THE CRYPT.
“When are you going down again to the chapel, Mr. Grant?” said lady
Arctura: she was better now, and able to work.
“I was down last night, and want to go again this evening by myself--if
you don’t mind, my lady,” he answered. “I am sure it will be better for
you not to go down till you are ready to give your orders to have
everything cleared away for the light and air to enter. The damp and
closeness of the place are too much for you.”
“I think it was rather the want of sleep that made me ill,” she
answered; “but you can do just as you please.”
“I thank you for your confidence, my lady,” returned Donal. “I do not
think you will repent it.”
“I know I shall not.”
Having some things to do first, it was late before Donal went
down--intent on learning the former main entrance, and verifying the
position of the chapel in the castle.
He betook himself to the end of the passage under the little gallery,
and there examined the signs he had observed: those must be the outer
ends of two of the steps of the great staircase! they came through,
resting on the wall. That end of the chapel, then, adjoined the main
stair. Evidently, too, a door had been built up in the process of
constructing the stair. The chapel then had not been entered from that
level since the building of the stair. Originally there had, most
likely, been an outside stair to this door, in an open court.
After a little more examination, partially of necessity from lack of
light, he was on his way out, and already near the top of the mural
stair, thinking of the fresh observations he would take outside in the
morning, when behind, overtaking him from the regions he had left, came
a blast of air, and blew out his candle. He shivered--not with the cold
of it, though it did breathe of underground damps and doubtful growths,
but from a feeling of its having been sent after him to make him go
down again--for did it not indicate some opening to the outer air? He
relighted his candle and descended, carefully guarding it with one
hand. The cold sigh seemed to linger about him as he went--gruesome as
from a closed depth, the secret bosom of the castle, into which the
light never entered. But, wherever it came from last, however earthy
and fearful, it came first from the open regions of life, and had but
passed through a gloom that life itself must pass! Could it have been a
draught down the pipe of the music-chords? No, for they would have
loosed some light-winged messenger with it! He must search till he
found its entrance below!
He crossed the little gallery, descended, and went again into the
chapel: it lay as still as the tomb which it was no more. He seemed to
miss the presence of the dead, and feel the place deserted. All round
its walls, as far as he could reach or see, he searched carefully, but
could perceive no sign of possible entrance for the messenger blast. It
came again!--plainly through the open door under the windows. He went
again into the passage outside the wall, and the moment he turned into
it, the draught seemed to come from beneath, blowing upwards. He
stooped to examine; his candle was again extinguished. Once more he
relighted it. Searching then along the floor and the foot of the walls,
he presently found, in the wall of the chapel itself, close to the
ground, a narrow horizontal opening: it must pass under the floor of
the chapel! All he saw was a mere slit, but the opening might be
larger, and partially covered by the flooring-slab, which went all the
length of the slit! He would try to raise it! That would want a
crowbar! but having got so far, he would not rest till he knew more! It
must be very late and the domestics all in bed; but what hour it was he
could not tell, for he had left his watch in his room. It might be
midnight and he burrowing like a mole about the roots of the old house,
or like an evil thing in the heart of a man! No matter! he would follow
up his search--after what, he did not know.
He crept up, and out of the castle by his own stair, so to the
tool-house. It was locked. But lying near was a half-worn shovel: that
might do! he would have a try with it! Like one in a dream of ancient
ruins, creeping through mouldy and low-browed places, he went down once
more into the entrails of the house.
Inserting the sharp edge of the worn shovel in the gap between the
stone and that next it, he raised it more readily than he had hoped,
and saw below it a small window, whose sill sloped steeply inward. How
deep the place might be, and whether it would be possible to get out of
it again, he must discover before entering. He took a letter from his
pocket, lighted it, and threw it in. It revealed a descent of about
seven feet, into what looked like a cellar. He blew his candle out, put
it in his pocket, got into the window, slid down the slope, and reached
his new level with ease. He then lighted his candle, and looked about
him.
His eye first fell on a large flat stone in the floor, like a
gravestone, but without any ornament or inscription. It was a roughly
vaulted place, unpaved, its floor of damp hard-beaten earth. In the
wall to the right of that through which he had entered, was another
opening, low down, like the crown of an arch the rest of which was
beneath the floor. As near as he could judge, it was right under the
built-up door in the passage above. He crept through it, and found
himself under the spiral of the great stair, in the small space at the
bottom of its well. On the floor lay a dust-pan and a
house-maid’s-brush--and there was the tiny door at which they were
shoved in, after their morning’s use upon the stair! It was
open-inwards; he crept through it: he was in the great hall of the
house--and there was one of its windows wide open! Afraid of being by
any chance discovered, he put out his light, and proceeded up the stair
in the dark.
He had gone but a few steps when he heard the sound of descending feet.
He stopped and listened: they turned into the half-way room. When he
reached it, he heard sounds which showed that the earl was in the
closet behind it. Things rushed together in his mind. He hurried up to
lady Arctura’s room, thence descended, for the third time that
night--but no farther than the oak door, passed through it, entered the
little chamber, and hastening to the farther end of it, laid his ear
against the wall. Plainly enough he heard the sounds he had
expected--those of the dream-walking rather than sleep-walking earl,
moaning, and calling in a low voice of entreaty after some one whose
name did not grow audible to the listener.
“Ah!” thought Donal, “who would find it hard to believe in roaming and
haunting ghosts, that had once seen this poor man roaming his own
house, and haunting that chamber! How easily I could punish him now,
with a lightning blast of terror!”
It was but a thought; it did not amount to a temptation; Donal knew he
had no right. Vengeance belongs to the Lord, for he alone knows how to
use it.
I do not believe that _mere_ punishment exists anywhere in the economy
of the highest; I think _mere_ punishment a human idea, not a divine
one. But the consuming fire is more terrible than any punishment
invented by riotous and cruel imagination. Punishment indeed it is--not
_mere_ punishment; a power of God for his creature. Love is God’s being;
love is his creative energy; they are one: God’s punishments are for the
casting out of the sin that uncreates, for the recreating of the things
his love made and sin has unmade.
He heard the lean hands of the earl go slowly sweeping, at the ends of
his long arms, over the wall: he had seen the thing, else he could
hardly have interpreted the sounds; and he heard him muttering on and
on, though much too low for his words to be distinguishable. Had they
been, Donal by this time was so convinced that he had to do with an evil
and dangerous man, that he would have had little scruple in listening.
It is only righteousness that has a right to secrecy, and does not want
it; evil has no right to secrecy, alone intensely desires it, and rages
at being foiled of it; for when its deeds come to the light, even evil
has righteousness enough left to be ashamed of them. But he could remain
no longer; his very soul felt sick within him. He turned hastily away to
leave the place. But carrying his light too much in front, and
forgetting the stool, he came against it and knocked it over, not
without noise. A loud cry from the other side of the wall revealed the
dismay he had caused. It was followed by a stillness, and then a
moaning.
He made haste to find Simmons, and send him to his master. He heard
nothing afterwards of the affair.