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Famous Modern Ghost Stories by Various

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Soon she developed delicate spiritual needs to which her simple parents
were strangers. From long truancies in the woods she would come home
laden with mysterious flowers, and soon she came to ask for books and
pictures and music, of which the poor souls that had given her birth had
never heard. Finally she had her way, and went to study at a certain
fashionable college; and there the brief romance of her life began.
There she met a romantic young Frenchman who had read Ronsard to her and
written her those picturesque letters I had found in the old mahogany
work-box. And after a while the young Frenchman had gone back to France,
and the letters had ceased. Month by month went by, and at length one
day, as she sat wistful at the window, looking out at the foolish sunlit
road, a message came. He was dead. That headstone in the village
churchyard tells the rest. She was very young to die--scarcely nineteen
years; and the dead who have died young, with all their hopes and dreams
still like unfolded buds within their hearts, do not rest so quietly in
the grave as those who have gone through the long day from morning until
evening and are only too glad to sleep.

* * * * *

Next day I took the little box to a quiet corner of the orchard, and
made a little pyre of fragrant boughs--for so I interpreted the wish of
that young, unquiet spirit--and the beautiful words are now safe, taken
up again into the aerial spaces from which they came.

But since then the birds sing no more little French songs in my old
orchard.



The Bowmen

BY ARTHUR MACHEN

From _The Bowmen_, by Arthur Machen. Published in England by
Simpkin, Marshall, Hamilton, Kent & Co., Ltd., and in America by
G.P. Putnam's Sons. By permission of the publishers and Arthur
Machen.


It was during the Retreat of the Eighty Thousand, and the authority of
the Censorship is sufficient excuse for not being more explicit. But it
was on the most awful day of that awful time, on the day when ruin and
disaster came so near that their shadow fell over London far away; and,
without any certain news, the hearts of men failed within them and grew
faint; as if the agony of the army in the battlefield had entered into
their souls.


On this dreadful day, then, when three hundred thousand men in arms with
all their artillery swelled like a flood against the little English
company, there was one point above all other points in our battle line
that was for a time in awful danger, not merely of defeat, but of utter
annihilation. With the permission of the Censorship and of the military
expert, this corner may, perhaps, be described as a salient, and if this
angle were crushed and broken, then the English force as a whole would
be shattered, the Allied left would be turned, and Sedan would
inevitably follow.

All the morning the German guns had thundered and shrieked against this
corner, and against the thousand or so of men who held it. The men joked
at the shells, and found funny names for them, and had bets about them,
and greeted them with scraps of music-hall songs. But the shells came on
and burst, and tore good Englishmen limb from limb, and tore brother
from brother, and as the heat of the day increased so did the fury of
that terrific cannonade. There was no help, it seemed. The English
artillery was good, but there was not nearly enough of it; it was being
steadily battered into scrap iron.

There comes a moment in a storm at sea when people say to one another,
"It is at its worst; it can blow no harder," and then there is a blast
ten times more fierce than any before it. So it was in these British
trenches.

There were no stouter hearts in the whole world than the hearts of these
men; but even they were appalled as this seven-times-heated hell of the
German cannonade fell upon them and overwhelmed them and destroyed them.
And at this very moment they saw from their trenches that a tremendous
host was moving against their lines. Five hundred of the thousand
remained, and as far as they could see the German infantry was pressing
on against them, column upon column, a gray world of men, ten thousand
of them, as it appeared afterwards.

There was no hope at all. They shook hands, some of them. One man
improvised a new version of the battle-song, "Good-by, good-by to
Tipperary," ending with "And we shan't get there." And they all went on
firing steadily. The officer pointed out that such an opportunity for
high-class fancy shooting might never occur again; the Tipperary
humorist asked, "What price Sidney Street?" And the few machine guns did
their best. But everybody knew it was of no use. The dead gray bodies
lay in companies and battalions, as others came on and on and on, and
they swarmed and stirred, and advanced from beyond and beyond.

"World without end. Amen," said one of the British soldiers with some
irrelevance as he took aim and fired. And then he remembered--he says he
cannot think why or wherefore--a queer vegetarian restaurant in London
where he had once or twice eaten eccentric dishes of cutlets made of
lentils and nuts that pretended to be steak. On all the plates in this
restaurant there was printed a figure of St. George in blue, with the
motto, "_Adsit Anglis Sanctus Georgius_"--"May St. George be a present
help to the English." This soldier happened to know Latin and other
useless things, and now, as he fired at his man in the gray advancing
mass--three hundred yards away--he uttered the pious vegetarian motto.
He went on firing to the end, and at last Bill on his right had to clout
him cheerfully over the head to make him stop, pointing out as he did so
that the King's ammunition cost money and was not lightly to be wasted
in drilling funny patterns into dead Germans.

For as the Latin scholar uttered his invocation he felt something
between a shudder and an electric shock pass through his body. The roar
of the battle died down in his ears to a gentle murmur; instead of it,
he says, he heard a great voice and a shout louder than a thunder-peal
crying, "Array, array, array!"

His heart grew hot as a burning coal, it grew cold as ice within him, as
it seemed to him that a tumult of voices answered to his summons. He
heard, or seemed to hear, thousands shouting: "St. George! St. George!"

"Ha! Messire, ha! sweet Saint, grant us good deliverance!"

"St. George for merry England!"

"Harow! Harow! Monseigneur St. George, succor us!"

"Ha! St. George! Ha! St. George! a long bow and a strong bow."

"Heaven's Knight, aid us!"

And as the soldier heard these voices he saw before him, beyond the
trench, a long line of shapes, with a shining about them. They were like
men who drew the bow, and with another shout, their cloud of arrows flew
singing and tingling through the air towards the German hosts.

The other men in the trench were firing all the while. They had no hope;
but they aimed just as if they had been shooting at Bisley.

Suddenly one of them lifted up his voice in the plainest English.

"Gawd help us!" he bellowed to the man next to him, "but we're blooming
marvels! Look at those gray ... gentlemen, look at them! D'ye see them?
They're not going down in dozens nor in 'undreds; it's thousands, it is.
Look! look! there's a regiment gone while I'm talking to ye."

"Shut it!" the other soldier bellowed, taking aim, "what are ye gassing
about?"

But he gulped with astonishment even as he spoke, for, indeed, the gray
men were falling by the thousands. The English could hear the guttural
scream of the German officers, the crackle of their revolvers as they
shot the reluctant; and still line after line crashed to the earth.

All the while the Latin-bred soldier heard the cry:

"Harow! Harow! Monseigneur, dear Saint, quick to our aid! St. George
help us!"

"High Chevalier, defend us!"

The singing arrows fled so swift and thick that they darkened the air,
the heathen horde melted from before them.

"More machine guns!" Bill yelled to Tom.

"Don't hear them," Tom yelled back.

"But, thank God, anyway; they've got it in the neck."

In fact, there were ten thousand dead German soldiers left before that
salient of the English army, and consequently there was no Sedan. In
Germany, a country ruled by scientific principles, the Great General
Staff decided that the contemptible English must have employed shells
containing an unknown gas of a poisonous nature, as no wounds were
discernible on the bodies of the dead German soldiers. But the man who
knew what nuts tasted like when they called themselves steak knew also
that St. George had brought his Agincourt Bowmen to help the English.



A Ghost

BY GUY DE MAUPASSANT

Translated for this volume by M. Charles Sommer.


We were speaking of sequestration, alluding to a recent lawsuit. It was
at the close of a friendly evening in a very old mansion in the Rue de
Grenelle, and each of the guests had a story to tell, which he assured
us was true.

Then the old Marquis de la Tour-Samuel, eighty-two years of age, rose
and came forward to lean on the mantelpiece. He told the following story
in his slightly quavering voice.

"I, also, have witnessed a strange thing--so strange that it has been
the nightmare of my life. It happened fifty-six years ago, and yet there
is not a month when I do not see it again in my dreams. From that day I
have borne a mark, a stamp of fear,--do you understand?

"Yes, for ten minutes I was a prey to terror, in such a way that ever
since a constant dread has remained in my soul. Unexpected sounds chill
me to the heart; objects which I can ill distinguish in the evening
shadows make me long to flee. I am afraid at night.

"No! I would not have owned such a thing before reaching my present
age. But now I may tell everything. One may fear imaginary dangers at
eighty-two years old. But before actual danger I have never turned back,
_mesdames_.

"That affair so upset my mind, filled me with such a deep, mysterious
unrest that I never could tell it. I kept it in that inmost part, that
corner where we conceal our sad, our shameful secrets, all the
weaknesses of our life which cannot be confessed.

"I will tell you that strange happening just as it took place, with no
attempt to explain it. Unless I went mad for one short hour it must be
explainable, though. Yet I was not mad, and I will prove it to you.
Imagine what you will. Here are the simple facts:

"It was in 1827, in July. I was quartered with my regiment in Rouen.

"One day, as I was strolling on the quay, I came across a man I believed
I recognized, though I could not place him with certainty. I
instinctively went more slowly, ready to pause. The stranger saw my
impulse, looked at me, and fell into my arms.

"It was a friend of my younger days, of whom I had been very fond. He
seemed to have become half a century older in the five years since I had
seen him. His hair was white, and he stooped in his walk, as if he were
exhausted. He understood my amazement and told me the story of his life.

"A terrible event had broken him down. He had fallen madly in love with
a young girl and married her in a kind of dreamlike ecstasy. After a
year of unalloyed bliss and unexhausted passion, she had died suddenly
of heart disease, no doubt killed by love itself.

"He had left the country on the very day of her funeral, and had come to
live in his hotel at Rouen. He remained there, solitary and desperate,
grief slowly mining him, so wretched that he constantly thought of
suicide.

"'As I thus came across you again,' he said, 'I shall ask a great favor
of you. I want you to go to my chateau and get some papers I urgently
need. They are in the writing-desk of my room, of _our_ room. I cannot
send a servant or a lawyer, as the errand must be kept private. I want
absolute silence.

"'I shall give you the key of the room, which I locked carefully myself
before leaving, and the key to the writing-desk. I shall also give you a
note for the gardener, who will let you in.

"'Come to breakfast with me to-morrow, and we'll talk the matter over.'

"I promised to render him that slight service. It would mean but a
pleasant excursion for me, his home not being more than twenty-five
miles from Rouen. I could go there in an hour on horseback.

"At ten o'clock the next day I was with him. We breakfasted alone
together, yet he did not utter more than twenty words. He asked me to
excuse him. The thought that I was going to visit the room where his
happiness lay shattered, upset him, he said. Indeed, he seemed
perturbed, worried, as if some mysterious struggle were taking place in
his soul.

"At last he explained exactly what I was to do. It was very simple. I
was to take two packages of letters and some papers, locked in the first
drawer at the right of the desk of which I had the key. He added:

"'I need not ask you not to glance at them.'

"I was almost hurt by his words, and told him so, rather sharply. He
stammered:

"'Forgive me. I suffer so much!'

"And tears came to his eyes.

"I left about one o'clock to accomplish my errand.

"The day was radiant, and I rushed through the meadows, listening to the
song of the larks, and the rhythmical beat of my sword on my
riding-boots.

"Then I entered the forest, and I set my horse to walking. Branches of
the trees softly caressed my face, and now and then I would catch a leaf
between my teeth and bite it with avidity, full of the joy of life, such
as fills you without reason, with a tumultuous happiness almost
indefinable, a kind of magical strength.

"As I neared the house I took out the letter for the gardener, and noted
with surprise that it was sealed. I was so amazed and so annoyed that I
almost turned back without fulfilling my mission. Then I thought that I
should thus display over-sensitiveness and bad taste. My friend might
have sealed it unconsciously, worried as he was.

"The manor looked as though it had been deserted the last twenty years.
The gate, wide-open and rotten, held, one wondered how. Grass filled the
paths; you could not tell the flower-beds from the lawn.

"At the noise I made kicking a shutter, an old man came out from a
side-door and was apparently amazed to see me there. I dismounted from
my horse and gave him the letter. He read it once or twice, turned it
over, looked at me with suspicion, and asked:

"'Well, what do you want?'

"I answered sharply:

"'You must know it as you have read your master's orders. I want to get
in the house.'

"He appeared overwhelmed. He said:

"'So--you are going in--in his room?'

"I was getting impatient.

"'_Parbleu!_ Do you intend to question me, by chance?'

"He stammered:

"'No--monsieur--only--it has not been opened since--since the death. If
you will wait five minutes, I will go in to see whether----'

"I interrupted angrily:

"'See here, are you joking? You can't go in that room, as I have the
key!'

"He no longer knew what to say.

"'Then, monsieur, I will show you the way.'

"'Show me the stairs and leave me alone. I can find it without your
help.'

"'But--still--monsieur----'

"Then I lost my temper.

"'Now be quiet! Else you'll be sorry!'

"I roughly pushed him aside and went into the house.

"I first went through the kitchen, then crossed two small rooms occupied
by the man and his wife. From there I stepped into a large hall. I went
up the stairs, and I recognized the door my friend had described to me.

"I opened it with ease and went in.

"The room was so dark that at first I could not distinguish anything. I
paused, arrested by that moldy and stale odor peculiar to deserted and
condemned rooms, of dead rooms. Then gradually my eyes grew accustomed
to the gloom, and I saw rather clearly a great room in disorder, a bed
without sheets having still its mattresses and pillows, one of which
bore the deep print of an elbow or a head, as if someone had just been
resting on it.

"The chairs seemed all in confusion. I noticed that a door, probably
that of a closet, had remained ajar.

"I first went to the window and opened it to get some light, but the
hinges of the outside shutters were so rusted that I could not loosen
them.

"I even tried to break them with my sword, but did not succeed. As those
fruitless attempts irritated me, and as my eyes were by now adjusted to
the dim light, I gave up hope of getting more light and went toward the
writing-desk.

"I sat down in an arm-chair, folded back the top, and opened the drawer.
It was full to the edge. I needed but three packages, which I knew how
to distinguish, and I started looking for them.

"I was straining my eyes to decipher the inscriptions, when I thought I
heard, or rather felt a rustle behind me. I took no notice, thinking a
draft had lifted some curtain. But a minute later, another movement,
almost indistinct, sent a disagreeable little shiver over my skin. It
was so ridiculous to be moved thus even so slightly, that I would not
turn round, being ashamed. I had just discovered the second package I
needed, and was on the point of reaching for the third, when a great and
sorrowful sigh, close to my shoulder, made me give a mad leap two yards
away. In my spring I had turned round, my hand on the hilt of my sword,
and surely had I not felt that, I should have fled like a coward.

"A tall woman, dressed in white, was facing me, standing behind the
chair in which I had sat a second before.

"Such a shudder ran through me that I almost fell back! Oh, no one who
has not felt them can understand those gruesome and ridiculous terrors!
The soul melts; your heart seems to stop; your whole body becomes limp
as a sponge, and your innermost parts seem collapsing.

"I do not believe in ghosts; and yet I broke down before the hideous
fear of the dead; and I suffered, oh, I suffered more in a few minutes,
in the irresistible anguish of supernatural dread, than I have suffered
in all the rest of my life!

"If she had not spoken, I might have died. But she did speak; she spoke
in a soft and plaintive voice which set my nerves vibrating. I could not
say that I regained my self-control. No, I was past knowing what I did;
but the kind of pride I have in me, as well as a military pride, helped
me to maintain, almost in spite of myself, an honorable countenance. I
was making a pose, a pose for myself, and for her, for her, whatever she
was, woman, or phantom. I realized this later, for at the time of the
apparition, I could think of nothing. I was afraid.

"She said:

"'Oh, you can be of great help to me, monsieur!'

"I tried to answer, but I was unable to utter one word. A vague sound
came from my throat.

"She continued:

"'Will you? You can save me, cure me. I suffer terribly. I always
suffer. I suffer, oh, I suffer!'

"And she sat down gently in my chair. She looked at me.

"'Will you?'

"I nodded my head, being still paralyzed.

"Then she handed me a woman's comb of tortoise-shell, and murmured:

"'Comb my hair! Oh, comb my hair! That will cure me. Look at my
head--how I suffer! And my hair--how it hurts!'

"Her loose hair, very long, very black, it seemed to me, hung over the
back of the chair, touching the floor.

"Why did I do it? Why did I, shivering, accept that comb, and why did I
take between my hands her long hair, which left on my skin a ghastly
impression of cold, as if I had handled serpents? I do not know.

"That feeling still clings about my fingers, and I shiver when I recall
it.

"I combed her, I handled, I know not how, that hair of ice. I bound and
unbound it; I plaited it as one plaits a horse's mane. She sighed, bent
her head, seemed happy.

"Suddenly she said, 'Thank you!' tore the comb from my hands, and fled
through the door which I had noticed was half opened.

"Left alone, I had for a few seconds the hazy feeling one feels in
waking up from a nightmare. Then I recovered myself. I ran to the window
and broke the shutters by my furious assault.

"A stream of light poured in. I rushed to the door through which that
being had gone. I found it locked and immovable.

"Then a fever of flight seized on me, a panic, the true panic of battle.
I quickly grasped the three packages of letters from the open desk; I
crossed the room running, I took the steps of the stairway four at a
time. I found myself outside, I don't know how, and seeing my horse
close by, I mounted in one leap and left at a full gallop.

"I didn't stop till I reached Rouen and drew up in front of my house.
Having thrown the reins to my orderly, I flew to my room and locked
myself in to think.

"Then for an hour I asked myself whether I had not been the victim of an
hallucination. Certainly I must have had one of those nervous shocks,
one of those brain disorders such as give rise to miracles, to which the
supernatural owes its strength.

"And I had almost concluded that it was a vision, an illusion of my
senses, when I came near to the window. My eyes by chance looked down.
My tunic was covered with hairs, long woman's hairs which had entangled
themselves around the buttons!

"I took them off one by one and threw them out of the window with
trembling fingers.

"I then called my orderly. I felt too perturbed, too moved, to go and
see my friend on that day. Besides, I needed to think over what I should
tell him.

"I had his letters delivered to him. He gave a receipt to the soldier.
He inquired after me and was told that I was not well. I had had a
sunstroke, or something. He seemed distressed.

"I went to see him the next day, early in the morning, bent on telling
him the truth. He had gone out the evening before and had not come
back.

"I returned the same day, but he had not been seen. I waited a week. He
did not come back. I notified the police. They searched for him
everywhere, but no one could find any trace of his passing or of his
retreat.

"A careful search was made in the deserted manor. No suspicious clue was
discovered.

"There was no sign that a woman had been concealed there.

"The inquest gave no result, and so the search went no further.

"And in fifty-six years I have learned nothing more. I never found out
the truth."

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