"My goodness!" gasped Mrs. Townsend. Her face assumed a strange gathering of wrath in the midst of her terror. Suddenly she made a determined move forward, although her husband strove to hold her back.
"You let me be," said she. She moved forward. Then she recoiled and gave a loud shriek. "The wet sheet flapped in my face," she cried. "Take me away, take me away!" Then she fainted. Between them they got her back to the house. "It was awful," she moaned when she came to herself, with the family all around her where she lay on the dining-room floor. "Oh, David, what do you suppose it is?""Nothing at all," replied David Townsend stoutly. He was remarkable for courage and staunch belief in actualities. He was now denying to himself that he had seen anything unusual.
"Oh, there was," moaned his wife.
"I saw something," said George, in a sullen, boyish bass.
The maid sobbed convulsively and so did Adrianna for sympathy.
"We won't talk any about it," said David. "Here, Jane, you drink this hot tea--it will do you good; and Cordelia, you hang out the clothes in our own yard. George, you go and put up the line for her.""The line is out there," said George, with a jerk of his shoulder.
"Are you afraid?"
"No, I ain't," replied the boy resentfully, and went out with a pale face.
After that Cordelia hung the Townsend wash in the yard of their own house, standing always with her back to the vacant lot. As for David Townsend, he spent a good deal of his time in the lot watching the shadows, but he came to no explanation, although he strove to satisfy himself with many.
"I guess the shadows come from the smoke from our chimneys, or else the poplar tree," he said.
"Why do the shadows come on Monday mornings, and no other?"demanded his wife.
David was silent.
Very soon new mysteries arose. One day Cordelia rang the dinner-bell at their usual dinner hour, the same as in Townsend Centre, high noon, and the family assembled. With amazement Adrianna looked at the dishes on the table.
"Why, that's queer!" she said.
"What's queer?" asked her mother.
Cordelia stopped short as she was about setting a tumbler of water beside a plate, and the water slopped over.
"Why," said Adrianna, her face paling, "I--thought there was boiled dinner. I--smelt cabbage cooking.""I knew there would something else come up," gasped Cordelia, leaning hard on the back of Adrianna's chair.
"What do you mean?" asked Mrs. Townsend sharply, but her own face began to assume the shocked pallour which it was so easy nowadays for all their faces to assume at the merest suggestion of anything out of the common.
"I smelt cabbage cooking all the morning up in my room," Adrianna said faintly, "and here's codfish and potatoes for dinner."The Townsends all looked at one another. David rose with an exclamation and rushed out of the room. The others waited tremblingly. When he came back his face was lowering.
"What did you--" Mrs. Townsend asked hesitatingly.
"There's some smell of cabbage out there," he admitted reluctantly.
Then he looked at her with a challenge. "It comes from the next house," he said. "Blows over our house.""Our house is higher."
"I don't care; you can never account for such things.""Cordelia," said Mrs. Townsend, "you go over to the next house and you ask if they've got cabbage for dinner."Cordelia switched out of the room, her mouth set hard. She came back promptly.
"Says they never have cabbage," she announced with gloomy triumph and a conclusive glance at Mr. Townsend. "Their girl was real sassy.""Oh, father, let's move away; let's sell the house," cried Adrianna in a panic-stricken tone.
"If you think I'm going to sell a house that I got as cheap as this one because we smell cabbage in a vacant lot, you're mistaken,"replied David firmly.
"It isn't the cabbage alone," said Mrs. Townsend.
"And a few shadows," added David. "I am tired of such nonsense. Ithought you had more sense, Jane."
"One of the boys at school asked me if we lived in the house next to the vacant lot on Wells Street and whistled when I said 'Yes,'"remarked George.
"Let him whistle," said Mr. Townsend.
After a few hours the family, stimulated by Mr. Townsend's calm, common sense, agreed that it was exceedingly foolish to be disturbed by a mysterious odour of cabbage. They even laughed at themselves.
"I suppose we have got so nervous over those shadows hanging out clothes that we notice every little thing," conceded Mrs. Townsend.
"You will find out some day that that is no more to be regarded than the cabbage," said her husband.
"You can't account for that wet sheet hitting my face," said Mrs.
Townsend, doubtfully.
"You imagined it."
"I FELT it."
That afternoon things went on as usual in the household until nearly four o'clock. Adrianna went downtown to do some shopping.
Mrs. Townsend sat sewing beside the bay window in her room, which was a front one in the third story. George had not got home. Mr.
Townsend was writing a letter in the library. Cordelia was busy in the basement; the twilight, which was coming earlier and earlier every night, was beginning to gather, when suddenly there was a loud crash which shook the house from its foundations. Even the dishes on the sideboard rattled, and the glasses rang like bells.
The pictures on the walls of Mrs. Townsend's room swung out from the walls. But that was not all: every looking-glass in the house cracked simultaneously--as nearly as they could judge--from top to bottom, then shivered into fragments over the floors. Mrs.
Townsend was too frightened to scream. She sat huddled in her chair, gasping for breath, her eyes, rolling from side to side in incredulous terror, turned toward the street. She saw a great black group of people crossing it just in front of the vacant lot.