The Deserted House | Page 3

some fairy tale has been told it to conceal the truth it
suspects. I scolded myself for a silly fool; the house remained unaltered
in its appearance, and the visions faded in my brain, until one day a
chance incident woke them to life again.
I was wandering through the avenue as usual, and as I passed the
deserted house I could not resist a hasty glance at its close-curtained
upper windows. But as I looked at it, the curtain on the last window
near the pastry shop began to move. A hand, an arm, came out from
between its folds. I took my opera glass from my pocket and saw a
beautifully formed woman's hand, on the little finger of which a large
diamond sparkled in unusual brilliancy; a rich bracelet glittered on the
white, rounded arm. The hand set a tall, oddly formed crystal bottle on
the window ledge and disappeared again behind the curtain.
I stopped as if frozen to stone; a weirdly pleasurable sensation, mingled
with awe, streamed through my being with the warmth of an electric
current. I stared up at the mysterious window and a sigh of longing
arose from the very depths of my heart. When I came to myself again, I
was angered to find that I was surrounded by a crowd which stood
gazing up at the window with curious faces. I stole away
inconspicuously, and the demon of all things prosaic whispered to me
that what I had just seen was the rich pastry cook's wife, in her Sunday
adornment, placing an empty bottle, used for rose-water or the like, on
the window sill. Nothing very weird about this.
Suddenly a most sensible thought came to me. I turned and entered the
shining, mirror-walled shop of the pastry cook. Blowing the steaming

foam from my cup of chocolate, I remarked: "You have a very useful
addition to your establishment next door." The man leaned over his
counter and looked at me with a questioning smile, as if he did not
understand me. I repeated that in my opinion he had been very clever to
set up his bakery in the neighboring house, although the deserted
appearance of the building was a strange sight in its contrasting
surroundings. "Why, sir," began the pastry cook, "who told you that the
house next door belongs to us? Unfortunately every attempt on our part
to acquire it has been in vain, and I fancy it is all the better so, for there
is something queer about the place."
You can imagine, dear friends, how interested I became upon hearing
these words, and that I begged the man to tell me more about the house.
"I do not know anything very definite, sir," he said. "All that we know
for a certainty is that the house belongs to the Countess S., who lives on
her estates and has not been to the city for years. This house, so they
tell me, stood in its present shape before any of the handsome buildings
were raised which are now the pride of our avenue, and in all these
years there has been nothing done to it except to keep it from actual
decay. Two living creatures alone dwell there, an aged misanthrope of a
steward and his melancholy dog, which occasionally howls at the moon
from the back courtyard. According to the general story the deserted
house is haunted. In very truth my brother, who is the owner of this
shop, and myself have often, when our business kept us awake during
the silence of the night, heard strange sounds from the other side of the
wall. There was a rumbling and a scraping that frightened us both And
not very long ago we heard one night a strange singing which I could
not describe to you. It was evidently the voice of an old woman, but the
tones were so sharp and clear, and ran up to the top of the scale in
cadences and long trills, the like of which I have never heard before,
although I have heard many singers in many lands. It seemed to be a
French song, but I am not quite sure of that, for I could not listen long
to the mad, ghostly singing, it made the hair stand erect on my head.
And at times, after the street noises are quiet, we can hear deep sighs,
and sometimes a mad laugh, which seem to come out of the earth. But
if you lay your ear to the wall in our back room, you can hear that the

noises come from the house next door." He led me into the back room
and pointed through the window. "And do you see that iron chimney
coming out of the wall there? It