EXIT JANET HOPE.
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 Deepley 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 bed-room 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 bed-room
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 downstairs
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 climbed 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 Hope 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 Chillington 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 someone 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 Hope 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 Chillington, 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 Chillington 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 Chillington that, day and night, twelve candles
shall be kept burning round the coffin, and ever since I came to reside
at Deepley 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 Deepley Walls. Madame Delclos 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 Chillington for a moment before leaving. She gave
me two frigid fingers, and said that she hoped I should 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
Delclos, who had been trying to look _sympathique_, 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.