First Dark by Elizabeth Spencer
"First Dark" by Elizabeth Spencer is a narrative that intertwines personal and local mythology through the story of Tom Beavers, a World War II veteran who frequently returns to his hometown of Richton, Mississippi. The tale opens with Tom discussing a local ghost story about an elderly man seen waving at twilight, a time known as "first dark." This ghostly figure serves as a catalyst for Tom's relationship with Frances Harvey, a woman who also shares an unsettling connection to the ghost from her childhood.
As their romance develops under the shadow of Frances's controlling mother, who has recently passed away, the couple faces the challenge of navigating their future amid familial obligations and the lingering presence of the past. The narrative explores themes of love, familial loyalty, and the remnants of memory, culminating in Frances's realization that her mother’s death was a profound act of sacrifice for her happiness. The story concludes on an ambiguous note, suggesting a release from the constraints of the past as Frances and Tom embark on a new chapter, leaving behind both the physical home and its associated ghosts. Spencer's work delicately examines the intersection of personal desires against the backdrop of familial legacies and community folklore.
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First Dark by Elizabeth Spencer
First published: 1959
Type of plot: Ghost story
Time of work: About 1946
Locale: Richton, Mississippi
Principal Characters:
Frances Harvey , a woman in her early thirtiesMrs. Harvey , her mother, an invalidRegina Tom Beavers , a former resident of Richton
The Story
Tom Beavers, a native of Richton, Mississippi, recently returned from World War II, lives in Jackson but frequently drives to Richton to check on the elderly aunt who reared him after his mother ran away with a salesperson. He is talking with the pharmacist in the local drugstore about a ghost that is a part of the mythology of the town. For years, people have reported seeing an elderly man waving at them from the Jackson road near Richton at twilight, the time of day referred to as "first dark." A group of men on a chain gang once reported having had a conversation with the man, who asked them to move a bulldozer because he had a sick girl in his wagon and had to get her to the hospital.
During the discussion, Frances Harvey, a woman in her thirties who lives with her invalid mother, enters the store. Overhearing the conversation, she asks Tom why he is inquiring about the ghost. When he relates that he had seen the waving man the night before as he drove into town at first dark, Frances says that she saw the figure at about the same time. Although the two of them have never known each other well, the ghost story draws them into conversation, and the next Saturday at twilight, they are sitting in his car at the spot where the ghost had been sighted. Frances recalls that, as a child, she and her sister, Regina, were terrified by stories of the ghost related by her family's servants.
The couple soon discovers that they are attracted to each other and begin meeting on a regular basis. Eventually Tom is invited up to Mrs. Harvey's bedroom one afternoon for tea. Although she is an invalid, the old woman is still a powerful force, an often bitter and even cruel woman with an acid tongue, who rules the house and her daughter as imperiously as ever. Although Mrs. Harvey approves of Tom as a prospective husband for her daughter, Frances is afraid to marry him and bring him into the house, knowing that her mother will dominate both their lives. As she tells Tom, "She'd make demands, take all my time, laugh at you behind your back—she has to run everything. You'd hate me in a week."
Their courtship continues in a limbo created by Frances's mother's strong hold on her, until Mrs. Harvey unexpectedly dies. In the weeks that follow, Frances suffers from insomnia and recalls a favorite humorous comment of her father: "Let all things proceed in orderly progression to their final confusion." She has always thought the "final confusion" referred to death, but she decides now that chaos can occur at any point. Her mother's many expensive clothes, for example, have created a dilemma for her: There is no room for them in the attic, but she knows that she cannot simply sell them or give them away.
One afternoon, coming out of the cemetery after visiting her mother's grave, Frances encounters an elderly black man who requests that she move her car, which is blocking the road, so that he can carry a sick girl to the hospital in his wagon. That night, Frances is unable to sleep, worried because she did not offer to drive the girl to the hospital herself. She goes to her mother's room for the sedatives that she bought the day before her mother's death. When she finds the box empty, she realizes that her mother, unable to express her love in words, had committed suicide so that she and Tom could be married. The next morning, Frances hurries out to the spot where she saw the old man and finds him plowing. She inquires about the girl and is told that she will be all right.
When Frances tells Tom about her experience, he determines not to reveal to her that the story parallels that reported by members of the chain gang years before, because she already is burdened with "ghosts" enough—her mother and the house itself. He quickly decides that the only way to solve their problems is to take her away from the house. Her immediate response is that she cannot abandon the family home, one of the grandest in town, but he insists, reminding her of all of her mother's clothes. Impulsively, she concedes that he is right and goes to get her coat. As they leave, she locks the door and places the key under the doormat, "a last obsequy to the house."
The story concludes with an enigmatic, somewhat ghostly paragraph in which the house seems to take on a character of its own. The narrator observes that it has become more beautiful than ever, apparently unaware that it has been rejected by Tom, perhaps pleased to have rid itself of an undesirable element, "to be free, at last, to enter with abandon the land of mourning and shadows and memory." Like the two lovers in John Keats's poem "The Eve of St. Agnes," Frances and Tom leave behind them the ghosts of a past that might have continued to haunt them and move toward whatever the future may hold.