The Wind in the Rose Bush: And Other Ghost Stories

THE WIND IN THE ROSE BUSH

Inwood Commons Modern Editions

The Inwood Commons Modern Editions gently update out-of-copyright texts by women and people of color for modern readers. Texts are edited for clarity, ease of reading, social mores, and currency values to help you connect to the writer’s message. Correct spellings are used throughout. Best of all, the original texts are included in appendices, so that you may read either or both. Some editions also include essays by scholars to explain context and highlight ideas.

The Wind in the Rose Bush

And Other Ghost Stories

Mary E. Wilkins Freeman

Inwood Commons Modern Edition

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Publisher: Wendy Fuller

Contents

Mary Eleanor Wilkins Freeman vii

Wikipedia Contributors

The Wind in the Rose Bush 1

The Shadows on the Wall 21

Luella Miller 37

The Southwest Room 53

The Vacant Lot 81

The Lost Ghost 97

Appendix A

The Wind in the Rose Bush (Original) 117

Appendix B

The Shadows on the Wall (Original) 135

Appendix C

Luella Miller (Original) 151

Appendix D

The Southwest Chamber (Original) 165

Appendix E

The Vacant Lot (Original) 191

Appendix F

The Lost Ghost (Original) 207

Mary Eleanor Wilkins Freeman

Wikipedia Contributors

Mary Eleanor Wilkins Freeman (born 1852, died 1930) was an American novelist, poet, playwright, and short story writer. She was the first recipient of the William Dean Howells Medal for Distinction in Fiction from the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

Biography

She was born in Randolph, Massachusetts in 1852, to Eleanor Lothrop and Warren Edward Wilkins, who originally baptized her as Mary Ella.¹ Freeman’s parents were orthodox Congregationalists and were very strict parents.² Religious constraints play a key role in some of her works.

In 1867, the family moved to Brattleboro, Vermont, where Freeman graduated from the local high school before attending Mount Holyoke College (then, Mount Holyoke Female Seminary) in South Hadley, Massachusetts, for one year, from 1870 to 1871. She later finished her education at Glenwood Seminary in West Brattleboro.³ When the family’s dry goods business in Vermont failed in 1873, they returned to Randolph, Massachusetts. Freeman’s mother died three years later, and she changed her middle name to Eleanor in her memory.⁴

Freeman’s father died suddenly in 1883, leaving her without any immediate family and an estate worth only $973 (about $20,000 in 2016 dollars). She moved in with a friend and began writing as her only source of income.⁵

During a visit to Metuchen, New Jersey in 1892 at the age of 40, she met Dr. Charles Manning Freeman, a non-practicing medical doctor seven years younger than her. After ten years of courtship and delays, the two were married in 1902. Immediately after, she firmly established her name as Mary E. Wilkins Freeman, which she asked Harper’s to use on all her work.⁶ The couple built a home in Metuchen, where Freeman was known as a local celebrity for her writing, despite having occasionally published satirical fictional representations of her neighbors.⁷

Her husband, who suffered from alcoholism and an addiction to sleeping powders, was committed to the New Jersey State Hospital for the Insane in Trenton, and the two legally separated a year later.⁸ After his death in 1923, he left most of his wealth to his chauffeur and only one dollar to his former wife.⁹

In April 1926, Freeman became the first recipient of the William Dean Howells Medal for Distinction in Fiction from the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

She suffered a heart attack and died in Metuchen in 1930, at age 77.¹⁰

Writing

Freeman began writing stories and verse for children while still a teenager to help support her family and was quickly successful. When the supernatural caught her interest, the result was a group of short stories which combined domestic realism with supernaturalism and these have proved very influential. Her best-known work was written in the 1880s and 1890s while she lived in Randolph.

Her works are local color and almost entirely focused on the lives, experiences, and conditions of lower class and working people, especially women, in rural New England. She explored the lives of women and the relationships that they shared, particularly focusing on power dynamics.¹¹ Her works are social commentary, revealing the economic and spiritual decline of the era. She claimed that her works were,

intended as a study of the human will in several New England characters, in different phases of disease and abnormal development and to prove...the truth of a theory that its cure depended entirely upon the capacity of the individual for a love which could rise above all considerations of self...¹²

She illustrated the effects of Puritan values in characters dealing with honesty, morbid conscientiousness, passivity, and the overdeveloped will and its’ peculiarities.¹³ Her works also effectively portray the tension between a modernizing world and the cultural and economic situation of rural New England and how the two worked in relation with one another, as opposed to separate from one another.¹⁴ In her lifetime she wrote 15 volumes of short stories, 50 uncollected short stories, 14 novels, 3 volumes of poetry, 3 plays, 8 children’s books, and prose essays.

Notes

¹ Sondra Fishinger, Mary E. Wilkins Freeman, 1852–1930, in Past and Promise: Lives of New Jersey Women (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1997), 139.

² Mary E. Wilkins Freeman, in The Norton Anthology of American Literature, ed. Nina Baym, vol. c (New York: Norton & Company, 2007), 625–26.

³ Fishinger, Mary E. Wilkins Freeman, 1852–1930, 140.

⁴ Ibid.

⁵ Fishinger, Mary E. Wilkins Freeman, 1852–1930, 141.

⁶ Ibid.

⁷ Ibid.

⁸ Ibid.

⁹ Ibid.

¹⁰ Ibid.

¹¹ Leah B. Glasser, Mary E. Wilkins Freeman, in Heath Anthology of American Literature, ed. Paul Lauter (Cengage Learning, n.d.), accessed April 15, 2015.

¹² Perry D. Westbrook, Mary E. Wilkins Freeman (31 October 1852–15 March 1930) in American Short-Story Writers, 1880–1910, eds. Bobby Ellen Kimbel and William E. Grant, vol. 78 (Detroit: Gale, 1989) 159–73. Dictionary of Literary Biography vol. 78, Dictionary of Literary Biography Complete Online, accessed April 15, 2015.

¹³ Westbrook, Mary E. Wilkins Freeman.

¹⁴ Glasser, Mary E. Wilkins Freeman.

The Wind in the Rose Bush

(1903)

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 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 on the ferry as it shot swiftly and smoothly across stream. A horse was attached to a light country wagon on board, and he pawed the deck uneasily. His owner stood near, with a wary eye on 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 gloomy, stood near her.

Rebecca paid no attention to either of them. She was tall and spare and pale, the stereotype of a spinster, yet with rudimentary lines and expressions of middle-age. She 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 difficult 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, she said.

Rebecca looked at her and nodded coldly.

Yes, very, she agreed.

Have you come far?

I have come from Michigan.

Oh, said the woman, with awe. It’s a long way, she remarked soon.

Yes, it is, replied Rebecca, conclusively.

Still the other woman was not daunted. She determined to know something, motivated by something out of place in Rebecca’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 ride. Finally Rebecca herself became unexpectedly talkative. She turned to the other woman and asked if she knew John Dent’s widow who lived in Ford Village. Her husband died about three years ago, she said, by way of detail.

The woman jumped violently. She turned pale, then she flushed. She cast a strange glance at her husband, who was looking at both women with impassive keenness.

Yes, I guess I do, faltered the woman finally.

Well, his first wife was my sister, said Rebecca as though passing on important news.

Was she? responded the other woman feebly. She glanced at her husband with 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 jumped so violently that she noticed it.

What is the matter? she asked.

Nothing, 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 eagerness, 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. 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 ominous.

I guess so, she said.

John always wrote that she was a beautiful woman, said Rebecca.

Then the ferry grated on the shore.

John Dent’s widow had sent a horse and wagon to meet her. 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, Thomas replied. Don’t you go to burning your fingers in other folks’ pudding, Maria.

Do you suppose she’ll see anything? Maria asked with a spasmodic shudder and a terrified roll of her eyes.

See, returned Thomas with calm 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’s true, and she’s a nervous woman, she might be scared enough to lose her wits, said Maria, staring uneasily after Rebecca’s erect back in the wagon disappearing over the crest of the hilly road.

Wits that so easy upset ain’t worth much, declared Thomas. You keep out of it, Maria.

Rebecca in the meantime rode on in the wagon, beside a blond 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 area’s original cottages, small and white, with a roof extending on one side over a patio, 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 patio-less side, a carved railing down the front steps, and a modern hardwood 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 to set the brake, and leaping out of the wagon, then going around to the rear for her 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 thought comfortably. I guess Agnes will have considerable. I’ve got enough, but it will come in handy for her schooling. She can have advantages.

The boy dragged the trunk up the fine gravel walk, but before he reached the steps leading up to the patio, because the house stood on a terrace, the front door opened and a blond, frizzled head of a very large and striking woman appeared. She held up her black silk skirt, revealing bulky ruffles of starched embroidery, and waited for Rebecca. She smiled placidly, her pink, double-chinned face widened and dimpled, but her blue eyes were wary and calculating. She extended her hand as Rebecca climbed the steps.

This is Rebecca, I suppose, she said.

Yes, ma’am, replied Rebecca, noticing with confusion a weird look made up of fear and defiance on Emeline Dent’s face.

Your letter only arrived this morning, said Emeline, in a steady voice. Her large face was pink, and her china-blue eyes were at once aggressive and veiled with secrecy.

Yes, I hardly thought you’d get my letter, replied Rebecca. I felt as if I couldn’t wait to hear from you before I came. I supposed you’d be so situated that you could have me a little while without putting you out too much, from what John used to write me about his circumstances. When I had that money so unexpected I felt as if I must come for Agnes. I suppose you’ll be willing to give her up. You know she’s my own blood, and of course she’s no relation to you, though you must have got attached to her. I know from her picture what a sweet girl she must be. John always said she looked like her own mother, and Grace was a beautiful woman, if she was my sister.

Rebecca stopped and stared at Emeline in amazement and alarm. The imposing blond woman stood speechless, livid, gasping, with her hand to her heart, her lips parted in a horrible caricature of a smile.

Are you sick? cried Rebecca, drawing near. Don’t you want me to get you some water?

Then Emeline recovered herself with a huge effort. It is nothing, she said. I am subject to—spells. I am over it now. Won’t you come in, Rebecca?

As she spoke, the beautiful deep-rose color poured into her face, her blue eyes met Rebecca’s with the opacity of turquoise stones. They were a revelation of blue, but they concealed all behind.

Rebecca followed Emeline in. The boy, who had waited idly, climbed the steps with the trunk. But before they entered the door a strange thing happened. On the upper terrace close to the patio post, grew a large rose bush, and on it, late in the season though it was, one small red, perfect rose.

Rebecca looked at it, and Emeline extended her hand with a quick gesture. Don’t you pick that rose, she brusquely cried.

Rebecca drew herself up with stiff dignity.

I ain’t in the habit of picking other folks’ roses without permission, she said.

As Rebecca spoke she jumped violently, and lost sight of her resentment, because something unusual happened. Suddenly the rose bush was agitated if by a gust of wind, yet it was a remarkably still day. Not a leaf of the hydrangea standing on the terrace close to the rose trembled.

What on earth— began Rebecca, then she stopped with a gasp at the sight of Emeline’s face. It somehow gave Rebecca the impression of a desperately clutched hand of secrecy.

Come in, said she in a harsh voice, which seemed to come out of her chest without using her throat or mouth. Come into the house. I’m getting cold out here.

What makes that rose bush blow like that when there isn’t any wind? asked Rebecca, trembling with vague horror, yet resolute.

I don’t see as it is blowing, returned Emeline calmly. And as she spoke, the bush was quiet.

It was blowing, declared Rebecca.

It isn’t now, said Emeline. I can’t try to account for everything that blows outside. I have too much to do.

She spoke scornfully and confidently, with defiant, unflinching eyes, first on the bush, then on Rebecca, and led the way into the house.

It looked weird, persisted Rebecca, but she followed, and also the boy with the trunk.

Rebecca entered an interior that was prosperous, even elegant, by her simple ideas. There were heavy wool carpets, handmade lace curtains, and plenty of brilliant upholstery and polished wood.

You’re real nicely situated, remarked Rebecca, after she had become a little accustomed to her new surroundings and the two women were seated at the tea table.

Emeline stared with a hard complacency from behind her silver-plated service. Yes, I be, she said.

You got all the things new? said Rebecca hesitatingly, with a jealous memory of her dead sister’s bridal furnishings.

Yes, said Emeline. I was never one to want dead folks’ things, and I had money enough of my own, so I wasn’t beholden to John. I had the old duds put up at auction. They didn’t bring much.

I suppose you saved some for Agnes. She’ll want some of her poor mother’s things when she is grown up, said Rebecca with some indignation.

The defiant stare of Emeline’s blue eyes waxed more intense. There’s a few things up in the attic, she said.

She’ll be likely to value them, remarked Rebecca. As she spoke she glanced at the window. Isn’t it almost time for her to be coming home? she asked.

Almost time, answered Emeline carelessly, but when she gets over to Addie Slocum’s she never knows when to come home.

Is Addie Slocum her close friend?

Close as any.

Maybe we can have her come out to see Agnes when she’s living with me, said Rebecca wistfully. I suppose she’ll be likely to be homesick at first.

Most likely, answered Emeline.

Does she call you mother? Rebecca asked.

No, she calls me Aunt Emeline, replied Emeline shortly. When did you say you were going home?

In about a week, I thought, if she can be ready to go so soon, answered Rebecca with a surprised look.

She thought that she would not remain a day longer than she could help after such an inhospitable look and question.

Oh, as far as that goes, said Emeline, it wouldn’t make any difference about her being ready. You could go home whenever you felt that you must, and she could come afterward.

Alone?

Why not? She’s a big girl now, and you don’t have to change train cars.

My niece will go home when I do, and not travel alone. If I can’t wait here for her, in the house that used to be her mother’s and my sister’s home, I’ll go and stay somewhere, returned Rebecca with warmth.

Oh, you can stay here as long as you want to. You’re welcome, said Emeline.

Then Rebecca jumped. There she is, she declared in a trembling, exultant voice. Nobody knew how she longed to see the girl.

She isn’t as late as I thought she’d be, said Emeline. Again that curious, subtle change passed over her face, and again it settled into that stony impassiveness.

Rebecca stared at the door, waiting for it to open. Where is she? she soon asked.

I guess she’s stopped to take off her hat in the entry, suggested Emeline.

Rebecca waited. Why don’t she come? It can’t take her all this time to take off her hat.

For answer Emeline rose with a stiff jerk and threw open the door.

Agnes, she called. Agnes! Then she turned and looked at Rebecca. She ain’t there.

I saw her pass the window, said Rebecca in bewilderment.

You must have been mistaken.

I know I did, persisted Rebecca.

You couldn’t have.

I did. I saw first a shadow go over the ceiling, then I saw her in the mirror there, she pointed to a mirror over the sideboard opposite, and then the shadow passed the window.

How did she look in the mirror?

Little and blond, with the light hair kind of tossing over her forehead.

You couldn’t have seen her.

Was that like Agnes?

Like enough, but of course you didn’t see her. You’ve been thinking so much about her that you thought you did.

"You thought you did."

I thought I saw a shadow pass the window, but I must have been mistaken. She didn’t come in, or we would have seen her before now. I knew it was too early for her to get home from Addie Slocum’s, anyhow.

When Rebecca went to bed Agnes had not returned. Rebecca had resolved that she would not sleep until the girl came, but she was very tired, and she reasoned with herself that she was foolish. Besides, Emeline suggested that Agnes might go to the church social with Addie Slocum. When Rebecca suggested that she be sent for and told that her aunt had come, Emeline laughed knowingly.

I guess you’ll find out that a young girl ain’t so ready to leave a gathering, where there’s boys, to see her aunt, said she.

She’s too young, said Rebecca incredulously and indignantly.

She’s sixteen, replied Emeline, and she’s always been great for the boys.

She’s going to school four years after I get her before she thinks of boys, declared Rebecca.

We’ll see, laughed Emeline.

After Rebecca went to bed, she lay awake a long time listening for the sound of girlish laughter and a boy’s voice under her window. Then she fell asleep.

The next morning she was down early. Emeline, who had no servants, was busily preparing breakfast.

Don’t Agnes help you with breakfast? asked Rebecca.

No, I let her sleep, replied Emeline shortly.

What time did she get home last night?

She didn’t get home.

What?

She didn’t get home. She stayed with Addie. She often does.

"Without sending