"I can assure you," said I, "that it will take a very tangible ghost to
frighten me." And I stood up before the fire with my glass in my hand.
"It is your own choosing," said the man with the withered arm, and
glanced at me askance.
"Eight-and-twenty years," said I, "I have lived, and never a ghost have
I seen as yet."
The old woman sat staring hard into the fire, her pale eyes wide open.
"Ay," she broke in; "and eight-and-twenty years you have lived and
never seen the likes of this house, I reckon. There's a many things to
see, when one's still but eight-and-twenty." She swayed her head slowly
from side to side. "A many things to see and sorrow for."
I half suspected the old people were trying to enhance the spiritual
terrors of their house by their droning insistence. I put down my empty
glass on the table and looked about the room, and caught a glimpse of
myself, abbreviated and broadened to an impossible sturdiness, in the
queer old mirror at the end of the room. "Well," I said, "if I see
anything to-night, I shall be so much the wiser. For I come to the
business with an open mind."
"It's your own choosing," said the man with the withered arm once more.
I heard the sound of a stick and a shambling step on the flags in the
passage outside, and the door creaked on its hinges as a second old man
entered, more bent, more wrinkled, more aged even than the first. He
supported himself by a single crutch, his eyes were covered by a shade,
and his lower lip, half-averted, hung pale and pink from his decaying
yellow teeth. He made straight for an arm-chair on the opposite side
of the table, sat down clumsily, and began to cough. The man with the
withered arm gave this new-comer a short glance of positive dislike;
the old woman took no notice of his arrival, but remained with her eyes
fixed steadily on the fire.
"I said--it's your own choosing," said the man with the withered arm,
when the coughing had ceased for a while.
"It's my own choosing," I answered.
The man with the shade became aware of my presence for the first time,
and threw his head back for a moment and sideways, to see me. I caught
a momentary glimpse of his eyes, small and bright and inflamed. Then he
began to cough and splutter again.
"Why don't you drink?" said the man with the withered arm, pushing
the beer towards him. The man with the shade poured out a glassful
with a shaky arm that splashed half as much again on the deal table.
A monstrous shadow of him crouched upon the wall and mocked his
action as he poured and drank. I must confess I had scarce expected
these grotesque custodians. There is to my mind something inhuman in
senility, something crouching and atavistic; the human qualities seem
to drop from old people insensibly day by day. The three of them made
me feel uncomfortable, with their gaunt silences, their bent carriage,
their evident unfriendliness to me and to one another.
"If," said I, "you will show me to this haunted room of yours, I will
make myself comfortable there."
The old man with the cough jerked his head back so suddenly that it
startled me, and shot another glance of his red eyes at me from under
the shade; but no one answered me. I waited a minute, glancing from one
to the other.
"If," I said a little louder, "if you will show me to this haunted room
of yours, I will relieve you from the task of entertaining me."
"There's a candle on the slab outside the door," said the man with the
withered arm, looking at my feet as he addressed me. "But if you go to
the red room to-night"--
("This night of all nights!" said the old woman.)
"You go alone."
"Very well," I answered. "And which way do I go?"
"You go along the passage for a bit," said he, "until you come to a
door, and through that is a spiral staircase, and half-way up that is a
landing and another door covered with baize. Go through that and down
the long corridor to the end, and the red room is on your left up the
steps."
"Have I got that right?" I said, and repeated his directions. He
corrected me in one particular.
"And are you really going?" said the man with the shade, looking at me
again for the third time, with that queer, unnatural tilting of the
face.
("This night of all nights!" said the old woman.)
"It is what I came for," I said, and moved towards the door. As I did
so, the old man with the shade rose and staggered round the table, so
as to be closer to the others and to the fire. At the door I turned
and looked at them, and saw they were all close together, dark against
the firelight, staring at me over their shoulders, with an intent
expression on their ancient faces.
"Good-night," I said, setting the door open.
"It's your own choosing," said the man with the withered arm.
I left the door wide open until the candle was well alight, and then I
shut them in and walked down the chilly, echoing passage.
I must confess that the oddness of these three old pensioners in
whose charge her ladyship had left the castle, and the deep-toned,
old-fashioned furniture of the housekeeper's room in which they
foregathered, affected me in spite of my efforts to keep myself at a
matter-of-fact phase. They seemed to belong to another age, an older
age, an age when things spiritual were different from this of ours,
less certain; an age when omens and witches were credible, and ghosts
beyond denying. Their very existence was spectral; the cut of their
clothing, fashions born in dead brains. The ornaments and conveniences
of the room about them were ghostly--the thoughts of vanished men,
which still haunted rather than participated in the world of to-day.
But with an effort I sent such thoughts to the right-about. The long,
draughty subterranean passage was chilly and dusty, and my candle
flared and made the shadows cower and quiver. The echoes rang up and
down the spiral staircase, and a shadow came sweeping up after me, and
one fled before me into the darkness overhead. I came to the landing
and stopped there for a moment, listening to a rustling that I fancied
I heard; then, satisfied of the absolute silence, I pushed open the
baize-covered door and stood in the corridor.
The effect was scarcely what I expected, for the moonlight, coming
in by the great window on the grand staircase, picked out everything
in vivid black shadow or silvery illumination. Everything was in its
place: the house might have been deserted on the yesterday instead of
eighteen months ago. There were candles in the sockets of the sconces,
and whatever dust had gathered on the carpets or upon the polished
flooring was distributed so evenly as to be invisible in the moonlight.
I was about to advance, and stopped abruptly. A bronze group stood upon
the landing, hidden from me by the corner of the wall, but its shadow
fell with marvellous distinctness upon the white panelling, and gave
me the impression of someone crouching to waylay me. I stood rigid for
half a minute perhaps. Then, with my hand in the pocket that held my
revolver, I advanced, only to discover a Ganymede and Eagle glistening
in the moonlight. That incident for a time restored my nerve, and a
porcelain Chinaman on a buhl table, whose head rocked silently as I
passed him, scarcely startled me.
The door to the red room and the steps up to it were in a shadowy
corner. I moved my candle from side to side, in order to see clearly
the nature of the recess in which I stood before opening the door. Here
it was, thought I, that my predecessor was found, and the memory of
that story gave me a sudden twinge of apprehension. I glanced over my
shoulder at the Ganymede in the moonlight, and opened the door of the
red room rather hastily, with my face half turned to the pallid silence
of the landing.
I entered, closed the door behind me at once, turned the key I found in
the lock within, and stood with the candle held aloft, surveying the
scene of my vigil, the great red room of Lorraine Castle, in which the
young duke had died. Or, rather, in which he had begun his dying, for
he had opened the door and fallen headlong down the steps I had just
ascended. That had been the end of his vigil, of his gallant attempt to
conquer the ghostly tradition of the place, and never, I thought, had
apoplexy better served the ends of superstition. And there were other
and older stories that clung to the room, back to the half-credible
beginning of it all, the tale of a timid wife and the tragic end that
came to her husband's jest of frightening her. And looking around that
large shadowy room, with its shadowy window bays, its recesses and
alcoves, one could well understand the legends that had sprouted in its
black corners, its germinating darkness. My candle was a little tongue
of light in its vastness, that failed to pierce the opposite end of the
room, and left an ocean of mystery and suggestion beyond its island of
light.
I resolved to make a systematic examination of the place at once, and
dispel the fanciful suggestions of its obscurity before they obtained a
hold upon me. After satisfying myself of the fastening of the door, I
began to walk about the room, peering round each article of furniture,
tucking up the valances of the bed, and opening its curtains wide. I
pulled up the blinds and examined the fastenings of the several windows
before closing the shutters, leant forward and looked up the blackness
of the wide chimney, and tapped the dark oak panelling for any secret
opening. There were two big mirrors in the room, each with a pair of
sconces bearing candles, and on the mantelshelf, too, were more candles
in china candlesticks. All these I lit one after the other. The fire
was laid,--an unexpected consideration from the old housekeeper,--and I
lit it, to keep down any disposition to shiver, and when it was burning
well, I stood round with my back to it and regarded the room again. I
had pulled up a chintz-covered arm-chair and a table, to form a kind
of barricade before me, and on this lay my revolver ready to hand. My
precise examination had done me good, but I still found the remoter
darkness of the place, and its perfect stillness, too stimulating for
the imagination. The echoing of the stir and crackling of the fire
was no sort of comfort to me. The shadow in the alcove, at the end
in particular, had that undefinable quality of a presence, that odd
suggestion of a lurking living thing, that comes so easily in silence
and solitude. At last, to reassure myself, I walked with a candle into
it, and satisfied myself that there was nothing tangible there. I stood
that candle upon the floor of the alcove, and left it in that position.
By this time I was in a state of considerable nervous tension, although
to my reason there was no adequate cause for the condition. My mind,
however, was perfectly clear. I postulated quite unreservedly that
nothing supernatural could happen, and to pass the time I began to
string some rhymes together, Ingoldsby fashion, of the original legend
of the place. A few I spoke aloud, but the echoes were not pleasant.
For the same reason I also abandoned, after a time, a conversation with
myself upon the impossibility of ghosts and haunting. My mind reverted
to the three old and distorted people downstairs, and I tried to keep
it upon that topic. The sombre reds and blacks of the room troubled me;
even with seven candles the place was merely dim. The one in the alcove
flared in a draught, and the fire-flickering kept the shadows and
penumbra perpetually shifting and stirring. Casting about for a remedy,
I recalled the candles I had seen in the passage, and, with a slight
effort, walked out into the moonlight, carrying a candle and leaving
the door open, and presently returned with as many as ten. These I put
in various knick-knacks of china with which the room was sparsely
adorned, lit and placed where the shadows had lain deepest, some on the
floor, some in the window recesses, until at last my seventeen candles
were so arranged that not an inch of the room but had the direct light
of at least one of them. It occurred to me that when the ghost came, I
could warn him not to trip over them. The room was now quite brightly
illuminated. There was something very cheery and reassuring in these
little streaming flames, and snuffing them gave me an occupation, and
afforded a reassuring sense of the passage of time.
Even with that, however, the brooding expectation of the vigil weighed
heavily upon me. It was after midnight that the candle in the alcove
suddenly went out, and the black shadow sprang back to its place there.
I did not see the candle go out; I simply turned and saw that the
darkness was there, as one might start and see the unexpected presence
of a stranger. "By Jove!" said I aloud; "that draught's a strong one!"
and, taking the matches from the table, I walked across the room in a
leisurely manner to relight the corner again. My first match would not
strike, and as I succeeded with the second, something seemed to blink
on the wall before me. I turned my head involuntarily, and saw that the
two candles on the little table by the fireplace were extinguished. I
rose at once to my feet.
"Odd!" I said. "Did I do that myself in a flash of absent-mindedness?"
I walked back, relit one, and as I did so, I saw the candle in the
right sconce of one of the mirrors wink and go right out, and almost
immediately its companion followed it. There was no mistake about it.
The flame vanished, as if the wicks had been suddenly nipped between a
finger and a thumb, leaving the wick neither glowing nor smoking, but
black. While I stood gaping, the candle at the foot of the bed went
out, and the shadows seemed to take another step towards me.
"This won't do!" said I, and first one and then another candle on the
mantelshelf followed.
"What's up?" I cried, with a queer high note getting into my voice
somehow. At that the candle on the wardrobe went out, and the one I had
relit in the alcove followed.
"Steady on!" I said. "These candles are wanted," speaking with a
half-hysterical facetiousness, and scratching away at a match the
while for the mantel candlesticks. My hands trembled so much that
twice I missed the rough paper of the matchbox. As the mantel emerged
from darkness again, two candles in the remoter end of the window
were eclipsed. But with the same match I also relit the larger mirror
candles, and those on the floor near the doorway, so that for the
moment I seemed to gain on the extinctions. But then in a volley there
vanished four lights at once in different corners of the room, and I
struck another match in quivering haste, and stood hesitating whither
to take it.
As I stood undecided, an invisible hand seemed to sweep out the two
candles on the table. With a cry of terror, I dashed at the alcove,
then into the corner, and then into the window, relighting three, as
two more vanished by the fireplace; then, perceiving a better way,
I dropped the matches on the iron-bound deed-box in the corner, and
caught up the bedroom candlestick. With this I avoided the delay of
striking matches; but for all that the steady process of extinction
went on, and the shadows I feared and fought against returned, and
crept in upon me, first a step gained on this side of me and then on
that. It was like a ragged storm-cloud sweeping out the stars. Now and
then one returned for a minute, and was lost again. I was now almost
frantic with the horror of the coming darkness, and my self-possession
deserted me. I leaped panting and dishevelled from candle to candle, in
a vain struggle against that remorseless advance.
I bruised myself on the thigh against the table, I sent a chair
headlong, I stumbled and fell and whisked the cloth from the table in
my fall. My candle rolled away from me, and I snatched another as I
rose. Abruptly this was blown out, as I swung it off the table, by the
wind of my sudden movement, and immediately the two remaining candles
followed. But there was light still in the room, a red light that
staved off the shadows from me. The fire! Of course, I could still
thrust my candle between the bars and relight it!
I turned to where the flames were still dancing between the glowing
coals, and splashing red reflections upon the furniture, made two steps
towards the grate, and incontinently the flames dwindled and vanished,
the glow vanished, the reflections rushed together and vanished, and
as I thrust the candle between the bars, darkness closed upon me like
the shutting of an eye, wrapped about me in a stifling embrace, sealed
my vision, and crushed the last vestiges of reason from my brain. The
candle fell from my hand. I flung out my arms in a vain effort to
thrust that ponderous blackness away from me, and, lifting up my voice,
screamed with all my might--once, twice, thrice. Then I think I must
have staggered to my feet. I know I thought suddenly of the moonlit
corridor, and, with my head bowed and my arms over my face, made a run
for the door.
But I had forgotten the exact position of the door, and struck myself
heavily against the corner of the bed. I staggered back, turned, and
was either struck or struck myself against some other bulky furniture.
I have a vague memory of battering myself thus, to and fro in the
darkness, of a cramped struggle, and of my own wild crying as I darted
to and fro, of a heavy blow at last upon my forehead, a horrible
sensation of falling that lasted an age, of my last frantic effort to
keep my footing, and then I remember no more.
* * * * *
I opened my eyes in daylight. My head was roughly bandaged, and the man
with the withered arm was watching my face. I looked about me, trying
to remember what had happened, and for a space I could not recollect.
I rolled my eyes into the corner, and saw the old woman, no longer
abstracted, pouring out some drops of medicine from a little blue
phial into a glass. "Where am I?" I asked. "I seem to remember you, and
yet I cannot remember who you are."
They told me then, and I heard of the haunted Red Room as one who hears
a tale. "We found you at dawn," said he, "and there was blood on your
forehead and lips."
It was very slowly I recovered my memory of my experience. "You believe
now," said the old man, "that the room is haunted?" He spoke no longer
as one who greets an intruder, but as one who grieves for a broken
friend.
"Yes," said I; "the room is haunted."
"And you have seen it. And we, who have lived here all our lives, have
never set eyes upon it. Because we have never dared.... Tell us, is it
truly the old earl who"--
"No," said I; "it is not."
"I told you so," said the old lady, with the glass in her hand. "It is
his poor young countess who was frightened"--
"It is not," I said. "There is neither ghost of earl nor ghost of
countess in that room, there is no ghost there at all; but worse, far
worse"--
"Well?" they said.
"The worst of all the things that haunt poor mortal man," said I; "and
that is, in all its nakedness--_Fear!_ Fear that will not have light
nor sound, that will not bear with reason, that deafens and darkens and
overwhelms. It followed me through the corridor, it fought against me
in the room"--
I stopped abruptly. There was an interval of silence. My hand went up
to my bandages.
Then the man with the shade sighed and spoke. "That is it," said he.
"I knew that was it. A Power of Darkness. To put such a curse upon a
woman! It lurks there always. You can feel it even in the daytime, even
of a bright summer's day, in the hangings, in the curtains, keeping
behind you however you face about. In the dusk it creeps along the
corridor and follows you, so that you dare not turn. There is Fear in
that room of hers--black Fear, and there will be--so long as this house
of sin endures."