The pistol in my pocket swung
uselessly against my thigh. I was flustered beyond belief and ashamed
that I was so. "Keep close to me, Frances," I said huskily, as the door swung wide and
a shaft of light fell upon a figure moving rapidly. Mabel was going down
the corridor. Beyond her, in the shadows on the staircase, a second
figure stood beckoning, scarcely visible. "Before they get her! Quick!" was screamed into my ears, and our arms
were about her in the same moment. It was a horrible scene. Not that
Mabel struggled in the least, but that she collapsed as we caught her
and fell with her dead weight, as of a corpse, limp, against us. And her
teeth began again. They continued, even beneath the hand that Frances
clapped upon her lips....

We carried her back into her own bedroom, where she lay down peacefully
enough. It was so soon over.... The rapidity of the whole thing robbed
it of reality almost. It had the swiftness of something remembered
rather than of something witnessed. She slept again so quickly that it
was almost as if we had caught her sleepwalking. I cannot say. I asked
no questions at the time; I have asked none since; and my help was
needed as little as the protection of my pistol. Frances was strangely
competent and collected.... I lingered for some time uselessly by the
door, till at length, looking up with a sigh, she made a sign for me to
go. "I shall wait in your room next door," I whispered, "till you come." But, though going out, I waited in the corridor instead, so as to hear
the faintest call for help. In that dark corridor upstairs I waited, but
not long. It may have been fifteen minutes when Frances reappeared,
locking the door softly behind her. Leaning over the banisters, I saw
her. "I'll go in again about six o'clock," she whispered, "as soon as it gets
light. She is sound asleep now. Please don't wait. If anything happens
I'll call--you might leave your door ajar, perhaps." And she came up, looking like a ghost. But I saw her first safely into bed, and the rest of the night I spent
in an armchair close to my opened door, listening for the slightest
sound. Soon after five o'clock I heard Frances fumbling with the key,
and, peering over the railing again, I waited till she reappeared and
went back into her own room. She closed her door. Evidently she was
satisfied that all was well. Then, and then only, did I go to bed myself, but not to sleep. I could
not get the scene out of my mind, especially that odious detail of it
which I hoped and believed my sister had not seen--the still, dark
figure of the housekeeper waiting on the stairs below--waiting, of
course, for Mabel. Chapter IX


It seems I became a mere spectator after that; my sister's lead was so
assured for one thing, and, for another, the responsibility of leaving
Mabel alone--Frances laid it bodily upon my shoulders--was a little more
than I cared about. Moreover, when we all three met later in the day,
things went on so exactly as before, so absolutely without friction or
distress, that to present a sudden, obvious excuse for cutting our visit
short seemed ill-judged. And on the lowest grounds it would have been
desertion. At any rate, it was beyond my powers, and Frances was quite
firm that she must stay. We therefore did stay. Things that happen in
the night always seem exaggerated and distorted when the sun shines
brightly next morning; no one can reconstruct the terror of a nightmare
afterwards, nor comprehend why it seemed so overwhelming at the time. I slept till ten o'clock, and when I rang for breakfast, a note from my
sister lay upon the tray, its message of counsel couched in a calm and
comforting strain. Mabel, she assured me, was herself again and
remembered nothing of what had happened; there was no need of any
violent measures; I was to treat her exactly as if I knew nothing. "And,
if you don't mind, Bill, let us leave the matter unmentioned between
ourselves as well. Discussion exaggerates; such things are best not
talked about. I'm sorry I disturbed you so unnecessarily; I was stupidly
excited. Please forget all the things I said at the moment." She had
written "nonsense" first instead of "things," then scratched it out. She
wished to convey that hysteria had been abroad in the night, and I
readily gulped the explanation down, though it could not satisfy me in
the smallest degree. There was another week of our visit still, and we stayed it out to the
end without disaster. My desire to leave at times became that frantic
thing, desire to escape; but I controlled it, kept silent, watched and
wondered. Nothing happened. As before, and everywhere, there was no
sequence of development, no connection between cause and effect; and
climax, none whatever. The thing swayed up and down, backwards and
forwards like a great loose curtain in the wind, and I could only
vaguely surmise what caused the draught or why there was a curtain at
all. A novelist might mold the queer material into coherent sequence
that would be interesting but could not be true. It remains, therefore, not a story but a history. Nothing happened. Perhaps my intense dislike of the fall of darkness was due wholly to my
stirred imagination, and perhaps my anger when I learned that Frances
now occupied a bed in our hostess's room was unreasonable. Nerves were
unquestionably on edge. I was forever on the lookout for some event that
should make escape imperative, but yet that never presented itself. I
slept lightly, left my door ajar to catch the slightest sound, even made
stealthy tours of the house below-stairs while everybody dreamed in
their beds. But I discovered nothing; the doors were always locked; I
neither saw the housekeeper again in unreasonable times and places, nor
heard a footstep in the passages and halls. The Noise was never once
repeated. That horrible, ultimate thunder, my intensest dread of all,
lay withdrawn into the abyss whence it had twice arisen. And though in
my thoughts it was sternly denied existence, the great black reason for
the fact afflicted me unbelievably. Since Mabel's fruitless effort to
escape, the Doors kept closed remorselessly. She had failed; they gave
up hope. For this was the explanation that haunted the region of my mind
where feelings stir and hint before they clothe themselves in actual
language. Only I firmly kept it there; it never knew expression. But, if my ears were open, my eyes were opened too, and it were idle to
pretend that I did not notice a hundred details that were capable of
sinister interpretation had I been weak enough to yield. Some protective
barrier had fallen into ruins round me, so that Terror stalked behind
the general collapse, feeling for me through all the gaping fissures. Much of this, I admit, must have been merely the elaboration of those
sensations I had first vaguely felt, before subsequent events and my
talks with Frances had dramatized them into living thoughts.