Books: Her Weight in Gold
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George Barr McCutcheon >> Her Weight in Gold
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"Whatever you may think of this story," he began, "I can assure you
that there is a very deep mystery attached to Gloaming and as I cannot
offer the faintest explanation except to call your attention to the
supernatural conditions which exist, I am obliged to admit that I, for
one, firmly believe the house is haunted. For several generations the
Gloame family, to an individual, has believed in the ghost of the
south wing and our faith cannot be shaken. We have the evidence of our
ears, our eyes, and of all who have undertaken to explode the theory.
I'll be just as brief as possible, Major Harper, so you need not look
at your wife's watch. My great-great-grandfather, Godfrey Gloame, was
born in this house and he brought a beautiful bride here when he was
married twenty-five years afterward. He was, as are all the Gloames, a
Virginian of the old type, and he was a fire-eater, so the family
records say. When he was married it was to a young lady of wealth and
position in the North--a very gay and, if I must say it, a
particularly--ah!--unsatisfactory mistress of a home." "What could you
expect of a Yankee wife?" asked young Garrison, tantalisingly.
"They were different in those days," responded the grey old narrator,
with a smile for his wife. "My great-great-grandmother was a beautiful
woman, and she was well aware of that fact. Her husband was a jealous
devil, as unreasonable as a jackass, and as stubborn as an ox. To make
a long story short, after they had been married five years and had
seen enough of the connubial hell to drive them both out of mind, he
took a sudden fancy that she was false to him. A young Virginian, in
fact, the very man who stood up with him at the wedding, was a
frequent visitor at this house and was a decided favourite with my
maternal ancestor. Godfrey went to drinking rather heavily, simply
because he found it impossible to discover anything wrong in his
wife's conduct--I may say that he had watched her, too, ladies and
gentlemen. Being too honourable to accuse her of infidelity without
having actual proof, he suffered in silence and his cups, all the time
allowing the gap between them to grow wider and wider. One night he
came home from Richmond late and saw his friend, Harry Heminway,
leaving the place on horseback. Inflamed by jealousy, and drink, too,
I reckon, he dashed up to his wife's room. I do not know what
followed, for no one ever knew, but the next mornin' they found her
dead on the bed, her throat cut from ear to ear in a most dreadful
manner. He was dead on the floor, the same knife sticking in his
breast. Their son, my great-grand-father, the famous General George W.
Gloame, then a child of three, was lying on the bed with his mother,
asleep."
"What beautiful nerves that kid must have had," muttered Gates.
"And did they never hang the murderer?" asked Lieutenant King.
"Good heavens, no! Didn't I say he had jabbed the knife into his own
heart? How could they hang him? Well, all this happened in that room
at the far end of the south wing--it's always locked now and has been
for a hundred and thirty years. The furniture stands just as it was
when that pair occupied the apartment. Now comes the strange part of
the story."
"Ugh!" interrupted Miss Kelly, with a shudder. "Just hear how the wind
whistles around the house. It positively gives me the shivers."
"Well, within a week after the murder queer things began to happen in
that room," the Colonel went on. "Odd noises were to be heard, muffled
screams came from behind the closed doors, and finally the people who
lived here saw the white, ghostly form of my great-great-grandmother
moving about in the room and in the halls. Ever since that time her
spirit can be seen up there, for it comes around once in a while to
see if anybody desecrates the room by trying to sleep in it. With my
own eyes I have seen it--dozens of times. Since my marriage it has not
been here, but I expect it almost any night."
George Washington appeared suddenly in the hall door and his
stentorian though eminently respectable tones startled the entire
assemblage, the Colonel included. There were a dozen little feminine
shrieks and more than one man caught his breath sharply. George
Washington was the butler at Gloaming.
"Majah Harpeh's kerridge, sah," he announced obsequiously.
"Oh, I'm so glad," gasped Miss Kelly, mightily relieved. Then, in
confusion: "I mean, Mrs. Harper, that I'm glad it isn't the ghost, you
know."
Half an hour later the parlours were deserted, except for the presence
of a tall young man with a far-away, dissatisfied look in his eyes. In
all the spare bed chambers guests were preparing for bed. Young
Garrison had said good night to all of them and remained below stairs
to commune with himself at the midnight hour.
For many minutes he sat before the fireplace, staring moodily at the
flames. Gates Garrison admitted reluctantly that it was all very nice
at Gloaming, that it was "a bully place to spend the holidays and all
that, you know," but for a very well-defined reason he was wishing
they were over and he was back in New York once more. He was in love.
It is not unusual for a young man of his age to be desperately in love
and it is by no means unusual that he should be in love with the most
impossible of persons. Gates Garrison's affections at this period of
his life were the property in fee simple of a very pretty and
decidedly popular member of the chorus at Weber & Field's. After
convincing himself that he was quite alone in the huge old parlour,
the hopeless Mr. Garrison guiltily drew from the inside pocket of his
coat a thick and scrawly letter. Then he did things to this letter
that in after years he would blush to acknowledge, if they remained a
part of his memory. He kissed the scribble--undeniably. Then, with
rapt eyes, he reread the lengthy missive from "Dolly." It had come in
the morning mail and he had read it a dozen times. The reader is left
to conjecture just what the letter contained. Mr. Garrison's thoughts
were running something like this:
"Lord, if my sister knew about you, Dolly, she'd have so many fits
that you couldn't count them. They think I'm an absolute stick when it
comes to girls. If they only knew! What the deuce did I do with that
photograph--ah, here it is. Inside vest pocket, left-hand side--just
where it belongs."
He pulled a small photograph from his vest pocket and sat gazing at it
rapturously. It was the portrait of the fair Dolly in tights. After a
long scrutiny of this rather picturesque product of nature and the
photographer, he arose and, with a sigh, turned off all the lights in
the room, still holding the picture in his hand. The fire in the grate
was now the only means of illumination in the parlour and the halls
were dark. Reconsidering his impulse to go to bed, he threw himself in
a chair before the grate, his elbow resting on the mahogany table at
its right. There he devoted himself to--dreams. A wave of cold air
crossing his back brought him from dreamland.
"Some one must have left a door open," he grumbled. He looked up and
down the hall and then resumed his seat before the fire. A moment
later the chilly draft struck him again. "Confound it! There's a devil
of a draft from somewhere. It goes clean through me. Must be a crack
in the floor. That's the trouble with these shacks that somebody's
grandfather built before the flood." He vigorously poked up the fire
and drew his chair a little closer to the circle of warmth.
Had he turned his head for an instant as he sat down he could have
seen that he was not alone in the room. A tall, shadowy woman in white
was standing in the hall door, looking pensively in upon him. For a
full minute she stood there, hesitating between modesty and curiosity,
and then turned as if to glide away.
Reconsidering, she smiled defiantly and more or less nervously, and
then turned back into the room. Of course, he did not hear her as she
approached. The mere fact that her filmy white dress was of the
fashion in vogue before the Revolution should prove her identity to
the reader. She was the Gloaming Ghost.
Gates Garrison was softly, tenderly addressing the photograph of the
airy but not ethereal Dolly. The words were not for the ears of
others. Even the infatuated lover would have despised the strain of
softness in his tones had he known there was a hearer.
"If you could but speak to me," he was saying to the picture, "you'd
make me happy, I know. You'd tell me that you love me. You'd tell me
that you hate that meddlesome old man Ellison. You've got it just as
bad as I have, haven't you, Dolly?"
"What a real woman she seems to be," exclaimed a soft silvery voice at
his shoulder. Garrison whirled and looked up into the beautiful face
of the ghost.
"Great Heaven!" he gasped, struggling to his feet, his eyes riveted to
the face of the wraith.
"Only a part of it, my dear sir," corrected the ghost, with a rare
smile in which courage struggled with diffidence. "Dear me, why do you
stare at me so rudely?"
She was standing directly before him now, tall and straight. He was
hanging to the mantelpiece, almost speechless.
"Who--what in Heaven's name are you?" he cried.
"Why, don't you know me? I am Mrs. Godfrey Gloame," she replied, a
touch of resentment in her voice.
"The--the ghost?"
"That's what they call me," she admitted sadly. "It's such a horrid
thing to be called, too. In reality, I'm merely a visitor from another
world. There are many more of my kind in this room at this instant,
sir, but you cannot see them. They are visible to me, however. If it
interests you in the least, I can tell you that you are surrounded by
ghosts. Please don't run! They can not hurt you. Why should they, even
if they could? What a big, strong man you are to be afraid of such
perfectly harmless, docile beings as we. Over in that corner, looking
from the window, stands my daughter-in-law, Mrs. George Gloame. I saw
her husband, my son, sitting in the hallway as I came through. Judging
from their attitudes, they've had another of those horrid quarrels. I
hope you'll pardon me for disturbing you. You looked so lonely I
couldn't resist the desire to come in and see. you as I was passing."
Gates was regaining his composure rapidly. The first uncanny shock was
wearing off and he was confessing to himself that there was nothing to
fear in the spectral bit of loveliness.
"I--I'm sure I appreciate the honour," he said, bowing low.
"Permit me to introduce myself," she went on, and he marvelled at her
charm of manner. "I am the great-great-grandmother of Cassady Gloame,
and the daughter of Van Rensselaer Brevoort, of New York. He is a
millionaire."
"He must be a pretty old millionaire by this time, isn't he?"
"Oh, poor papa has been dead for a hundred and one years."
"Indeed? He isn't here, is he? I'm getting so I don't mind you in the
least but I'd rather not meet any male--er--ghosts, if you please."
Mrs. Godfrey Gloame laughed unrestrainedly.
"Don't you know that we are nothing but spectral air?" she cried
derisively.
"Ah, since you speak of it, I did feel your draft when you came in,"
he said. "But, if you will pardon me, Mrs. Gloame, there is something
uncanny about you just the same. You'll admit that, I'm sure. How
would you have felt when you were in the flesh to have had a horrible
ghost suddenly walk in upon you?" "Oh, I am horrible, am I?" she said
as she leaned toward him with an entrancing smile.
"Heavens, no!" he retracted. "You are a marvel of beauty. I don't
wonder that your husband was jealous." She did not appear to have
heard the last remark.
"How I used to live in terror of ghosts," she cried, looking about
apprehensively. "Would you believe it, sir, up to the time I was
married I could not bear the thought of being left alone in the house
for a single minute of the night. The darkness, the mystic flicker of
the lights, the stillness seemed to swarm with spirits--Oh, you don't
know how I suffered with the fear of them."
"And after you got married--what then?"
"I soon had material spirits to contend with."
"How so?"
"That is an extremely personal inquiry, sir."
"I beg pardon if I have overstepped the bounds of politeness."
"I may as well tell you that my husband drank terribly. It's all over
the country anyhow, I hear."
"The Gloame pedigree says that you drove him to it."
"I know that is what the Gloames claim, but it is a shameless slander.
My poor, dear husband has told me since that he was wrong and he would
give all he has on earth to set me aright in that hateful old
pedigree. The poor fellow killed himself, you doubtless know. I was
never so shocked in my life as when I heard that he had committed such
a brutal act." Mrs. Gloame was looking sadly, reminiscently into the
fire and there was a trace of tears in her voice.
"But, my dear madam, didn't he begin by slaying you?" exclaimed Gates
in surprise.
"To be sure, he did destroy me first or I might have kept him from
committing the awful crime of suicide," she said, despondently.
PART II
"But murder is so much worse than suicide," expostulated Garrison. "We
hang men for murder, you know."
"I've a notion that it would be difficult to hang them for suicide.
But you are quite wrong in your estimation of the crime. You do not
know what it is to be murdered, I presume."
"Well, hardly."
"Nor what it is to commit suicide? Well, let me advise you, judging
from what I know of the hereafter, get murdered in preference to
committing suicide. I'd even suggest that you commit murder, if you
are determined to do anything rash."
"And be hanged for it!" laughed Gates.
"You can be hanged or be d----d, just as you like," she said
meaningly. "I wish you could talk to my husband if you are thinking of
doing anything of the kind. I'm sure your young love affairs must be
getting to the suicide stage by this time."
"But I don't want to kill anybody, much less myself. Oh, I beg your
pardon," he cried suddenly. "Pray have a chair, Mrs. Gloame. It was
unpardonable in me to let you remain standing so long. I've been a
trifle knocked out, I mean disconcerted. That's my only excuse."
"You are not expected to know anything about ghost etiquette," she
said sweetly, dropping into a chair at the side of the table farthest
from the fire. Garrison had some fear that her vapoury figure might
sink through the chair, but he was agreeably surprised to find that it
did not. Mrs. Gloame leaned back with a sigh of contentment and
deliberately crossed her pretty feet on the fender.
"Won't you sit nearer to the fire?" lie asked. "It's very cold tonight
and you must be chilled to the bone. You are not dressed for cold
weather." She was attired in a low-necked and sleeveless gown.
"I'm not at all cold and, besides, I did not bring my bones with me."
He resumed his seat at the opposite side of the table. "Have you come
far tonight?"
"From the graveyard a mile down the river. It is a beautiful cemetery,
isn't it?"
"I am quite a stranger in these parts. Besides, I'm not partial to
graveyards."
"Oh, dear me," she cried, in confusion. "The idea of my sitting here
talking to a total stranger all this time. You must think me extremely
bold."
"I am the bold one, madam. It's my first experience, you know, and I
think I'm doing pretty well, don't you? By the way, Mrs. Gloame, my
name is Gates Garrison, of New York, and my sister is the present Mrs.
Gloame."
"The pretty young thing with the old Gloame husband?"
"Can't say she's pretty, you. know. She's my sister."
"I passed her in the hall tonight."
"The dev--the deuce you did!" cried Gates, coming to his feet in
alarm. "Then she must be lying out there in a dead faint." He was
starting for the door when she recalled him.
"Oh, she did not see me. She merely shivered and asked a servant to
close the door. An ill wind seems to be a north wind, so far as ghosts
are concerned," she concluded pathetically. "So you are from New York.
Dear New York; I haven't been there in a hundred and thirty-five
years, I dare say. One in my position rather loses count of the years,
you know. I suppose the place is greatly changed. And your lady-love
lives there, too, I see."
"My lady-love?" demanded Gates, taken back.
"Yes, the girl who is so well dressed from her shoulders up," with a
tantalising smile.
"You mean--this?" he asked, turning a fiery red as he tried to slip
the picture of Dolly under a book.
"Let me see it, please. Who is she?" He was ashamed, but he held out
the picture. A poorly disguised look of disgust crossed the startled
features of Mrs. Godfrey Gloame.
"She's--a friend of the Colonel's," said Gates promptly.
"I should think his wife would do well to be on her guard. This is the
first time I ever saw such a costume. In my day a woman would not have
dared to do such a thing. Don't you know her?"
"Oh, casually," answered he, looking away.
"I'm glad to hear that. She is nothing to you, then?"
He shook his head in fine disdain.
"I don't care much for you men in these days, Mr. Garrison," she said.
"You're not complimentary."
"When I compare the men of my day--men like Godfrey--with the men of
today, I thank Heaven I had the honour to be killed by a gentleman.
You don't know how many unhappy wives I meet in the cemetery."
"Well, there are no women like you in this day, either. You are
beautiful, glorious," he cried, leaning toward her eagerly. She shrank
back with a laugh, holding her hands between his face and her own.
"How lovely," she sighed. "But keep away, please."
"Well, I should say," he exclaimed, his teeth almost chattering, so
cold was the air that fanned his face. "I never got such a frost from
a woman in all my life."
"If my husband had heard your words of flattery he would have created
a terrible disturbance. He was fearfully jealous--a perfect devil when
the spell came over him."
"A devil then and a devil now, I may infer."
"Oh, no; you do him an injustice. Godfrey really was an angel, and if
he had not killed himself I think he would not now be in such an
uncertain position. He is still on probation, you see."
"Between two fires, as it were."
"I think not. The last time I saw him he was shivering."
"I don't wonder," said Gates, ruefully, recalling the chill of a
moment since. "Does he ever come here?"
"Not often. There are so many unpleasant associations, he says. It was
here that the funeral took place and he has expressed very strong
exceptions to the sermon of a minister who alluded to him as an
unfortunate victim of his own folly. The idea! It would have been
folly, indeed, for Godfrey to have lived after I was dead. Every woman
in Virginia would have been crazy to marry him. And then one of the
pall-bearers did not suit him. He had cheated Godfrey in a horse
trade, I think."
"I should like to have known Godfrey Gloame."
"You would have admired him. He was the best pistol shot, the bravest
man in all Virginia. Three times he fought duels, coming off
victorious each time. He would have been an ideal husband if he had
not been so indolent, so dissipated, and so absurdly jealous of Harry
Heminway. I shall never forgive him for killing me on account of poor
Harry."
"Is that why he killed you?" asked Gates eagerly.
"He said so at the time, but he was sorry for it afterward. That is
usually the way with jealous men."
"Whew!" exclaimed the man, starting up. "There's another draft, didn't
you feel it?"
"It is my husband coming, I know his footstep," she said delightedly,
looking toward the door.
"Holy smoke!" cried Gates, in alarm.
"Don't let him hear you speak of smoke. He is very touchy about it
just now. Ah, come in, Godfrey, dear."
She crossed to the door to meet the tall, grey young man in the
eighteenth century costume, Garrison looking on with open mouth, and
rising hair.
Godfrey Gloame was a handsome fellow, albeit he was as transparent as
glass. His hair was powdered with all the care of a dandy and his
garments hung properly upon his frame. He kissed his wife and then
glared at young Mr. Garrison.
"Who is this man, Beatrice?" he demanded, his hand going to his sword
hilt. Mrs. Gloame caught the hand and there was passionate entreaty in
her eyes. "Speak, woman! What are you doing here with him at this time
of night?"
"Now, don't he cross, Godfrey," she pleaded. "It's only Mr. Garrison."
"And who the devil is Mr. Garrison?"
"What a very disagreeable ghost," muttered Gates, remembering that
ghosts are harmless.
Mrs. Gloame led the unruly Godfrey up to the table and, in a
delightfully old-fashioned way, introduced the two gentlemen.
"Mr. Garrison is the brother of my successor, the present mistress of
Gloaming," she said.
"And a devilish pretty woman, too. I've seen her frequently. By the
way, I stopped in her bedchamber as I came through. But that's neither
here or there. What are you doing here with this young whipper-
snapper, Beatrice?"
"Let me explain, Mr. Gloame," began Gates hastily.
"I desire no explanation from you, sah," interposed Godfrey, towering
with dignity. "You would explain just as all men do under like
circumstances. Beatrice, I demand satisfaction."
"Be rational, Godfrey, for once in your life. It is beneath my dignity
to respond to your insult," said Mrs. Gloame proudly.
"Good for you, Mrs. Gloame," cried Garrison approvingly. "You would be
a bully actress."
"Sah, you insult my wife by that remark," roared Godfrey Gloame, and
this time the sword was unsheathed.
"Oh, I'm not afraid of you, old chap," said Gates bravely. "You're
nothing but wind, you know. Be calm and have a chair by the fire. Your
wife says you have chills."
"I do not require an invitation to sit down in my own house, sah. I am
Godfrey Gloame, sah, of Gloaming, sah."
"You mean you were--you are now his shade," said Gates. "Ah, that's
the word I've been trying to think of--shade! You are shades--that's
it--shades, not ghosts. Yes, Mr. Gloame, I've heard all about your
taking off and I am sure that you were a bit too hasty. You had no
license to be jealous of your wife--she assures me of it, and from
what I've seen of her I'd be willing to believe anything she says."
"Ah, too true, too true! I always was and always will be a fool. It
was she who should have slain me. Will you ever forgive me, Beatrice,
forgive me fully?" said Godfrey, in deep penitence.
"I can forgive everything but the fact that you were so shockingly
drunk the night you killed us," said she, taking his hands in hers.
"Oh, that was an awful spree! My head aches to think of it."
"It was not the murder I condemn so much as the condition you were in
when you did it," she complained. "Mr. Garrison, you do not know how
humiliating it is to be killed by a man who is too drunk to know where
the jugular vein is located. My neck was slashed--oh, shockingly!"
"Yes, my dear sah, if I must admit it, I did it in a most bungling
mannah," admitted her husband. "Usually I am very careful in matters
of importance, and I am only able to attribute the really indecent
butchery to the last few sups I took from General Bannard's demijohn.
My hand was very unsteady, wasn't it, dearest?"
"Miserably so. See, Mr. Garrison, on my neck you can see the five
scars, indications of his ruthlessness. One stroke should have been
sufficient, a doctor told me afterwards. This one, the last,--do you
see it? Well, it was the only capable stroke of them all. Just think
of having to go through eternity with these awful scars on my neck.
And it was beautiful, too, wasn't it, Godfrey?"
Garrison thought it must have been the prettiest neck ever given to
woman.
"Divine!" cried Mr. Gloame warmly. "My dear sah, there never lived a
woman who had the arms, the neck, and shoulders that my wife
possessed. I speak reservedly, too, sah, for since my demise I have
seen thousands. A shade has some privileges, you know."
"Godfrey Gloame!" cried his wife, suspiciously. "What have you been
doing? Have you been snooping into the privacy of--"
"Now, my dear girl, do not be too hasty in your conclusions. You'll
observe, Mr. Garrison, that I am not the only jealous one. I have
merely seen some shoulders. Very ordinary ones, too, I'll say. Oh, I
am again reminded that I want an explanation for your damnably
improper conduct tonight, madam. This thing of meeting a man here at
twelve o'clock is--"
"Goodness!" cried Mrs. Gloame anxiously. "It is not twelve, is it! I
must hasten away by a quarter after twelve."
"It lacks considerable of that hour," said Gates. Turning to Godfrey
Gloame, who was leaning against the mantel, he went on to explain:
"You see, sir, I was reading here and your wife dropped in--blew in, I
might say--all without my knowledge, very much as you did. She had had
no invitation, we had made no date--I mean arrangement--and I was
paralysed at first. Your wife is a perfect stranger to me. There is a
disparity in our ages that ought to protect her. I am twenty-four and
she is at least a hundred and fifty."
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