Aunt Jane's Nieces on the Ranch

CHAPTER XI – THE MAJOR ENCOUNTERS THE GHOST

Ascending once more to the library the weary watchers resumed their former attitudes of waiting, as patiently as they might, for the coming of the day. Uncle John looked at his watch and found it was only a little after two o’clock. The minutes seemed hours to-night.

Suddenly a tremendous shriek rent the night, a shriek so wild and blood-curdling in its intensity that they sprang up and clung to each other in horror. While they stood motionless and terror-stricken there came a thump! – thump! – as of some heavy object tumbling down the three or four steps leading from the hall to the corridor of the old South Wing, and then the door burst open and Major Doyle – clothed in red-and-white striped pajamas – fairly fell into the library, rolled twice over and came to a stop in a sitting position, from whence he let out another yell that would have shamed a Cherokee Indian and which so startled big Runyon that he held a tenor note at high C for fully a minute – much like the whistle of a peanut roaster – the which was intended for an expression of unqualified terror.

Patsy was the first to recover and kneel beside the poor major, whose eyes were literally bulging from their sockets.

“Oh, Dad – dear Dad! – what is it?” she cried.

The major shuddered and clapped his hands to his eyes. Then he rocked back and forth, moaning dismally, while Patsy clung to his neck, sobbing and nearly distracted.

“Speak, Major!” commanded Arthur.

“A – a ghost!” was the wailing reply.

“A ghost!” echoed the amazed spectators.

“Did you see it?” questioned Uncle John in a trembling voice, as he bent over his brother-in-law.

“See it?” shouted the major, removing his hands to glare angrily at Mr. Merrick. “How could I see anything in the dark? The room was black as pitch.”

“But you said a ghost.”

“Of course I said a ghost,” retorted the major, querulously, as he rubbed his bare ankle with one hand to soothe a bump. “You don’t have to see a ghost to know it’s there, do you? And this ghost – Oh, Patsy, darling, I can’t say it! – it’s too horrible.”

Again a fit of shuddering seized him and he covered his eyes anew and rocked his body back and forth while he maintained his seat upon the floor. His legs were spread wide apart and he wiggled his big toes convulsively.

Beth asked with bated breath:

“Did you hear the ghost, then, Major?”

“Um! I heard it,” he moaned. “And it’s the end of all – the destroyer of our hopes – the harbinger of despair!”

“Look here, Major,” said Uncle John desperately, “be a man, and tell us what you mean.”

“It – it was baby – baby Jane!”

Arthur sobbed and dropped his head upon the table. Rudolph groaned. Runyon swore softly, but with an accent that did not seem very wicked. Uncle John stared hard at the major.

“You’re an ass,” he said. “You’ve had a nightmare.”

The major could not bear such an aspersion, even under the trying circumstances. He scrambled to his feet, this time trembling with indignant anger, and roared:

“I tell you I heard baby – baby Jane – and she was crying! Don’t I know? Don’t I know our baby’s voice?”

Arthur leaped to his feet, a resolute expression upon his face. Instantly they all turned and followed him from the room. Into the hall, up the steps and through the corridor of the South Wing they passed, and just inside the major’s room Rudolph struck a match and lighted a lamp that stood upon the table.

The place was in wild disorder, for when the major leaped from the bed he had dragged the coverings with him and they lay scattered upon the floor. The chair in which he had placed his clothing had been overturned and there was no question that his flight had been a precipitous rout. The casement of the window, set far back in the thick adobe wall, was wide open and the night breeze that came through it made the flame of the lamp flicker weirdly.

Beth proved her courage by bolding crossing the room and closing the window, while the others stood huddled just inside the door. Back of them all was the white face of Major Doyle, a brave soldier who had faced the enemy unflinchingly in many a hard fought battle, but a veritable poltroon in an imaginary ghostly presence.

Scarcely daring to breathe, they stood in tense attitudes listening for a repetition of the baby’s cry. Only an awesome, sustained silence rewarded them.

The major’s open watch upon the table ticked out the minutes – five – ten – fifteen. Then the doctor crept back to the library and quietly resumed his book. Presently Runyon joined him.

“Between you and me, Doc,” said the big fellow, “I don’t take much stock in ghosts.”

“Nor I,” returned Dr. Knox. “Major Doyle is overwrought. His imagination has played him a trick.”

Rudolph Hahn entered and lighted a fresh cigar.

“Curious thing, wasn’t it?” he said.

“No; mere hallucination,” declared the doctor.

“I don’t know about that,” answered the boy. “Seems to me a ghost would do about as a person in life did. The child cried – poor little baby Jane! – and the ghostly wail was heard in the one room in this house that is haunted – the blue room. Perhaps there’s something about the atmosphere of that room that enables those who have passed over to make themselves heard by us who are still in the flesh.”

He was so earnest that the doctor glanced at him thoughtfully over the top of his book.

“It’s the dead of night, and you’re agitated and unreasonable, Hahn. In the morning you’ll be ashamed of your credulity.”

Dolph sat down without reply. His wife came in and sat beside him, taking his hand in hers. In another quarter of an hour back came Uncle John, shivering with the chill of the corridor, and stood warming himself before the grate fire.

“If the major heard the baby,” he said reflectively, “it must be proof that – that something – has happened to the little dear, and – and we must face the worst.”

“Well, it was baby I heard,” asserted the major, who, having hastily donned his clothes, now made his reappearance in the library. “I was lying in a sort of dose when the cry first reached my ears. Then I sat up and listened, and heard it again distinctly, as if little Jane were only two feet away. Then – then – ”

“Then you tested your lungs and made your escape,” added the doctor drily.

“I admit it, sir!” said Major Doyle, haughtily. “Had it been anyone else who encountered the experience – even a pill peddler – he would have fainted.”

In the blue room Patsy and Beth alone remained with Arthur Weldon. Not a sound broke the stillness. When an hour had passed, Patsy said:

“Won’t you go away, Arthur? Beth and I will watch.”

He shook his head.

“You can do no good by staying in this awful place,” pleaded the girl, speaking in a whisper.

“If she – if baby – should be heard again, I – I’d like to be here,” he said pathetically.

Patsy knew he was suffering and the fact aroused her to action.

“Father isn’t a coward,” she remarked, “and either he heard the cry, or he dreamed it. In the latter case it amounts to nothing; but if Jane really cried out, that fact ought to give us an important clue.”

He started at this suggestion, which the girl had uttered without thought, merely to reassure him. Yet now she started herself, struck by the peculiar significance of her random words.

“In what way, Patsy?” asked Beth, calmly.