"i had a friend," he said, "in fact, i had two friends. one was young—about your age," nodding to sanford. "the other was older. he was not so clever nor so attractive nor so brilliant nor so jolly as the younger, but he had a characteristic—perhaps his only one—for he was a very ordinary man. he had an iron will. his determination was as unbreakable as anything human could be. and he was devoted to his friend, who, somehow, loved him. i don't know why, because he had so many other admirers—but he stuck to his friend—joan. they called the two darby and joan. their real names were not unlike those, and it was rather funny. darby used to talk as you were talking, sir," he nodded again to sanford, "and he was sure, cock sure, that what he said was right. he[194] would tell what things were possible and what were not, and prove what he said very nicely. joan wasn't clever, but he knew that it does no good to call a thing impossible. he knew, in fact, that nothing is more possible than the most impossible things."
the man coughed and cleared his throat and waited a moment as if to see whether he were intruding. no one spoke, so he went on.
"one day darby rushed into joan's study and told him of a haunted mill he'd discovered. it was one of the old mills where the farmers used to bring their sacks before the big concerns in the west swallowed all the little trades. it was dusty and cobwebbed and broken down and unused and haunted. and there was a farmhouse directly across the road and a house on either side of it not a hundred feet away.
"'was it always haunted?' asked joan. 'no,' said darby, 'only once a year.' on christmas eve every year for nineteen years there had appeared, late at night, a little light in one of the windows; and that side of the house had an odd look, some[195]how it seemed to look fresher and newer, and at one o'clock or so a horrible piercing shriek would ring out from the mill, and then a kind of crashing fall, and then all was still, and the light would disappear.
"'had nobody investigated?' oh, yes. the first year it was noticed was when houses were built up around it. it used to stand away from everything else, and the miller and his family lived there. then, long after they were dead, people moved out there and heard the noises and saw the light. they thought of tramps and escaped criminals and everything one suggests till it had occurred too repeatedly for that, and then a young farmer went over one christmas eve, not telling any one, and they found him roaming about the mill, a hopeless wreck the next day; he had gone quite mad.
"and the next year a man came up from the city, and his friends were in the next room to help him if he called, and he didn't call, and they were afraid to startle him by knocking, so they got a ladder and peeped into the window at ten[196] minutes to one, and he lay peacefully on the bed with his eyes closed and his hands stretched loosely out, and they thought it was a great joke that he should sleep through it, so they went home, and in the morning they found him in horrible convulsions, and he never recovered.
"and there were two young divinity students that went once together, and they had a crowd along with instructions to break in the door at one exactly. and at the stroke of one the crowd beat in the great door and burst into an empty room! they had gone up a flight too far, somehow, and as they stood staring at each other, from the room beneath them came a dreadful shriek and a crash, and when they rushed down they found the boys in a dead faint. they brought them to and got them home, and they muttered nonsense about a dog and a sash and would say no more. and they escaped with severe nervous prostration. but later they lost what little nerve they had and couldn't sleep at night, and joined the catholic church, because they said that there were things they found it difficult to reconcile....
[197]
"'and what was the story of it all?' asked joan. oh, the story was disagreeable enough. the miller's daughter wanted to marry a poor young man, but her father would not let her. and she refused to accept his rich nephew. so he locked her in her room till she should consent. and she stayed there a week. and one night the nephew came home late and saw a tiny light in her window, and presently he saw some one place a ladder and go softly up, and the miller's daughter leaned out and helped him in. so he told her father, who came into her room the next night with a bloodhound, and bound her to the bed and hushed her cries with her sash, and lit the little light. and when her lover had climbed the ladder—the dog was there. and that was christmas eve.
"'do the people suffer this without complaint—these deaths and convulsions and apostasies?' asked joan. well, no. but if they destroyed the mill a liquor saloon would go up immediately. the proprietor was simply waiting. and they didn't want that. so they kept it quiet. and nobody need go there. nobody had been alarmed or hurt except[198] the meddlers. and in villages the people have less scientific curiosity. but darby was going immediately. it was december twenty-third now. joan must come, too; it would be most exciting. joan argued against it, but he too was curious, so they agreed to go. and the next day they went."
