The Deep Lake Mystery. Wells Carolyn

I looked, the details of the landscape became clearer and I discerned a few faint lights here and there in the houses.

      The big house nearest us I took to be Pleasure Dome. Not only because it was the next house, but because I could dimly distinguish a large building surmounted by a gilded dome.

      How could any man in his sober senses construct such a place to live in?

      It seemed like a cross between the Boston State House and the Taj Mahal.

      I was really anxious to go over there and see the thing at closer range. I decided to ask Moore to take me over the next day.

      Suddenly the lights all went out and the house and its dome disappeared from view. Looking at my watch I saw it was just one o’clock and concluded that the master of the house had his home darkened at that hour.

      But after I again accustomed my eyes to the darkness I could see the outlines of Pleasure Dome, and it looked infinitely more attractive in the half light than it had done in the brightness of its own illumination.

      As a whole, though, the lake scene was depressing. It had a melancholy, dismal air that seemed to lay a damper on my spirits. It was like a cold, clammy hand resting on my forehead. I even shook my head impatiently, as if to fling it off, and then smiled at my own foolishness. But it persisted. The lake was mournful, it even seemed menacing.

      With an exclamation of disgust at my own impressionableness, I sprang up from my chair, flashed on the lights and prepared for bed.

      The bright, pleasant room restored my equilibrium or equanimity or whatever it was that had been jarred, and I found myself all ready for bed, in a peaceful, happy frame of mind.

      I turned off the lights, and then the lake lured me back to a last glimpse of its wild, eerie beauty.

      Again I flung on my robe and sat at the window. It seemed as if I couldn’t leave it. The black, sinister water, the dark shores, with deep hollows here and there, the waving, soughing trees, with thick underbrush beneath them, all seemed possessed of a spirit of evil, a frightful, uncanny spirit, that made me shiver with an unreasonable apprehension, that held me in thrall.

      I have no use for premonitions, I have no faith in presentiments, but I had to admit to myself then a fear, a foreboding of some intangible, ghastly horror. Then would come the moonlight, pale and sickly now, and lasting but a moment before the clouds again blotted it out.

      Yet I liked the darkness better, for the moon cast such horrendous shadows of those black trees into the lake that it seemed to people the lake with monstrous, maleficent beings, who leered and danced like devils.

      Though I knew the hobgoblins were only the waving trees, distorted in the moonlight, I was none the less weak-minded enough to see portentous spectres that made my flesh creep.

      With a half laugh and a half groan at my utter imbecility, I declared to myself that I would go to bed and go to sleep.

      But as I started to rise from my chair, I saw something that made me sink back again.

      The moon now was behind a light, translucent cloud, that caused a faint light on the lake.

      Round a jutting corner I saw a canoe come into my line of vision.

      A moment’s attention convinced me that it was no ghostly craft, but an ordinary canoe, propelled by a pair of human arms.

      This touch of human companionship put to rout all my feelings of fear and even my forebodings of tragedy.

      Normally interested now, I watched to see who might be out at that time of night, and for what purpose.

      The cloud dispersed itself, and the full clear moonlight shone down on the boat and its occupant. To my surprise it was a girl, a young-appearing girl, and she was paddling softly, but with a skilled stroke that told of long practice.

      Her hair seemed to be silver in the moonlight, but I realized the light was deceptive and the curly bob might be either flaxen or gold.

      She wore a white sweater and a white skirt – that much I could see plainly, but I could distinguish little more. She had no hat on, and I could see white stockings and shoes as the craft passed the house.

      She seemed intent on her work, and her beautiful paddling aroused my intense admiration. She did not look up at our house at all; indeed, she seemed like an enchanted princess, doomed to paddle for her life, so earnestly did she bend to her occupation. She passed the house and kept on, in the direction of Pleasure Dome.

      Could she be going there? I hardly thought so, yet I watched carefully, hanging out of my window to do so.

      To my surprise she did steer her little craft straight to the great house next door, and turned as if to land there.

      The Tracy house was on a line with the Moore bungalow, that is, on a curving line. They were both on the same large crescent of lake shore. Pleasure Dome had a cove or inlet behind it, Moore had told me, but that was not visible from my window. The front of the house was, however, and I distinctly saw the girl beach her canoe, step lightly out and then disappear among the trees in the direction of the house.

      I still sat staring at the point where she had been lost to my vision. I let the picture sink into my mind. I could see her as plainly in retrospect as I had in reality. That lissome, slender figure, that graceful springy walk – but she had limped, a very little. Not as if she were really lame, but as if she had hurt her foot or strained her ankle recently.

      I speculated on who she might be. Kee had told me of no young girl living in the Tracy house now, since the niece had left there.

      Ah, the niece. Could this be Sampson Tracy’s niece, perhaps staying at her uncle’s for a visit and coming home late from a party? But she would have had an escort or chaperon or maid – somebody would have been with her.

      Yet, how could I tell that? Kee had said she was high-handed, and might she not elect to go about unescorted at any hour?

      I concluded it must be the niece, for who else could it be? Then I remembered that there might be other guests at Pleasure Dome besides the morose and glum-looking Ames. This, then, might be another house guest, and perhaps the young people of the Deep Lake community were in the habit of running wild in this fashion.

      Anyway, the whole episode had helped to dispel the gloom engendered by the oppressive and harrowing atmosphere of the lake scene, and I felt more cheerful. And as there was no sign of the girl’s returning, I concluded she had reached the house in safety and had doubtless already gone to bed.

      I tarried quite a while longer, listening to the quivering, whispering sounds of the poplars, and an occasional note from a bird or from some small animal scurrying through the woods, and finally, with a smile at my own thoughts, I snapped off the lights and got into bed.

      I couldn’t sleep at first, and then, just as I was about to fall asleep, I heard the light plash of a paddle.

      As soon as I realized what the sound was, I sprang up and hurried to the window. But I saw no boat. Whether the same girl or some one else, the boat and whoever paddled it, were out of sight, and though I heard, or imagined I heard, a faint and diminishing sound as of paddling, I could see no craft of any sort.

      I strained my eyes to see if her canoe was still beached in front of Pleasure Dome, but the moon was unfriendly now, and I could not distinguish objects on the beach.

      Again I began to feel that sickening dread of calamity, that nameless horror of tragedy, and I resolutely went back to bed with a determination to stay there till morning, no matter what that God-forsaken lake did next.

      I carried out this plan, and when the morning broke in a riot of sunshine, singing birds, blooming flowers and a smiling lake, I forgot all the night thoughts and their burdens and gave myself over to a joyous outlook.

      Breakfast was at eight-thirty and was served on an enclosed porch looking out on the lake.

      “You know, you don’t have to get up at this ungodly hour,” Lora said, as she smiled her greeting, “but we are wideawakes here.”

      “Suits me perfectly,” I told her. “I’ve no love