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LITTLE CLASSICS
EDITED BY
ROSSITER JOHNSON

STORIES OF MYSTERY

BOSTON AND NEW YORK
HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY
The Riverside Press Cambridge
1914

COPYRIGHT, 1875, BY JAMES R. OSGOOD & CO.
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

CONTENTS.

THE GHOST . . . . . . . . . . . . . _William D. O'Connor_

THE FOUR-FIFTEEN EXPRESS . . . . . . _Amelia B. Edwards_

THE SIGNAL-MAN . . . . . . . . . . . _Charles Dickens_

THE HAUNTED SHIPS . . . . . . . . . _Allan Cunningham_

A RAFT THAT NO MAN MADE . . . . . . _Robert T.S. Lowell_

THE INVISIBLE PRINCESS . . . . . . . _Francis O'Connor_

THE ADVOCATE'S WEDDING-DAY . . . . . _Catherine Crowe_

THE BIRTHMARK . . . . . . . . . . . _Nathaniel Hawthorne_

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

THE GHOST.

BY WILLIAM D. O'CONNOR.

At the West End of Boston is a quarter of some fifty streets, more or
less, commonly known as Beacon Hill.

It is a rich and respectable quarter, sacred to the abodes of Our First
Citizens. The very houses have become sentient of its prevailing
character of riches and respectability; and, when the twilight deepens
on the place, or at high noon, if your vision is gifted, you may see
them as long rows of Our First Giants, with very corpulent or very broad
fronts, with solid-set feet of sidewalk ending in square-toed
curbstone, with an air about them as if they had thrust their hard hands
into their wealthy pockets forever, with a character of arctic reserve,
and portly dignity, and a well-dressed, full-fed, self-satisfied,
opulent, stony, repellent aspect to each, which says plainly, "I belong
to a rich family, of the very highest respectability."

History, having much to say of Beacon Hill generally, has, on the
present occasion, something to say particularly of a certain street
which bends over the eminence, sloping steeply down to its base. It
is an old street,--quaint, quiet, and somewhat picturesque. It was
young once, though,--having been born before the Revolution, and was
then given to the city by its father, Mr. Middlecott, who died without
heirs, and did this much for posterity. Posterity has not been grateful
to Mr. Middlecott. The street bore his name till he was dust, and then
got the more aristocratic epithet of Bowdoin. Posterity has paid him
by effacing what would have been his noblest epitaph. We may expect,
after this, to see Faneuil Hall robbed of its name, and called Smith
Hall! Republics are proverbially ungrateful. What safer claim to
public remembrance has the old Huguenot, Peter Faneuil, than the old
Englishman, Mr. Middlecott? Ghosts, it is said, have risen from the
grave to reveal wrongs done them by the living; but it needs no ghost
from the grave to prove the proverb about republics.

Bowdoin Street only differs from its kindred, in a certain shady, grave,
old-fogy, fossil aspect, just touched with a pensive solemnity, as if
it thought to itself, "I'm getting old, but I'm highly respectable;
that's a comfort." It has, moreover, a dejected, injured air, as if
it brooded solemnly on the wrong done to it by taking away its original
name and calling it Bowdoin; but as if, being a very conservative street,
it was resolved to keep a cautious silence on the subject, lest the
Union should go to pieces. Sometimes it wears a profound and mysterious
look, as if it could tell something if it had a mind to, but thought
it best not. Something of the ghost of its father--it was the only child
he ever had!--walking there all the night, pausing at the corners to
look up at the signs, which bear a strange name, and wringing his
ghostly hands in lamentation at the wrong done his memory! Rumor told
it in a whisper, many years ago. Perhaps it was believed by a few of
the oldest inhabitants of the city; but the highly respectable quarter
never heard of it, and, if it had, would not have been bribed to believe
it, by any sum. Some one had said that some very old person had seen
a phantom there. Nobody knew who some one was. Nobody knew who the very
old person was. Nobody knew who had seen it, nor when, nor how. The
very rumor was spectral.

All this was many years ago. Since then it has been reported that a
ghost was seen there one bitter Christmas eve, two or three years back.
The twilight was already in the street; but the evening lamps were not
yet lighted in the windows, and the roofs and chimney-tops were still
distinct in the last clear light of the dropping day. It was light
enough, however, for one to read easily, from the opposite sidewalk,
"Dr. C. Renton," in black letters, on the silver plate of a door, not
far from the Gothic portal of the Swedenborgian church. Near this door
stood a misty figure, whose sad, spectral eyes floated on vacancy, and
whose long, shadowy white hair lifted like an airy weft in the streaming
wind. That was the ghost! It stood near the door a long time, without
any other than a shuddering motion, as though it felt the searching
blast, which swept furiously from the north up the declivity of the
street, rattling the shutters in its headlong passage. Once or twice,
when a passer-by, muffled warmly from the bitter air, hurried past,
the phantom shrank closer to the wall, till he was gone. Its vague,
mournful face seemed to watch for some one. The twilight darkened
gradually, but it did not flit away. Patiently it kept its piteous look
fixed in one direction,--watching,--watching; and, while the howling
wind swept frantically through the chill air, it still seemed to
shudder in the piercing cold.

A light suddenly kindled in an opposite window. As if touched by a gleam
from the lamp, or as if by some subtle interior illumination, the
spectre became faintly luminous, and a thin smile seemed to quiver over
its features. At the same moment, a strong, energetic figure--Dr.
Renton himself--came in sight, striding down the slope of the pavement
to his own door, his overcoat thrown back, as if the icy air were a
tropical warmth to him, his hat set on the back of his head, and the
loose ends of a 'kerchief about his throat, streaming in the nor'wester.
The wind set up a howl the moment he came in sight, and swept upon him;
and a curious agitation began on the part of the phantom. It glided
rapidly to and fro, and moved in circles, and then, with the same swift,
silent motion, sailed toward him, as if blown thither by the gale. Its
long, thin arms, with something like a pale flame spiring from the tips
of the slender fingers, were stretched out, as in greeting, while the
wan smile played over its face; and when he rushed by, unheedingly,
it made a futile effort to grasp the swinging arms with which he
appeared to buffet back the buffeting gale. Then it glided on by his
side, looking earnestly into his countenance, and moving its pallid
lips with agonized rapidity, as if it said, "Look at me--speak to
me--speak to me--see me!" But he kept his course with unconscious eyes,
and a vexed frown on his forehead betokening an irritated mind. The
light that had shone in the figure of the phantom darkened slowly, till
the form was only a pale shadow. The wind had suddenly lulled, and no
longer lifted its white hair. It still glided on with him, its head
drooping on its breast, and its long arms hanging by its side; but when
he reached the door, it suddenly sprang before him, gazing fixedly into
his eyes, while a convulsive motion flashed over its grief-worn
features, as if it had shrieked out a word. He had his foot on the step
at the moment. With a start, he put his gloved hand to his forehead,
while the vexed look went out quickly on his face. The ghost watched
him breathlessly. But the irritated expression came back to his
countenance more resolutely than before, and he began to fumble in his
pocket for a latch-key, muttering petulantly, "What the devil is the
matter with me now?" It seemed to him that a voice had cried clearly,
yet as from afar, "Charles Renton!"--his own name. He had heard it in
his startled mind; but then, he knew he was in a highly wrought state
of nervous excitement, and his medical science, with that knowledge
for a basis, could have reared a formidable fortress of explanation
against any phenomenon, were it even more wonderful than this.

He entered the house; kicked the door to; pulled off his overcoat;
wrenched off his outer 'kerchief; slammed them on a branch of the
clothes-tree; banged his hat on top of them; wheeled about; pushed in
the door of his library; strode in, and, leaving the door ajar, threw
himself into an easy-chair, and sat there in the fire-reddened dusk,
with his white brows knit, and his arms tightly locked on his breast.
The ghost had followed him, sadly, and now stood motionless in a corner
of the room, its spectral hands crossed on its bosom, and its white
locks drooping down!

It was evident Dr. Renton was in a bad humor. The very library caught
contagion from him, and became grouty and sombre. The furniture was
grim and sullen and sulky; it made ugly shadows on the carpet and on
the wall, in allopathic quantity; it took the red gleams from the fire
on its polished surfaces in homoeopathic globules, and got no good from
them. The fire itself peered out sulkily from the black bars of the
grate, and seemed resolved not to burn the fresh deposit of black coals
at the top, but to take this as a good time to remember that those coals
had been bought in the summer at five dollars a ton,--under price, mind
you,--when poor people, who cannot buy at advantage, but must get their
firing in the winter, would then have given nine or ten dollars for
them. And so (glowered the fire), I am determined to think of that
outrage, and not to light them, but to go out myself, directly! And
the fire got into such a spasm of glowing indignation over the injury,
that it lit a whole tier of black coals with a series of little
explosions, before it could cool down, and sent a crimson gleam over
the moody figure of its owner in the easy-chair, and over the solemn
furniture, and into the shadowy corner filled by the ghost.

The spectre did not move when Dr. Renton arose and lit the chandelier.
It stood there, still and gray, in the flood of mellow light. The
curtains were drawn, and the twilight without had deepened into
darkness. The fire was now burning in despite of itself, fanned by the
wintry gusts, which found their way down the chimney. Dr. Renton stood
with his back to it, his hands behind him, his bold white forehead
shaded by a careless lock of black hair, and knit sternly; and the same
frown in his handsome, open, searching dark eyes. Tall and strong, with
an erect port, and broad, firm shoulders, high, resolute features, a
commanding figure garbed in aristocratic black, and not yet verging
into the proportions of obesity,--take him for all in all, a very fine
and favorable specimen of the solid men of Boston. And seen in contrast
(oh! could he but have known it!) with the attenuated figure of the
poor, dim ghost!

Hark! a very light foot on the stairs,--a rich rustle of silks.
Everything still again,--Dr. Renton looking fixedly, with great
sternness, at the half-open door, whence a faint, delicious perfume
floats into the library. Somebody there, for certain. Somebody peeping
in with very bright, arch eyes. Dr. Renton knew it, and prepared to
maintain his ill-humor against the invader. His face became triply
armed with severity for the encounter. That's Netty, I know, he thought.
His daughter. So it was. In she bounded. Bright little Netty! Gay little
Netty! A dear and sweet little creature, to be sure, with a delicate
and pleasant beauty of face and figure, it needed no costly silks to
grace or heighten. There she stood. Not a word from her merry lips,
but a smile which stole over all the solitary grimness of the library,
and made everything better, and brighter, and fairer, in a minute. It
floated down into the cavernous humor of Dr. Renton, and the gloom began
to lighten directly,--though he would not own it, nor relax a single
feature. But the wan ghost in the corner lifted its head to look at
her, and slowly brightened as to something worthy a spirit's love, and
a dim phantom's smiles. Now then, Dr. Renton! the lines are drawn, and
the foe is coming. Be martial, sir, as when you stand in the ranks of
the Cadets on training-days! Steady, and stand the charge! So he did.
He kept an inflexible front as she glided toward him, softly, slowly,
with her bright eyes smiling into his, and doing dreadful execution.
Then she put her white arms around his neck, laid her dear, fair head
on his breast, and peered up archly into his stern visage. Spite of
himself, he could not keep the fixed lines on his face from breaking
confusedly into a faint smile. Somehow or other, his hands came from
behind him, and rested on her head. There! That's all. Dr. Renton
surrendered at discretion! One of the solid men of Boston was taken
after a desperate struggle,--internal, of course,--for he kissed her,
and said, "Dear little Netty!" and so she was.

The phantom watched her with a smile, and wavered and brightened as
if about to glide to her; but it grew still, and remained.

"Pa in the sulks to-night?" she asked, in the most winning, playful,
silvery voice.

"Pa's a fool," he answered in his deep chest-tones, with a vexed
good-humor; "and you know it."

"What's the matter with pa? What makes him be a great bear? Papa-sy,
dear," she continued, stroking his face with her little hands, and
patting him, very much as Beauty might have patted the Beast after she
fell in love with him; or as if he were a great baby. In fact, he began
to look then as if he were.

"Matter? Oh! everything's the matter, little Netty. The world goes
round too fast. My boots pinch. Somebody stole my umbrella last year.
And I've got a headache." He concluded this fanciful abstract of his
grievances by putting his arms around her, and kissing her again. Then
he sat down in the easy-chair, and took her fondly on his knee.

"Pa's got a headache! It is t-o-o bad, so it is," she continued in the
same soothing, winning way, caressing his brow with her tiny hands.
"It's a horrid shame, so it is! P-o-o-r pa. Where does it ache, papa-sy,
dear? In the forehead? Cerebrum or cerebellum, papa-sy? Occiput or
sinciput, deary?"

"Bah! you little quiz," he replied, laughing and pinching her cheek,
"none of your nonsense! And what are you dressed up in this way for,
to-night? Silks, and laces, and essences, and what not! Where are you
going, fairy?"

"Going out with mother for the evening, Dr. Renton," she replied
briskly; "Mrs. Larrabee's party, papa-sy. Christmas eve, you know. And
what are you going to give me for a present, to-morrow, pa-sy?"

"To-morrow will tell, little Netty."

"Good! And what are you going to give me, so that I can make _my_
presents, Beary?"

"Ugh!" But he growled it in fun, and had a pocket-book out from his
breast-pocket directly after. Fives--tens--twenties--fifties--all
crisp, and nice, and new bank-notes.

"Will that be enough, Netty?" He held up a twenty. The smiling face
nodded assent, and the bright eyes twinkled.

"No, it won't. But _that_ will," he continued, giving her a fifty.

"Fifty dollars, Globe Bank, Boston!" exclaimed Netty, making great
eyes at him. "But we must take all we can get, pa-sy; mustn't we? It's
too much, though. Thank you all the same, pa-sy, nevertheless." And
she kissed him, and put the bill in a little bit of a portemonnaie with
a gay laugh.

"Well done, I declare!" he said, smilingly. "But you're going to the
party?"

"Pretty soon, pa."

He made no answer; but sat smiling at her. The phantom watched them,
silently.

"What made pa so cross and grim, to-night? Tell Netty--do," she
pleaded.

"Oh! because;--everything went wrong with me, to-day. There." And he
looked as sulky, at that moment, as he ever did in his life.

"No, no, pa-sy; that won't do. I want the particulars," continued Netty,
shaking her head, smilingly.

"Particulars! Well, then, Miss Nathalie Renton," he began, with mock
gravity, "your professional father is losing some of his oldest
patients. Everybody is in ruinous good health; and the grass is growing
in the graveyards."

"In the winter time, papa?--smart grass!"

"Not that I want practice," he went on, getting into soliloquy; "or
patients, either. A rich man who took to the profession simply for the
love of it, can't complain on that score. But to have an interloping
she-doctor take a family I've attended ten years, out of my hands, and
to hear the hodge-podge gabble about physiological laws, and woman's
rights, and no taxation without representation, they learn from
her,--well, it's too bad!"

"Is that all, pa-sy? Seems to me _I_'d like to vote, too," was Netty's
piquant rejoinder.

"Hoh! I'll warrant," growled her father. "Hope you'll vote the Whig
ticket, Netty, when you get your rights."

"Will the Union be dissolved, then, pa-sy,--when the Whigs are beaten?"

"Bah! you little plague," he growled, with a laugh. "But, then, you
women don't know anything about politics. So, there. As I was saying,
everything went wrong with me to-day. I've been speculating in railroad
stock, and singed my fingers. Then, old Tom Hollis outbid me to-day,
at Leonard's, on a rare medical work I had set my eyes upon having.
Confound him! Then, again, two of my houses are tenantless, and there
are folks in two others that won't pay their rent, and I can't get them
out. Out they'll go, though, or I'll know why. And, to crown all--um-m.
And I wish the Devil had him! as he will."

"Had who, Beary-papa?"

"Him. I'll tell you. The street-floor of one of my houses in Hanover
Street lets for an oyster-room. They keep a bar there, and sell liquor.
Last night they had a grand row,--a drunken fight, and one man was
stabbed, it's thought fatally."

"O father!" Netty's bright eyes dilated with horror.

"Yes. I hope he won't die. At any rate, there's likely to be a stir
about the matter, and my name will be called into question, then, as
I'm the landlord. And folks will make a handle of it, and there'll be
the deuce to pay, generally."

He got back the stern, vexed frown, to his face, with the anticipation,
and beat the carpet with his foot. The ghost still watched from the
angle of the room, and seemed to darken, while its features looked
troubled.

"But, father," said Netty, a little tremulously, "I wouldn't let my
houses to such people. It's not right; is it? Why, it's horrid to think
of men getting drunk, and killing each other!"

Dr. Renton rubbed his hair into disorder, with vexation, and then
subsided into solemnity.

"I know it's not exactly right, Netty; but I can't help it. As I said
before, I wish the Devil had that barkeeper. I ought to have ordered
him out long ago, and then this wouldn't have happened. I've increased
his rent twice, hoping to get rid of him so; but he pays without a
murmur; and what am I to do? You see, he was an occupant when the
building came into my hands, and I let him stay. He pays me a good,
round rent; and, apart from his cursed traffic, he's a good tenant.
What can I do? It's a good thing for him, and it's a good thing for
me, pecuniarily. Confound him! Here's a nice rumpus brewing!"

"Dear pa, I'm afraid it's not a good thing for you," said Netty,
caressing him and smoothing his tumbled hair. "Nor for him either. I
wouldn't mind the rent he pays you. I'd order him out. It's bad money.
There's blood on it."

She had grown pale, and her voice quivered. The phantom glided over
to them, and laid its spectral hand upon her forehead. The shadowy eyes
looked from under the misty hair into the doctor's face, and the pale
lips moved as if speaking the words heard only in the silence of his
heart,--"Hear her, hear her!"

"I must think of it," resumed Dr. Renton, coldly. "I'm resolved, at
all events, to warn him that if anything of this kind occurs again,
he must quit at once. I dislike to lose a profitable tenant; for no
other business would bring me the sum his does. Hang it, everybody does
the best he can with his property,--why shouldn't I?"

The ghost, standing near them, drooped its head again on its breast,
and crossed its arms. Netty was silent. Dr. Renton continued,
petulantly,--

"A precious set of people I manage to get into my premises. There's
a woman hires a couple of rooms for a dwelling, overhead, in that same
building, and for three months I haven't got a cent from her. I know
these people's tricks. Her month's notice expires to-morrow, and out
she goes."

"Poor creature!" sighed Netty.

He knit his brow, and beat the carpet with his foot, in vexation.

"Perhaps she can't pay you, pa," trembled the sweet, silvery voice.
"You wouldn't turn her out in this cold winter, when she can't pay
you,--would you, pa?"

"Why don't she get another house, and swindle some one else?" he
replied, testily; "there's plenty of rooms to let."

"Perhaps she can't find one, pa," answered Netty.

"Humbug!" retorted her father; "I know better."

"Pa, dear, if I were you, I'd turn out that rumseller, and let the poor
woman stay a little longer; just a little, pa."

"Sha'n't do it. Hah! that would be scattering money out of both pockets.
Sha'n't do it. Out she shall go; and as for him,--well, he'd better
turn over a new leaf. There, let us leave the subject, darling. It vexes
me. How did we contrive to get into this train? Bah!"

He drew her closer to him, and kissed her forehead. She sat quietly,
with her head on his shoulder thinking very gravely.

"I feel queerly to-day, little Netty," he began, after a short pause.
"My nerves are all high-strung with the turn matters have taken."

"How is it, papa? The headache?" she answered.

"Y-e-s--n-o--not exactly; I don't know," he said dubiously; then, in
an absent way, "it was that letter set me to think of him all day, I
suppose."

"Why, pa, I declare," cried Netty, starting up, "if I didn't forget
all about it, and I came down expressly to give it to you! Where is
it? Oh! here it is."

She drew from her pocket an old letter, faded to a pale yellow, and
gave it to him. The ghost started suddenly.

"Why, bless my soul! it's the very letter! Where did you get that,
Nathalie?" asked Dr. Renton.

"I found it on the stairs after dinner, pa."

"Yes, I do remember taking it up with me; I must have dropped it," he
answered, musingly, gazing at the superscription. The ghost was gazing
at it, too, with startled interest.

"What beautiful writing it is, pa," murmured the young girl. "Who wrote
it to you? It looks yellow enough to have been written a long time
since."

"Fifteen years ago, Netty. When you were a baby. And the hand that wrote
it has been cold for all that time."

He spoke with a solemn sadness, as if memory lingered with the heart
of fifteen years ago, on an old grave. The dim figure by his side had
bowed its head, and all was still.

"It is strange," he resumed, speaking vacantly and slowly, "I have not
thought of him for so long a time, and to-day--especially this
evening--I have felt as if he were constantly near me. It is a singular
feeling."

He put his left hand to his forehead, and mused,--his right clasped
his daughter's shoulder. The phantom slowly raised its head, and gazed
at him with a look of unutterable tenderness.

"Who was he, father?" she asked with a hushed voice.

"A young man, an author, a poet. He had been my dearest friend, when
we were boys; and, though I lost sight of him for years,--he led an
erratic life,--we were friends when he died. Poor, poor fellow! Well,
he is at peace."

The stern voice had saddened, and was almost tremulous. The spectral
form was still.

"How did he die, father?"

"A long story, darling," he replied, gravely, "and a sad one. He was
very poor and proud. He was a genius,--that is, a person without an
atom of practical talent. His parents died, the last, his mother, when
he was near manhood. I was in college then. Thrown upon the world, he
picked up a scanty subsistence with his pen, for a time. I could have
got him a place in the counting-house, but he would not take it; in
fact, he wasn't fit for it. You can't harness Pegasus to the cart, you
know. Besides, he despised mercantile life, without reason, of course;
but he was always notional. His love of literature was one of the rocks
he foundered on. He wasn't successful; his best compositions were too
delicate, fanciful, to please the popular taste; and then he was full
of the radical and fanatical notions which infected so many people at
that time in New England, and infect them now, for that matter; and
his sublimated, impracticable ideas and principles, which he kept till
his dying day, and which, I confess, alienated me from him, always
staved off his chances of success. Consequently, he never rose above
the drudgery of some employment on newspapers. Then he was terribly
passionate, not without cause, I allow; but it wasn't wise. What I mean
is this: if he saw, or if he fancied he saw, any wrong or injury done
to any one, it was enough to throw him into a frenzy; he would get black
in the face and absolutely shriek out his denunciations of the
wrong-doer. I do believe he would have visited his own brother with the
most unsparing invective, if that brother had laid a harming finger on a
street-beggar, or a colored man, or a poor person of any kind. I don't
blame the feeling; though with a man like him it was very apt to be
a false or mistaken one; but, at any rate, its exhibition wasn't
sensible. Well, as I was saying, he buffeted about in this world a long
time, poorly paid, fed, and clad; taking more care of other people than
he did of himself. Then mental suffering, physical exposure, and want
killed him."

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