Who has not heard such sounds, and
who in his heart of hearts has not been only too well aware that they
are nocturnal, exclusively nocturnal. The shadows of evening bring with
them visitors; prying, curious visitors; grim and ghastly visitors;
grey, esoteric visitors; visitors from a world seemingly inconsequent,
wholly incomprehensible. Mrs. Gordon did not believe in ghosts. She
scoffed at the idea of ghosts, and, like so many would-be wits,
unreasonably brave by day, and the reverse by night, had hitherto
attributed banshees and the like to cats and other animals. But
now,--now when all was dark,--pitch dark and hushed, and she, for aught
she knew to the contrary, the only one, in that great rambling
building, awake, she reviewed again and again, in her mind, that
rushing up the stairs. The wind! It could not have been the wind. The
wind shuts doors, and rattles windows, and moans, and sighs, and howls
and screeches, but it does not walk the house in boots. Neither do
rats! And if she had imagined the noises, why did she not imagine other
things; why, for example, did she not see tables dance, and tea-urns
walk? All that would be fancy, unblushing, genuine fancy, and if she
conjured up one absurdity, why not another! That was a conundrum for
any sceptic. Thus did she argue, naturally and logically, in the quite
sensible fashion of a lawyer, or a scientist; yet, all the while, her
senses told her that the atmosphere of the house had undergone some
profoundly subtle and unaccountable change,--a change that brought with
it a presence, at once sinister and hostile.
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