FullReads

“Peacocks on a blue ground, you are sure?”

“Of course I am. Why?”

“Only when I went in there that afternoon it was not peacocks on a blue ground; it was great red roses on a yellow ground.”

“Why, what do you mean?”

“What I say.”

“Did Miss Sophia have it changed?”

“No. I went in there again an hour later and the peacocks were there.”

“You didn’t see straight the first time.”

“I expected you would say that.”

“The peacocks are there now; I saw them just now.”

“Yes, I suppose so; I suppose they flew back.”

“But they couldn’t.”

“Looks as if they did.”

“Why, how could such a thing be? It couldn’t be.”

“Well, all I know is those peacocks were gone for an hour that afternoon and the red roses on the yellow ground were there instead.”

The widow stared at her a moment, then she began to laugh rather hysterically.

“Well,” said she, “I guess I sha’n’t give up my nice room for any such tomfoolery as that. I guess I would just as soon have red roses on a yellow ground as peacocks on a blue; but there’s no use talking, you couldn’t have seen straight. How could such a thing have happened?”

“I don’t know,” said Eliza Lippincott; “but I know I wouldn’t sleep in that room if you’d give me a thousand dollars.”

“Well, I would,” said the widow, “and I’m going to.”

When Mrs. Simmons went to the southwest chamber that night she cast a glance at the bed-hanging and the easy chair. There were the peacocks on the blue ground. She gave a contemptuous thought to Eliza Lippincott.

“I don’t believe but she’s getting nervous,” she thought. “I wonder if any of her family have been out at all.”

But just before Mrs. Simmons was ready to get into bed she looked again at the hangings and the easy chair, and there were the red roses on the yellow ground instead of the peacocks on the blue. She looked long and sharply. Then she shut her eyes, and then opened them and looked. She still saw the red roses. Then she crossed the room, turned her back to the bed, and looked out at the night from the south window. It was clear and the full moon was shining. She watched it a moment sailing over the dark blue in its nimbus of gold. Then she looked around at the bed hangings. She still saw the red roses on the yellow ground.

Mrs. Simmons was struck in her most venerable point. This apparent contradiction of the reasonable as manifested in such a commonplace thing as chintz of a bed-hanging affected this ordinarily unimaginative woman as no ghostly appearance could have done. Those red roses on the yellow ground were to her much more ghostly than any strange figure clad in the white robes of the grave entering the room.

She took a step toward the door, then she turned with a resolute air. “As for going downstairs and owning up I’m scared and having that Lippincott girl crowing over me, I won’t for any red roses instead of peacocks. I guess they can’t hurt me, and as long as we’ve both of us seen ’em I guess we can’t both be getting loony,” she said.

Mrs. Elvira Simmons blew out her light and got into bed and lay staring out between the chintz hangings at the moonlit room. She said her prayers in bed always as being more comfortable, and presumably just as acceptable in the case of a faithful servant with a stout habit of body. Then after a little she fell asleep; she was of too practical a nature to be kept long awake by anything which had no power of actual bodily effect upon her. No stress of the spirit had ever disturbed her slumbers. So she slumbered between the red roses, or the peacocks, she did not know which.