A Girl in White by H. D. Everett
“A Girl in White” was first published in 1920, in Everett’s anthology The Death-Mask and Other Ghosts. Hard to define, it’s not a typical ghost story, and is, possibly, better classed as a paranormal romance.
About H. D. Everett (1851 – 1923)
Henrietta Dorothy Everett (née Huskisson) was a popular author during the late 1800s to early 1900s. However, her work has since fallen into obscurity, and most people are unlikely to be familiar with her name. The daughter of John Huskisson, a Royal Marines Lieutenant, little is known about her life, including her date of birth. However, church records show she was baptized 4 March 1851.
In 1869, she married Isaac Edward Everett, a solicitor; and began writing in 1896, when she was aged 44. Between then and 1920, she published 22 books, with 17 different publishers, using her pen-name Theo Douglas. Although Everett wrote three historical novels, more than half of her books had fantasy or supernatural themes. For instance, her novel Iras: A Mystery (1896) is about an Egyptologist who revives an ancient mummy and falls in love with the beautiful Iras he has unwrapped.
In 1920, when she published The Death-Mask and Other Stories, for reasons unknown, she discarded her pen-name and published the collection as H. D. Everett. However, her identity had already been revealed in 1910, so using a pseudonym probably no longer offered any advantages.
The Death-Mask and Other Stories earned the praise of both M. R. James and H.P. Lovecraft. In his essay “Some Remarks on Ghost Stories” (1929) [paragraph 16], James described Everett’s anthology as having “a rather quieter tone on the whole” and “some excellently conceived stories”. Meanwhile, in his essay essay Supernatural Horror in Literature [Chapter 9, paragraph 9], Lovecraft stated: “Mrs. H. D. Everett, though adhering to very old and conventional models, occasionally reaches singular heights of spiritual terror in her collection of short stories.”
The Death-Mask and Other Stories was Everett’s only story collection. However, in 2006, Wordsworth Editions republished an expanded versions of the collection under the title The Crimson Blind & Other Stories. The expanded version contained all 14 stories from the original collection, along with two additional tales: “The Pipers of Mallory” and “The Whispering Wall”. It’s interesting to note the author published both of these stories in magazines, prior to putting together her anthology, and either she or her publisher must have decided not to include them in original anthology.
A Girl in White
By H. D. Everett
(Online Text)
I
In telling the following story I give fictitious names. I do not wish the little house to be identified, nor would I do the owner of the property the slightest injury. It is, doubtless, a harmless place, where people have lived happily in the past, and will again in the future—ninety-nine people out of every hundred. That I happened to be the hundredth man who there underwent a notable experience, may have had nothing to do with local influence. I write this, but add a query: perhaps one wiser than I will answer, and unravel the mystery which I merely present. I do not pretend to explain.
I took Riverside Cottage for my mother and widowed sister, for three months of the summer of 1914—mid-June to mid-September. They had both passed through a time of trial with which my story has nothing to do; quiet and change of scene became desirable, and mother wished to be within easy reach of London and of me. That was why I explored the Thames valley on their behalf, and was at once attracted to this house—a modern villa, with gay garden sloping to the water’s edge, and boat moored at a small landing-stage overhung with trees: the stage and mooring-place shared, I may mention, with the villa next along the road, the garden of which joined with ours.
As soon as my mother and Lydia were settled in, I ran down for the week-end. They were satisfied with the place, and indeed could not praise it sufficiently, or the wisdom of my choice. The quiet delighted them, the privacy, as well as the outlook over the broad stream, which seemed to exercise a tranquillising influence in its flow. Also the small house was sufficiently convenient; the two elderly servants were pleased, as well as the joint mistresses: what more could be desired?
Needless to say, I agreed with the encomiums and swallowed the reflected praise; but somehow there was a note which jarred. I was the discoverer of the cottage, its original admirer; but the very first night I slept under its roof, I began to wonder what attracted me to the place, and why I had thought it the right sort of nest for mother, who was old and tired, and Lydia, who was middle-aged and particular.
What was the jarring note? Did the “softness” of the valley, the near neighbourhood of a vast body of moving water, depress my spirits? No, for when we sat out in the garden, bright with flowers, and when I rowed Lydia a mile or so up stream, for the sake of floating down in the cool evening, I felt as usual. It was the house which overpowered me with its influence (I use the word in a non-committal sense)—the house where I became oppressed and ill at ease.
It is just the place where a fellow would cut his throat: that was my reflection the next morning, after a night of broken rest and uneasy dreams. My mother remarked at breakfast that I was not looking well, and Lydia made some joke to the effect that it did not suit me to be off the pavements. I went to church with the two women; for, as a matter of course, the dear souls were punctual churchgoers, and expected me to be the same: returned to eat a light and digestible mid-day meal; and enjoyed a post-prandial nap in a basket chair under the trees, which made up for the disturbed night. Where could be a passing of time more commonplace, and less likely to foster morbid fancies? Yet it was after this, while still broad daylight of a summer afternoon, that I had my first glimpse of the white girl.
The staircase came down into the square entrance hall, close to the door of the dining-room (it will be understood that in the cottage there were no wide spaces; all was small and cramped). As I was descending the stairs, the figure of a girl in white passed quickly before me, from left to right, entering the dining-room. I felt a distinct shock of surprise, and, gaining the open doorway scarcely a minute later, paused to look into the room. There were no screens or recesses in which to hide, the room was plainly vacant, and here the bow-window did not open to the floor as in the other parlour. The latticed casements were set wide to admit the air, but they were narrow and high from the floor, and it would have needed a distinct effort for a grown person to squeeze through. I was still standing astonished in the doorway, when Lydia called to me from the garden. I was to make haste, for tea was ready; it had been carried out of doors.
Now the natural impulse would have been to tell out my uncanny experience, and inquire who was this girl in white who intruded upon us; but a curious reticence shackled my tongue and kept me mute. An inner voice might have been whispering—This is our secret, yours and mine, and you must reveal it to no other. I did not consider then the scruple about alarming my mother; that developed later. As I took the seat placed for me under the tree, the servant emerged from the house carrying hot scones covered by a napkin; she wore the usual black gown and white apron, and I knew the other domestic was similarly attired. Lydia and my mother both wore black; it could have been no mistake for any lawful inmate; none of them were in the least like my white girl. I drank my tea and kept up an indifferent conversation, but all the while I was trying to reconstruct the picture of what I had seen.
It was not easy. As a rule, I pride myself on quick perception and ready memory, receiving clear imprints, which are correctly retained; but in this case it was as if the surprise of the vision had blurred its details. The slender figure of a girl in white, no touch of colour in her array, which seemed of ordinary modern fashion—quickly passing the foot of the stairs, and disappearing into the room beyond. I had seen no face, that must have been turned from me; but I thought I could recall fair hair, so fair as to be almost flaxen, swept up smoothly from the nape of the neck, into twists worn high upon the head.
Again at night I was ill at ease. The period of absolute darkness is brief at mid-summer, and the first grey light was making lawn and flowerbeds visible when I drew away the screens from the window and looked out. There behind a rosebush, at the edge of the shrubbed border, was the same white figure. The girl might be stealing flowers before their owners were awake; I thought her action looked like it. Presently I saw her more distinctly, as she moved across the lawn to a heavy-topped standard [1], which had its own circle of root-room cut round it in the grass. She was welcome to our hired roses; but a desire beset me to accost her, and find out who she was, and whence she came. So I hurriedly flung on my clothes.
A last glance from the window showed her still in sight. I went down to the drawing-room, opened shutters and glass door, and stepped out into the garden; but, as will have been divined, in vain. There was no girl in white, nor did the lawn show any track of footsteps, though my own were plainly traceable in the morning dew.
I was glad that morning to get back to London and my work; and felt distinctly reluctant to view the approach of Saturday, when I was again pledged to spend the weekend at Riverside. But on this, my second visit, I experienced nothing more abnormal than the burden of melancholy and foreboding which the Cottage imposed on me before, weighing on my spirits and driving away sleep. I saw no white girl, and evidently my mother and Lydia had seen nothing, for they seemed wholly contented and at ease. For the third week-end I was engaged elsewhere; but the fourth, a Saturday late in July, found me again at the Cottage.
Expectant attention is supposed by some people to account for psychical happenings. I went thither prepared to see the figure, and I did see it, but under new conditions; no repetition of what occurred before.
My broken night repeated itself, though through the previous fortnight I had been sleeping well. I could get no rest in bed, and tossed there till I was almost in a fever. Plainly it was the house which affected me with this insomnia; and as soon as daylight began, I resolved to dress, take out a couple of cushions, and see if I could get to sleep lying in the boat. I crept softly downstairs, crossed the solitary garden, where all was wrapped in the Sabbath stillness of the early dawn, and, once in the boat, swinging to the silent flow of the great river, I slept delightfully and woke refreshed.
The servants were busy in the house when I went back, to bathe and shave and dress again, and doubtless they regarded me with wonder. To shave! I was presently at the glass, intent on chin-scraping—turned to moisten the lather—and, looking back, the face presented to me was not my own. Instead of the expected image, this was the countenance of a lovely girl, who looked at me with dark eyes full of sadness and appeal, whose lips moved as if to speak.
I cannot calculate how long the vision lasted; I only know it gave me full time to see—to note my own figure reflected behind her, shirt-sleeved and razor in hand, my head overtopping hers—to imprint on memory every feature of that face. Yes, I had been right; she was fair, the ghost girl, with hair so light as to be almost flaxen, which curled in rings on her forehead, while—an unusual combination—her eyes and eyebrows were of the darkest brown. My ghost was pale, but it was not the pallor of death; her lips were warmly red, and on the left cheek there was a dimple ready to deepen had she smiled. Her dress was white. So far I can describe her, though there is poverty about the written words. I stood frozen, gazing; and then the image melted into a haze of mist, which in its turn disappeared, and the mirror gave back nothing but my own swart reflection in the common way.
My hand shook, and I cut myself over the shaving which came after, which perhaps was not wonderful. The vision was not repeated, though several times that day I stood to gaze. And the second night was sleepless, like the first.
The experiment of the boat had answered well, so at dawn I betook myself thither as before. I fell asleep easily, but woke after the first hour, before the light was full. But it was sufficient to show plainly the slope of the garden, and there, wandering among the flower beds, was the white girl.
I did not spring up at once to confront her, something seemed to hold me paralysed and still. She came on towards me, walking uncertainly with spread hands, as I have seen the blind! On, till she stepped upon the wooden stage, and then, light as a feather, over the side into the boat. It did not sway under the added burden. I lay in the stern, as I say, paralysed; and she went on to the bow, there turning to look back at me, and wringing her hands together as if in a passion of distress. Then—it all passed in a moment—she plunged into the river and was gone.
I was on my feet the instant after, but there was nothing to be seen. No swirling eddies, no bubbles coming to the surface, no human creature struggling and sinking in those dark depths. Then I remembered that I had not heard a splash—all had passed in absolute silence—the boat had not swayed, as it must have done under a material weight. I was awake, I had not dreamed; but the being of my vision was not girl but ghost.
II
Close upon this last incident came the cataclysm we all remember, the outbreak of the war. I volunteered to rejoin my old regiment, was accepted, and in the hurry of preparation and equipment, my last days in England slipped rapidly away. But I found time to prosecute certain inquiries about the past history of the river cottage. I could not ascertain that it had ever been the scene of a tragedy, but people are not always candid in answering such questions put by a tenant. It was built some forty years ago, and the original owner died there, peacefully in her bed, and at an age exceeding the threescore years and ten. It was now the property of two middle-aged spinsters, who let it every year to cover the expenses of their autumn tour. All this was prosaic enough; the girl in white was not to be accounted for. And, moreover, she seemed to have been visible to no one else; the vision was to me alone.
Of my own fortunes during the following twelvemonth [2], I shall speak only briefly. I was in the great Retreat, and was twice wounded, but so slightly as to be able to return to duty after a brief sojourn in hospital. But in the early spring I received a third wound, which was a more serious matter, and sent me back to England for doubtful and difficult repair. My mother and Lydia came to London, where I was in hospital, occupying lodgings near me, and anxious, so soon as I should be pronounced convalescent, to have me handed over to their care. I was better, able to sit up, and discharge was well in sight, when my mother sprang upon me what she felt sure would be a pleasant surprise.
“Can you guess, Dick, where we are going so soon as you can be moved? We were so happy last year, Lydia and I, in the little house you found for us at G—, that I thought we could not do better than engage it again this summer, if it is still to be had.”
And here the dear soul paused, plainly expecting my expressions of delight. I could not spoil her pleasure by avowing I hated the place, the cottage and its surroundings, and of my free will would never have set foot in it again. So I swallowed down my distaste.
“And was it to let, mother?” I asked in my turn.
“Alas! no. Riverside Cottage had been snapped up before we inquired—and I don’t wonder, it is so sweet a place. But I have taken the house next along the road, the one they call the Lodge, and I hope we shall like it as well. If you remember, the gardens join, and the landing-stage is shared between the two. The rooms are larger than at Riverside, and that will be an advantage when you are with us too.”
Not Riverside Cottage after all, but the house next door. That was something of a reprieve, for I did not know how, under invalid conditions, my jarred nerves would stand the reappearance of the girl in white. But it was not probable, at least I thought not, that two houses could be made uninhabitable by one ghost.
I did not leave the hospital so soon as was expected—complications arose, and healing was deferred. So I had time to receive a report, this time from my sister, of the neighbours at Riverside. The Tressidys were pleasant people, so I gathered; an old General who was subject to gout, and his maiden sister who kept house for him; also two unmarried daughters, both pretty and one charming, and the name of the charmer was Emily. The other daughter was, I gathered, something of an invalid; and Emily was the mainspring of the family, full of spirits and fun. Lydia so evidently intended me to fall captive to Emily, that the spirit of resistance quickened, and I was not sorry to hear, on my arrival, that Emily was away on a visit, and the introduction would be deferred.
The Lodge appeared cheerful and comfortable that first evening, and I was not visited with the depression of the year before; also, in my airy bedroom overlooking the river, I slept well and undisturbed. It was not until the second day that I was introduced to the Tressidy family. Lydia came to summon me from the small sitting-room which was styled the library. The General had called, especially on me, bringing with him his elderly sister, and the younger daughter, Grace. A pretty girl, Lydia said, preparing me, but not to be compared with Emily. So I was ushered into the room, halting with my stick.
There I was presented to a grizzled, choleric-looking old soldier, a meek elderly female, also grizzled; lastly to the girl. And how shall I describe my sensations, when from her seat in the background and the shadow, she turned on me the face of my ghost, and faintly smiled?
It was the very same face which looked at me out of the glass at Riverside Cottage, the dark eyes and eyebrows, the almost flaxen hair, even the hinted dimple on the cheek, which became more evident with her smile. Was it wonderful that I felt myself stricken dumb in those first moments, and then that I answered with some odd misstatements in replying to General Tressidy, when he asked, as everybody does, about conditions at the Front, the service I had seen, and my wound. What the old man thought of my confusion I do not know; perhaps he concluded that the marring bullet had impaired, not body only, but also mind.
I had a chance to speak to Grace Tressidy later on when tea was served. The likeness persisted; it was no temporary hallucination. I wished she would have removed her hat, simple as it was, the ghost having been hatless; but in other ways she was dressed for the part, as her gown was white. She wished to relieve me of handing the cake, because I moved lamely, but this I would not allow; and when her wants were supplied, I sat down by her; the General was now talking to my mother. Did she like the river valley, I asked, and did she know it well? I wanted to ascertain if she had been in the neighbourhood last year, but could not put so bold a question. It was all new to her, she replied, and all delightful; and then she caught her breath, and looked at me with the dark eyes of the vision, eyes with a question in them on her side: was it possible she remembered me, as I recognised her?
“You will think me very silly,” she went on. “Emily laughs at me. I have never been here before, and yet it seems as if this place was familiar—even the house where we are staying. I knew every nook of the garden, and every turn of the road. It is as if I had visited it in a dream.”
Was that in truth the explanation, and was my ghost nothing more than a perception of Grace Tressidy’s dreams? I saw her several times in the days that followed, sometimes hatless, and twice I tried to draw the conversation again to this point, that I might ask her further, and perhaps confess; but each time she avoided it with timidity: had she taken herself to task for so unguardedly speaking out to a stranger, or was she afraid of what I might have to tell? The charming Emily was still away, and I was told, among her other virtues and merits, that she had been a constant nurse and guardian to this younger sister during a period of ill-health. My informant did not say the nature of Grace’s illness, and she appeared now to have completely recovered. She walked and bicycled, and was as active as other girls; but the aunt would not let her go on the water, so the boat at the landing-stage was left to us.
I was disturbed by no ghost at River Lodge, but again I took to resting ill at night, though, up to now, mine had been the deep sleep of healthy convalescence. Perhaps I was thinking rather more of Grace Tressidy than was good for me, or would have pleased Lydia, who wished me to be attracted to her favourite, Emily. But, however caused, my insomnia returned; and the night it was at its worst, after tossing feverishly for a couple of hours, I recollected how, the year before, I had been able to sleep in the boat. There it still was, moored to the landing-stage between the two gardens, and a longing beset me to try anew the experiment which succeeded before. So again I armed myself with cushions and went out, and, lying there in the stern, exacted to find drowsy peace.
The summer was not so far advanced as when I slept out the previous year, and the early mornings were somewhat chill. It seemed to be the chill which waked me, and, raising myself for a change of position, I looked up the slope of garden to the Riverside house with its drawn blinds. And lo! there again was my vision, on the lawn among the rose-bushes, recognised with a shock of heart which curdled through nerves and blood.
My white girl, who so strangely resembled Grace Tressidy; or was it this time Grace Tressidy herself? She moved away from the bushes, and came slowly towards me with her hands spread out, like a blind person feeling her way.
Was I dreaming or awake? The ghost had acted so; the figure was but repeating the scene of a year before. I lay as if spell-bound, and could neither move nor speak. She came on, and as she crossed the stage I saw that her feet were bare. Then, as before, she stepped into the boat. This time it rocked and swayed under a material weight. The spell was broken. I sprang up, but not soon enough to prevent what followed. The figure at the prow made the despairing gesture I well remembered, and then plunged into the water, now with a splash and scream.
The current in shore was slow, and what there was carried her past me. I seized her as she rose for the second time, and dragged her out drenched and gasping, but, thank Heaven, alive.
“I was asleep,” she sobbed; and then—”What will Emily say!” and she fell again to weeping.
I could seek no explanation then and there. My task was to hurry her back at once, and rouse the inmates of Riverside for those ministrations of which she stood in need—hot bath, dry rubbing, bed. I could see that the accident caused all that household deep dismay, but it was everything that the girl was saved.
When I went round later to inquire, I was told Miss Tressidy wished to see me: this was not Grace, but the aunt.
“We have no words to express our thanks, Captain Blake,” she began. “I speak for the General too, for he is laid up in his room; the agitation has brought on a fit of gout. Our poor child would have been lost to us, but for you. It was just God’s Providence that you happened to be there.”
Then followed her story. Grace was a somnambulist. She had walked in her sleep as a child, but the tendency seemed to be outgrown, till it returned after an illness early in last year. Then it caused grave anxiety for a time, but the sister, Emily, was constantly at hand to watch, and so prevented harm. Grace was now well again as they believed; the trouble had not recurred for nearly a twelvemonth, so it was thought safe for Emily to leave.
The troubled period was, I gathered, in June and July of 1914, and so coincident with the appearance of my ghost, in a place unknown to Grace Tressidy, but where she was in the future to run so grave a risk to life. Does this afford an explanation of the story I have told? It may, or it may not; but it is the only one I have to offer.
Some day I may tell the whole of my experience to Grace herself; but first there must be the telling of another tale I have in mind, and all will depend on whether she is disposed to listen. I think—I hope—she will be favourable to a war-worn soldier, but I do not know. Then I shall perhaps discover correspondences closer than those of which I am aware, and divine how it came about that we were drawn together, I as her preserver, she to yield the life I saved, to my care for days to come.
H. D. Everett (1851 – 1923)
__________________________
1. The word standard has several meanings. In the context of the story, it refers to an ornamental shrub that has been trained to stand upright, like a tree. [Further Information]
2. Twelvemonth is an archaic word that means a year. It’s only likely to be encountered in old texts.