Kitabı oku: «Donal Grant», sayfa 24

CHAPTER LIV.
LADY ARCTURA'S ROOM

The next day, when he saw lady Arctura, Donal was glad to learn that, for all the excitement of the day before, she had passed a good night, and never dreamed at all.

"I've been thinking it all over, my lady," he said, "and it seems to me that, if your uncle heard the noise of our plummet so near, the chimney can hardly rise from the floor you searched; for that room, you know, is half-way between the ground-floor and first floor. Still, sound does travel so! We must betake ourselves to measurement, I fear.—But another thing came into my head last night which may serve to give us a sort of parallax. You said you heard the music in your own room: would you let me look about in it a little? something might suggest itself!—Is it the room I saw you in once?"

"Not that," answered Arctura, "but the bedroom beyond it. I hear it sometimes in either room, but louder in the bedroom. You can examine it when you please.—If only you could find my bad dream, and drive it out!—Will you come now?"

"It is near the earl's room: is there no danger of his hearing anything?"

"Not the least. The room is not far from his, it is true, but it is not in the same block; there are thick walls between. Besides he is too ill to be up."

She led the way, and Donal followed her up the main staircase to the second floor, and into the small, curious, ancient room, evidently one of the oldest in the castle, which she had chosen for her sitting-room. Perhaps if she had lived less in the shadow, she might have chosen a less gloomy one: the sky was visible only through a little lane of walls and gables and battlements. But it was very charming, with its odd nooks and corners, recesses and projections. It looked an afterthought, the utilization of a space accidentally defined by rejection, as if every one of its sides were the wall of a distinct building.

"I do wish, my lady," said Donal, "you would not sit so much where is so little sunlight! Outer and inner things are in their origin one; the light of the sun is the natural world-clothing of the truth, and whoever sits much in the physical dark misses a great help to understanding the things of the light. If I were your director," he went on, "I would counsel you to change this room for one with a broad, fair outlook; so that, when gloomy thoughts hid God from you, they might have his eternal contradiction in the face of his heaven and earth."

"It is but fair to tell you," replied Arctura, "that Sophia would have had me do so; but while I felt about God as she taught me, what could the fairest sunlight be to me?"

"Yes, what indeed!" returned Donal. "Do you know," he added presently, his eyes straying about the room, "I feel almost as if I were trying to understand a human creature. A house is so like a human mind, which gradually disentangles and explains itself as you go on to know it! It is no accidental resemblance, for, as an unavoidable necessity, every house must be like those that built it."

"But in a very old house," said Arctura, "so many hands of so many generations have been employed in the building, and so many fancied as well as real necessities have been at work, that it must be a conflict of many natures."

"But where the house continues in the same family, the builders have more or less transmitted their nature, as well as their house, to those who come after them."

"Do you think then," said Arctura, almost with a shudder, "that I inherit a nature like the house left me—that the house is an outside to me—fits my very self as the shell fits the snail?"

"The relation of outer and inner is there, but there is given with it an infinite power to modify. Everyone is born nearer to God than to any ancestor, and it rests with him to cultivate either the godness or the selfness in him, his original or his mere ancestral nature. The fight between the natural and the spiritual man is the history of the world. The man who sets his faults inherited, makes atonement for the sins of those who went before him; he is baptized for the dead, not with water but with fire."

"That seems to me strange doctrine," said Arctura, with tremulous objection.

"If you do not like it, do not believe it. We inherit from our ancestors vices no more than virtues, but tendencies to both. Vice in my great-great-grandfather may in me be an impulse."

"How horrible!" cried Arctura.

"To say that we inherit sin from Adam, horrifies nobody: the source is so far back from us, that we let the stream fill our cisterns unheeded; but to say we inherit it from this or that nearer ancestor, causes the fact to assume its definite and individual reality, and make a correspondent impression."

"Then you allow that it is horrible to think oneself under the influence of the vices of certain wicked people, through whom we come where we are?"

"I would allow it, were it not that God is nearer to us than any vices, even were they our own; he is between us and those vices. But in us they are not vices—only possibilities, which become vices when they are yielded to. Then there are at the same time all sorts of counteracting and redeeming influences. It may be that wherein a certain ancestor was most wicked, his wife was especially lovely. He may have been cruel, and she tender as the hen that gathers her chickens under her wing. The main danger is perhaps, of being caught in some sudden gust of unsuspected impulse, and carried away of the one tendency before the other has time to assert and the will to rouse itself. But those who doubt themselves and try to do right may hope for warning. Such will not, I think, be allowed to go far out of the way for want of that. Self-confidence is the worst traitor."

"You comfort me a little."

"And then you must remember," continued Donal, "that nothing in its immediate root is evil; that from best human roots worst things spring. No one, for instance, will be so full of indignation, of fierceness, of revenge, as the selfish man born with a strong sense of justice.—But you say this is not the room in which you hear the music best?"

"No, it is here."

CHAPTER LV.
HER BED-CHAMBER

Lady Arctura opened the door of her bedroom. Donal glanced round it. It was as old-fashioned as the other.

"What is behind that press there—wardrobe, I think you call it?" he asked.

"Only a recess," answered lady Arctura. "The press, I am sorry to say, is too high to get into it."

Possibly had the press stood in the recess, the latter would have suggested nothing; but having caught sight of the opening behind the press, Donal was attracted by it. It was in the same wall with the fireplace, but did not seem formed by the projection of the chimney, for it did not go to the ceiling.

"Would you mind if I moved the wardrobe a little on one side?" he asked.

"Do what you like," she answered.

Donal moved it, and found the recess rather deep for its size. The walls of the room were wainscotted to the height of four feet or so, but the recess was bare. There were signs of hinges on one, and of a bolt on the other of the front edges: it had seemingly been once a closet, whose door continued the wainscot. There were no signs of shelves in it; the plaster was smooth.

But Donal was not satisfied. He took a big knife from his pocket, and began tapping all round. The moment he came to the right-hand side, there was a change in the sound.

"You don't mind if I make a little dust, my lady?" he said.

"Do anything you please," answered Arctura.

He sought in several places to drive the point of his knife into the plaster; it would nowhere enter it more than a quarter of an inch: here was no built wall, he believed, but one smooth stone. He found nothing like a joint till he came near the edge of the recess: there was a limit of the stone, and he began at once to clear it. It gave him a straight line from the bottom to the top of the recess, where it met another at right angles.

"There does seem, my lady," he said, "to be some kind of closing up here, though it may of course turn out of no interest to us! Shall I go on, and see what it is?"

"By all means," she answered, but turned pale as she spoke.

Donal looked at her anxiously. She understood his look.

"You must not mind my feeling a little silly," she said. "I am not silly enough to give way to it."

He went on again with his knife, and had presently cleared the outlines of a stone that filled nearly all the side of the recess. He paused.

"Go on! go on!" said Arctura.

"I must first get a better tool or two," answered Donal. "Will you mind being left?"

"I can bear it. But do not be long. A few minutes may evaporate my courage."

Donal hurried away to get a hammer and chisel, and a pail to put the broken plaster in. Lady Arctura stood and waited. The silence closed in upon her. She began to feel eerie. She felt as if she had but to will and see through the wall to what lay beyond it. To keep herself from so willing, she had all but reduced herself to mental inaction, when she started to her feet with a smothered cry: a knock not over gentle sounded on the door of the outer room. She darted to the bedroom-door and flung it to—next to the press, and with one push had it nearly in its place. Then she opened again the door, thinking to wait for a second knock on the other before she answered. But as she opened the inner, the outer door also opened—slowly—and a face looked in. She would rather have had a visitor from behind the press! It was her uncle; his face cadaverous; his eyes dull, but with a kind of glitter in them; his look like that of a housebreaker. In terror of himself, in terror lest he should discover what they had been about, in terror lest Donal should appear, wishing to warn the latter, and certain that, early as it was, her uncle was not himself, with intuitive impulse, the moment she saw him, she cried out,

"Uncle! what is that behind you?"

She felt afterwards, and was very sorry, that it was both a deceitful and cruel thing to do; but she did it, as I have said, by a swift, unreflecting instinct—which she concluded, in thinking about it, came from the ready craft of some ancestor, and illustrated what Donal had been saying.

The earl turned like one struck on the back, imagined something of which Arctura knew nothing, cowered to two-thirds of his height, and crept away. Though herself trembling from head to foot, Arctura was seized with such a pity, that she followed him to his room; but she dared not go in. She stood a moment in the passage within sight of his door, and thought she heard his bell ring. Now Simmons might meet Donal! In a moment or two, however, she was relieved. Donal came round a turn, carrying his implements. She signed to him to make haste, and he was just safe inside her room when Simmons came along on his way to his master's. She drew the door to, as if she had been just coming out, and said,

"Knock at my door as you return, and tell me how your master is: I heard his bell."

She then begged Donal to go on with his work, but stop it the moment she made a noise with the handle of the door, and resumed her place outside till Simmons should re-appear. Full ten minutes she stood waiting: it seemed an hour. Though she heard Donal at work within, and knew Simmons must soon come, though the room behind her was her own, and familiar to her from childhood, the long empty passage in front of her appeared frightful. What might not come pacing along towards her! At last she heard her uncle's door—steps—and the butler approached. She shook the handle of the door, and Donal's blows ceased.

"I can't make him out, my lady!" said Simmons. "It is nothing very bad, I think, this time; but he gets worse and worse—always taking more and more o' them horrid drugs. It's no use trying to hide it: he'll drop off sudden one o' these days! I've heard say laudanum don't shorten life; but it's not one nor two, nor half a dozen sorts o' laudanums he keeps mixing in that poor inside o' his! The end must come, and what will it be? It's better you should be prepared for it when it do come, my lady. I've just been a giving of him some into his skin—with a little sharp-pointed thing, a syringe, you know, my lady: he says it's the only way to take some medicines. He's just a slave to his medicines, my lady!"

As soon as he was gone, Arctura returned to Donal. He had knocked the plaster away, and uncovered a slab, very like one of the great stones on some of the roofs. The next thing was to prize it from the mortar, and that was not difficult. The instant he drew the stone away, a dank chill assailed them, accompanied by a humid smell, as from a long-closed cellar. They stood and looked, now at each other, now at the opening in the wall, where was nothing but darkness. The room grew cold and colder. Donal was anxious as to how Arctura might stand what discovery lay before them, and she was anxious to read his sensations. For her sake he tried to hide all expression of the awe that was creeping over him, and it gave him enough to do.

"We are not far from something, my lady!" he said. "It makes one think of what He said who carries the light everywhere—that there is nothing covered that shall not be revealed, neither hid that shall not be known. Shall we leave it for the present?"

"Anything but that!" said Arctura with a shiver; "—anything but an unknown terrible something!"

"But what can you do with it?"

"Let the daylight in upon it."

Her colour returned as she spoke, and a look of determination came into her eyes.

"You will not be afraid to be left then when I go down?"

"I am cowardly enough to be afraid, but not cowardly enough to let you go alone. I will share with you. I shall not be afraid—not much—not too much, I mean—if I am with you."

Donal hesitated.

"See!" she went on, "I am going to light a candle, and ask you to come down with me—if down it be: it may be up!"

"I am ready, my lady," said Donal.

She lighted the candle.

"Had we not better lock the door, my lady?"

"That might set them wondering," she answered. "We should have to lock both the doors of this room, or else both the passage-doors! The better way will be to pull the press after us when we are behind it."

"You are right, my lady. Please take some matches with you."

"To be sure."

"You will carry the candle, please. I must have my hands free. Try to let the light shine past me as much as you can, that I may see where I am going. But I shall depend most on my hands and feet."

CHAPTER LVI.
THE LOST ROOM

Donal then took the light from her hand, and looked in. The opening went into the further wall and turned immediately to the left. He gave her back the candle, and went in. Arctura followed close.

There was a stair in the thickness of the wall, going down steep and straight. It was not wide enough to let them go abreast. "Put your hand on my shoulder, my lady," said Donal. "That will keep us together. If I fall, you must stand stock-still."

She put her hand on his shoulder, and they began their descent. The steps were narrow and high, therefore the stair was steep They had gone down from thirty to thirty-five steps, when they came to a level passage, turning again at right angles to the left. It was twice the width of the stair. Its sides, like those of the stair, were of roughly dressed stones, and unplastered. It led them straight to a strong door. It was locked, and in the rusty lock they could see the key from within. To the right was another door, a smaller one, which stood wide open. They went through, and by a short passage entered an opener space. Here on one side there seemed to be no wall, and they stood for a moment afraid to move lest they should tumble into darkness. But sending the light about, and feeling with hands and feet, they soon came to an idea of the place they were in. It was a little gallery, with arches on one side opening into a larger place, the character of which they could only conjecture, for nearly all they could determine was, that it went below and rose above where they stood. On the other side was a plain wall, such as they had had on both sides of them.

They had been speaking in awe-filled whispers, and were now in silence endeavouring to send their sight through the darkness beyond the arches.

"Listen, my lady," said Donal.

>From above their heads came a chord of the aerial music, soft and faint and wild! A strange effect it had! it was like news of the still airy night and the keen stars, come down through secret ways into the dark places of the earth, from spaces so wide that they seem the most awful of prisons! It sweetly fostered Arctura's courage.

"That must be how the songs of angels sounded, with news of high heaven, to the people of old!" she said.

Donal was not in so high a mood. He was occupied at the moment with the material side of things.

"We can't be far," he said, "from the place where our plummet came down! But let us try a little further."

The next moment they came against a cord, and at their feet was the weight of the clock.

At the other end of the little gallery they came again to a door and again to a stair, turning to the right; and again they went down. Arctura kept up bravely. The air was not so bad as might have been feared, though it was cold and damp. This time they descended but a little way, and came to a landing place, on the right of which was a door. Donal raised a rusty latch and pushed; the door swung open against the wall, dropping from one hinge with the slight shock. Two steps more they descended, and stood on a stone floor.

Donal thought at first they must be in one of the dungeons, but soon bethought himself that they had not descended far enough for that.

A halo of damp surrounded their candle; its weak light seemed scarcely to spread beyond it; for some moments they took in nothing of what was around them. The floor first began to reveal itself to Donal's eye: in the circle of the light he saw, covered with dust as it was, its squares of black and white marble. Then came to him a gleam of white from the wall; it was a tablet; and at the other end was something like an altar, or a tomb.

"We are in the old chapel of the castle!" he said. "—But what is that?" he added instantly with an involuntary change of voice, and a shudder through his whole nervous being.

Arctura turned; her hand sought his and clasped it convulsively. They stood close to something which the light itself had concealed from them. Ere they were conscious of an idea concerning it, each felt the muscles of neck and face drawn, as if another power than their own invaded their persons. But they were live wills, and would not be overcome. They forced their gaze; perception cleared itself; and slowly they saw and understood.

With strangest dream-like incongruity and unfitness, the thing beside them was a dark bedstead, with carved posts and low wooden tester, richly carved!—This in the middle of a chapel!—But there was no speculation in them; they could only see, not think. Donal took the candle. From the tester hung large pieces of stuff that had once made heavy curtains, but seemed hardly now to have as much cohesion as the dust on a cobweb; it held together only in virtue of the lightness to which decay had reduced it. On the bed lay a dark mass, like bed clothes and bedding not quite turned to dust—they could yet see something like embroidery in one or two places—dark like burnt paper or half-burnt flaky rags, horrid as a dream of dead love!

Heavens! what was that shape in the middle?—what was that on the black pillow?—what was that thick line stretching towards one of the head-posts? They stared speechless. Arctura pressed close to Donal. His arm went round her to protect her from what threatened almost to overwhelm himself—the inroad of an unearthly horror. Plain to the eyes of both, the form in the middle of the bed was that of a human body, slowly crumbling where it lay. Bed and blankets and quilt, sheets and pillows had crumbled with it through the long wasting years, but something of its old shape yet lingered with the dust: that was a head that lay on the pillow; that was the line of a long arm that pointed across the pillow to the post.—What was that hanging from the bedpost and meeting the arm? God in heaven! there was a staple in the post, and from the staple came a chain!—and there at its other end a ring, lying on the pillow!—and through it—yes through it, the dust-arm passed!—This was no mere death-bed; it was a torture bed—most likely a murder-bed; and on it yet lay the body that died on it—had lain for hundreds of years, unlifted for kindly burial: the place of its decease had been made its tomb—closed up and hidden away!

A bed in a chapel, and one dead thereon!—how could it be? Had the woman—for Donal imagined the form yet showed it the body of a woman—been carried thither of her own desire, to die in a holy place? That could not be: there was the chain! Had she sought refuge there from some persecutor? If so, he has found her! She was a captive—mad perhaps, more likely hated and the victim of a terrible revenge; left, probably enough, to die of hunger, or disease—neglected or tended, who could tell? One thing, only was clear—that there she died, and there she was buried!

Arctura was trembling. Donal drew her closer, and would have taken her away. But she said in his ear, as if in dread of disturbing the dust,

"I am not frightened—not very. It is only the cold, I think."

They went softly to the other end of the chapel, almost clinging together as they went. They saw three narrow lancet windows on their right, but no glimmer came through them.

They came to what had seemed an altar, and such it still seemed. But on its marble-top lay the dust plainly of an infant—sight sad as fearful, and full of agonizing suggestion! They turned away, nor either looked at the other. The awful silence of the place seemed settling on them like a weight. Donal made haste, nor did Arctura seem less anxious to leave it.

When they reached the stair, he made her go first: he must be between her and the terror! As they passed the door on the other side of the little gallery—down whose spiracle had come no second breath—Donal said to himself he must question that door, but to Arctura he said nothing: she had had enough of inquiry for the moment!

Slowly they ascended to Arctura's chamber. Donal replaced the slab, and propped it in its position; gathered the plaster into the pail; replaced the press, and put a screw through the bottom of it into the floor. Arctura stood and watched him all the time.

"You must leave your room again, my lady!" said Donal.

"I will. I shall speak to mistress Brookes at once."

"Will you tell her all about it?"

"We must talk about that!"

"How will she bear it," thought Donal; "how after such an experience, can she spend the rest of the day alone? There is all the long afternoon and evening to be met!"

He gave the last turn to the screw in the floor, and rose. Then first he saw that Arctura had turned very white.

"Do sit down, my lady!" he said. "I would run for mistress Brookes, but I dare not leave you."

"No, no; we will go down together! Give me that bottle of eau de Cologne, please."

Donal did not know either eau de Cologne or its bottle, but he darted to the dressing-table and guessed correctly. It revived her, and she began to take deep breaths. Then with a strong effort she rose to go down.

The time for speech concerning what they had seen, was not come!

"Would you not like, my lady," said Donal, "to come to the schoolroom this afternoon? You could sit beside while I give Davie his lessons!"

"Yes," she answered at once; "I should like it much!—Is there not something you could give me to do?—Will you not teach me something?"

"I should like to begin you with Greek, and teach you a little mathematics—geometry first of all."

"You frighten me!"

"Your fright wouldn't outlast the beginning," said Donal. "Anyhow, you will have Davie and me for company! You must be lonely sometimes! You see little of Miss Carmichael now, I fancy."

"She has not been near me since that day in the avenue! We salute now and then coming out of church. She will not come again except I ask her; and I shall be in no haste: she would only assume I was sorry, and could not do without her!"

"I should let her wait, my lady!" said Donal. "She sorely wants humbling!"

"You do not know her, Mr. Grant, if you think anything I could do would have that effect on her."

"Pardon me, my lady; I did not imagine it your task to humble her! But you need not let her ride over you as she used to do; she knows nothing really, and a great many things unreally. Unreal knowledge is worse than ignorance.—Would not Miss Graeme be a better friend?"

"She is much more lovable; but she does not trouble her head about the things I care for.—I mean religion," she added hesitatingly.

"So much the better,—"

"Mr. Grant!"

"You did not let me finish, my lady!—So much the better, I was going to say, till she begins to trouble her heart about it—or rather to untrouble her heart with it! The pharisee troubled his head, and no doubt his conscience too, and did not go away justified; but the poor publican, as we with our stupid pity would call him, troubled his heart about it; and that trouble once set a going, there is no fear. Head and all must soon follow.—But how am I to get rid of this plaster without being seen?"

"I will show you the way to your own stair without going down—the way we came once, you may remember. You can take it to the top of the house till it is dark.—But I do not feel comfortable about my uncle's visit. Can it be that he suspects something? Perhaps he knows all about the chapel—and that stair too!"

"He is a man to enjoy having a secret!—But our discovery bears out what we were saying as to the likeness of house and man—does it not?"

"You don't mean there is anything like that in me?" rejoined Arctura, looking frightened.

"You!" he exclaimed. "—But I mean no individual application," he added, "except as reflected from the general truth. This house is like every human soul, and so, like me and you and all of us. We have found the chapel of the house, the place they used to pray to God in, built up, lost, forgotten, filled with dust and damp—and the mouldering dead lying there before the Lord, waiting to be made live again and praise him!"

"I said you meant me!" murmured Arctura, with a faint, sad smile.

"No; the time is past for that. It is long since first you were aware of the dead self in the lost chapel; a hungry soul soon misses both, and knows, without being sure of it, that they are somewhere. You have kept searching for them in spite of all persuasion that the quest was foolish."

Arctura's eyes shone in her pale face; but they shone with gathering tears. Donal turned away, and took up the pail. She rose, and guided him to his tower-stair, where he went up and she went down.