The Portland daily press., 1895-07-05
THU SINKING HOUSE.
By LUCY CLEVELAND.
copyright, 1895, by the Author.l
CHAPTER I.


house on the salt meadow land. 1t stood
some distance in from sea, yet near
enough to hear the boom of the tide;
near enough to see, from its upper win
Gows, the storm fed shore and the whir
Of wings as the wild plover swept the
foam.
The meadow land was fed by tie salt
tide; fed also by canals that slowly
slipped their way to sea, a green ooze of
mud on the wet banks that were red
mirror at sunset when the slime took
the shapes of slowly congealing blood
darkening horribly in the night shad-
ows The old house looked down into
the red ooze.
1t had fascination for me which I
could not entirely conquer. found
myself continually turning to look
back at it when I had passed by and
turning to look at it again.
!, There was a great eye of a window
under its roof, window that was red
With strange red at sunrise, and at
sunset drew veil like stained foam
from some mounting wave over its pal
lid light. TWAS wicked eye of a Win
dow.
e Along the roof weird fingers of lean
grass were always reckoning and point
ing down into the silent rooms. The
leaves trod with strange footsteps as
they fell and followed along the gables
The vine that chung around the heavy
doorway, locked, padlocked, rusted and
blackening through time, was like the
tender embrace of woman's arm
around some unrelenting form. What
had been the vicissitudes offs life that
came and went and came again under
the gray moses? What was the mystery
within? What was the accumulation of
was gradually sinking? 1t had settled
almost to the second story and bleared
with pallid but awful calm toward
the fresh green hill far off that laughed
in summer time with the song Of
streams and the full throated thrush,
and in winter stood pure and cleaning
under the eye of the old, old moon, to
whom the white speechless lips of the
canal parted, but spoke not
No bird ever tilted on the boughs of
the trees that stood in front of the sink
ing house. Three trees, fir trees, whose
seed had been dropped by some fright
ened, huttered bird in its haste across
the red light; trees that had long since
forgotten their forest companionship of
green finger tips to finger tips, but
doomed in lonely isolation; frs that had
gathered to themselves the same gray
ooze Of liohens that mantled the gable
of the haunted house, drops like the fall
ings of gray death along dying face.
No sweet influences of springtide and
summer ever spread their white blossom
and bounty around the weird shadows.
Of daisies and dandelions and buttercup
curls there were none.
Eyes; the house is haunted" said the
distant townspeople, with good Dutch
shudder, land We wouldn't sleep under
its roof for all that we could see at this
Mechlin fair. %
upon me. In vain I said: 81 will go to-
morrow. I have been wheeling time
along slowly enough on this old Dutch
roost. I have 40 duties awaiting me in
London. will go tomorrow. But still
I staid, and still I fingered in my boat
along the gray canal and rested on my
oars in the sunset red when all the
water was witchery of restless lights
and pink reflections, the great grewsome
house CLOSED in the crimson, disordered
depths I found myself spellbound gaz-
ing into the red ooze into which the
great house stared, where the vine, like
the womans olinging arm, trembled;
where the lean fingers of grass some
times locked fast together in a skeleton
dance, as if keeping time to some ghostly
band; where the footsteps Of the leaves
moved, and where the great eye of the
window kept looking in.
What was the unaccountable domin-
ion of the place over me? Beyond analy-
sis. But beyond question was within
the horizon of some untraveled force,
call it spirit, demon, the departed su-
perterrestrial world care not for the
nomenclature of the supernatural-th
Society For Psychical Research had not
yet been founded. The power was there,
in subtlest tmosphere and spell. If I
could have torn through the gray veil
that blows back and forth in the spirits
air! God only knows what verities are
beyond-what we call actual, actually
verified
Why, asked myself, why this cold
tremor that seizes upon the soul of man
at the thought of behelding the disem-
bodied spirit? Why that batcd breath,
that creep through all the nerves as we
enter the chamber of death? The man
is gone Alone the tenement of clay re-
mains. But is he gone? What is it that
grows around the room? A misty but
palpable presence? You dare not be
quite alone beside that clay you call
dead for long. Gradually the presence
comes sweeping in. There is something
in the room that lives. I dare avow it
is the strongest proof we have of the
immortality Of what We call soul.
Shall confess that an unwonted chill
took possession Of me, which should
not have been ashamed to acknowledge
tn tha Cyiolyot olI7h of OF