Miss Mary Pask by Edith Wharton

Night and fog were now one, and the darkness as thick as a blanket. I / felt vainly about for a bell. At last my hand came in contact with a / knocker and I lifted it. The clatter with which it fell sent a prolonged / echo through the silence; but for a minute or two nothing else happened.

"There's no one there, I tell you! " the boy called impatiently from the / gate.

But there was. I had heard no steps inside, but presently a bolt shot / back, and an old woman in a peasant's cap pushed her head out. She had / set her candle down on a table behind her, so that her face, aureoled / with lacy wings, was in obscurity; but I knew she was old by the stoop / of her shoulders and her fumbling movements. The candle-light, which / made her invisible, fell full on my face, and she looked at me.

"This is Miss Mary Pask's house?"

"Yes, sir. " Her voice-a very old voice-was pleasant enough, unsurprised / and even friendly.

"I'll tell her," she added, shuffling off.

"Do you think she'll see me? " I threw after her.

"Oh, why not? The idea! " she almost chuckled. As she retreated I saw / that she was wrapped in a shawl and had a cotton umbrella under her arm. / Obviously she was going out-perhaps going home for the night. I wondered / if Mary Pask lived all alone in her hermitage.

The old woman disappeared with the candle and I was left in total / darkness. After an interval I heard a door shut at the back of the house / and then a slow clumping of aged _sabots_ along the flags outside. The / old woman had evidently picked up her _sabots_ in the kitchen and left / the house. I wondered if she had told Miss Pask of my presence before / going, or whether she had just left me there, the butt of some grim / practical joke of her own. Certainly there was no sound within doors. / The footsteps died out, I heard a gate click-then complete silence / closed in again like the fog.

"I wonder-" I began within myself; and at that moment a smothered memory / struggled abruptly to the surface of my languid mind.

"But she's _dead_-Mary Pask is _dead_! " I almost screamed it aloud in my / amazement.

It was incredible, the tricks my memory had played on me since my fever! / I had known for nearly a year that Mary Pask was dead-had died suddenly / the previous autumn-and though I had been thinking of her almost / continuously for the last two or three days it was only now that the / forgotten fact of her death suddenly burst up again to consciousness.

Dead! But hadn't I found Grace Bridgeworth in tears and crape the very / day I had gone to bid her good-bye before sailing for Egypt? Hadn't she / laid the cable before my eyes, her own streaming with tears while I / read: "Sister died suddenly this morning requested burial in garden of / house particulars by letter"-with the signature of the American Consul / at Brest, a friend of Bridgeworth's I seemed to recall? I could see the / very words of the message printed on the darkness before me.

As I stood there I was a good deal more disturbed by the discovery of / the gap in my memory than by the fact of being alone in a pitch-dark / house, either empty or else inhabited by strangers. Once before of late / I had noted this queer temporary blotting-out of some well-known fact; / and here was a second instance of it. Decidedly, I wasn't as well over / my illness as the doctors had told me. Well, I would get back to / Morgat and lie up there for a day or two, doing nothing, just eating and / sleeping.

In my self-absorption I had lost my bearings, and no longer remembered / where the door was. I felt in every pocket in turn for a match-but since / the doctors had made me give up smoking, why should I have found one?

The failure to find a match increased my sense of irritated / helplessness, and I was groping clumsily about the hall among the angles / of unseen furniture when a light slanted along the rough-cast wall of / the stairs. I followed its direction, and on the landing above me I saw / a figure in white shading a candle with one hand and looking down. A / chill ran along my spine, for the figure bore a strange resemblance to / that of Mary Pask as I used to know her.

"Oh, it's _you_! " she exclaimed in the cracked twittering voice which / was at one moment like an old woman's quaver, at another like a boy's / falsetto. She came shuffling down in her baggy white garments, with her / usual clumsy swaying movements; but I noticed that her steps on the / wooden stairs were soundless. Well-they would be, naturally!

I stood without a word, gazing up at the strange vision above me, and / saying to myself: "There's nothing there, nothing whatever. It's your / digestion, or your eyes, or some damned thing wrong with you somewhere-"

But there was the candle, at any rate; and as it drew nearer, and lit up / the place about me, I turned and caught hold of the doorlatch. For, / remember, I had seen the cable, and Grace in crape.

"Why, what's the matter? I assure you, you don't disturb me! " the white / figure twittered; adding, with a faint laugh: "I don't have so many / visitors nowadays-"