The Red Lady — A Closer Reading

enough and not unnatural under the circumstances. If I remember rightly I decided that if the awful figure came again or if any other tragedy should happen at “The Pines” I should kill myself. Fortunately my reason, though badly shaken, did at least reassert itself. After all, I am not a natural believer in ghosts. The supernatural has never greatly interested or impressed me. It is not so much-that I am skeptical as that I am pragmatic--that is, I have to discern some use or meaning in spiritual experiences. It is this turn of mind, inherited, I think, from my French father, that saved me now. Very gradually, as I knelt there in that God-given attitude of prayer, an attitude whose subjective benefit to the human race no one will ever be able to measure, an attitude which, in its humility, in its resignation, in its shutting out of this world's light, so opens the inner eyes of the soul--as I knelt there, my mood began to change from one of insane superstition and fear to one of quiet and most determined thought.

In fact, my reason reasserted itself and powerfully. One by one, all the alarming incidents began to link themselves together, to suggest a plan, a logical whole. It was as though, with my eyes shut and hidden in my hands, I saw for the first time.

Three housekeepers, one after the other, had been frightened away from “The Pines.” The old servants of the house had been forced, also by supernatural fears, to leave. A most determined attempt had been made against Robbie's nerves and Mary's courage. And now, at the climax of the crescendo--for then it seemed to me, God forgive me! that my experience had been worse than Robbie's death--I, the fourth housekeeper, was being terrified almost out of my wits. All these things pointed to one conclusion. It was somebody's interest to isolate little Mrs. Brane. It was especially somebody's interest to frighten every one away from the northern wing. Somewhere in this house, and presumably in this part of the house, there was something enormously valuable, something to tempt evil spirits clad in substantial flesh and blood, as substantial, for instance, as that of the bolster-like figure of the Baron. And the leader of this enterprise, the master-spirit, was a hell-cat with red-gold hair and a face like my own.

This was a horrid thought in itself and almost an incredible one, but it was, at least, not supernatural. The creature that had seemed to rise up on the threshold of the bookroom was a living being, a woman of flesh and blood. I repeated this over and over to myself. I felt that I must possess my mind perfectly of this fact and lay hold of it so that no future manifestations might so nearly drive me to distraction as the manifestation of to-night. She was a real woman, a female criminal, wily and brave and very cunning. She had deliberately made use of this extraordinary chance resemblance, had artfully heightened it, had copied my habitual costume, for excellent reasons of her own. It was probably entirely by her agency that I had been brought to “The Pines.” With a blinding realization of my own stupidity I remembered the suspicious fashion in which I had learned of the position--a slip of paper handed to me on the street! I had been chosen deliberately, for my resemblance, by this thief for a double purpose of mystification and of diverting suspicion. What more convenient for a night-prowler than to possess a double in some authorized inmate of the house? Night-prowler?--why, she might walk up and down the house in broad daylight, and, providing only that she was careful not to be seen simultaneously with me, nor at too close intervals of time at an unreasonable distance from my known whereabouts, she might stand at Mrs. Brane's elbow or flit past Mary down the stairs or go through the kitchen under Sara Lorrence's very nose.