Sir Jekyl's Room is Visited.
It was near one o'clock. Sir Jekyl yawned and wound his watch, and
looked at his bed as if he would like to be in it without the trouble of
getting there; and at that moment there came a sharp knock at his door,
which startled him, for he thought all his people were asleep by that
time.
"Who's there?" he demanded in a loud key.
"It's me, sir, please," said Donica Gwynn's voice.
"Come in, will you?" cried he; and she entered.
"Are you sick?" he asked.
"No, sir, thank you," she replied, with a sharp courtesy.
"You look so plaguy pale. Well, I'm glad you're not. But what the deuce
can you want of me at this hour of night? Eh?"
"It's only about that room, sir."
"Oh, curse the room! Talk about it in the morning. You ought to have
been in your bed an hour ago."
"So I was, sir; but I could not sleep, sir, for thinking of it."
"Well, go back and think of it, if you must. How can I stop you? Don't
be a fool, old Gwynn."
"No more I will, sir, please, if I can help, for fools we are, the most
on us; but I could not sleep, as I said, for thinking o't; and so I
thought I'd jist put on my things again, and come and try if you, sir,
might be still up."
"Well, you see I'm up; but I want to get to bed, Gwynn, and not to talk
here about solemn bosh; and you must not bore me about that green
chamber--do you see?--to-night, like a good old girl; it will do in the
morning--won't it?"
"So it will, sir; only I could not rest in my bed, until I said, seeing
as you mean to sleep in this room, it would never do. It won't. I can't
stand it."
"Stand what? Egad! it seems to me you're demented, my good old Donica."
"No, Sir Jekyl," she persisted, with a grim resolution to say out her
say. "You know very well, sir, what's running in my head. You know it's
for no good anyone sleeps there. General Lennox, ye say; well an' good.
You know well what a loss Mr. Deverell met with in that room in Sir
Harry, your father's time."
"And you slept in it, did not you, and saw something? Eh?"
"Yes, I _did_" she said, in a sudden fury, with a little stamp on the
floor, and a pale, staring frown.
After a breathless pause of a second or two she resumed.
"And you know what your poor lady saw there, and never held up her head
again. And well you know, sir, how your father, Sir Harry, on his
death-bed, desired it should be walled up, when you were no more than a
boy; and your good lady did the same many a year after, when _she_ was a
dying. And I tell ye, Sir Jekyl, ye'll sup sorrow yourself yet if you
don't. And take a fool's counsel, and shut up that door, and never let
no one, friend or foe, sleep there; for well I know it's not for
nothing, with your dead father's dying command, and your poor dear
lady's dying entreaty against it, that you put anyone to sleep there. I
don't know who this General Lennox may be--a good gentleman or a bad;
but I'm sure it's for no righteous reason he's to lie there. You would
not do it for nothing."
This harangue was uttered with a volubility, which, as the phrase is,
took Sir Jekyl aback. He was angry, but he was also perplexed and a
little stunned by the unexpected vehemence of his old housekeeper's
assault, and he stared at her with a rather bewildered countenance.
"You're devilish impertinent," at last he said, with an effort. "You
rant there like a madwoman, just because I like you, and you've been in
our family, I believe, since before I was born; you think you may say
what you like. The house is mine, I believe, and I rather think I'll do
what I think best in it while I'm here."
"And you going to sleep in this room!" she broke in. "What else can it
be?"
"You mean--what the devil do you mean?" stammered the Baronet again,
unconsciously assuming the defensive.
"I mean you know very well _what_, Sir Jekyl," she replied.
"It was my father's room, hey?--when I was a boy, as you say. It's good
enough for his son, I suppose; and I don't ask _you_ to lie in the green
chamber."
"_I'll_ be no party, sir, if you please, to any one lying there," she
observed, with a stiff courtesy, and a sudden hectic in her cheek.
"Perhaps you mean because my door's a hundred and fifty feet away from
the front of the house, if any mischief should happen, I'm too far
away--as others were before me--to prevent it, eh?" said he, with a
flurried sneer.
"What I mean, I mean, sir--you ought not; that's all. You won't take it
amiss, Sir Jekyl--I'm an old servant--I'm sorry, sir; but I'a made up my
mind what to do."
"You're not thinking of any folly, surely? You seemed to me always too
much afraid, or whatever you call it, of the remembrance, you know, of
what you _saw_ there--eh?--_I_ don't know, of course, _what_--to speak
of it to me. I never pressed you, because you seemed--you know you
did--to have a horror; and surely you're not going now to talk among the
servants or other people. You can't be far from five-and-thirty years in
the family."
"Four-and-thirty, Sir Jekyl, next April. It's a good while; but I won't
see no more o' that; and unless the green chamber be locked up, at the
least, and used no more for a bed-room, I'd rather go, sir. Nothing may
happen, of course, Sir Jekyl--it's a hundred to one nothing _would_
happen; but ye see, sir, I've a feeling about it, sir; and there has
been these things ordered by your father that was, and by your poor
lady, as makes me feel queer. Nothing being done accordingly, and I
could not rest upon it, for sooner or later it would come to this, and
stay I could not. I judge no one--Heaven forbid,--Sir Jekyl--oh, no! my
own conscience is as much as I can look to; so sir, if you please, so
soon as you can suit yourself I'll leave, sir."
"Stuff! old Gwynn; don't mind talking to-night," said the Baronet, more
kindly than he had spoken before; "we'll see about it in the morning.
Good-night. We must not quarrel about nothing. I was only a school-boy
when you came to us, you know."
But in the morning "old Gwynn" was resolute. She was actually going, so
soon as the master could suit himself. She was not in a passion, nor in
a panic, but in a state of gloomy and ominous obstinacy.
"Well, you'll give me a little time, won't you, to look about me?" said
the Baronet, peevishly.
"Such is my intention, sir."
"And see, Gwynn, not a word about that--that green chamber, you know, to
Miss Beatrix."
"As you please, sir."
"Because if you begin to talk, they'll all think we are haunted."
"Whatever you please to order, sir."
"And it was not--it was my grandfather, you know, who built it."
"Ah, so it was, sir;" and Gwynn looked astonished and shook her head, as
though cowed by the presence of a master-spirit of evil.
"One would fancy you saw his ghost, Gwynn; but he was not such a devil
as your looks would make him, only a bit wild, and a favourite with the
women, Gwynn--always the best judge of merit--hey? Beau Marlowe they
called him--the best dressed man of his day. How the devil could such a
fellow have any harm in him?"
There is a fine picture, full length, of Beau Marlowe, over the
chimneypiece of the great hall of Marlowe. He has remarkably
gentlemanlike hands and legs; the gloss is on his silk stockings still.
His features are handsome, of that type which we conventionally term
aristocratic; high, and smiling with a Louis-Quatorze insolence. He
wears a very fine coat of cut velvet, of a rich, dusky red, the
technical name of which I forget. He was of the gilded and powdered
youth of his day.
He certainly was a handsome fellow, this builder of the "green chamber,"
and he has not placed his candle under a bushel. He shines in many parts
of the old house, and has repeated himself in all manner of becoming
suits. You see him, three-quarters, in the parlour, in blue and silver;
you meet him in crayon, and again in small oil, oval; and you have him
in half a dozen miniatures.
We mention this ancestor chiefly because when his aunt, Lady Mary, left
him a legacy, he added the green chamber to the house.
It seems odd that Sir Jekyl, not fifty yet, should have had a
grandfather who was a fashionable and wicked notoriety of mature years,
and who had built an addition to the family mansion so long as a
hundred and thirty years ago. But this gentleman had married late, as
rakes sometimes do, and his son, Sir Harry, married still
later--somewhere about seventy; having been roused to this uncomfortable
exertion by the proprietorial airs of a nephew who was next in
succession. To this matrimonial explosion Sir Jekyl owed his entrance
and agreeable sojourn upon the earth.
"I won't ask you to stay now; you're in a state. I'll write to town for
Sinnott, as you insist on it, but you won't leave us in confusion, and
you'll make her _au fait_--won't you? Give her any hints she may
require; and I know I shall have you back again when you cool a little,
or at all events when we go back to Dartbroke; for I don't think I shall
like this place."
So Donica Gwynn declared herself willing to remain till Mrs. Sinnott
should arrive from London; and preparations for the reception of guests
proceeded with energy.