Dora, after her interview with Arthur Dynecourt, feels indeed that all
is lost. Hope is abandoned--nothing remains but despair; and in this
instance despair gains in poignancy by the knowledge that she believes
she knows the man who could help them to a solution of their troubles if
he would or dared. No; clearly he dare not! Therefore, no assistance can
be looked for from him.
Dinner at the castle has been a promiscuous sort of entertainment for
the past three or four days, so Dora feels no compunction in declining
to go to it. In her own room she sits brooding miserably over her
inability to be of any use in the present crisis, when she suddenly
remembers that she had promised in the afternoon when with Florence to
give her, later on, an account of her effort to obtain the truth about
this mystery which is harrowing them.
It is now eleven o'clock, and Dora decides that she must see Florence
at once. Rising, wearily, she is about to cross the corridor to her
cousin's room, when, the door opening, she sees Florence, with a face
pale and agitated, coming toward her.
"You, Florence!" she exclaims. "I was just going to you, to tell you
that my hopes of this afternoon are all--"
"Let me speak," interrupts Florence breathlessly. "I must, or--" She
sinks into a chair, her eyes close, and involuntarily she lays her hand
upon her heart as if to allay its tumultuous beating.
Dora, really alarmed, rushing to her dressing-case, seizes upon a flask
of eau-de-Cologne, and flings some of its contents freely over the
fainting girl. Florence, with a sigh, rouses herself, and sits upright.
"There is no time to lose," she says confusedly. "Oh, Dora!" Here she
breaks down and bursts into tears.
"Try to compose yourself," entreats Dora, seeing the girl has some
important news to impart, but is so nervous and unstrung as to be almost
incapable of speaking with any coherence. But presently Florence grows
calmer, and then, her voice becoming clear and full, she is able to
unburden her heart.
"All this day I have been oppressed by a curious restlessness," she says
to Dora; "and, when you left me this afternoon, your vague promises of
being able to elucidate the terrible secret that is weighing us down
made me even more unsettled. I did not go down to dinner--"
"Neither did I," puts in Mrs. Talbot sympathetically.
"I wandered up and down my room for at least two hours, thinking always,
and waiting for the moment when you would return, according to promise,
and tell me the success of your hidden enterprise. You did not come, and
at half past nine, unable to stay any longer in my own room with only
my own thoughts for company, I opened my door, and, listening intently,
found by the deep silence that reigned throughout the house that almost
every one was gone, if not to bed, at least to their own rooms."
"Lady FitzAlmont and Gertrude passed to their rooms about an hour
ago," says Dora. "But some of the men, I think, are still in the
smoking-room."
"I did not think of them. I stole from my room, and roamed idly
through the halls. Suddenly a great--I can not help thinking now a
supernaturally strong--desire to go into the servants' corridor took
possession of me. Without allowing myself an instant's hesitation, I
turned in its direction, and walked on until I reached it."
She pauses here, and draws her breath rapidly.
"Go on," entreats Dora impatiently.
"The lamp was burning very dimly. The servants were all down-stairs--at
their supper, I suppose--because there was no trace of them anywhere.
Not a sound could be heard. The whole place looked melancholy and
deserted, and filled me with a sense of awe I could not overcome. Still
it attracted me. I lingered there, walking up and down until its very
monotony wearied me; even then I was loath to leave it, and, turning
into a small sitting-room, I stood staring idly around me. At last,
somewhere in the distance I heard a clock strike ten, and, turning,
I decided on going back once more to my room."
Again, emotion overcoming her, Florence pauses, and leans back in her
chair.
"Well, but what is there in all this to terrify you so much?" demands
her cousin, somewhat bewildered.
"Ah, give me time! Now I am coming to it," replies Florence quickly.
"You know the large screen that stands in the corridor just outside
the sitting-room I have mentioned--put there, I imagined to break the
draught? Well, I had come out of the room and was standing half-hidden
by this screen, when I saw something that paralyzed me with fear."
She rises to her feet and grows deadly pale as she says this, as though
the sensation of fear she has been describing has come to her again.
"You saw--?" prompts Dora, rising too, and trembling violently, as
though in expectation of some fatal tidings.
"I saw the door of the room that leads to the haunted chamber slowly
move. It opened; the door that has been locked for nearly fifty years,
and that has filled the breasts of all the servants here with terror and
dismay, was cautiously thrown open! A scream rose to my lips, but I was
either too terrified to give utterance to it, or else some strong
determination to know what would follow restrained me, and I stood
silent, like one turned into stone. I had instinctively moved back a
step or two, and was now completely hidden from sight, though I could
see all that was passing in the corridor through a hole in the
framework of the screen. At last a figure came with hesitating
footsteps from behind the door into the full glare of the flickering
lamp. I could see him distinctly. It was--"
"Arthur Dynecourt!" cries the widow, covering her ghastly face with her
hands.
Florence regards her with surprise.
"It was," she says at last. "But how did you guess it?"
"I knew it," cries Dora frantically. "He has murdered him, he has hidden
his body away in that forgotten chamber. He was gloating over his
victim, no doubt, just before you saw him, stealing down from a secret
visit to the scene of his crime."
"Dora," exclaims Florence, grasping her arm, "if he should not have
murdered him after all, if he should only have secured him there,
holding him prisoner until he should see his way more clearly to getting
rid of him! If this idea be the correct one, we may yet be in time to
save, to rescue him!"
The agitation of the past hours proving now too much for her, Florence
bursts into tears and sobs wildly.
"Alas, I dare not believe in any such hope!" says Dora. "I know that man
too well to think him capable of showing any mercy."
"And yet 'that man,' as you call him, you would once have earnestly
recommended to me as a husband!" returns Florence, sternly.
"Do not reproach me now," exclaims Dora; "later on you shall say to me
all that you wish, but now moments are precious."
"You are right. Something must be done. Shall I--shall I speak to Mr.
Villiers?"
"I hardly know what to advise"--distractedly. "If we give our suspicions
publicity, Arthur Dynecourt may even yet find time and opportunity to
baffle and disappoint us. Besides which, we may be wrong. He may have
had nothing to do with it, and--"
"At that rate, if secrecy is to be our first thought, let you and me go
alone in search of Sir Adrian."
"Alone, and at this hour, to that awful room!" exclaims Dora, recoiling
from her.
"Yes, at once"--firmly--"without another moment's delay."
"Oh, I can not!" declares Dora, shuddering violently.
"Then I shall go alone!"
As Florence says this, she takes up her candlestick and moves quickly
toward the door.
"Stay, I will go," cries Dora, trembling. But a slight interruption
occurring at this instant, they are compelled to wait for awhile.
Ethel Villiers, coming into the room to make her parting adieus to
Mrs. Talbot, as she and her father intend leaving next morning, gazes
anxiously from Florence to Dora, seeing plainly that there is something
amiss.
"What is it?" she asks kindly, going up to Florence.
Miss Delmaine, after a little hesitation, encouraged by a glance at
Dora's terrified countenance, determines on taking the new-comer into
their confidence.
In a few words she explains all that has taken place, and their
suspicions. Ethel, though paling beneath the horror and surprise
occasioned by the recital, does not lose her self-possession.
"I will go with you," she volunteers. "But, let me say," she adds, "that
I think you are wrong in making this search without a man. If--if indeed
we are still in time to be of any use to poor Sir Adrian--always
supposing he really is secreted in that terrible room--I do not think
any of us would be strong enough to help him down the stairs, and, if he
has been slowly starving all this time, think how weak he will be!"
"Oh, what a wretched picture you conjure up!" exclaims Florence,
nervously clasping her hands. "But you are right, and now tell me who
you think can best be depended upon in this crisis."
"I am sure," says Ethel, blushing slightly, but speaking with intense
earnestness, "that, if you would not mind trusting Captain Ringwood, he
would be both safe and useful."
As this suggestion meets with approval, they manage to convey a message
to the captain, and in a very few minutes he is with them, and is made
acquainted with their hopes and fears.
Silently, cautiously, without any light, but carrying two small lamps
ready for ignition, they go down to the corridor where is the door that
leads to the secret staircase.
Turning the handle of this door, Captain Ringwood discovers that it is
locked, but, nothing daunted, he pulls it so violently backward and
forward that the lock, rusty with age, gives way, and leaves the passage
beyond open to them.
Going into the small landing at the foot of the staircase, they close
the door carefully behind them, and then, Captain Ringwood producing
some matches, they light the two lamps and go swiftly, with anxiously
beating hearts, up the stairs.
The second door is reached, and now nothing remains but to mount the
last flight of steps and open the fatal door.
Their hearts at this trying moment almost fail them. They look into one
another's blanched faces, and look there in vain for hope. At last
Ringwood, touching Ethel's arm, says, in a whisper--
"Come, have courage--all may yet be well!"
He moves toward the stone steps, and they follow him. Quickly mounting
them, he lays his hand upon the door, and, afraid to give them any more
time for reflection or dread of what may yet be in store for them,
throws it open.
At first the feeble light from their lamps fails to penetrate the
darkness of the gloomy apartment. At the cursory glance, such as they
at first cast round the room, it appears to be empty. Their hearts sink
within them. Have they indeed hoped in vain!
Dora is crying bitterly; Ethel, with her eyes fixed upon Ringwood, is
reading her own disappointment in his face, when suddenly a piercing cry
from Florence wakes the echoes round them.
She has darted forward, and is kneeling over something that even now is
only barely discernible to the others as they come nearer to it. It
looks like a bundle of clothes, but, as they stoop over it, they, too,
can see that it is in reality a human body, and apparently rigid in
death.
But the shriek that has sprung from the very soul of Florence has
reached some still living fibers in the brain of this forlorn creature.
Slowly and with difficulty he raises his head, and opens a pair of
fast-glazing eyes. Mechanically his glance falls upon Florence. His lips
move; a melancholy smile struggles to show itself upon his parched and
blackened lips.
"Florence," he rather sighs than says, and falls back, to all
appearance, dead.
"He is not dead!" cries Florence passionately. "He can not be! Oh, save
him, save him! Adrian, look up--speak to me! Oh, Adrian, make some sign
that you can hear me!"
But he makes no sign. His very breath seems to have left him. Gathering
him tenderly in her arms, Florence presses his worn and wasted face
against her bosom, and pushes back the hair from his forehead. He is so
completely altered, so thorough a wreck has he become, that it is indeed
only the eyes of love that could recognize him. His cheeks have fallen
in, and deep hollows show themselves. His beard has grown, and is now
rough and stubbly; his hair is uncombed, the lines of want, despair, and
cruel starvation have blotted out all the old fairness of his features.
His clothes are hanging loosely about him; his hands, limp and
nerveless, are lying by his side. Who shall tell what agony he suffered
during these past lonely days with death--an awful, creeping, gnawing
death staring him in the face?
A deadly silence has fallen upon the little group now gazing solemnly
down upon his quiet form. Florence, holding him closely to her heart, is
gently rocking him to and fro, as though she will not be dissuaded that
he still lives.
At length Captain Ringwood, stooping pitifully over her, loosens her
hold so far as to enable him to lay his hand upon Adrian's heart. After
a moment, during which they all watch him closely, he starts, and,
looking still closer into the face that a second ago he believed dead,
he says, with subdued but deep excitement--
"There may yet be time! He breathes--his heart beats! Who will help me
to carry him out of this dungeon?"
He shudders as he glances round him.
"I will," replies Florence calmly.
These words of hope have steadied her and braced her nerves. Ethel
and Mrs. Talbot, carrying the lamps, go on before, while Ringwood and
Florence, having lifted the senseless body of Adrian, now indeed
sufficiently light to be an easy burden, follow them.
Reaching the corridor, they cross it hurriedly, and carrying Adrian up
a back staircase that leads to Captain Ringwood's room by a circuitous
route, they gain it without encountering a single soul, and lay him
gently down on Ringwood's bed, almost at the very moment that midnight
chimes from the old tower, and only a few minutes before Arthur
Dynecourt steals from his chamber to make that last visit to his
supposed victim.