The Shape of Fear
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Elia W. Peattie >> The Shape of Fear
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6 This etext was prepared by Judy Boss, Omaha, NE
Note: I have omitted signature indicators and italicization of the
running heads. In addition, I have made the following changes to the text:
PAGE LINE ORIGINAL CHANGED TO
156 1 where as were as
156 4 mouth mouth.
165 5 Wedgwood Wedgewood
166 9 Wedgwood Wedgewood
167 6 surperfluous superfluous
172 11 every ever
173 17 Bogg Boggs
THE SHAPE OF FEAR
And Other Ghostly Tales
BY
ELIA WILKINSON PEATTIE
CONTENTS
THE SHAPE OF FEAR
ON THE NORTHERN ICE
THEIR DEAR LITTLE GHOST
A SPECTRAL COLLIE
THE HOUSE THAT WAS NOT
STORY OF AN OBSTINATE CORPSE
A CHILD OF THE RAIN
THE ROOM OF THE EVIL THOUGHT
STORY OF THE VANISHING PATIENT
THE PIANO NEXT DOOR
AN ASTRAL ONION
FROM THE LOOM OF THE DEAD
A GRAMMATICAL GHOST
THE SHAPE OF FEAR
TIM O'CONNOR -- who was de-
scended from the O'Conors with
one N -- started life as a poet
and an enthusiast. His mother
had designed him for the priesthood, and at
the age of fifteen, most of his verses had an
ecclesiastical tinge, but, somehow or other,
he got into the newspaper business instead,
and became a pessimistic gentleman, with a
literary style of great beauty and an income
of modest proportions. He fell in with men
who talked of art for art's sake, -- though
what right they had to speak of art at all
nobody knew, -- and little by little his view
of life and love became more or less pro-
fane. He met a woman who sucked his
heart's blood, and he knew it and made no
protest; nay, to the great amusement of the
fellows who talked of art for art's sake, he
went the length of marrying her. He could
not in decency explain that he had the tra-
ditions of fine gentlemen behind him and
so had to do as he did, because his friends
might not have understood. He laughed at
the days when he had thought of the priest-
hood, blushed when he ran across any of
those tender and exquisite old verses he had
written in his youth, and became addicted
to absinthe and other less peculiar drinks,
and to gaming a little to escape a madness
of ennui.
As the years went by he avoided, with
more and more scorn, that part of the world
which he denominated Philistine, and con-
sorted only with the fellows who flocked about
Jim O'Malley's saloon. He was pleased with
solitude, or with these convivial wits, and with
not very much else beside. Jim O'Malley
was a sort of Irish poem, set to inspiring
measure. He was, in fact, a Hibernian
Mæcenas, who knew better than to put bad
whiskey before a man of talent, or tell a trite
tale in the presence of a wit. The recountal
of his disquisitions on politics and other cur-
rent matters had enabled no less than three
men to acquire national reputations; and a
number of wretches, having gone the way of
men who talk of art for art's sake, and dying
in foreign lands, or hospitals, or asylums,
having no one else to be homesick for, had
been homesick for Jim O'Malley, and wept
for the sound of his voice and the grasp of
his hearty hand.
When Tim O'Connor turned his back upon
most of the things he was born to and took
up with the life which he consistently lived
till the unspeakable end, he was unable to
get rid of certain peculiarities. For example,
in spite of all his debauchery, he continued
to look like the Beloved Apostle. Notwith-
standing abject friendships he wrote limpid
and noble English. Purity seemed to dog his
heels, no matter how violently he attempted
to escape from her. He was never so drunk
that he was not an exquisite, and even his
creditors, who had become inured to his
deceptions, confessed it was a privilege to
meet so perfect a gentleman. The creature
who held him in bondage, body and soul,
actually came to love him for his gentleness,
and for some quality which baffled her, and
made her ache with a strange longing which
she could not define. Not that she ever de-
fined anything, poor little beast! She had
skin the color of pale gold, and yellow eyes
with brown lights in them, and great plaits
of straw-colored hair. About her lips was a
fatal and sensuous smile, which, when it got
hold of a man's imagination, would not let
it go, but held to it, and mocked it till the
day of his death. She was the incarnation
of the Eternal Feminine, with all the wifeli-
ness and the maternity left out -- she was
ancient, yet ever young, and familiar as joy
or tears or sin.
She took good care of Tim in some ways:
fed him well, nursed him back to reason after
a period of hard drinking, saw that he put
on overshoes when the walks were wet, and
looked after his money. She even prized
his brain, for she discovered that it was a
delicate little machine which produced gold.
By association with him and his friends, she
learned that a number of apparently useless
things had value in the eyes of certain con-
venient fools, and so she treasured the auto-
graphs of distinguished persons who wrote to
him -- autographs which he disdainfully tossed
in the waste basket. She was careful with
presentation copies from authors, and she
went the length of urging Tim to write a
book himself. But at that he balked.
"Write a book!" he cried to her, his gen-
tle face suddenly white with passion. "Who
am I to commit such a profanation?"
She didn't know what he meant, but she
had a theory that it was dangerous to excite
him, and so she sat up till midnight to cook
a chop for him when he came home that night.
He preferred to have her sitting up for him,
and he wanted every electric light in their
apartments turned to the full. If, by any
chance, they returned together to a dark
house, he would not enter till she touched the
button in the hall, and illuminated the room.
Or if it so happened that the lights were
turned off in the night time, and he awoke to
find himself in darkness, he shrieked till the
woman came running to his relief, and, with
derisive laughter, turned them on again. But
when she found that after these frights he lay
trembling and white in his bed, she began to
be alarmed for the clever, gold-making little
machine, and to renew her assiduities, and to
horde more tenaciously than ever, those valu-
able curios on which she some day expected to
realize when he was out of the way, and no
longer in a position to object to their barter.
O'Connor's idiosyncrasy of fear was a
source of much amusement among the boys
at the office where he worked. They made
open sport of it, and yet, recognizing him
for a sensitive plant, and granting that genius
was entitled to whimsicalities, it was their
custom when they called for him after work
hours, to permit him to reach the lighted cor-
ridor before they turned out the gas over his
desk. This, they reasoned, was but a slight
service to perform for the most enchanting
beggar in the world.
"Dear fellow," said Rick Dodson, who
loved him, "is it the Devil you expect to see?
And if so, why are you averse? Surely the
Devil is not such a bad old chap."
"You haven't found him so?"
"Tim, by heaven, you know, you ought to
explain to me. A citizen of the world and
a student of its purlieus, like myself, ought to
know what there is to know! Now you're a
man of sense, in spite of a few bad habits --
such as myself, for example. Is this fad of
yours madness? -- which would be quite to
your credit, -- for gadzooks, I like a lunatic!
Or is it the complaint of a man who has gath-
ered too much data on the subject of Old
Rye? Or is it, as I suspect, something more
occult, and therefore more interesting?"
"Rick, boy," said Tim, "you're too -- in-
quiring!" And he turned to his desk with a
look of delicate hauteur.
It was the very next night that these two
tippling pessimists spent together talking about
certain disgruntled but immortal gentlemen,
who, having said their say and made the world
quite uncomfortable, had now journeyed on
to inquire into the nothingness which they
postulated. The dawn was breaking in the
muggy east; the bottles were empty, the cigars
burnt out. Tim turned toward his friend with
a sharp breaking of sociable silence.
"Rick," he said, "do you know that Fear
has a Shape?"
"And so has my nose!"
"You asked me the other night what I
feared. Holy father, I make my confession
to you. What I fear is Fear."
"That's because you've drunk too much --
or not enough.
"'Come, fill the cup, and in the fire of Spring
Your winter garment of repentance fling --'"
"My costume then would be too nebulous
for this weather, dear boy. But it's true what
I was saying. I am afraid of ghosts."
"For an agnostic that seems a bit --"
"Agnostic! Yes, so completely an agnostic
that I do not even know that I do not know!
God, man, do you mean you have no ghosts
-- no -- no things which shape themselves?
Why, there are things I have done --"
"Don't think of them, my boy! See,
'night's candles are burnt out, and jocund
day stands tiptoe on the misty mountain
top.'"
Tim looked about him with a sickly smile.
He looked behind him and there was nothing
there; stared at the blank window, where the
smoky dawn showed its offensive face, and
there was nothing there. He pushed away
the moist hair from his haggard face -- that
face which would look like the blessed St.
John, and leaned heavily back in his chair.
"'Yon light is not daylight, I know it, I,'"
he murmured drowsily, "'it is some meteor
which the sun exhales, to be to thee this
night --'"
The words floated off in languid nothing-
ness, and he slept. Dodson arose preparatory
to stretching himself on his couch. But first
he bent over his friend with a sense of tragic
appreciation.
"Damned by the skin of his teeth!" he mut-
tered. "A little more, and he would have
gone right, and the Devil would have lost a
good fellow. As it is" -- he smiled with his
usual conceited delight in his own sayings,
even when they were uttered in soliloquy -- "he
is merely one of those splendid gentlemen one
will meet with in hell." Then Dodson had a
momentary nostalgia for goodness himself,
but he soon overcame it, and stretching him-
self on his sofa, he, too, slept.
That night he and O'Connor went together
to hear "Faust" sung, and returning to the
office, Dodson prepared to write his criti-
cism. Except for the distant clatter of tele-
graph instruments, or the peremptory cries of
"copy" from an upper room, the office was
still. Dodson wrote and smoked his inter-
minable cigarettes; O' Connor rested his head
in his hands on the desk, and sat in perfect
silence. He did not know when Dodson fin-
ished, or when, arising, and absent-mindedly
extinguishing the lights, he moved to the
door with his copy in his hands. Dodson
gathered up the hats and coats as he passed
them where they lay on a chair, and called:
"It is done, Tim. Come, let's get out of
this."
There was no answer, and he thought Tim
was following, but after he had handed his
criticism to the city editor, he saw he was
still alone, and returned to the room for his
friend. He advanced no further than the
doorway, for, as he stood in the dusky cor-
ridor and looked within the darkened room,
he saw before his friend a Shape, white, of
perfect loveliness, divinely delicate and pure
and ethereal, which seemed as the embodi-
ment of all goodness. From it came a soft
radiance and a perfume softer than the wind
when "it breathes upon a bank of violets
stealing and giving odor." Staring at it,
with eyes immovable, sat his friend.
It was strange that at sight of a thing so
unspeakably fair, a coldness like that which
comes from the jewel-blue lips of a Muir
crevasse should have fallen upon Dodson, or
that it was only by summoning all the man-
hood that was left in him, that he was able
to restore light to the room, and to rush to
his friend. When he reached poor Tim he
was stone-still with paralysis. They took
him home to the woman, who nursed him out
of that attack -- and later on worried him into
another.
When he was able to sit up and jeer at
things a little again, and help himself to the
quail the woman broiled for him, Dodson,
sitting beside him, said:
"Did you call that little exhibition of yours
legerdemain, Tim, you sweep? Or are you
really the Devil's bairn?"
"It was the Shape of Fear," said Tim, quite
seriously.
"But it seemed mild as mother's milk."
"It was compounded of the good I might
have done. It is that which I fear."
He would explain no more. Later -- many
months later -- he died patiently and sweetly
in the madhouse, praying for rest. The little
beast with the yellow eyes had high mass cele-
brated for him, which, all things considered,
was almost as pathetic as it was amusing.
Dodson was in Vienna when he heard of it.
"Sa, sa!" cried he. "I wish it wasn't so
dark in the tomb! What do you suppose Tim
is looking at?"
As for Jim O'Malley, he was with diffi-
culty kept from illuminating the grave with
electricity.
ON THE NORTHERN ICE
THE winter nights up at Sault Ste.
Marie are as white and luminous as
the Milky Way. The silence which
rests upon the solitude appears to
be white also. Even sound has been included
in Nature's arrestment, for, indeed, save the
still white frost, all things seem to be oblit-
erated. The stars have a poignant brightness,
but they belong to heaven and not to earth,
and between their immeasurable height and
the still ice rolls the ebon ether in vast, liquid
billows.
In such a place it is difficult to believe that
the world is actually peopled. It seems as if
it might be the dark of the day after Cain
killed Abel, and as if all of humanity's re-
mainder was huddled in affright away from
the awful spaciousness of Creation.
The night Ralph Hagadorn started out for
Echo Bay -- bent on a pleasant duty -- he
laughed to himself, and said that he did not
at all object to being the only man in the
world, so long as the world remained as un-
speakably beautiful as it was when he buckled
on his skates and shot away into the solitude.
He was bent on reaching his best friend in
time to act as groomsman, and business had
delayed him till time was at its briefest. So
he journeyed by night and journeyed alone,
and when the tang of the frost got at his
blood, he felt as a spirited horse feels when it
gets free of bit and bridle. The ice was as
glass, his skates were keen, his frame fit, and
his venture to his taste! So he laughed, and
cut through the air as a sharp stone cleaves the
water. He could hear the whistling of the
air as he cleft it.
As he went on and on in the black stillness,
he began to have fancies. He imagined him-
self enormously tall -- a great Viking of the
Northland, hastening over icy fiords to his love.
And that reminded him that he had a love
-- though, indeed, that thought was always
present with him as a background for other
thoughts. To be sure, he had not told her
that she was his love, for he had seen her only
a few times, and the auspicious occasion had
not yet presented itself. She lived at Echo
Bay also, and was to be the maid of honor to
his friend's bride -- which was one more
reason why he skated almost as swiftly as the
wind, and why, now and then, he let out a
shout of exultation.
The one cloud that crossed Hagadorn's sun
of expectancy was the knowledge that Marie
Beaujeu's father had money, and that Marie
lived in a house with two stories to it, and
wore otter skin about her throat and little
satin-lined mink boots on her feet when she
went sledding. Moreover, in the locket in
which she treasured a bit of her dead mother's
hair, there was a black pearl as big as a pea.
These things made it difficult -- perhaps im-
possible -- for Ralph Hagadorn to say more
than, "I love you." But that much he meant
to say though he were scourged with chagrin
for his temerity.
This determination grew upon him as he
swept along the ice under the starlight.
Venus made a glowing path toward the west
and seemed eager to reassure him. He was
sorry he could not skim down that avenue of
light which flowed from the love-star, but he
was forced to turn his back upon it and face
the black northeast.
It came to him with a shock that he was
not alone. His eyelashes were frosted and
his eyeballs blurred with the cold, so at first
he thought it might be an illusion. But when
he had rubbed his eyes hard, he made sure
that not very far in front of him was a long
white skater in fluttering garments who sped
over the ice as fast as ever werewolf went.
He called aloud, but there was no answer.
He shaped his hands and trumpeted through
them, but the silence was as before -- it was
complete. So then he gave chase, setting his
teeth hard and putting a tension on his firm
young muscles. But go however he would,
the white skater went faster. After a time,
as he glanced at the cold gleam of the north
star, he perceived that he was being led from
his direct path. For a moment he hesitated,
wondering if he would not better keep to his
road, but his weird companion seemed to
draw him on irresistibly, and finding it sweet
to follow, he followed.
Of course it came to him more than once
in that strange pursuit, that the white skater
was no earthly guide. Up in those latitudes
men see curious things when the hoar frost is
on the earth. Hagadorn's own father -- to
hark no further than that for an instance!
-- who lived up there with the Lake Superior
Indians, and worked in the copper mines, had
welcomed a woman at his hut one bitter
night, who was gone by morning, leaving wolf
tracks on the snow! Yes, it was so, and John
Fontanelle, the half-breed, could tell you
about it any day -- if he were alive. (Alack,
the snow where the wolf tracks were, is melted
now!)
Well, Hagadorn followed the white skater
all the night, and when the ice flushed pink
at dawn, and arrows of lovely light shot up into
the cold heavens, she was gone, and Haga-
dorn was at his destination. The sun climbed
arrogantly up to his place above all other
things, and as Hagadorn took off his skates
and glanced carelessly lakeward, he beheld a
great wind-rift in the ice, and the waves
showing blue and hungry between white fields.
Had he rushed along his intended path,
watching the stars to guide him, his glance
turned upward, all his body at magnificent
momentum, he must certainly have gone into
that cold grave.
How wonderful that it had been sweet to
follow the white skater, and that he followed!
His heart beat hard as he hurried to his
friend's house. But he encountered no wed-
ding furore. His friend met him as men
meet in houses of mourning.
"Is this your wedding face?" cried Haga-
dorn. "Why, man, starved as I am, I look
more like a bridegroom than you!"
"There's no wedding to-day!"
"No wedding! Why, you're not --"
"Marie Beaujeu died last night --"
"Marie --"
"Died last night. She had been skating
in the afternoon, and she came home chilled
and wandering in her mind, as if the frost
had got in it somehow. She grew worse and
worse, and all the time she talked of you."
"Of me?"
"We wondered what it meant. No one
knew you were lovers."
"I didn't know it myself; more's the pity.
At least, I didn't know --"
"She said you were on the ice, and that
you didn't know about the big breaking-up,
and she cried to us that the wind was off shore
and the rift widening. She cried over and
over again that you could come in by the old
French creek if you only knew --"
"I came in that way."
"But how did you come to do that? It's
out of the path. We thought perhaps --"
But Hagadorn broke in with his story and
told him all as it had come to pass.
That day they watched beside the maiden,
who lay with tapers at her head and at her
feet, and in the little church the bride who
might have been at her wedding said prayers
for her friend. They buried Marie Beaujeu
in her bridesmaid white, and Hagadorn was
before the altar with her, as he had intended
from the first! Then at midnight the lovers
who were to wed whispered their vows in the
gloom of the cold church, and walked together
through the snow to lay their bridal wreaths
upon a grave.
Three nights later, Hagadorn skated back
again to his home. They wanted him to go
by sunlight, but he had his way, and went
when Venus made her bright path on the ice.
The truth was, he had hoped for the com-
panionship of the white skater. But he did
not have it. His only companion was the
wind. The only voice he heard was the bay-
ing of a wolf on the north shore. The world
was as empty and as white as if God had just
created it, and the sun had not yet colored
nor man defiled it.
THEIR DEAR LITTLE GHOST
THE first time one looked at Els-
beth, one was not prepossessed.
She was thin and brown, her nose
turned slightly upward, her toes
went in just a perceptible degree, and her
hair was perfectly straight. But when one
looked longer, one perceived that she was a
charming little creature. The straight hair
was as fine as silk, and hung in funny little
braids down her back; there was not a flaw
in her soft brown skin, and her mouth was
tender and shapely. But her particular charm
lay in a look which she habitually had, of
seeming to know curious things -- such as it
is not allotted to ordinary persons to know.
One felt tempted to say to her:
"What are these beautiful things which
you know, and of which others are ignorant?
What is it you see with those wise and pel-
lucid eyes? Why is it that everybody loves
you?"
Elsbeth was my little godchild, and I knew
her better than I knew any other child in the
world. But still I could not truthfully say
that I was familiar with her, for to me her
spirit was like a fair and fragrant road in the
midst of which I might walk in peace and
joy, but where I was continually to discover
something new. The last time I saw her
quite well and strong was over in the woods
where she had gone with her two little
brothers and her nurse to pass the hottest
weeks of summer. I followed her, foolish old
creature that I was, just to be near her, for I
needed to dwell where the sweet aroma of her
life could reach me.
One morning when I came from my room,
limping a little, because I am not so young as
I used to be, and the lake wind works havoc
with me, my little godchild came dancing to
me singing:
"Come with me and I'll show you my
places, my places, my places!"
Miriam, when she chanted by the Red Sea
might have been more exultant, but she could
not have been more bewitching. Of course
I knew what "places" were, because I had
once been a little girl myself, but unless you
are acquainted with the real meaning of
"places," it would be useless to try to ex-
plain. Either you know "places" or you do
not -- just as you understand the meaning of
poetry or you do not. There are things in
the world which cannot be taught.
Elsbeth's two tiny brothers were present,
and I took one by each hand and followed
her. No sooner had we got out of doors in
the woods than a sort of mystery fell upon
the world and upon us. We were cautioned
to move silently, and we did so, avoiding the
crunching of dry twigs.
"The fairies hate noise," whispered my
little godchild, her eyes narrowing like a
cat's.
"I must get my wand first thing I do," she
said in an awed undertone. "It is useless to
try to do anything without a wand."
The tiny boys were profoundly impressed,
and, indeed, so was I. I felt that at last, I
should, if I behaved properly, see the fairies,
which had hitherto avoided my materialistic
gaze. It was an enchanting moment, for
there appeared, just then, to be nothing
commonplace about life.
There was a swale near by, and into
this the little girl plunged. I could see her
red straw hat bobbing about among the
tall rushes, and I wondered if there were
snakes.
"Do you think there are snakes?" I asked
one of the tiny boys.
"If there are," he said with conviction,
"they won't dare hurt her."
He convinced me. I feared no more.
Presently Elsbeth came out of the swale. In
her hand was a brown "cattail," perfectly
full and round. She carried it as queens
carry their sceptres -- the beautiful queens we
dream of in our youth.
"Come," she commanded, and waved the
sceptre in a fine manner. So we followed,
each tiny boy gripping my hand tight. We
were all three a trifle awed. Elsbeth led us
into a dark underbrush. The branches, as
they flew back in our faces, left them wet
with dew. A wee path, made by the girl's
dear feet, guided our footsteps. Perfumes
of elderberry and wild cucumber scented the
air. A bird, frightened from its nest, made
frantic cries above our heads. The under-
brush thickened. Presently the gloom of the
hemlocks was over us, and in the midst of
the shadowy green a tulip tree flaunted its
leaves. Waves boomed and broke upon the
shore below. There was a growing dampness
as we went on, treading very lightly. A little
green snake ran coquettishly from us. A fat
and glossy squirrel chattered at us from a safe
height, stroking his whiskers with a com-
plaisant air.
At length we reached the "place." It was
a circle of velvet grass, bright as the first
blades of spring, delicate as fine sea-ferns.
The sunlight, falling down the shaft between
the hemlocks, flooded it with a softened light
and made the forest round about look like
deep purple velvet. My little godchild stood
in the midst and raised her wand impressively.
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