Poor Lucy Rivers

Poor Lucy Rivers by Bernard Capes

A physician recounts how he first notices Miss Phillida Gray at Paul’s type-writing exchange, distressed by a machine she insists is unsuitable for her though the manager can find no defect. Intrigued, he obtains her address and commissions her to type circulars. He finds her living in extreme poverty in a bleak West Kensington flat, where a new type-writer is her only substantial possession. On her mantelpiece he sees love verses addressed to “Phyllis,” later discovering that they were written by his son Jack. Jack confesses that he loves Phillida, an orphan and the daughter of Captain Gray, but that she has fled rather than endanger his prospects. The physician promises to see her again before revealing her address. On the following day he finds Phillida in terror. She has been unable to complete his work because the type-writer produces words she has not typed. She says that, before she exchanged her first machine, it began typing by itself at night; she burned the sheets each morning. The replacement behaves identically, convincing her that the flat itself is haunted. Phillida tells him that the previous tenant, Lucy Rivers, was also a typist and vanished mysteriously about two months earlier. The physician persuades Phillida to type one of his circulars while he watches her fingers. Though she faithfully copies his text, the finished page contains only a desperate repeated cry: “William! William! Come back to me! O, William, in God’s name!” He takes Phillida home to his mother, where she is cared for and reunited with the prospect of Jack’s love. Determined to investigate, the physician spends a night alone in the flat. He hears or dreams of the machine typing, and in the morning finds sheets again covered with Lucy’s anguished appeal to William. He burns them reverently. At Paul’s exchange he learns that both machines Phillida used were in fact the same one formerly rented by Lucy Rivers, and that Lucy had lived in the same converted flat. He then visits Lucy’s earlier lodgings. Her former landlady says Lucy had received one man, who called himself an astronomer, and that after his visits ceased she became strange and repeatedly went onto the roof, apparently hoping to find him among the chimney-pots. Returning to the flat, the physician climbs through an unbolted roof trap into deep snow. There he discovers Lucy Rivers’s frozen body, buried beneath the snow for two months. She had gone onto the roof, closed the trap behind her, and died unnoticed. Her lost lover’s name, desertion, ruin, and despair have survived in the type-writer’s ceaseless plea for William to return.

By Bernard Capes · First published 1896 · Genre: Supernatural Horror, Ghost Story, Gothic Fiction · 5,903 words

First lines

The following story was told to a friend-with leave, conditionally, to make it public-by a well-known physician who died last year.

I was in Paul's type-writing exchange (says the professional narrator), seeing about some circulars I required, when a young lady came in bearing a box, the weight of which seemed to tax her strength severely. She was a very personable young woman, though looking ill, I fancied-in short, with those diathetic symptoms which point to a condition of hysteria. The manager, who had been engaged elsewhere, making towards me at the moment, I intimated to him that he should attend to the new-comer first. He turned to her.

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Edwardian supernatural fiction · London setting · West Kensington · early twentieth century · ghost story · psychological horror · mystery tale · frame narrative · physician narrator · haunted typewriter · automatic writing · restless spirit

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Poor Lucy Rivers is listed on Textopian as a short story by Bernard Capes, dated 1896 CE.

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