THE WIND IN THE ROSE-BUSH
And Other Stories Of The Supernatural
By Mary Wilkins
Contents
The Wind in the Rose-bush
The Shadows on the Wall
Luella Miller
The Southwest Chamber
The Vacant Lot
The Lost Ghost
THE WIND IN THE ROSE-BUSH
Ford Village has no railroad station, being on the other side of
the river from Porter's Falls, and accessible only by the ford
which gives it its name, and a ferry line.
The ferry-boat was waiting when Rebecca Flint got off the train
with her bag and lunch basket. When she and her small trunk were
safely embarked she sat stiff and straight and calm in the ferry-
boat as it shot swiftly and smoothly across stream. There was a
horse attached to a light country wagon on board, and he pawed the
deck uneasily. His owner stood near, with a wary eye upon him,
although he was chewing, with as dully reflective an expression as
a cow. Beside Rebecca sat a woman of about her own age, who kept
looking at her with furtive curiosity; her husband, short and stout
and saturnine, stood near her. Rebecca paid, no attention to
either of them. She was tall and spare and pale, the type of a
spinster, yet with rudimentary lines and expressions of matronhood.
She all unconsciously held her shawl, rolled up in a canvas bag, on
her left hip, as if it had been a child. She wore a settled frown
of dissent at life, but it was the frown of a mother who regarded
life as a froward child, rather than as an overwhelming fate.
The other woman continued staring at her; she was mildly stupid,
except for an over-developed curiosity which made her at times
sharp beyond belief. Her eyes glittered, red spots came on her
flaccid cheeks; she kept opening her mouth to speak, making little
abortive motions. Finally she could endure it no longer; she
nudged Rebecca boldly.
"A pleasant day," said she.
Rebecca looked at her and nodded coldly.
"Yes, very," she assented.
"Have you come far?"
"I have come from Michigan."
"Oh!" said the woman, with awe. "It's a long way," she remarked
presently.
"Yes, it is," replied Rebecca, conclusively.
Still the other woman was not daunted; there was something which
she determined to know, possibly roused thereto by a vague sense of
incongruity in the other's appearance. "It's a long ways to come
and leave a family," she remarked with painful slyness.
"I ain't got any family to leave," returned Rebecca shortly.
"Then you ain't--"
"No, I ain't."
"Oh!" said the woman.
Rebecca looked straight ahead at the race of the river.
It was a long ferry. Finally Rebecca herself waxed unexpectedly
loquacious. She turned to the other woman and inquired if she knew
John Dent's widow who lived in Ford Village. "Her husband died
about three years ago," said she, by way of detail.
The woman started violently. She turned pale, then she flushed;
she cast a strange glance at her husband, who was regarding both
women with a sort of stolid keenness.
"Yes, I guess I do," faltered the woman finally.
"Well, his first wife was my sister," said Rebecca with the air of
one imparting important intelligence.
"Was she?" responded the other woman feebly. She glanced at her
husband with an expression of doubt and terror, and he shook his
head forbiddingly.
"I'm going to see her, and take my niece Agnes home with me," said
Rebecca.
Then the woman gave such a violent start that she noticed it.
"What is the matter?" she asked.
"Nothin', I guess," replied the woman, with eyes on her husband,
who was slowly shaking his head, like a Chinese toy.
"Is my niece sick?" asked Rebecca with quick suspicion.
"No, she ain't sick," replied the woman with alacrity, then she
caught her breath with a gasp.
"When did you see her?"
"Let me see; I ain't seen her for some little time," replied the
woman. Then she caught her breath again.
"She ought to have grown up real pretty, if she takes after my
sister. She was a real pretty woman," Rebecca said wistfully.
"Yes, I guess she did grow up pretty," replied the woman in a
trembling voice.
"What kind of a woman is the second wife?"
The woman glanced at her husband's warning face. She continued to
gaze at him while she replied in a choking voice to Rebecca:
"I--guess she's a nice woman," she replied. "I--don't know, I--
guess so. I--don't see much of her."
"I felt kind of hurt that John married again so quick," said
Rebecca; "but I suppose he wanted his house kept, and Agnes wanted
care. I wasn't so situated that I could take her when her mother
died. I had my own mother to care for, and I was school-teaching.
Now mother has gone, and my uncle died six months ago and left me
quite a little property, and I've given up my school, and I've come
for Agnes. I guess she'll be glad to go with me, though I suppose
her stepmother is a good woman, and has always done for her."
The man's warning shake at his wife was fairly portentous.
"I guess so," said she.
"John always wrote that she was a beautiful woman," said Rebecca.
Then the ferry-boat grated on the shore.
John Dent's widow had sent a horse and wagon to meet her sister-in-
law. When the woman and her husband went down the road, on which
Rebecca in the wagon with her trunk soon passed them, she said
reproachfully:
"Seems as if I'd ought to have told her, Thomas."
"Let her find it out herself," replied the man. "Don't you go to
burnin' your fingers in other folks' puddin', Maria."
"Do you s'pose she'll see anything?" asked the woman with a
spasmodic shudder and a terrified roll of her eyes.
"See!" returned her husband with stolid scorn. "Better be sure
there's anything to see."
"Oh, Thomas, they say--"
"Lord, ain't you found out that what they say is mostly lies?"
"But if it should be true, and she's a nervous woman, she might be
scared enough to lose her wits," said his wife, staring uneasily
after Rebecca's erect figure in the wagon disappearing over the
crest of the hilly road.
"Wits that so easy upset ain't worth much," declared the man. "You
keep out of it, Maria."
Rebecca in the meantime rode on in the wagon, beside a flaxen-
headed boy, who looked, to her understanding, not very bright. She
asked him a question, and he paid no attention. She repeated it,
and he responded with a bewildered and incoherent grunt. Then she
let him alone, after making sure that he knew how to drive
straight.
They had traveled about half a mile, passed the village square, and
gone a short distance beyond, when the boy drew up with a sudden
Whoa! before a very prosperous-looking house. It had been one of
the aboriginal cottages of the vicinity, small and white, with a
roof extending on one side over a piazza, and a tiny "L" jutting
out in the rear, on the right hand. Now the cottage was
transformed by dormer windows, a bay window on the piazzaless side,
a carved railing down the front steps, and a modern hard-wood door.
"Is this John Dent's house?" asked Rebecca.
The boy was as sparing of speech as a philosopher. His only
response was in flinging the reins over the horse's back,
stretching out one foot to the shaft, and leaping out of the wagon,
then going around to the rear for the trunk. Rebecca got out and
went toward the house. Its white paint had a new gloss; its blinds
were an immaculate apple green; the lawn was trimmed as smooth as
velvet, and it was dotted with scrupulous groups of hydrangeas and
cannas.
"I always understood that John Dent was well-to-do," Rebecca
reflected comfortably. "I guess Agnes will have considerable.
I've got enough, but it will come in handy for her schooling. She