CHAPTER XXIVHORROR
This chamber is the ghostly!Hood.
This chamber is the ghostly!Hood.
This chamber is the ghostly!Hood.
This chamber is the ghostly!
Hood.
“Oh, Madame Gloria! I’ve done bragging! I’ll never brag any more! I did pray to my guardian angel if he’d save my life and reason until I could get out of that place I would never brag any more!” exclaimed Philippa, with a hysterical laugh, as she dropped on one of the rude oak benches in the hall.
“Oh, Philippa, don’t speak so lightly of that awful——” cried Gloria, suddenly stopping and covering her pallid face with both hands, as she, too, sank upon a seat.
“Lightly? Gracious Heaven! I don’t speak lightly! All my boasted courage has come out in a cold sweat that trickles like ice water all down my spine! Madame Gloria, I would rather have seen the blackest evil spirit from the abyss, all alone at midnight, than that horrid——Ugh-h-h!”
“Philippa! for Heaven’s sake, don’t speak of it now, or evermore! You are a brave girl——”
“I will never say so after this. I’m conquered quite!” shuddered the willful creature.
“You have seen what would have shaken the nerves of the boldest man; it is no wonder that you are overcome as well as myself. But, Philippa, I beg you, for my sake, never mention to a human being what we have seen below. If it were once known what our eyes have beheld—what rises from the brink of that subterranean black river—the horror below the foundation of these walls—no living being could be induced to remain in the house with us.”
“Shall you remain?” whispered Philippa.
“Yes.”
“Oh, why?”
“Because I said I would, and I should be ashamed to retract. I will not be ejected, even by that appalling—— Oh! let us not speak of it, even to each other. And never, never to any one else. Your aunt would never come near the house, even by day, if she knew of that dire presence below, and I wish her to remain with us, Philippa. I say ‘us,’ because I feel sure that you will stay with me.”
“Yes, I will stay and I will keep the secret,” whispered the girl.
“The cellar and the horrible cave below it, with the black river, have long been disused, if ever, indeed, they were used at all. I will have the two doors at the head of the two flights of stairs leading down to the abyss nailed up to-day. The foul air from below will be excuse enough for that.”
“There be some that cannot be kept out by locks, or bolts, or bars, or nailed-up doors—no, nor evenby tons of stone and earth! And of such was what we saw!”
“Oh, hush, hush, hush! Why do you dwell upon that? Oh, that we both could drink of the waters of Lethe and forget it!” whispered Gloria, as she covered her face with her hands and shuddered.
At this moment a lucky interruption ended their dismal conversation.
Mrs. Brent came walking briskly from one of the side rooms, saying:
“Come, now, ma’am, dinner is ready—not such a dinner as I hope to set before you every day for the future, but just such a one as I could get up under the circumstances to-day.”
“I have no doubt it will be delicious and just what we like. As for me, I prefer what are called ‘picked up dinners’—simple little dishes. The sight of big joints takes away my appetite,” said Gloria, as she arose and followed her conductress into the room from which the latter had emerged.
It was the front room on the left-hand side of the hall—a large room, with an oak floor uncarpeted, stone walls unplastered, two tall front windows, uncurtained, and a broad fireplace, where blazed a rousing, fragrant fire of pine and cedar wood.
An oaken table, covered with a coarse, clean white cloth, stood in the middle of the room, set for dinner; two oaken chairs were placed for the master and mistress of the house.
David Lindsay stood before the fire, but on seeing Gloria, came forward to meet her.
“You look pale and worried,” he said, as he took her hand.
“Yes, I have been going over the house and I feel tired,” she replied.
“And hungry, I hope, to do justice to the dainty repast Mrs. Brent has prepared for us,” he added, as he led her to the table and drew out her chair.
“Now come, Mrs. Brent and Philippa, you must both sit down and dine with us to-day. Don’t let it be said that we had to take our dinner alone on the first day of our arrival at home,” said Gloria.
David Lindsay immediately arose and placed two more chairs at the table.
“Oh, we couldn’t think of it, ma’am, indeed!” answered the housekeeper, drawing away.
Gloria urged and David pleaded, but Mrs. Brent persisted in her refusal, until at length Gloria got up and left the table, saying:
“Very well, then, I will not eat a single morsel of dinner until you and Phil join us.”
“Oh, I’ll submit at once,” laughed Philippa, taking one of the vacant chairs.
“Do, Mrs. Brent, humor the fancy of our willful little lady,” said David Lindsay, as he arose and placed his hand on the back of another chair, inviting the old woman to take it.
“You are a couple of spoiled children, that’s what you are, and you ought both to be at school instead of being married, and that is the fact,” laughed the housekeeper, as, not really unwillingly, she took her place at the table with the genial young pair.
“Now, that is settled. The precedent—don’t they call it a precedent in the courts of law, David?—the precedent is established. Henceforth you are to take your meals with us, dear Mrs. Brent, just as if you were our mother, and Philippa were our sister; for we have neither mother nor sister on this earth—I mean David nor I—and, besides, really, we four are too few to be separated in thislonesome place,” said the little lady of the house, as she settled herself to enjoy her dinner as well as she could under the circumstances and the memory of the afternoon’s horror.
It was a very limited dinner, consisting of just what was at hand and could be cooked in a hurry; but it was a very dainty dinner, notwithstanding; there were delicious broiled venison steaks, light biscuits, fresh butter, a baked custard, preserved mountain cherries, tea, coffee and cream.
David Lindsay and Mrs. Brent fully appreciated the good things, and proved that they did so.
But neither Gloria nor Philippa could so far overcome the effect of that ghastly terror in the cave as to relish anything that was set before them.
As this late meal was to serve as both dinner and supper for the small household on this day of bustle, they sat rather long at the table, not leaving it, in fact, until the short tallow candles that had been placed upon it began to burn low in their sockets.
Then David Lindsay and Gloria withdrew from the dining-room and went into the parlor on the opposite side of the hall.
There, also, a fine fire was burning, and a table was drawn up before the hearth, flanked by two straight-backed, chip-bottomed chairs.
“What would Miss Agrippina de Crespigney say, if she could have seen her niece, the ‘Countess Gloria,’ sitting down at the table with her housekeeper?” inquired David Lindsay, with a smile, as they seated themselves near the fire.
“Oh, for Heaven’s sake, drop that! I never was intended for a fine lady, David Lindsay—never!—much less for a countess! I love people, DavidLindsay. I never want to keep them at a distance. I want to draw them closer to me,” she murmured, in a tender tone, with her eyes fixed dreamily upon the fire.
“Then love me, draw me nearer to you, and my life’s devotion shall be yours,” was in his heart and almost on his lips to say; but he put away the selfish thought and continued silent.
It was growing late, and they were both very tired.
Gloria was the first to rise.
“Good-night, David Lindsay,” she said as she took one of the tallow candles from the chimney shelf to light her steps.
“Good-night,” he answered, in gentle tones.
“Your room,” she resumed, and then she hesitated, holding the candle in her hand and looking down on the floor—“your room is the one over the dining-room. You will find everything prepared there for your comfort.”
“I thank you—very much,” answered the young man, in a low and broken voice.
“Good-night,” she said, still hesitating.
“Good-night, lady dear.”
“God—bless—you, David Lindsay,” she added, faltering.
“And you, too! God bless you, Gloria,” he answered.
She went out of the room; but as she turned to shut the door, she caught sight of his face. It wore a look of weary sorrow, such as he never would have willingly permitted her to see; and suddenly she sat down her candle on the hall bench, ran back into the room, threw her arms around hisneck and kissed his forehead, sobbing forth the words:
“Oh, David Lindsay, I am so sorry—so sorry! But I can’t help it. Indeed, I can’t, dear David Lindsay!”
With a look of ineffable tenderness, he put his arm around her waist and drew her close to his heart, and would have returned her kiss, but she suddenly broke from him, and ran out of the room. She caught up her candle from the hall table, flew up stairs to her own chamber, shut the door, and flung herself down on the bed in a passion of tears.
“Oh-h-h! what a hard, cold, proud wretch I am! What a cruel, wicked, unnatural monster! But I cannot help it! I cannot! I don’t want to be married—I do not. I love David Lindsay! I do love him, dearly, dearly, dearly; I always did love him better than anybody else in the whole world. Ah! who is so good and grand as he is, within himself? No one that I ever saw in this world. No one that I ever read of. But I don’t want to be his wife! I don’t want to be anybody’s wife! Oh, I wish I had stayed at the Sacred Heart, with the quiet sisters there!”
She was interrupted in her passionate vehemence of self-reproaches and lamentations by the sound of light footsteps and cheerful voices approaching her door, and finally by a rapping at the same.
She arose, composed herself as well as she could and went and opened to Mrs. Brent and Philippa, who had come to bid her good-night, and to ask if she would need anything more before they should retire to bed.
Gloria thanked them and said that she would require nothing.
“And if you should, you have only to knock on the door between us to let me know, for you see our room is just back of yours here,” added the housekeeper.
“I will remember,” replied Gloria, in a low tone.
“I suppose Mr. Lindsay will not want anything. I reckon he’ll be up before long. I left him sitting before the big parlor fire,” remarked Mrs. Brent.
“I dare say,” answered Gloria, so wearily that the housekeeper bade her good-night and retired, followed by Philippa, who, since their fearful adventure in the cavern under the cellar, had been strangely silent and reserved.
Gloria locked her door leading into the hall and bolted the one leading into the rear room occupied by the housekeeper.
Then she replenished her fire from a box of wood that sat on one side of the hearth, and also threw on a number of resinous pine knots and cones, that their bright blaze might light up the large, gloomy chamber.
Having done this, she proceeded to examine her room more carefully than she had yet done.
It was one of the two front and principal bedchambers in the house, being immediately above, and of the same dimensions with the “big parlor” below. And, with the exception of the bed, which, in all its appointments, was very good, it was as rudely furnished. The walls and floor were perfectly bare. The windows were without curtains or shades, but were provided with unpainted oak shutters which closed from the outside. These two front windows faced the east; between them stood an old oaken chest of drawers surmounted by a hanging mirror, so mildewed as to be scarcely useful.Each side of this old piece of furniture stood a high-backed, chip-bottomed chair, one under each window.
On the south side of the room was the broad open fireplace, with deep closets in the recesses on the right and left.
On the west side was the high four-post bedstead, with its head against the partition wall, and its foot opposite the windows. On the side nearest the fireplace was the door leading into the rear room.
On the north side was the door opening into the hall. In the corner between this hall door and the head of the bed was an old-fashioned piece of furniture of black walnut that reached from the lofty ceiling to the floor, and might have been a bookcase, a clothes-press, a cabinet, or the three in one; for the long, heavy black doors hanging open disclosed closets within closets, and shelves and drawers and pigeon-holes innumerable, and of all shapes and sizes. Yellow papers protruded from many compartments.
Gloria made up her mind to investigate this ancient secretary at her leisure the next day.
Then, having offered up her evening prayers and thanksgivings, she went to bed, and, notwithstanding care and anxiety, she soon fell asleep.
David Lindsay sat long over the fire in the big parlor; not until all the household had been for hours in deep repose did he rouse himself to go to the chamber allotted to him over the dining-room.
This was a large, square room, in all respects a counterpart of the one on the opposite side of the hall occupied by Gloria. It was furnished in the same rude style.
The only difference was that this room was withoutthe huge old escritoire, or secretary, that stood in the other.
David Lindsay did not replenish his fire. It was nearly out, so he covered it up, blew out his snuff of candle, and retired to bed; but not to sleep—at least, for a long time.
He was as nearly heart-broken, poor fellow, as any youthful lover ever was. His pride was struggling with the sense of disappointment, humiliation and sorrow that seemed to be rushing him into despair. He felt sure that if his capricious but tender bride knew the tithe of his sufferings, she would give herself to him; but not to her pity could he bear to owe his love. He must accept his fate, rather than lose his self-respect; must see her in safety, and then depart.
But how to secure her safety? That was the question that kept him awake so long.
At length, weary mind and body succumbed to sleep.
Then a very strange thing happened.
How long he had slept, he knew not; at what time he awoke, or whether he really did awake, or only dreamt, he never could tell; but it seemed to him that he was gently aroused from a deep and dreamless sleep, by the touch of a soft hand on his face, and the tone of a soft voice in his ear.
“Who is there?” he murmured, only half conscious.
The sweet, low-toned, pathetic voice answered: “It is I, your mother. David Gryphyn, arise, go hence, get to your home. My mother has somewhat to say to you.”
The soft voice, breathing flute-like over him, heldhis soul in a spell of silence and repose until it ceased.
Then, wondering, he started up as from a dream.
The room was perfectly dark, but he groped his way to the mantelpiece, where he had left the tallow candle and the box of matches, and he struck a light. And still in great agitation, he went to both the chamber doors—the one leading into the hall, and the one leading into the rear room—and examined them. They were both securely locked and bolted as he had left them.
Then he went to the front windows, hoisted them, and threw open the heavy oaken shutters. A flood of light burst into the room. He found, to his surprise, that it was broad day and the sun was rising.