EXIT JANET HOLME.
The effect upon me of the discovery that Sister Agnes was the midnight
visitor of the room over mine was at once to stifle that brood of
morbid fancies with which of late both room and visitor had become
associated in my mind. I loved her so thoroughly, she was to me so
complete an embodiment of all that was noble and beautiful in
womanhood, that however unsatisfying to my curiosity such visits might
be, I could not doubt that she must have excellent reasons for making
them. One thing was quite evident, that since she herself had said
nothing respecting the room and her visits to it, it was impossible
for me to question her on the matter. Such being the case, I felt that
it would be a poor return for all her goodness to me to question Dance
or any other person respecting what she herself wished to keep
concealed. Besides, it was doubtful whether Dance would tell me
anything, even if I were to ask her. She had warned me a few hours
after my arrival at Dupley Walls that there were many things under
that roof respecting which I must seek no explanation; and with no one
of the other domestics was I in any way intimate.
Still my curiosity remained unsatisfied; still over the room itself
hung a veil of mystery which I would fain have lifted. All my visits
to the room to see whether the light shone under the door had hitherto
been made previously to the midnight visits of Sister Agnes. The
question that now arose in my mind was whether the mysterious thread
of light was or was not visible after Sister Agnes's customary
visit--whether, in fact, it shone there all the night through. In
order to solve this doubt I lay awake the night following that of my
discovery of Sister Agnes. Listening intently, with my bedroom door
ajar, I heard her go upstairs, and ten minutes later I could just
distinguish her smothered footfall as she came down. I heard the door
at the bottom of the corridor shut behind her, and then I knew that I
was safe.
Slipping out of bed, I stole, barefooted as I was, out of my bedroom
and up the flight of stairs which led to the black door. Of ghosts in
the ordinary meaning of that word--in the meaning which it has for
five children out of six--I had no fear: my fears, such as they were,
ran in quite another groove. I went upstairs slowly, with shut eyes,
counting each stair as I put my feet on it from one up to ten. I knew
that from the tenth stair the streak of light, if there, would be
visible. On the tenth stair I opened my eyes. There was the thread of
light shining clear and steady under the black door. For a minute I
stood looking at it. In the intense silence the beating of my heart
was painfully audible. Grasping the banister with one hand, I went
down stairs backwards, step by step, and so regained the sanctuary of
my own room.
I scarcely know in what terms to describe, or how to make sufficiently
clear, the strange sort of fascination there was for me in those
nightly rambles--in living perpetually on the edge of a mystery. While
daylight lasted the feeling slumbered within me; I could even take
myself to task for wanting to pry into a secret that evidently in
nowise concerned me. But as soon as twilight set in, and night's
shadows began to creep timidly out of their corners, so surely could I
feel the spell working within me, the desire creeping over me to
pluck out the heart of the mystery that lay hidden behind the black
nail-studded door upstairs. Sometimes I clomb the staircase at one
hour, sometimes at another; but there was no real sleep for me,
nothing but fitful uneasy dozes, till the brief journey had been made.
After climbing to the tenth stair, and satisfying myself that the
light was there, I would creep back noiselessly to bed, and fall at
once into a deep dreamless sleep that was often prolonged till late in
the forenoon.
At length there came a night when the secret was laid bare, and the
spell broken for ever. I had been in bed for two hours and a half,
lying in that half-dreamy state in which facts and fancies are so
inextricably jumbled together that it is too much labour to
disintegrate the two, when the clock struck one. Next moment I was out
of bed, standing with the handle of the half-opened door in my hand,
listening to the silence. I had heard Sister Agnes come down some time
ago, and I felt secure from interruption. To-night the moon shone
brightly in through a narrow window in the gable, and all the way
upstairs there was a track of white light as though a company of
ghosts had lately passed that way. As I went upstairs I counted them
up to the tenth, and then I stood still. Yes, the thread of light was
there as it always was, only--only somehow it seemed broader to-night
than I had ever noticed it as being before. It _was_ broader. I could
not be mistaken. While I was still pondering over this problem, and
wondering what it might mean, my eye was taken by the dull gleam of
some small white object about half way up the door. My eyes were taken
by it, and would not leave it till I had ascertained what it really
was. I approached it step by step, slowly, and then I saw that it was
in reality that which I had imagined it to be. It was a small silver
key--Sister Agnes's key--which she had forgotten to take away with her
on leaving the room. Moreover the door was unlocked, having been
simply pulled to by Sister Agnes on leaving, which explained why the
streak of light showed larger than common.
I felt as though I were walking in a dream, so unreal did the whole
business seem to me by this time. I was in a moonlight glamour; the
influence of the silver orb was upon me. Of self-volition I seemed to
have little or none left. I was given over to unseen powers, viewless,
that dwell in space, of which we have ordinarily no human cognition.
At such moments as these, and I have gone through many of them, I am
no longer the Janet Holme of everyday life. I am lifted up and beyond
my ordinary self. I obey a law whose beginning and whose ending I am
alike ignorant of: but I feel that it is a law and not an impulse. I
am led blindly forward, but I go unresistingly, feeling that there is
no power left in me save that of obeying.
Did I push open the door of the secret room, or was it opened for me
by unseen hands? I know not. I only know that it closed noiselessly
behind me of its own accord and left me standing there wondering,
alone, with white face and staring eyes.
The chamber was a large one, or seemed so to me. It was draped
entirely in black, hiding whatever windows there might be. The
polished wood floor was bare. The ceiling was painted with a number of
sprawling Cupids, some of them scattering flowers, others weaving
leafy chaplets, presumably to crown the inane-looking goddess
reclining in their midst on a bank of impossible cloud. But both
Cupids and goddess were dingy with age, and seemed to have grown too
old for such Arcadian revels.
The room was lighted with a dozen large wax candles placed in four
silver tripods, each of them about six feet in height, and screwed to
the floor to prevent their being overturned. All these preparations
were not without an object. That object was visible in the middle of
the room. It was a large black coffin studded with silver nails,
placed on a black slab about four feet in height, and more than half
covered with a large pall.
I felt no fear at sight of this grim object. I was lifted too far
above my ordinary self to be afraid. I simply wondered--wondered who
lay asleep inside the coffin, and how long he or she had been there.
The only article of furniture in the room was a _prie-dieu_ of black
oak. I knelt on this, and gazed on the coffin, and wondered. My
curiosity urged me to go up to it, and turn down the pall, and
ascertain whether the name of the occupant was engraved on the lid.
But stronger than my curiosity was a certain repugnance to go near it
which I could not overcome. That some person was shut up there who
during life had been of importance in the world, I could not doubt.
This, too, was the room in which Lady Pollexfen took her midnight
perambulations, and that coffin was the object she came to
contemplate. Perhaps the occupant of the coffin came out, and walked
with my lady, and held ghostly converse with her on such occasions. I
fancied that even now I could hear him breathing heavily, and turning
over uneasily in his narrow bed. There seemed a rustling, too, among
the folds of the sombre curtains as though some one were in hiding
there; and that low faint sobbing sigh which quivered through the
room, like an accent of unutterable sorrow, whence did it come? Others
than myself were surely there, though I might not be able to see them.
I knelt on the _prie-dieu_, stirring neither hand nor foot; as
immovable, in fact, except for my breathing, as a figure cut out of
stone. Looking and wondering still, after a time it seemed to me that
the lights were growing dimmer, that the room was growing colder; that
some baleful presence was beside me with malicious intent to gradually
numb and chill the life out of me, to freeze me, body and soul, till
the two could no longer hold together; and that when morning came, if
ever it did come to that accursed room, my husk would be there indeed,
but Janet Holme herself would be gone for ever. A viewless horror
stirred my hair, and caused my flesh to creep. The baneful influence
that was upon me was deepening in intensity; every minute that passed
seemed to render me more powerless to break the spell. Suddenly the
clock struck two. At the same moment a light footfall sounded on the
stairs outside. It was Sister Agnes coming back to lock the door, and
to fetch the key which she had left behind two hours before. I heard
her approach the door, and I saw the door itself pulled close to; then
the key was turned, the bolt shot into its place, the key was
withdrawn, and I was left locked up alone in that terrible room.
But the proximity of another human being sufficed to break the spell
under which I had been powerless only a minute before. Better risk
discovery, better risk everything, than be left to pass the night
where I was. Should that horror settle down upon me again, I felt that
I must succumb to it. It would crush the life out of me as infallibly
as though I were in the folds of some huge Python. Long before morning
I should be dead.
I slid from off the _prie-dieu_, and walking backward, with my eyes
glancing warily to right and left, I reached the door, and struck it
with my fists. "Sister Agnes!" I cried, "Sister Agnes! do not leave
me. I am here alone."
Again the curtains rustled, stirred by invisible fingers; again that
faint long-drawn sigh ran like an audible shiver through the room. I
heard eager fingers busy outside the door; a mist swam up before my
eyes, and next moment I fainted dead away in the arms of Sister Agnes.
For three weeks after that time I lay very ill--lay very close to the
edge of the grave. But for the ceaseless attentions and tender
assiduities of Sister Agnes and Dance I should have slipped out of
life and all my troubles. To them I owe it that I am now alive to
write these lines. One bright afternoon, as I was approaching
convalescence, Sister Agnes and I, sitting alone, got into
conversation respecting the room upstairs, and my visit to it.
"But whose coffin is that, Sister Agnes?" I asked. "And why is it left
there unburied?"
"It is the coffin of Sir John Pollexfen, her ladyship's late husband,"
answered Sister Agnes, very gravely. "He died thirteen years ago. By
his will a large portion of the property left to his widow was
contingent on his body being kept unburied and above ground for twenty
years. Lady Pollexfen elected to have the body kept in that room which
you were so foolish as to visit without permission; and there it will
probably remain till the twenty years shall have expired. All these
facts are well known to the household; indeed, to the country for
miles around; but it was not thought necessary to mention them to a
child like you, whose stay in the house would be of limited duration
and to whom such knowledge could be of no possible benefit."
"But why do you visit the room every midnight, Sister Agnes?"
"It is the wish of Lady Pollexfen that, day and night, twelve candles
shall be kept burning round the coffin, and ever since I came to
reside at Dupley Walls it has been part of my duty to renew the
candles once every twenty-four hours. Midnight is the hour appointed
for the performance of that duty."
"Do you not feel afraid to go there alone at such a time?"
"Dear Janet, what is there to be afraid of? The dead have no power to
harm us. We shall be as they are in a very little while. They are but
travellers who have gone before us into a far country, leaving behind
them a few poor relics, and a memory that, if we have loved them,
ought to make us look forward with desire to the time when we shall
see them again."
Three weeks later I left Dupley Walls. Madame Duclos was in London for
a week, and it was arranged that I should return to France with her.
Major Strickland took me up to town and saw me safely into her hands.
My heart was very sad at leaving all my dear new-found friends, but
Sister Agnes had exhorted me to fortitude before I parted from her,
and I knew that neither by her, nor the major, nor George, nor Dance,
should I be forgotten. I saw Lady Pollexfen for a moment before
leaving. She gave me two frigid fingers, and said that she hoped I
would be a good girl, and attend assiduously to my lessons, for that
in after life I should have to depend upon my own industry for a
living. I felt at the moment that I would much rather do that than
have to depend through life on her ladyship's bounty.
A few tears would come when the moment arrived for me to say farewell
to the major. He tried his best, in his hearty affectionate way, to
cheer me up. I flung my arms round his neck and kissed him tenderly.
He turned abruptly, seized his hat, and rushed from the room.
Whereupon, Madame Duclos, who had been trying to look _sympathétique_,
drew herself up, frowned, and pinched one of my ears viciously.
Forty-eight hours later I was safely shut up in the Pension Clissot.
Here my personal narrative ends. From this point the story of which
the preceding pages form a part, will be recorded by another pen. It
was deemed advisable by those to whose opinion in such matters I bow
without hesitation, that this narrative of certain events in the
life of a child--a necessary introduction to the narrative yet to
come--should be written by the person whom it most concerned. Now that
her task is done, she abnegates at once (and thankfully) the first
person singular in favour of the third, and whatever is told of her in
the following pages, is told not by herself, but by that other pen, of
which mention is made above.
Between the time when this curtain falls and the next one draws up,
there is a lapse of seven years.