Chapter Sixteen
The Haunted Room
“Startled by her own thoughts, she looked around:
There was no fair fiend near her.”
Shelley.
It was really a very respectable attempt at a haunted room.
“Something like, isn’t it?” said Mr Morpeth, looking round him with approval, while Miss Morpeth shivered and declared she would not care to spend a night in it, and Miss Cecilia laughed at her and said she would like nothing better than to stay there till to-morrow morning, to see what was to be seen.
“Nonsense, my dear,” said Mrs Greville. “You would be as frightened as possible long before it got dark.”
“She would be in hysterics in half an hour,” said her brother, politely.
“I am sure I wouldn’t,” protested Cecilia. “Miss Western, you wouldn’t be afraid to spend the night here, would you?”
“I don’t know,” said Mary, doubtfully. “I almost think I should be. Those faces in the tapestry are so ghostly. I suppose,” she went on, simply, “if I had to stay here – I mean if there were any good reason for it, I should not be frightened – but I shouldn’t feel inclined to try it just as a test of bravery.”
“As a piece of foolish bravado, I should call it,” said Mrs Greville.
“It would be an awkward place to be shut up in,” said Mrs Golding, “for the door is in the tapestry, you see, ladies,” – she closed it as she spoke – “and it opens with a spring, and unless one knows the exact spot to press, it would be very difficult to find. The other door, which leads into the new part of the house, is hidden in the same way.”
She crossed the room, and, almost without hesitation, pressed a spot in the wall, and a door flew open. It led into another room, something like the first, but rather more modern in its furniture. All the party pressed forward.
“There is nothing particular to see here,” said Mrs Golding, “but this room opens again into the white corridor, where my master’s own rooms are. There is a very pretty view from the window at the end, if you would come this way, and we can get round to the front of the house again.”
A sudden impulse seized Mary.
“Mrs Greville,” she said, “I would like to go out into the garden by the door at the foot of the stair we tame up. Mayn’t I go back? I will meet you at the front of the house.”
“Very well,” said Mrs Greville. “You are such an odd girl, Mary,” she added, in a lower voice, “I suppose your dislike to Mr Cheviott prevents your liking to see his rooms!”
Mary laughed, but coloured a little too.
“Then I’ll meet you at the front of the house,” she said, as she turned away.
“Let me go with you,” put in Mr Morpeth – the others, under Mrs Golding’s guidance, had already passed on – “it wouldn’t do for you to go prowling about those ghostly rooms all by yourself, Miss Western. Who knows what might happen to you?”
Mary laughed again – this time more heartily.
“It’s not dark enough yet to be frightened,” she said, as they re-entered the haunted chamber, where already the heavy old hangings had toned down the afternoon light into dimness.
“Hardly,” said Mr Morpeth, carelessly, stepping forward to the window as he spoke. Mary was following him when a slight sound arrested her.
“Mr Morpeth,” she exclaimed, “it is to be hoped we can get out by the other door, for the one we have just come in by was shut behind us; I heard it click; it is my fault. I never thought about its being a spring door, and I let it swing to.”
She looked startled and a little pale. Mr Morpeth was surprised at her seeming to take it so seriously, and felt half inclined to banter her.
“We never meant to go back by the door we came in by,” he said. “What would have been the good of that? We’ll find the other in a minute – sure to; don’t look so aghast, Miss Western. At the worst we can ring the bells and alarm the house till some one comes to let us out. You are surely not afraid that we shall have to get out by the window?”
As he spoke he crossed over to the side of the room where, to their knowledge, the second door was, if only they could find it! Mr Morpeth, at first, began feeling about in a vague way, as if expecting to light upon the spring by a happy accident. But no such result followed; he began to look a little more thoughtful.
“Let’s see,” he said, consideringly, “whereabouts was it we first came into the room?”
Mary stepped backwards close to the wall, and then moved slowly along, keeping her back to it.
“It must have been about here, I think,” she said, stopping short. “I remember the first thing I caught sight of was that cabinet, and it seemed just opposite me; and Mrs Greville standing in front of it seemed to shut out that narrow pane of the window. Yes,” as Mr Morpeth put himself in the position she described – “yes, she was standing just there; the door must be hereabouts.”
They turned to search more systematically, but in vain. Peer as they would into every square inch of the musty tapestry hangings within a certain radius, feel as they would, up and down, right and left, higher up than Mrs Golding could possibly have reached, lower down than any door within the memory of man ever locked; it was all in vain. Then they looked at each other.
“It must be a spring pressing inwards – flat on the surface,” said Mr Morpeth. “I thought there would have been a little knob of some kind. However, let’s try again.”
He moved his hand slowly around the wall, pressing carefully, anxiously endeavouring to detect the slightest inequality or indentation, and Mary followed his example till their patience was exhausted. Then again they stopped and looked at each other.
“Would it be any good trying to find the spring of the other door?” said Mary, at last.
“I don’t fancy it would,” said Mr Morpeth. “You see, we’re quite in the dark as to what sort of spring it is; we may have touched it twenty times, but not pushed or pressed it the right way. Don’t you think we’d better just not bother for a little? They’re sure to miss us before long, and then that old party will hunt us up.”
But Mary looked by no means disposed to take things so philosophically.
“I don’t know that they will miss us so quickly,” she said. “It will take them some time to go all over the front of the house, and if they don’t find us in the grounds they are sure just to think we have walked on. I am sure Mrs Greville will think so, any way; she always takes things so comfortably,” she added, with an uneasy reflection that Mrs Greville would probably be rejoicing at the success of her amiable scheme for throwing herself and “young Morpeth” together. “I wish I had not left the others.”
Mr Morpeth smiled.
“I really think you are wasting a great deal of unnecessary energy on our misadventure,” he said. “I don’t see anything so very desperate about it. If we were in a box now, like that girl at Modena, Guinevere – no, Genevieve – no, bless me, I can’t remember. You know whom I mean – we might be rather uneasy. But at the very worst we cannot be left here more than an hour or two. I dare say the housekeeper will be coming back to look for us immediately, for she will know how awkward these doors are.”
“Yes,” said Mary, “I do think that is not unlikely. She did not hear us speak of going back to the gardens though, did she? she had gone on in front.”
“But she is pretty sure to miss us, and ask what had become of us – she’s not a stupid old lady by any means. Just let’s wait here comfortably a few minutes, and see if she doesn’t come.”
Mary tried to take his advice, but as the minutes passed she grew more and more uncomfortable.
“I say,” exclaimed Mr Morpeth, “supposing we try to make ourselves heard somehow. I never thought of that. Very likely there are offices – pantries, or kitchens, and so on under these rooms. There’s no bell, but supposing we jump on the floor and scream – I’ll jump, if you will be so good as to scream – some one will be sure to hear us and rush up to see what’s happening in the haunted room.”
But at this proposal Mary grew literally white with anxiety.
“Oh, please don’t, Mr Morpeth,” she said, so beseechingly that the young man looked at her with more concern than he had yet shown.
“What a queer girl she must be to take it to heart so!” he said to himself.
“Please don’t,” she repeated. “It would make such a to-do. I should be so dreadfully annoyed – oh, please don’t.”
“That horrible footman” was the great terror in her mind; “if he came up and saw me he would be sure to tell his master. What would Mr Cheviott think of me if he heard of my being here, prying about his house the very day after?”
“Very well. I’m very comfortable. I’m quite content to wait till some one comes to let us out,” said Mr Morpeth. “It was you, Miss Western, that was in such a hurry.”
Which was true enough. Mary did not know what to say – only her uneasiness increased. It began to grow dusk too – outside among the trees it was getting to look decidedly dusk.
“What shall we do?” she exclaimed at last, in a sort of desperation. “Evidently they are not missing us, and will not do so till they get home, and then there will be such a fuss! Oh, Mr Morpeth,” she went on, as a new idea struck her, “do you think you could possibly get out of the window?”
She said it so simply, and was evidently so much in earnest, that Mr Morpeth gave up for once his habit of looking at the ludicrous side, and set to work to discover how this last suggestion could be carried out. The window was much more easy to deal with than the doors. It opened at once, and, leaning over, Mr Morpeth descried a little ledge below it, leading to the top of the porch above the side-door into the shrubbery.
“I can easily get out,” he said, turning back to Mary, “but once I am out what do you want me to do? You don’t want any fuss, but I must tell somebody to come and get you out.”
“Oh, yes, of course – if you could find Mrs Greville and ask her to tell the housekeeper of the door’s having shut to, she would come and open it,” said Mary. “If you could just tell her in a matter-of-fact way, you know. What I don’t want is a great rush of all the servants and people about the place to see me locked up here; it would be so uncomfortable. I’ll wait here quite patiently once I know you’ve gone, for you’ll be sure to find them.”
“I’ll do my best,” said Mr Morpeth, quietly, “and of course if I should break my neck or my arms or anything, there will be the satisfaction of knowing it was in a good cause.”
Mary started forward.
“You don’t mean that there is really any risk for you,” she exclaimed. “No, I am sure there isn’t,” she continued, after looking out of the window, and examining it for herself, “of course, if there was, I shouldn’t want you to go. You are laughing at me because you think me very silly – I am very sorry, but I can’t help it. I do so wish I hadn’t come here – I wish I could get out of the window too!”
“No, indeed, it would not be safe for you at all,” said Mr Morpeth, hastily, concealing his private opinion that the feat was not so easy as it looked. “I am a good climber and I’ve had plenty of practice. It is nothing for me, but it would be quite different for you – promise me, Miss Western, you will not try to get out of the window while I am away. I shall be as quick as I can, but I may not be able to find the others all at once.”
“Very well,” said Mary. “I do promise. Not that I ever meant to get out of the window, I assure you.”
Mr Morpeth clambered out successfully. Mary watched him groping along the ledge, holding on first by a projecting window sash, then by a water-pipe, then by what she could not tell – somehow or other he had made his way to the roof of the door porch, and was hidden from her sight. But, in a minute, a whistle and a low call of “all right” satisfied her as to his safety.
“He is very good-natured,” thought Mary. “He called out softly on purpose not to attract attention. What a silly girl he must think me, to make such a fuss about such a simple thing! But I can’t help it.”
She drew back from the window and sat down on one of the straight-backed, tapestry-cushioned chairs, and began to calculate how long she would probably have to wait. Ten minutes at most – it could not take longer to run round to the front of the house and find Mrs Golding.
“They will come back by that door,” said Mary, to herself, directing her eyes towards the invisible entrance by which she and Mr Morpeth had returned to the haunted room. “How glad I shall be when I see it open! How I wish I had a watch! It would pass the time to count the minutes till they come – but I could hardly see the minute hand on a watch even now. How dark it is getting! It is those great trees outside – in summer, no light at all can get in here I should think.”
She got up and turned again to the window, fancying that looking out would be a little less gloomy than sitting staring at the old furniture and the shadowy figures on the walls, growing more and more weird and gruesome as the light faded. But, standing there at the window, there returned to her mind the tragic story of which Mrs Golding had given, her the outlines, and, despite her endeavours to think of something else, her imagination persisted in filling in the details. “She had thrown herself out of the window in despair,” Mrs Golding had told of the unhappy prisoner, and Mary recalled it with a slight shudder.
Was it much to be wondered at? Any one would grow desperate shut up within these four gloomy walls – gloomy now, and gloomy then, no doubt, for the tapestry was very old – older, probably, than the date of the story – and the room had ever since been left much as it was at that time. It was a ghastly story, as much for what had preceded the final tragedy as for the catastrophe itself.
“It is so very horrible to think of any one’s having been shut up in this very room for days, and weeks, and months, perhaps,” thought Mary. “And to think that her only way out of it was to many a man she hated! Still, whoever she was, she must have been brave; the only inconsistent part of the story is her being supposed to haunt the place she must have had such a horror of. Dear me, how dark it is getting! – how I do wish they would come, and how I wish I had not heard that story!”
Mary left the window again, and sat down on one of the hard, high-backed chairs. In spite of her anxiety and excitement, she was growing very tired, and once or twice she almost felt as if she were getting sleepy. But she was determined not to yield to this.
“It would be far worse if I fell asleep, and woke to find myself all in the dark,” she said to herself. “If I have to stay all night, I must keep awake, and, indeed, it begins to look very like having to stay all night. What can have become of Mr Morpeth? I am sure he has been gone half an hour.”
She listened till her ears were strained, but there was no sound. Then again the confused, sleepy feeling came over her; she dozed unconsciously for a minute or two, to be awakened suddenly by what in her sleep had seemed a loud noise. Mary started up, her heart beating violently, but she heard nothing for a moment or two. Then there came a faint creaking sound, as of some one coming up the staircase and along the passage outside. It was not the side from which she was looking for assistance, and, besides, whoever it was was approaching in perfect silence.
“Mr Morpeth would be sure to call out if it was he,” she reflected; “besides, Mrs Golding would be with him, and they would come the other way. Who can it be? Oh! supposing – just supposing the ghost were to come in, what should I do? I should always be told it was a dream; but I am not dreaming. And something must have been seen, otherwise there would not be the story about it.”
All this flashed through her mind in an instant. She got up from her chair with a vague intention of escaping, hiding herself somewhere, anywhere, but sat down again, as the steps came nearer and nearer, with a feeling of hopelessness. How could she escape? Where could she hide herself? There was no cupboard or recess, not even a curtain, in the bare, half-furnished room; she must just wait where she was, whatever happened, and, as if fascinated, poor Mary sat gazing on that part of the wall where she knew the door to be. Another moment – it seemed to her hours – and she heard the slight click of the concealed spring, and, thank Heavens, it was no ghost in flowing white, but a gentleman in a great-coat! Thus much Mary could discern, dusk though it was, even at the first glance, to her inexpressible relief.
“Mr Morpeth,” she exclaimed, “is it you? Oh, I am so thankful! But why – ”
The voice that interrupted her was not Mr Morpeth’s.
“Who is there? Is it you, Mrs Golding? What is the matter?” exclaimed the some one whose approach had so terrified her.
An instant’s pause; Mary’s wits, beginning to recover themselves, were all but scattered again as a frightful suspicion dawned upon her. Was she dreaming, could it be that her very worst misgiving was realised? Who was it standing in frowning bewilderment before her? Ghost, indeed – at that moment it seemed to her she would rather have faced twenty ghosts than the living man before her.
“Mr Cheviott!” she ejaculated, feebly, hardly conscious of speaking.
Mr Cheviott came forward a little, but cautiously, and in evident astonishment and perplexity. Something in the tone of the half whisper struck him as familiar, though it was too dark for him to distinguish at once anything but the general outline of poor Mary’s figure.
“Who is it? I don’t understand; does Mrs Golding know of your being here?” he asked, confusedly, with a vague idea that possibly the mysterious visitor was some friend of the housekeeper.
“No – oh, yes, I mean,” replied Mary; “I got locked in by mistake, and – and – ”
There was an end for the time of all explanation; Mary burst into unheroic tears; but not before an exclamation, to her ears fraught with inexpressible meaning, had reached her from Mr Cheviott.
“Miss Western, you here!” was all he said, but it was enough.
Though from the first of his entrance she had had no hope of escaping unperceived, yet the hearing his recognition expressed in words seemed to make things worse, and for the moment exaggerated almost beyond endurance the consciousness of her ignominious position. She cried as much from a sort of indignation at circumstances as from nervousness or timidity.
Mr Cheviott stood silent and motionless. Wild ideas were hurrying through his brain to the exclusion for the time of all reasonable conjecture. Had she been locked up here since the day before? Had she come with a frantic idea of winning him over even now to approve of an engagement between Arthur and her sister? If not, what was she doing here? And now that he had discovered her, what could he do or say that would not add to her distress?
Suddenly Mary looked up. Her tears somehow or other, had restored her self-control; the very shame she felt at Mr Cheviott’s hearing her sobs reacted so as to give her confidence.
“Why should I be ashamed? It is very natural I should cry after all the worry I have had the last few days; and who has caused it all? Who has broken Lily’s heart and made us all miserable? Why should I care what such a man as that thinks of me?”
She left off crying, and got up from the chair on which she had sunk down at the climax of her terror. She turned to Mr Cheviott, and said calmly, though not without the remains of an uncontrollable quaver in her voice:
“If you will be so good as to open the door, I should very much like to go.”
Mr Cheviott took up the cue with considerable relief. Any amount of formality was better than tears.
“Certainly,” he said, quietly. Then, almost to his own astonishment, the ludicrous side of the position suddenly presenting itself to him, a spirit of mischief incited him to add, “you must allow, Miss Western, I am in no way to blame for this disagreeable adventure of yours. And, if you will pardon my asking you, I must confess before I let you out I should very much like to know how you got in.”
Mary flamed up instantly.
“You have no right,” she began, – “no right,” she was going to say, “to ask me anything I have not chosen to tell you,” but she stopped short. She was in Mr Cheviott’s own house – how could she possibly refuse to tell him how she had got there? “I beg your pardon,” she said instead. “I – I came here with Mrs Greville and some people who wanted to see the house. I did not want to come,” she could not resist adding, with a curious little flash of defiance, “but I could not help it.”
“Ah! indeed, I understand,” said Mr Cheviott, turning to open the door, but to which part of her speech his observation was addressed, Mary was left in ignorance.
Mr Cheviott stopped.
“Which way do you wish to go out?” he asked.
“Out to the garden, if you please,” said Mary, eagerly. “That is the way Mr Morpeth – the gentleman that was with me, I mean – will be coming back. At least, I don’t know,” she went on, growing confused; “it depends on where he finds the housekeeper. But anyway, I would rather meet them all outside.”
“How on earth did ‘the gentleman that was with her’ get out?” thought Mr Cheviott – “or was it through some foolery of his that she got locked in?” But he was determined to ask no more questions.
He turned again to the wall, pressed the concealed spring without an instant’s hesitation, and the door flew open – flew open, and Mary, without a glance behind her, flew out.