We did not stay long in the drawing-rooms,—in fact, they felt so damp
and so chilly that I was glad to get to the fire upstairs. We locked
the doors of the drawing-rooms,—a precaution which, I should observe,
we had taken with all the rooms we had searched below. The bedroom my
servant had selected for me was the best on the floor,—a large one, with
two windows fronting the street. The four-posted bed, which took up no
inconsiderable space, was opposite to the fire, which burned clear and
bright; a door in the wall to the left, between the bed and the window,
communicated with the room which my servant appropriated to himself.
This last was a small room with a sofa bed, and had no communication
with the landing place,—no other door but that which conducted to the
bedroom I was to occupy. On either side of my fireplace was a cupboard
without locks, flush with the wall, and covered with the same dull-brown
paper. We examined these cupboards,—only hooks to suspend female dresses,
nothing else; we sounded the walls,—evidently solid, the outer walls of
the building. Having finished the survey of these apartments, warmed
myself a few moments, and lighted my cigar, I then still accompanied by
F⸺, went forth to complete my reconnoiter. In the landing place there was
another door; it was closed firmly. “Sir,” said my servant, in surprise,
“I unlocked this door with all the others when I first came; it cannot
have got locked from the inside, for—”
Before he had finished his sentence, the door, which neither of us
then was touching, opened quietly of itself. We looked at each other a
single instant. The same thought seized both,—some human agency might be
detected here. I rushed in first, my servant followed. A small, blank,
dreary room without furniture; a few empty boxes and hampers in a corner;
a small window; the shutters closed; not even a fireplace; no other door
but that by which we had entered; no carpet on the floor, and the floor
seemed very old, uneven, worm-eaten, mended here and there, as was shown
by the whiter patches on the wood; but no living being, and no visible
place in which a living being could have hidden. As we stood gazing
round, the door by which we had entered closed as quietly as it had
before opened; we were imprisoned.
For the first time I felt a creep of indefinable horror. Not so my
servant. “Why, they don’t think to trap us, sir; I could break that
trumpery door with a kick of my foot.”
“Try first if it will open to your hand,” said I, shaking off the vague
apprehension that had seized me, “while I unclose the shutters and see
what is without.”
I unbarred the shutters,—the window looked on the little back yard I have
before described; there was no ledge without,—nothing to break the sheer
descent of the wall. No man getting out of that window would have found
any footing till he had fallen on the stones below.
F⸺, meanwhile, was vainly attempting to open the door. He now turned
round to me and asked my permission to use force. And I should
here state, in justice to the servant, that far from evincing any
superstitious terrors, his nerve, composure, and even gayety amidst
circumstances so extraordinary, compelled my admiration, and made me
congratulate myself on having secured a companion in every way fitted to
the occasion. I willingly gave him the permission he required. But though
he was a remarkably strong man, his force was as idle as his milder
efforts; the door did not even shake to his stoutest kick. Breathless and
panting, he desisted. I then tried the door myself, equally in vain. As I
ceased from the effort, again that creep of horror came over me; but this
time it was more cold and stubborn. I felt as if some strange and ghastly
exhalation were rising up from the chinks of that rugged floor, and
filling the atmosphere with a venomous influence hostile to human life.
The door now very slowly and quietly opened as of its own accord. We
precipitated ourselves into the landing place. We both saw a large, pale
light—as large as the human figure, but shapeless and unsubstantial—move
before us, and ascend the stairs that led from the landing into the
attics. I followed the light, and my servant followed me. It entered, to
the right of the landing, a small garret, of which the door stood open.
I entered in the same instant. The light then collapsed into a small
globule, exceedingly brilliant and vivid, rested a moment on a bed in the
corner, quivered, and vanished. We approached the bed and examined it,—a
half-tester, such as is commonly found in attics devoted to servants. On
the drawers that stood near it we perceived an old faded silk kerchief,
with the needle still left in a rent half repaired. The kerchief was
covered with dust; probably it had belonged to the old woman who had last
died in that house, and this might have been her sleeping room. I had
sufficient curiosity to open the drawers: there were a few odds and ends
of female dress, and two letters tied round with a narrow ribbon of faded
yellow. I took the liberty to possess myself of the letters. We found
nothing else in the room worth noticing,—nor did the light reappear;
but we distinctly heard, as we turned to go, a pattering footfall on the
floor, just before us. We went through the other attics (in all four),
the footfall still preceding us. Nothing to be seen—nothing but the
footfall heard. I had the letters in my hand; just as I was descending
the stairs I distinctly felt my wrist seized, and a faint, soft effort
made to draw the letters from my clasp. I only held them the more
tightly, and the effort ceased.
We regained the bedchamber appropriated to myself, and I then remarked
that my dog had not followed us when we had left it. He was thrusting
himself close to the fire, and trembling. I was impatient to examine the
letters, and while I read them, my servant opened a little box in which
he had deposited the weapons I had ordered him to bring, took them out,
placed them on a table close at my bed head, and then occupied himself in
soothing the dog, who, however, seemed to heed him very little.
The letters were short,—they were dated; the dates exactly thirty-five
years ago. They were evidently from a lover to his mistress, or a husband
to some young wife. Not only the terms of expression, but a distinct
reference to a former voyage, indicated the writer to have been a
seafarer. The spelling and handwriting were those of a man imperfectly
educated, but still the language itself was forcible. In the expressions
of endearment there was a kind of rough, wild love; but here and there
were dark unintelligible hints of some secret not of love,—some secret
that seemed of crime. “We ought to love each other,” was one of the
sentences I remember, “for how everyone else would execrate us if all
was known.” Again: “Don’t let anyone be in the same room with you at
night,—you talk in your sleep.” And again: “What’s done can’t be undone;
and I tell you there’s nothing against us unless the dead could come to
life.” Here there was underlined in a better handwriting (a female’s),
“They do!” At the end of the letter latest in date the same female hand
had written these words: “Lost at sea the 4th of June, the same day as——”