Five nights at the Five Pines

I  COULD hear the men above me, like bloodhounds on the trail.

Will Dove, following his shot, had rushed off down the back street, hoping to find what he had aimed at. I drew down the cellar doors which opened beneath the house and locked them, just as Alf began to prowl around the “under.”

“Stay here!” I whispered.

Mounting the ladder, I shut the trap-door before the judge had time to negotiate the kitchen companionway.

“There is no one in the round cellar,” I lied.

And he was saying, “No one entered Mattie’s room.”

“Look over on the back street,” I advised, and so got rid of him.

To every one I met I gave the same word; “I saw him jump off the roof and escape that way,” pointing in the direction Will Dove had taken, and seeing his retreating figure yelling and brandishing the shotgun they did not lose any time in following. The house was soon cleared.

Only to Jasper did I say, at a moment when no one heard me, “Wait, I’ve caught the ghost!”

But as soon as I had said it I regretted confiding in him. Unequal to facing the horror alone, he immediately set up a shout after the last man in sight, “Hi, wait a minute!”

Luckily the Winkle-Man did not hear him and kept on going. He had tripped on his long fork two or three times and was desperately trying to catch up.

“Before they return,” said I, “look here!” And I opened the trap and led Jasper down the ladder.

A huddled figure lay prone upon the earth where it had fallen, as if it had not moved since I had left.

“What?”

“Stop!” I cried, for Jasper would have wrenched the creature to its feet. “Can’t you see?” I turned the lifeless body over and tried to raise it from the damp floor. “Help me lift her on the mattress!”

Jasper caught hold of the limp form, and at the feel of the light body in his strong arms exclaimed again, “What—what is it?”

“It’s Mattie,” said I. “Don’t you understand? Mattie ‘Charles T. Smith.’”

“She’s not dead?” he asked.

“I hope not!”

I bathed her face with water from the pail and made her limbs lie comfortably.

“I think we had better leave her here till she comes to,” I said. “I don’t want all those men pursuing her.”

“Just as you say,” he answered. He was nonplussed and confused, willing to let me manage matters any way I wanted to. “Suppose you stay down here and watch, and I’ll go up to the door and head them off if they come back. If you want anything, call. I’ll be right near.”

Jasper went up the ladder again, and I sat down beside the prostrate form of Mattie and waited for her return to consciousness.

The round cellar was dark now. Early dusk was stealing the light of the short autumn day, and except for the shaft of strained sunshine that seeped through the trap-door the pit was dark. I opened the doors into the “under,” but only a faint ray filtered in from behind the boat.

“How gloomy it always must have been!” I thought. “If it had not been for that outside door, she would not even have had air. I suppose it was when she was going for water to the spring in the woods that the half-witted child saw her and told people it was the New Captain. That was what she wanted every one to think! She has always counted on that.... She must have gone out of here through the ‘under’ and up the stairs to the secret room every night. But why?”

“I went because I always went,” said Mattie.

Had I been talking aloud or had she answered my unspoken thought? Startled, I looked at the prone figure of the haggard woman in the tattered overalls and saw she had not even opened her eyes but was lying in the same exhausted position in which we had dropped her—that not a muscle moved, except for the faint breathing of her flat chest and her trembling jaw. She was speaking, or trying to speak again, and I leaned over her in the dark to catch every precious word. It was as if I listened to the unrelated utterances of an oracle. No one could tell whether Mattie would recover from this wanton chase or live through her devastating imprisonment. Each syllable, I thought, might be her last, and whatever clue she gave was important.

The house above me, where Jasper sat waiting on the doorstep, was so silent that I thought perhaps he might be able to hear her talking. I took hold of one of Mattie’s claw-like hands and stroked it gently.

“I went—up there,” the fluttering voice repeated, “because I always went. Every night of my life I spent in that room—ever since—it happened.”

“Yes, Mattie,” I whispered, trying not to frighten her.

“Jerry was a beautiful boy,” murmured Mattie. “Jerry—we named him for his grandfather—but his grandmother never knew it. Don’t you think his grandmother would have liked to know it?”

“Yes, Mattie.”

“You would never have forgotten him if you had ever seen him.”

“I shall never forget him now,” I said softly.

“No one ever saw him.”

The burden of her life came back to her as she regained consciousness completely. Tears trickled down her withered cheeks beneath her closed veined lids.

“No one ever saw him,” she repeated.

I was crying.

It was Mattie who sat up weakly and laid her thin arm around my shaking shoulders, the mood of motherliness so strong in her that she could protect even her worst enemy.

“Don’t take on,” she said; “it can’t be helped. It never could be helped.”

But I wept on and would not be comforted. For the five nights that I had spent listening to her presentation of her story, and the five days I had wondered whether it were true, and for all the empty days of Mattie’s life, and the lost opportunity of her neighbors and the lonely people whom she served, tears of contrition coursed unchecked.

“Mattie,” I sobbed, “what can I do for you, what can I do for you?”

She answered my question strangely.

“I’m ready to go,” she said.

I thought she meant that she was prepared to die.

Jasper could not stand the sound of crying any longer and had descended the ladder. When she saw him she looked worried, swung her two feet in their absurd boots to the floor, and stood up shakily.

“You can take me to the town home now,” she said, with a brave little swagger.

Jasper and I were too surprised to speak.

At the amazement on our faces she became disconcerted herself. A new terror assailed her.

“Or is it the jail you will take me to, eh? Is it against the law to be a ghost?” She staggered back against the white-washed wall.

Jasper caught her in his arms.

“Here,” he cried to me, “let’s get her out of this! Put her in bed, for Heaven’s sake. We’ve been down in this cave long enough!”

“Where are you taking me?” she implored.

“To your own room,” said I; “to the gabled room over the kitchen, where you belong.”

Between us we managed her, and as I laid her down once more and stripped off the captain’s ridiculous old clothes, and dressed her in a decent nightgown and tucked her in between the linen sheets with a hot-water bottle, she said brokenly,

“Seems as if I couldn’t stand havin’ you sleep in my bed.”

“I know. It won’t be that way any more, I promise you.”

Jasper went back to his vigil on the doorstep.

Mattie looked from me to the bureau and the nailed-up door.

“You’ve changed things,” she mumbled drowsily, and then; “my, but you are a brave woman!”

I smiled, and she smiled, too.

“I thought you would leave the house after the first time,” she continued. “I didn’t mean to do it before you come—not when I wrote that note. I never meant to bother you. Did you get a letter from me in a book?”

“Yes.”

“But afterward, when I knew you was asleep in my room, the both of you, I just gave way and threw myself against the little door. I didn’t care if you found me and settled things then and there, but you didn’t do nothing. You never did.”

“No,” I answered, “I didn’t think you were anything—but my imagination.”

Mattie turned her face from me.

“You didn’t imagine nothing,” she replied.

My heart stood still.

“I didn’t make anything up. I just went over and over it, like I always done, in my mind. Seems as if I never thought of anything else ever since.”

“Then the only psychic thing,” said I, more to myself than to her, “was thought-transference.”

I fell silent, but Mattie knew what was in my mind.

“That last night—” she began, and seemed to strangle.

“Hush, Mattie, it’s all right; nobody believes anything about that fifth night but me, and I’m your friend!”

Her eyes burned into mine, beseechingly.

“I believe you are.” And then her feeble fingers began to pick at the basket-pattern in the quilt. “I never had none,” she said, at length.

“Mattie,” I tried to make her understand, “you have me now to take care of you, and you can have this room and stay here as long as you live.”

“I can still work,” said Mattie, with a tired sigh.

“No, I don’t mean that. I don’t want you to work for me. I just want you to be here and be one of us, and—if you can—be happy.”

Mattie shook her head as if she hardly believed me.

“That is,” I added, “if you are willing to let me and my husband live here, too.”

Her answer surprised me.

“Have you any children?”

I looked at her and hesitated, blushing to the roots of my hair.

“Why, no.”

“I’d be more glad to stay,” said Mattie, “if you had some children. Oh, don’t go away! I didn’t mean to hurt your feelings after you’ve been so kind to me, and all. I only meant there’s plenty of room in the house for all of us, and room for more than us, too.... Because it always seemed to me, when people were married and everything was easy for them, and everybody knew it and was glad, and would bring them presents—wedding-presents and silver spoons for christenings—and they could show the little dresses all around—well, I don’t understand it, that’s all, them not having any.... You must excuse me.”

I wished that Jasper had heard what she said, just as she said it, for I never could repeat it to him in the same way, although I went right downstairs and tried.

We sat for a long time on the doorstep talking it over and reconstructing our lives to suit new necessities. Building our lives around the house, one might have called it, instead of building a house around our lives. It was easy to do that, with a home like the House of the Five Pines. A life built around the way we had been living hitherto would have been as difficult as growing ivy on a moving-van.

“The only disappointment is our room,” I said. “I have given it back to Mattie.”

“Well, there are three other bedrooms upstairs,” replied Jasper, “and one down.”

Probably he would never understand how much that little room, where so many things had happened, had come to mean to me.

“The nursery is all ready,” I continued, following my own train of thought; “and a nurse is living with us who not only will never leave, but fairly begs that we give her something to rock to sleep.”

My husband smiled, and put his hand over mine as we lingered there in our doorway, in the starlight.

Our intimate conversation was interrupted by Caleb Snow and Judge Bell, who came back tired and discouraged from the chase on which I had sent them. Will Dove had dropped off at his own house on the way back from the woods, and Alf had been obliged to give up the hunt long ago and go back to the Sailor’s Rest for supper.

“So it was Mattie!” said the judge, trying to cover his disappointment. “I thought so all the time.”

“Yes, you did!” The Winkle-Man waxed indignant. “You didn’t know no more who it was than the rest of us.”

“Didn’t I keep telling Will Dove not to fire that gun off in the woods?”

“Sure! You says that he couldn’t hit nothin’ with nothin’; that’s what you says!”

“Well, I meant that it was either Mattie or her ghost.”

“I don’t know what you meant,” said Caleb, “but when I told him to quit shootin’ I meant I was gosh-darned afraid he was goin’ to hit me.”

They continued their argument as they went down the street, and Jasper and I sat and smiled. They were not half so surprised as I thought they would be. They had lived too close to the sea to be much amazed at anything. If we wanted to keep Mattie and take care of her, they had no objections. The ways of city people were inexplicable, but as we had taken the burden of decision off their hands, they were glad to be relieved. The future of Mattie “Charles T. Smith” would not rest with the town council and the town home, nor would her financial needs embarrass the tax-payers. They eased their conscience by saying we would not be bothered very long. Consoling us and congratulating themselves, they went off arguing. It was something, after the trouble of their long evening’s hunt through the woods, to have the glory of spreading the news.