The Mammoth Book of Modern Ghost Stories

see that between himself and the still uncurtained window there stood a slender young woman – Laura’s peccant friend, without a doubt!

He could not see her very clearly, yet of that he was not sorry, for he was not and he had never been – he told himself with an inward chuckle – the man to spoil sport.

Secretly he could afford to smile at the thought of his cold, passionless wife acting as duenna. Hard man as he was, his old heart warmed to the erring stranger, the more so that her sudden apparition had removed a last lingering doubt from his mind.

She threw out her slender hands with a gesture that again seemed to fill his mind with memories of his vanished youth, and there floated across the dark room the whispered words, “Be not unkind.” And then – did she say “Remember Zelie?”

No, no – it was his heart, less atrophied than he had thought it to be, which had evoked, quickened into life, the name of his first love, the French girl who, if alive, must be – hateful, disturbing thought – an old woman today.

Then, as he gazed at her, the shadowy figure swiftly walked across the room, and so through the tapestry curtain.

He waited a moment, then slowly passed through the dining-room, and so into the firelit bedroom beyond.

His wife was standing by the window, looking as wraith-like as had done, just now, her friend. She was staring out into the darkness, her arms hanging by her side. She had not turned round when she had heard the door of the room open.

“Laura!” said her husband gruffly. And then she turned and cast on him a suffering alien glance.

“I accept your explanation of your presence here. And, well, I apologize for my foolish suspicions. Still, you’re not a child! The part you’re playing is not one any man would wish his wife to play. How long do you – and your friend – intend to stay here?”

“We meant to stay ten days,” she said listlessly, “but as you’re home, Roger, I’ll leave now, if you like.”

“And your friend, Laura, what of her?”

“I think she has already left The Folly.”

She waited a moment, then forced herself to add, “Julian Treville was killed today out hunting – as I suppose you know.”

“Good God! How awful! Believe me, I did not know—”

Roger Delacourt was sincerely affected, as well he might be, for already he had arranged, in his own mind, to go to Leicestershire next week.

And, strange to say, as the two travelled up to town together, he was more considerate in his manner to his wife than he had been for many years. For one thing, he felt that this curious episode proved Laura to have more heart than he had given her credit for. But, being the manner of man and of husband he happened to be, he naturally did not approve of her having risked her spotless reputation in playing the part of duenna to a friend who had loved not wisely but too well. He trusted that what had just happened would prove a lesson to his wife and, for the matter of that, to himself.

Clytie

Eudora Welty

Location:  Farr’s Gin, Jackson, Mississippi.

Time:  June, 1941.

Eyewitness Description:  “This face had been very close to hers; almost familiar, almost accessible. And then the face of Octavia was thrust between, and at other times the apoplectic face of her father, the face of her brother Henry with the bullet hole through the forehead . . .”

Author:  Eudora Welty (1909–2001) has been described as the “Queen of Southern Gothic”, a story tradition evolved from the original European version set in the southern states of the USA and including tales by the likes of William Faulkner (“A Rose for Emily”, 1930) and Flannery O’Connor (“Judgement Day” 1956). Growing up in Jackson, Mississippi, Welty worked for a local radio station and as a journalist for the Commercial Appeal writing and photographing the local area. During her later career she lectured on writing and for a time had an extended residence at Cambridge University where she became the first woman to enter Peterhouse College. Her fascination with the gothic was evident in her early short stories and particularly a novel, The Robber Bridegroom (1946), set in Natchez about a highwayman masquerading as a part-time gentleman, which earned laudatory reviews for its “mystery, sense of the inexplicable and gothic horror”. Among her stories cast in the same mould are “A Still Moment” (1943), “Moon Lake” (1949) and the earlier “Clytie” which she wrote for The Southern Review in 1941 and is the account of another “ghost feeler”, the enigmatic, mysterious Clytie Farr, as well as a landmark in 20th century Gothic fiction.

It was late afternoon, with heavy silver clouds which looked bigger land wider than cotton-fields, and presently it began to rain. Big round drops fell, still in the sunlight, on the hot tin sheds, and stained the white false fronts of the row of stores in the little town of Farr’s Gin. A hen and her string of yellow chickens ran in great alarm across the road, the dust turned river-brown, and the birds flew down into it immediately, seeking out little pockets in which to take baths. The bird dogs got up from the doorways of the stores, shook themselves down to the tail, and went to lie inside. The few people standing with long shadows on the level road moved over into the post office. A little boy kicked his bare heels into the sides of his mule, which proceeded slowly through the town toward the country.

After everyone else had gone under cover, Miss Clytie Farr stood still in the road, peering ahead in her near- sighted way, and as wet as the little birds.

She usually came out of the old big house about this time in the afternoon, and hurried through the town. It used to be that she ran about on some pretext or other, and for a while she made soft-voiced explanations that nobody could hear, and after that she began to charge up bills, which the postmistress declared would never be paid any more than anyone else’s, even if the Farrs were too good to associate with other people. But now Clytie came for nothing. She came every day, and no one spoke to her any more: she would be in such a hurry, and couldn’t see who it was. And every Saturday they expected her to be run over, the way she darted out into the road with all the horses and trucks.

It might be simply that Miss Clytie’s wits were all leaving her, said the ladies standing in the door to feel the cool, the way her sisters had left her; and she would just wait there to be told to go home. She would have to wring out everything she had on – the waist and the jumper skirt, and the long black stockings. On her head was one of the straw hats from the furnishing store, with an old black satin ribbon pinned to it to make it a better hat, and tied under the chin. Now, under the force of the rain, while the ladies watched, the hat slowly began to sag down on each side until it looked even more absurd and done for, like an old bonnet on a horse. And indeed it was with the patience almost of a beast that Miss Clytie stood there in the rain and stuck her long empty arms out a little from her sides, as if she were waiting for something to come along the road and drive her to shelter.

In a little while there was a clap of thunder.

“Miss Clytie! Go in out of the rain, Miss Clytie!” someone called.

The old maid did not look around, but clenched her hands and drew them up under her armpits, and sticking out her elbows like hen wings, she ran out of the street, her poor hat creaking and beating about her ears.

“Well, there goes Miss Clytie,” the ladies said, and one of them had a premonition about her.

Through the rushing water in the sunken path under the four wet black cedars, which smelled bitter as smoke, she ran to the house.

“Where the devil have you been?” called the older sister, Octavia, from an upper window.

Clytie looked up in time to see the curtain fall back.

She went inside, into the hall, and waited, shivering. It was very dark and bare. The only light was falling on the white sheet which covered the solitary piece of furniture, an organ. The red curtains over the parlour door, held