BEING WORN out with the long fight, we all slept the rest of the
afternoon away and two or three hours into the night. Then we got up
refreshed, and had supper. As for me, I could have been willing to let
the matter of the ghost drop; and the others were of a like mind, no
doubt, for they talked diligently of the battle and said nothing of that
other thing. And indeed it was fine and stirring to hear the Paladin
rehearse his deeds and see him pile his dead, fifteen here, eighteen
there, and thirty-five yonder; but this only postponed the trouble; it
could not do more. He could not go on forever; when he had carried the
bastille by assault and eaten up the garrison there was nothing for it
but to stop, unless Catherine Boucher would give him a new start and
have it all done over again—as we hoped she would, this time—but she was
otherwise minded. As soon as there was a good opening and a fair chance,
she brought up her unwelcome subject, and we faced it the best we could.
We followed her and her parents to the haunted room at eleven o’clock,
with candles, and also with torches to place in the sockets on the
walls. It was a big house, with very thick walls, and this room was in
a remote part of it which had been left unoccupied for nobody knew how
many years, because of its evil repute.
This was a large room, like a salon, and had a big table in it of
enduring oak and well preserved; but the chair were worm-eaten and
the tapestry on the walls was rotten and discolored by age. The dusty
cobwebs under the ceiling had the look of not having had any business
for a century.
Catherine said:
“Tradition says that these ghosts have never been seen—they have merely
been heard. It is plain that this room was once larger than it is now,
and that the wall at this end was built in some bygone time to make and
fence off a narrow room there. There is no communication anywhere with
that narrow room, and if it exists—and of that there is no reasonable
doubt—it has no light and no air, but is an absolute dungeon. Wait where
you are, and take note of what happens.”
That was all. Then she and her parents left us. When their footfalls
had died out in the distance down the empty stone corridors an uncanny
silence and solemnity ensued which was dismaler to me than the mute
march past the bastilles. We sat looking vacantly at each other, and it
was easy to see that no one there was comfortable. The longer we sat so,
the more deadly still that stillness got to be; and when the wind began
to moan around the house presently, it made me sick and miserable, and
I wished I had been brave enough to be a coward this time, for indeed
it is no proper shame to be afraid of ghosts, seeing how helpless the
living are in their hands. And then these ghosts were invisible, which
made the matter the worse, as it seemed to me. They might be in the
room with us at that moment—we could not know. I felt airy touches on my
shoulders and my hair, and I shrank from them and cringed, and was not
ashamed to show this fear, for I saw the others doing the like, and knew
that they were feeling those faint contacts too. As this went on—oh,
eternities it seemed, the time dragged so drearily—all those faces
became as wax, and I seemed sitting with a congress of the dead.
At last, faint and far and weird and slow, came a “boom!—boom!—boom!”—a
distant bell tolling midnight. When the last stroke died, that
depressing stillness followed again, and as before I was staring at
those waxen faces and feeling those airy touches on my hair and my
shoulders once more.
One minute—two minutes—three minutes of this, then we heard a long deep
groan, and everybody sprang up and stood, with his legs quaking. It
came from that little dungeon. There was a pause, then we herd muffled
sobbings, mixed with pitiful ejaculations. Then there was a second
voice, low and not distinct, and the one seemed trying to comfort the
other; and so the two voices went on, with moanings, and soft sobbings,
and, ah, the tones were so full of compassion and sorry and despair!
Indeed, it made one’s heart sore to hear it.
But those sounds were so real and so human and so moving that the idea
of ghosts passed straight out of our minds, and Sir Jean de Metz spoke
out and said:
“Come! we will smash that wall and set those poor captives free. Here,
with your ax!”
The Dwarf jumped forward, swinging his great ax with both hands, and
others sprang for torches and brought them.
Bang!—whang!—slam!—smash went the ancient bricks, and there was a hole
an ox could pass through. We plunged within and held up the torches.
Nothing there but vacancy! On the floor lay a rusty sword and a rotten
fan.
Now you know all that I know. Take the pathetic relics, and weave about
them the romance of the dungeon’s long-vanished inmates as best you can.