Although Mr. Henley had no doubt of the truth of Miss Guir's assertion, the mystery of her life was as real and deeply impressive as ever. Perhaps it was even more so, as seeming more subtle and far-reaching than crime itself, if such a thing were possible. Paul was determined to investigate the secret of the closet stairs; for while Ah Ben's explanation was plausible to a degree, the blank wall and heavy door at the bottom filled him with an uncanny fascination, which grew as he pondered upon them. Exactly what course to pursue he had not decided, but awaited an opportunity to continue his efforts in earnest. There were two serious difficulties to contend with; one was the want of tools, the other the necessity of prosecuting his work in silence.
As upon the previous evening, Dorothy and Mr. Henley dined alone, although Ah Ben, appearing just before they had finished, partook of a little dry lettuce and a small cup of coffee. Dorothy, as usual, ate most sparingly, “scarcely enough,” as Paul remarked, “to keep the parrot alive.”
After dinner they went together into the great hall, where Ah Ben prepared a pipe apiece for himself and his guest.
The logs were piled high upon the hearth, and the cheery blaze lit up the old pictures with a shimmering lustre, reducing the lamp to a mere spectral ornament. It was the flickering firelight that made the men and women on the walls nod at each other, as perhaps they had done in life.
They seated themselves in the spacious old leather-covered pew; Ah Ben and Dorothy upon one side, while Paul sat opposite. The men were soon engaged with their pipes, while Miss Guir had settled herself upon a pile of cushions in the corner nearest the chimney.
“You have been absent from home to-day, I believe,” said Henley to the old man, by way of opening the conversation, and with the hope of eliciting an answer which would throw some light upon his habits.
“Yes,” Ah Ben replied, blowing a volume of smoke from under his long, white moustache; “I seldom pass the entire day in this house. There are few things that give me more pleasure than roaming alone through the forest. One seems to come in closer touch with first principles. Nature, Mr. Henley, must be courted to be comprehended.”
“I suppose so,” answered Paul, not knowing what else to say, and wondering at the man's odd method of passing the time.
A long silence followed after this, only interrupted at intervals by guttural mutterings from the parrot, which seemed to be lodged somewhere in the upper regions of the obscure stairway. When the clock struck eleven, the bird shrieked out, as upon the previous night.
“Dorothy! Dorothy! it is bed time!”
Miss Guir arose, and saying “Good night,” left Ah Ben and Mr. Henley to themselves.
“I am afraid I have been very stupid,” said the old man, apologetically; “indeed, I must have fallen asleep, as it is my habit to take a nap in the early evening, after which I am more wide awake than at any other hour.”
“Not at all,” answered Paul, “I have been enjoying my pipe, and as Miss Guir seemed disposed to be quiet, think I must have been nodding myself.”
“Do you feel disposed to join me in another pipe and a midnight talk,” inquired the host, “or are you inclined for bed?”
Paul was not sleepy, and nothing could have suited him better than to sit over the fire, listening to this strange man, and so he again accepted eagerly. Ah Ben seemed pleased, declaring it was a great treat to have a friend who was as much of an owl as he himself was. And so he added fresh fuel to the dying embers, settled himself in his cosy corner by the fire, while Paul sat opposite.
“Every man must live his own life,” resumed Ah Ben; “but with my temper, the better half would be blotted out, were I deprived of this quiet time for thought and reflection.”
“I quite agree with you,” replied Paul, “and yet the wisdom of the world is opposed to late hours.”
“The wisdom of the world is based upon the experience of theworldly prosperous; and what is worldly prosperity but the accumulation of dollars? To be prosperous is one thing; to be happy, quite another.”
“I see you are coming back to our old argument. I am sure I could never school myself to the cheerful disregard for money which you seem to have. For my part, I could not do without it, although, to be sure, I sometimes manage on very little.”
“Again the wisdom of the world!” exclaimed Ah Ben, “and what has it done for us?”
“It has taught us to be very comfortable in this latter part of the nineteenth century,” Paul replied.
“Has it?” cried the old man, his eyes fixed full upon Henley's face. “I admit,” he continued, “that it has taught us to rely upon luxuries that eat out the life while pampering the body. It has taught us to depend upon the poison that paralyzes the will, and that personal power we were speaking of. It has done much for man, I grant you, but its efforts have been mainly directed to his destruction.”
“No man can be happy without health,” answered Paul, “and surely you will admit that the discoveries of the last few decades have done much to improve his physical condition.”
He was nestling back into the corner of his lounge, where the shadow of the mantelpiece screened his face, and enabled him to look directly into Ah Ben's eyes, now fixed upon him with strange intensity. There was a power behind those eyes that was wont to impress the beholder with a species of interest which he felt might be developed into awe; and yet they were neither large nor handsome, as eyes are generally counted. Deep set, mounted with withered lids and shaggy brows, their power was due to the manifestation of a spiritual force, a Titanic will, that made itself felt, independent of material envelopment. It was the soul looking through the narrow window of mortality.
“Health?” said Ah Ben, repeating Henley's last idea interrogatively, and yet scarcely above a whisper.
“Yes, health,” answered Paul. “I maintain that the old maxim of 'early to bed' says something on that score, as well as on that of wealth.”
“True, but you said that a man must needs be healthy to be happy.”
“That's it, and I maintain that it's a pretty good assertion.”
“There again we must differ. Happiness should be independent of bodily conditions, whether those conditions mean outward luxury or inward ease. I must again refer you to the prize-fighter. But if you will pardon me, I think you have put the cart before the horse; for once having granted that personal power, happiness must ensue, and your health as a necessity follow. First cultivate this occult force, and we need submit to no physical laws; for inasmuch as the higher controls the lower, we are masters of our own bodies.”
“That is a pretty good prescription for those who are able to follow it, but for my humble attainments I'd rather depend on physic and a virtuous life.”
“Quite so,” answered Ah Ben, thoughtfully, “but, speaking frankly, this limitation of your powers to the chemical action of your body only shows the narrowness of your scientific training. Had men been taught the power of the will as the underlying principle of every effect, one drug would have proved quite as efficacious as another, and bread pills would have met the requirements of the world.”
“But in the state of imbecility in which we happen to find ourselves,” added Paul, “I should think that a judicious application of the world's wisdom would be better than trifling with theories one does not comprehend.”
“As I said just now,” observed Ah Ben, “I have no desire to force my private views upon another, but I must distinctly object to the word 'theory,' as associated with my positive knowledge on this subject. Every man must do as he thinks right, and as suits him best; but, for my part, I have disregarded all the physical laws of health during an unusually long life.”
Paul straightened himself up, and looked at his host in the hope of a further explanation.
“I don't think I quite understand you!”
“Yes,” said Ah Ben, repeating the sentence slowly and emphasizing the words, “I disregard all laws usually considered essential to living at all!”
Henley was silent for a minute in a vain effort to decide whether or not he were speaking seriously. He could not help remembering his abstinence from food, but at the time had not doubted the man had eaten between meals.
“Then you certainly ought to know all about it,” he continued, relaxing into his former position, but quite unsettled as to Ah Ben's intention.
“You must admit that I have had sufficient time to be an authority unto myself, if not to others,” added the old man. And then as he pressed the ashes down into the bowl of his pipe with his long emaciated fingers, and watched the little threads of smoke as they came curling out from under his thick moustache, Paul could only admit that the gravity of his bearing was inconsistent with a humorous interpretation of his words.
“You interest me greatly,” resumed Henley, after scrutinizing the singular face before him for several minutes, in a kind of mesmeric fascination, “and I should like to ask what you mean by the cultivation of this occult power of which you spoke?”
“It is only to be acquired by the supremest quality of self-control, as I told you yesterday,” answered Ah Ben; “but when once gained, no man would relinquish it for the gold of a thousand Solomons! You would have proof of what I tell you? Well, some day perhaps you will!”
Henley started. The man had read his thoughts. It was the very question upon his lips.
“You are a mind reader!” cried Paul. “How did you know I was going to ask you that?”
Ah Ben made no answer; he did not even smile, but continued to gaze into the fire and blow little puffs of smoke toward the chimney.
“You referred just now to the prize-fighter,” Paul resumed after a few minutes, “but I am going to squelch that argument.”
“Yes,” Ah Ben replied, now with his eyes half closed, “you are going to tell me that, although the man may have been battered and bruised, he really feels no pain, because of the unnatural excitement of the moment; but there you only rivet the argument against yourself; for I maintain—and not from theory, but from knowledge—that that very excitement is an exaltation of the spirit, which may be cultivated and relied upon to conquer pain and the ills of the flesh forever!”
“It would go far indeed if it could do all that, although I believe there is something in what you say, for in a small way I have seen it myself.”
“Yes, we have all seen it in a small way; and does it not seem strange that men have never thought of cultivating it in a larger way, through the exercise of their will in controlling their minds and bodies? This exaltation of spirit is only attained through effort, or some great physical shock. It is the secret of all power; it conquers all pain, and makes disease impossible.”
“Makes disease impossible!” cried Paul in astonishment.
“Yes,” answered the elder man quietly. “This soul power, of which I speak, is the hidden akasa in all men—it is the man himself—and when once recognized, the body is relegated to its proper sphere as the servant, and not the master; then it is that man realizes his own power and supremacy over all things.”
“But,” persisted Henley, “if you go so far as to say that this occult or soul power can conquer disease, you would have us all living forever!”
“We do live forever,” answered Ah Ben.
“Yes, after death; but I mean here!”
“There is no such thing as death!” remarked Ah Ben quietly, as if he were merely giving expression to a well-established scientific fact.
“And yet we see it about us every day,” Paul replied.
“There you are wrong, for no man has ever seen that which never occurs!”
“You are quibbling with words,” suggested Henley.
“There is a change at a certain period in a man's life, which, from ignorance, people have agreed to call death. But it is a misnomer, for man never dies. He goes right on living; and it is generally a considerable time before he realizes the change that has taken place in him. He would laugh at the word death, as understood upon earth, as indeed he frequently does, for he is far more alive than ever before.”
“You speak as if you knew all this,” said Paul. “One might almost imagine that you had been in the other world yourself.”
“Had been!” exclaimed the old man with emphasis. “I am in it now, and so are you. But there is a difference between us; I know that I am in it, because I can see it, and touch it, and hear it; while you are in it without knowing it.”
There was an air of authority that impressed the hearer with the conviction of the speaker. This was not theory; it was the result of experience. There was a difference as vast as the night from the day. “I suppose, when I am dead, I shall know these things too,” said Paul meditatively.
“No,” answered Ah Ben, “not when you are dead, but when you have been born—when you have come into life.”
“Pardon me,” answered Paul, pondering on the man's strange assertion; “but this knowledge of yours is in demand more than all other knowledge. Positive information about the other world is what men have sought through all the ages; why do you not impart it to them?”
“Impart it!” exclaimed Ah Ben. “Can you explain to one who has been born blind what it is to see? Can you impart to such a man any true conception of the world in which he has always lived? Butcouchhis eyes, remove the worthless film that has covered them, and for the first time he realizes the glorious world surrounding him. Likewisecouchthe body, remove the shell that covers the spirit, and it is born.”
“I perceive, then, that it is only through death that most of us can hope to gain this knowledge.”
“Death, if you prefer the word,” said Ah Ben. “Yes, it is the death of the film over the eye that reveals the world to the blind; but I should hardly say that the man was dead because he had so entered into another existence.”
“Would you mind telling me how it is that you have gained this knowledge in such obvious exception to the rule!”
“The power of the occult is dormant in all men,” answered Ah Ben; “and as I have already said, may be developed slowly, through the exercise of the will, or suddenly, as in some great physical shock, and of a necessity comes to all in the event called death. Were I to tell you howIacquired this knowledge, Mr. Henley, it would startle you, far more than any exhibition of the power itself. No, I can not tell you; at least, not at present; perhaps some day you may be better prepared to hear it.”
The spark in the hanging lamp had almost expired, and the fire was reduced to a mere handful of coals, casting an erubescent glow over the pew and its occupants. Ah Ben stretched his hand toward the chimney, and as he did so, a ball of misty light appeared against it, just below the mantel. It was ill defined and hazy, like the reflection a firefly will sometimes make against the ceiling of a darkened room; but it was fixed, and Paul was sure it had not been there a moment before.
“Do you see that?” asked the old man, breaking the silence.
“Yes,” answered Paul; “and I was just wondering what it could be.”
“Watch! and you will see.”
They sat with their eyes fixed; but while Paul was staring into the mantel, Ah Ben was looking at him.
“Observe how it grows,” and even as he spoke the strange illumination deepened, until it assumed the distinct and definite form of a lamp. Then the mantelpiece dissolved into nothingness, and Paul was staring through the chimney into a strange room, whose form and contents were dimly revealed by the curious lamp which occupied a table in the centre. Two persons sat at this table, the one a woman, the other a boy, and near at hand was an English army officer. The woman was small, with dark eyes and hair, and a skin the color of tan bark. Her head was bowed forward and rested upon her arms, which were crossed upon the table. The man was looking down at her with a troubled expression, and in a minute he stooped forward and kissed the top of her head; he then turned suddenly and left the room. The scene was distinct, although the outer part of the room was in shadow. Presently the woman threw herself to the floor with a heart-rending shriek, and Paul started up, exclaiming:
“What has happened? She will wake everybody in the house!”
He bounded to his feet; but as he did so, the lamp in the strange room went out, and the chimney closed over the scene, leaving him with his old surroundings. Looking up at Ah Ben, he said:
“I must have fallen asleep. I've been dreaming.”
“Not at all,” answered Ah Ben. “You've been quite as wide awake as I have, and we've been looking at the same thing.”
Paul demanded the proof, which the old man gave by telling him what he had seen in every detail.
“Then it's magic!” said Henley, “for surely no room can be visible through that chimney.”
“That,” answered Ah Ben, “is mere assertion, which you can never prove.”
“Do you mean to tell me that the thing was real? There is a secret about this house which I do not understand!”
His manner was excited. He felt that he had been the dupe of the man before him, the prey to some clever trick; the thing was too preposterous, too unreasonable.
“Be calm,” said Ah Ben; “there is nothing in this that should disturb you. The room has disappeared from our sight, and will no more trouble us. Shall we have another pipe?”
The words had an instantaneous effect, so that Paul resumed his seat and pipe, as if nothing had happened. For several minutes he sat silently gazing at vacancy, and listening to the north wind as it moaned through the old pines. He was trying to account for what he had seen, but could not. The mystery was deepening into an overpowering gloom. The house, with its eccentric inmates; the girl Dorothy, with her freaks and manner of living; the odd circumstance of the stairway in his closet; these, and other things, flashed upon his memory in a confused jumble, and seemed as inexplicable as the vision just witnessed through the chimney.
Suddenly a thought struck him. Could this last have been hypnotism? He put the question straight to Ah Ben. The man passed his withered hand over his face thoughtfully as he answered:
“Hypnotism, Mr. Henley, is a name that is used in the West for a condition that has been known in the East for thousands of years as the underlying principle ofall phenomena.”
“And what is that condition?” Paul inquired.
“Sympathetic vibration,” answered the elder man.
“Vibration of what?” asked Paul.
“Of the mind,” said Ah Ben. “The condition of the universal mind vibrating in our material plane, or within the range of our physical senses, is represented in the trees and the rocks, in the earth and the stars. Our physical senses, being attuned to his form of vibration, are in sympathy with it, and apprehend all its phenomena. There is but one mind, of which man is a part. Thought is a product of mind. Thought is real, and, when sufficiently concentrated, becomes tangible and visible to those who can be brought into sympathy with its vibrations. There is but one primal substance, which is mind. Mind creates all things out of itself; therefore, to change the world we look at, it is only necessary to change our minds.”
“Let me ask if what I saw was hypnotism?” repeated Henley. “I ask this, first, because I know it is impossible to see through a brick wall, even if there should be such a room in the house; and, secondly, because I cannot believe that I was dreaming, consequently the thing could not have been real.”
“Hypnotism is a good enough word,” answered Ah Ben; “but that which men generally understand by the real, and that which they consider the unreal, are not so far apart as they suppose. You say the room was not real, and yet you saw it; had you wished, you might have touched it, which is certainly all the evidence you have of the existence of the room in which we are now sitting. Hypnotism is not a cause of hallucination, as is commonly supposed, but of fact. Its effects are not illusory, but real. Perhaps it would be more correct to say that they areas realas anything else, and thatallthe phenomena of nature are mere illusions of the senses, which they undoubtedly are. But whichever side we take, all appearances are the result of the same general cause—that of mental vibration. Matter has no real existence.”
Paul was meditating on what he had seen and what he was now hearing. Ah Ben's words were endowed with an added force by the vision of the mysterious room.
“When you tell me that there is practically no difference between the real and the unreal, and that matter has no real existence, I must confess to some perplexity,” observed Henley.
Ah Ben looked up and smoothed the furrows in his withered cheek thoughtfully for a minute before he answered:
“Unfortunately, Mr. Henley, language is not absolute or final in its power to convey thought, and the best we can do is to use it as carefully as possible to express ourselves, which we can only hope to do approximately. Therefore when I say that a thing is hot or cold, or hard or soft, I only mean that it is so by comparison with certain other things; and when I say that matter has no existence, I mean that it has no independent existence—no existence outside of the mind that brought it into being. I mean that it was formed by mind, formed out of mind, and that it continues to exist in mind as a part of mind. I mean that it is an appearance objective to our point of consciousness on the material plane; but inasmuch as it was formed by thought, it can be reformed by thought, which could never be if it existed independently of thought. It is real in the sense of apparent objectivity, and not real in the sense of independent objectivity, and yet it affects us in precisely the same manner as if it were independent of thought. What, then, is the difference between matter as viewed from the Idealist's or the Materialist's point of view? At first there is apparently none, but a deeper insight will show us that the difference is vast and radical, for in the one case the tree or the chair that I am looking at, owing its very existence to mind, is governed by mind, which could never be did they exist as separate and distinct entities. Therefore I say with perfect truth that matter does not exist in the one sense, and yet that it does exist in the other. I dream of a green field; a beautiful landscape, never before beheld; I awake and it is gone. Where was that enchanting scene? I can tell you: for it was in the mind, where everything else is. But upon waking I have changed my mind, and the scene has vanished. Thus it is with the Adept of the East, with the Yoghis, the Pundit, the Rishis, and the common Fakir; through the power of hypnotism they alter the condition of the subject's mind, and with it his world has likewise undergone a change. You say this is not real, that it is merely illusion; but in reply I would say that these illusions have been subjected to the severest tests; their reality has been certified to by every human sense, and when an illusion responds to the sense of both sight and touch, when the sense of sight is corroborated by that of touch, or by any other of the five senses, whatbetterevidence have we of the existence of those things we are all agreed to call real? Yes, I know what you are about to say, you object upon the ground that only a small minority are witnesses of the marvels of Eastern magic; but you are wrong, for I have seen hundreds of men in a public square all eye-witnesses to precisely the same occult phenomena at once. Now if certain hundreds could be so impressed, why not other hundreds? And with a still more powerful hypnotizer, why could not a majority—nay, all of those in a certain district, a certain State, a certain country,in the world—be made to see and feel things which now, and to us, have no existence? In that case, Mr. Henley, would it be the majority or the minority who were deceived?All is mind, and the hypnotizer merely alters it.”
“You said just now,” answered Paul, “that matter, being mind, was governed by mind, and that the tree or chair before me, owing its existence to mind, is subject to that mind; do you mean by that to say that the existence of that sofa, as a sofa, may be transformed into something else by mental action alone?”
“I do,” said Ah Ben, “under certain conditions; namely, the condition called hypnotism. On this material plane we are imprisoned; the will is not free to operate upon its environment, but in the spiritual state this dependence and slavery to the appearances we call realities is cast aside; the will becomes free and controls its own environment—in short, we are out of prison. But even here, Mr. Henley, by practicing the self-control we were speaking of, the will becomes so powerful that it can sometimes break through the bondage of matter, which, after all, is no more real than the stuff a dream is made of, and mold its prison walls into any form it chooses; in which case, of course, it is no longer a prison, and the other world is achieved without the change called death!”
“And why do you call it a prison, if no more real than a dream?”
“Have you ever had the nightmare? If so, you must know that your will was insufficient to free you from the horrid scene that had taken such forcible hold of you. Was the nightmare real or not?”
Paul was silent for several minutes. He could not deny the reality of the scene through the chimney, for it had the same forceful existence to him as anything in life. Ah Ben, seeing that he was still puzzling himself over the problem of mind and matter, the puzzle of life, the great sphinx riddle of the ages, said:
“Let me ask you a question, Mr. Henley—I might say several questions—which may possibly tend to throw a little light upon this subject, and perhaps convince you that matter is really mind.”
“Ask as many as you like.”
“Pantheism,” continued Ah Ben, “is scoffed at by many people calling themselves Christians as being idolatrous, and yet to me it is the most ennobling of all creeds. Without knowing anything of your religious faith, I would first ask if you believe in God?”
Paul answered affirmatively.
“Do you look upon him as a personal Deity—I mean as an exaggerated man in size and power—or as a Spirit?”
“As a Spirit,” Paul replied.
“Very well, then; do you believe that Spirit is infinite or finite?”
“Infinite.”
“Then, if it is infinite, there can be no part of space in which it does not exist.”
“That is my idea also.”
“If, then, that Spirit exists everywhere, it must penetrate all matter; in fact, all matter must, in its very essence, be a part of it; it must be formed out of the very substance of this infinite Spirit or Mind. Hence all is mind!”
“That seems clear enough,” said Paul; “in which case it seems to me that we are a part of God ourselves, and God being spirit, we must be spirits now.”
“Of course we are,” answered Ah Ben; “as I have already told you, we are in the spiritual world now, although much of it is screened from our view, because we are temporarily imprisoned in a lower vibratory plane, called matter.”
Ah Ben arose, and procuring candles, which he lighted by the expiring fire, the men went to their beds.
It was past midnight, and the house quiet, when Paul determined to have another look at the mysterious door at the foot of his closet stairs. He had sat for more than an hour before his bedroom fire, after bidding Ah Ben good-night, to make sure that the inmates of Guir House had retired; and as not a sound had been heard since locking his door, he sincerely hoped they were asleep. Before descending into the noisome depths, however, he concluded to climb up into his window, and have another look at the beautiful panorama of mountain and woodland shimmering in the meagre light of a hazy sky and a moon past full. The uncertain outline of a distant horizon; the interminable stretch of forest, which bore away upon every hand; the rugged heights, now soft and colorless; the aromatic smell of pine and fir; the distant murmur of falling water; and the assonant whispering of wind in the tree tops, had all become strangely fascinating to him, more so than such things had ever been before. “Never was a house so situated, so lost to the world, so tightly held in the lap of unregenerate nature,” thought Paul; “no laugh of child, no shout of man, no bark of dog, nor bellowing beast to break the stillness of the midnight air; an impenetrable, imperturbable, and silent wilderness shuts out the busy world, as we know it, forever and forever. It is a fitting place for such witchery as the old man seems master of, and I do not wonder that he has chosen it for his home; but the girl—the poor girl!—she must get away!” He closed the window, and prepared for his descent into the well.
Removing his shoes, he put on a pair of soft felt slippers, and then, with candle in his hand, a box of matches and a revolver in his pocket, entered the closet, and opened the scuttle in the floor. A mouldy smell rose upon the air, and Henley recoiled at the thought of what might be in waiting below. He had not the slightest idea of how he should open the door at the bottom, but would make a careful study of the situation, hoping that a solution of the difficulty would present itself. The steps creaked dismally as he placed his weight upon them, and it was necessary to use extreme caution to avoid breaking through the more rotten ones. He had not descended more than a dozen, when there was a terrible crash above his head, and he found himself in absolute darkness. The trap had fallen as upon the previous night, he having forgotten to fasten it back, and the wind had blown out his candle. Henley hastened back up the stairs, fearful lest the noise had waked some one in the house, and without relighting his candle threw himself upon the bed to await developments. After listening for some minutes, and hearing nothing, he became convinced that no one had been disturbed; and so, creeping out of bed, and lighting his candle by the dying embers in the fireplace, started in afresh. This time he was careful to fasten back the scuttle door, and in doing so discovered that one of the great iron hinges was loose. It was more than two feet long, and with very little difficulty he managed to wrench it off, thinking it might possibly be of service in forcing the door at the bottom. He was careful this time to let the scuttle down quietly after him, thinking it safer to do this than to prop it open.
The bottom was reached in safety after the usual doleful crunching and creaking of the timber, and Paul sat down on the bottom step, with his candle, to rest and quiet himself, before proceeding with his work upon the door. A dead stillness reigned all about him, broken only by the occasional resettling of the steps above his head, but which, to his excited brain, was like the report of a pistol; still even this ceased in a few minutes, and the silence was undisturbed. He now made a careful examination of the door. It was very heavy, and solid. Holding his candle close against the crack, he could see, to his surprise, that it was bolted upon the inside. Placing his ear close against the keyhole, he listened, but it was silent as a tomb within; and how the door became fastened upon the inside was inexplicable, unless indeed there was another outlet, which from his examination of the building had seemed improbable. Then, taking out his knife, he stuck it into the wood in various directions to ascertain the condition of its preservation. The door itself was in an excellent state; but in examining the lintel, the blade of his knife suddenly sank into the rotten wood up to the handle. Here, then, was the place to begin operations, and fortunately it was on the side from which the door opened. Henley had soon dug away a great segment of decayed wood, exposing the bolt clearly to view. Then taking the hinge which he had brought with him, and slipping the small end between the bolt and the frame of the door, he used it as a lever to pry against the bolt within. The iron was so old and rusty, and his purchase so poor, that he only succeeded in making a rasping sound where the two metals scraped against each other, and so stopped, discouraged. Presently he bethought him of his handkerchief, which he wrapped carefully around the end of the hinge, and thus not only gained a better purchase, increasing his leverage, but was able to operate without the slightest sound. It was a long time before the bolt moved, but to his intense gratification it did move at last, and Henley took a fresh grip upon his hinge. Backward and forward he worked his lever, and with each turn the old bolt slipped back a little. At last he could see the end of it, and then it was clear of the frame entirely. He had expected no difficulty in opening the door when the hinge was once slipped, but to his surprise it was still immovable. He pulled and tugged and pushed, but it would not budge; then suddenly, just as he was about to give up, it came tumbling down upon him, so that he was barely able to save it from falling against the stairs with a terrible crash, but fortunately caught it upon his shoulder, and lowered it to the floor without a sound. Imagine his surprise in going to what he now believed to be the open portal, to find that the doorway had been bricked up from within, and that the door itself had simply been the back of a solid wall. Naturally, he was disappointed at finding himself no nearer the inner chamber than before. A careful examination of the masonry showed that the work of bricking up the entrance had undoubtedly been done from the other side, and after the door had been closed and bolted. This was evidenced from the fact that there was no mortar next the door, against the smooth inner surface of which the bricks had been closely laid. Henley worked his hinge between some of the looser joints, and found, just as he expected, that the mortar had been laid from within. By degrees he managed to wedge one of the bricks out of its place, and then pulled it bodily from the wall. The inner surface was plastered over. He tried another, which he got out more easily, and it told the same tale. Then he went to work in earnest, and had soon dug a hole large enough to admit his body. Leaning over into the aperture, with his candle at arm's length, the place looked dark and empty, with faint masses of lighter shadow. Then, with a certain indescribable awe, Henley commenced crawling through the breach. Stepping upon an earthern floor, he found himself in a vault-like chamber—damp, mouldy, and foul of atmosphere. He glanced hurriedly about, and then turned to examine the wall through which he had come. Just as he had surmised, the bricks had been laid from the inner side, and plastered over within. The person who had done the work must have had some other means of escape. This set him to wondering where the other entrance could be, and to a careful search around the wall; but there was no door, no window, nor opening of any kind. How had the work been done? While he was wondering, he stumbled over something in the floor, and, recovering, threw back his head, holding his candle high above it. He was startled by the sight of what appeared to be four shadowy human faces, looking directly at him from above. Instinctively he sought his revolver, but before drawing it perceived that what he had taken for living people were simply four portraits, of the most remarkable character he had ever beheld. Paul stared in bewilderment at the sight before him. The pictures were so old, their canvases so rotten and mildewed and stained with the accumulated fungi of time and darkness that it was only by degrees that the intention of the artist became manifest. In the hall and other apartments of the old house, Henley thought he had seen the most original and inexplicable pictures ever painted; but here, buried forever from the sight of human eyes, were the most dreadful countenances ever transcribed from life or the imagination of man. Torture was clearly depicted upon each face; but not torture alone, for horror, fright, and mental agony were strangely blended in each. Not a face that looked down upon him from those antiquated frames but bore that agonized, heart-broken, terrified expression. Paul was paralyzed; a kind of mesmeric spell held him to the spot, so that he could not remove his eyes from the uncanny scene before him. Then a wild desire to be rid of the place forever seized him, and he stepped backward. At the same minute he observed for the first time what looked like some faded letters painted upon the wall directly beneath the four mysterious portraits. Examining these with his candle, he saw that they formed the words:
“The last of the Guirs.”
“No wonder Dorothy said that she was afraid of them,” Paul reflected; “their portraits alone would drive me mad.” He took another long searching look; and as his eyes grew accustomed to the faded coloring, he observed how cleverly the work had been done. Evidently the pictures had been painted from life, though under what circumstances Henley could never imagine. The faces were all those of a feminine type; they were of young women, apparently but little more than girls, and each with this life-like, though dreadful expression. As Paul stood marveling and wondering, a new interest seized him. At first he could not quite understand what it was, but it became stronger and better defined, he knew, for he recognized one of the faces. Yes, there could be no mistake about it; the picture on the left was aportrait of Dorothy herself. Henley rubbed his eyes, and looked again and again; he could not believe their evidence, but they had not deceived him. He tried to make himself believe that it was the likeness of some ancestor, to whom she had a strange resemblance; but, despite the look of pain, it could be no other than Dorothy, and indeed this very expression helped to heighten the likeness, for had he not seen a similar expression at the breakfast table? The longer he gazed at it, the more convinced he became that this was a portrait of Miss Guir. At last, thoroughly mystified, he turned away, intending to leave this grewsome chamber of horrors forever; but now for the first time the heap of rubbish in the center of the floor engaged his attention. Taking his hinge, he stirred up the mass; some shreds of cloth, which fell to pieces on being touched, and beneath them some human bones. This was all, but it was enough; and overwhelmed with horror, Henley rushed out of the room, bounding through the aperture he had made in the wall, and up the rickety stairs into his own bed chamber. He carefully closed the scuttle, heaped some firewood upon it, shut the closet door and fastened it securely from without. He then built up a roaring fire, lit another candle, and sat meditating over what he had seen until the dawn of day. When the light of the sun came streaming into his room, he undressed and went to bed.
Whatever may have been Mr. Henley's suspicions concerning the implication of the Guirs with the crime which he could no longer doubt had been committed in their house, they were promptly dispelled, so far as the young lady was concerned, upon meeting Dorothy at the breakfast table. Her innocent though serious face was a direct rebuke to any distrust he might have entertained; and he even doubted if she had any knowledge of the state of things he had discovered in the vault. This, of course, only added to the mystery; nor was Mr. Henley's self-esteem fortified by the memory of how unscrupulously he had become the guest of these people, and of how equivocal had been his treatment of their hospitality. All this, however, related to the past, and, as he felt, could not be now undone. He must act to the best of his ability in the extraordinary position in which he found himself.
After breakfast they walked again into the garden, and while Paul smoked his cigarette, meditatively, Dorothy gathered flowers for the house. There was an earnestness in everything that she did, quite unusual in a girl of her age, and at times her manner was grave and sad, but strangely attractive, nevertheless. When she had completed her labors in the garden, she came and seated herself beside him.
“Some day, Paul, we'll have a cheerier home than this; won't we?” she said, looking wistfully up at the quaint old pile before them.
“I don't think we could have a more romantic one,” he answered; and then, hoping to elicit an explanatory answer, added, “but why should Guir House not seem cheerful to you?”
“I don't know; it has always been gloomy; don't you think so?”
“Not having known it always, Dorothy, I am not in a position to judge; but it will always be the sweetest place on earth to me, because I met you here for the first time.”
“Yes, I know; but you must not forget your promise.”
She seemed nervous and anxious concerning his fulfillment of it.
“And do you suppose that I could ever forget anything you asked me? No, Dorothy, while you will it, I am your slave; but, as I told you before, you exert such a strange power over me that you could make me hate and fear you. I don't know why this should be so, but I feel it!”
“Hush!” she said, extending her outstretched hand toward his mouth; “do not talk in that way; you frighten me; for, O Paul! I was just beginning to hope that in you I had found a friend who would never shrink away from me. Do not tell me that you will ever become afraid of me like the others. I could not bear it.”
“I shrink! God forbid,” he answered, “but tell me why are other people afraid of you? You mystify me.”
“Because I am different—so different from them!”
“I'm quite sure of that,” he replied, “else I should never have come to love you within an hour of meeting you.”
She did not smile; she did not even look up at him, but sat gazing at nothing, with countenance as solemn and imperturbable as that of a Sphinx.
“How am I ever to understand you, Dorothy, you seem such a riddle?” said Paul presently.
“You will never understand me,” she answered with a sigh, “No one ever has understood me, and you will be just like the rest!”
“But you will never let me be afraid of you, like the others, will you?” he exclaimed half in earnest.
“I don't know; others are; why should not you be?”
She was still staring into vacancy, with her hands clasped, and Paul thought he detected a little, just a little, of the same expression he had seen in the portrait. He started, and Dorothy saw him.
“What is the matter?” she inquired, looking around at him for the first time.
“Nothing; only you looked so dreadfully in earnest, you startled me.”
“But surely you would not be startled by so simple a thing as that!”
“Why not? I am only human,” he answered.
“Yes, but I am sure there was something else. Now tell me, was there not?”
“Why, how strangely you talk!” he replied, searching her face for an explanation. “Of course there wasn't; why should there be?”
She leaned back, apparently still in doubt as to his assertion, while her countenance grew even more grave than before. Henley was puzzled, and while Dorothy had not ceased to charm him, he was conscious of a very slight uneasiness in her presence. This, however, wore off a little later when they went together for a stroll in the forest. The girl's extreme delicacy of appearance, her abstracted, melancholy manner, and sincerity of expression, both attracted and perplexed Paul, and kept him constantly at work endeavoring to solve her character and form some conception of the mystery of her life. He had not yet had even the courage to ask her if Ah Ben were her father, dreading to expose himself as an impostor and be ordered from the place, which, despite his discovery of the previous night, he could only regard as an unmitigated hardship in the present state of his feelings; and so he had let the hours slip by, constantly hoping that something would occur to explain the whole situation to him. And yet nothing had occurred, and now upon the third day he was as grossly ignorant of the causes which had produced his strange environment as at the moment of his arrival.
“One thing I do not understand,” Paul observed, as they wandered over the vari-colored leaves, side by side; “it is why you should be so anxious to leave this ideal spot.”
“Have I not told you that it is because I am out of my element; because I am avoided; because I have not a friend far nor near! Oh, Paul, you do not know what it is to be alone in the world!”
“And do you believe that a simple change of locality would alter all this?” he asked.
She paused for a moment before answering, and then, looking down upon the ground, said as if with some effort:
“No, not that alone.”
“What then, Dorothy?” he asked with solicitude.
“I have already told you,” she replied without looking up. “Oh, Paul, what a short memory you must have!”
“Of course I understand that we are to be married,” he responded hastily, “but how can that alter the situation? Dorothy, if we have not found congenial friends in that position in life in which God or nature has placed us, how can we hope to make them in another? Do you not think there may be some deeper reason than simple locality and single blessedness? Would it not be natural to look for the cause in the individual?”
“Undoubtedly you are right,” she answered, “but your premises do not apply to my case, for neither God nor nature ever intended that I should live this life. Oh, Paul, believe me when I tell you that I know whereof I speak. Do not judge me as you would another; some day you may know, but I can not tell you now.”
She spoke pleadingly, as imploring to be released from some awful incubus which it was impossible to explain. Paul listened in deep perplexity, and swore that the powers of heaven and earth should never come between them. So different was she from any girl that he had ever seen, that her very eccentricity bound him to her with a magic spell. When he had again asked her if Ah Ben would oppose their marriage, or indeed if any one else would, she declared that no human being would raise a voice against it.
“Then what is to hinder us?” he asked; “I am poor, but I can support you; not perhaps in such luxury as you are accustomed to, but I can give you a home; and if you are so unhappy here, why submit to unnecessary delay?”
He had become impassioned and enthused by the girl's strange influence over him.
“True, Paul, there are none to hinder us,” she replied seriously, “that is, no one but—but—”
She paused, not knowing how to proceed.
“Then there is some one,” cried Paul earnestly. “I thought as much. Who might the gentleman be?”
“Yourself!” exclaimed Dorothy, her eyes still fixed upon the ground.
“Myself!” shouted he in amazement. “Do you mean to say that I should oppose my own marriage with the girl I love?”
“You might,” she answered demurely, casting a side glance up at him, and allowing the very faintest, saddest kind of smile to rest for an instant upon her face.
“Well!” said Paul, “I do not suppose you will explain what you mean, but it would be only natural that I should like to know.”
“I only mean,” she replied, resuming her meditative attitude, “that you do not know me; that you neither know who nor what I am. If I did not love you, I might deceive and entrap you, but not under the circumstances.”
Later they returned to the house.