It was a good deal more than an hour later--in fact nearer twelve than
eleven o'clock--when young Donnington got up from the comfortable chair
where he had been ensconced, and put down the book which he had been
reading.
All the other men of the party, with the exception of old Mr.
Burnaby--who had gone to bed for good after his dramatic bolt from the
drawing-room--had disappeared some time ago. But Donnington had stayed
on downstairs, absorbed in a curious, privately printed book containing
the history of Wyndfell Hall.
Suddenly his eyes fell on the following passage:
"Every piece of the furniture in 'the White Parlour,' as it is still
called, is of historic value and interest. To take but one example.
A low, high-backed chair, covered with _petit point_ embroidery,
is believed to have been the _prie-dieu_ on which the Princesse
de Lamballe knelt during the whole of the night preceding her terrible
death. In a document which was sold with the chair in 1830, her
servant--who, it appears, had smuggled the chair into the
prison--recounts the curious fact that the poor Princess had a
prevision that she was to be _torn in pieces_. She spent the last
night praying for strength to bear the awful ordeal she knew lay
before her."
Donnington shut the book. "That's strange!" he muttered to himself as
he got up.
After putting the book back in the bookcase where he had found it, he
stood and looked round the splendid apartment with a mixture of interest
and delighted attention.
Yes, this wonderful old "post and panel" dwelling was the most beautiful
of the many beautiful old country houses with which he had made
acquaintance in the last two or three years; and it was awfully good of
Bubbles to have got him asked here! Even if she hadn't actually
suggested he should come, he knew that of course he owed his being here
to her.
The queer, enigmatic, clever girl had the whole of Donnington's
steadfast heart. Since he had first met Bubbles--only some eighteen
months ago, but it now seemed an eternity--all life had been different.
At first she had at once repelled, attracted, and shocked him. He had
been much taken aback when she had first proposed coming to see him,
unchaperoned, in the modest rooms he occupied in Gray's Inn. Then, after
she had twice invited herself to tea, her constant comings seemed quite
natural. Sometimes she would be accompanied by a friend, either another
girl or a man, and they would form a merry, happy little party of three
or four. But of course he was far, far happiest when she came alone.
Almost from the first moment there had been a kind of instinctive
intimacy between them, and very soon she had learnt to rely on him--even
to take his advice about little things--and to come to him with all her
troubles.
Bubbles Dunster had already been what Donnington in his own mind called
"deeply bitten" with spiritualism before they had met; yet he had known
her for some considerable time before she had allowed him to know it.
Even now she tried, ineffectually, to keep him outside all that
concerned that part of her life. But, as he once had told her with more
emotion than he generally betrayed, he would have followed her down to
hell itself.
There came a cloud over his honest face as he thought of what had
happened this very evening. And yet, and yet he had to admit that even
now he could never make up his mind--he never knew, that is, how far
what took place was due to a supernatural agency, or how much to
Bubbles' uncanny quickness and cleverness.
What was more strange, considering how well he knew her, Donnington did
not really know how much she herself believed in it all. As a
rule--probably because she knew how anxious and troubled he felt about
the matter--Bubbles would very seldom discuss with him any of the
strange happenings in which she was so absorbed. And yet, now and again,
almost as if in spite of herself, she would ask him if he would care to
come to a séance, or invite him to witness an exceptionally remarkable
manifestation at some psychic friend's house.
It had early become impossible for him, apart from everything else, to
accept the easy "all rot" theory, for Bubbles' occult gifts were really
very remarkable and striking. They had become known to the now large
circle of intelligent people who make a study of psychic phenomena, and
among them, just because she was an "amateur," she was much in request.
But it had never occurred to him, from what he had been told of the
party now gathered together, that there would be the slightest attempt
at the sort of thing which had happened to-night. He felt sharply
irritated with Miss Farrow, whom he had never liked, and also with
Lionel Varick. He knew that Bubbles' father had written to her aunt; he
had himself advised it, knowing, with that shrewd, rather pathetic
instinct which love gives to some natures, that Bubbles thought a great
deal of her aunt--far more, indeed, than her aunt did of her. He told
himself that he would speak to Miss Farrow to-morrow--have it out with
her.
Rather slowly and deliberately, for he was a rather slow and deliberate
young man, he put out the lights of the three seven-branched
candlesticks which illumined the beautiful old room; and, as he moved
about, he suddenly became aware that nearly opposite the door giving
into the staircase lobby was a finely-carved, oak, confessional-box.
What an odd, incongruous ornament to have in a living-room!
The last bedroom candlestick had gone, and temporarily blinded by the
sudden darkness, he groped his way up the broad, shallow stairs to the
corridor which he knew ultimately led to his room.
He was setting his feet cautiously one before the other on the landing,
his eyes by now accustomed to the grey dimness of a winter night, for
the great window above the staircase was uncurtained, when _Something_
suddenly loomed up before him, and he felt his right arm gripped.
He gave a stifled cry. And then, all at once, he knew that it was
Bubbles--only Bubbles! He felt her dear nearness rushing, as it were,
all over him. It was all he could do to prevent himself from taking her
in his arms.
"Bill? That _is_ you, isn't it?" she asked in a low whisper. "I'm so
frightened--so frightened! I should have come down long ago--but I
thought some of the others were still there. Oh! I wish I'd come down!
I've been waiting up here so long--and oh, Bill, I'm very cold!" She was
pressing up close to him, and he put his arm round her--in a protecting,
impersonal way.
"I wish we could go and sit down somewhere," she went on plaintively.
"It's horrible talking out here, on the landing. I suppose it wouldn't
do, Bill, for you to come into my room?"
"No, that wouldn't do at all," he said simply. "But look here,
Bubbles--would you like to go downstairs again, into the hall? It's
quite warm there,"--he felt that she was really shivering.
"I'm cold--I'm cold!"
"Put on something warmer," he said--or rather ordered. "Put on your fur
coat. Is it downstairs? Shall I go and fetch it?"
She whispered, "It's in my room--I know where it is. I know exactly
where Pegler put it."
She left him standing in the corridor, and went back into her room. The
door was wide open, and he could see that she was wearing a white
wrapper covered with large red flowers--some kind of Eastern, wadded
dressing-gown. He heard a cupboard door creak, and then she came out of
the room dragging her big fur coat over her dressing-gown; but he saw
that her feet were bare--she had not troubled to put on slippers.
"Go back," he said imperiously, "and put some shoes on, Bubbles--you'll
catch your death of cold."
How amazing, how incredible, this adventure would have appeared to him
even a year ago! But it seemed quite natural now--simply wilful Bubbles'
way. There was nothing Bubbles could do which would surprise Donnington
_now_.
"Don't shut your door," he muttered. "It might wake someone up. Just
blow out the candles, and leave the door open."
She obeyed him; and then he took her arm--again blinded by the sudden
obscurity in which they were now plunged.
"I hate going downstairs," she said fretfully. "Somehow I feel as if
downstairs were full of Them!"
"Full of _them_?" he repeated. "What on earth do you mean, Bubbles?"
And Bubbles murmured fearfully: "You know perfectly well what I mean.
And it's all my fault--all my fault!"
He whispered rather sternly back: "Yes, Bubbles, it _is_ your fault. Why
couldn't you leave the thing alone just for a little while--just through
the Christmas holidays?"
"I felt so tempted," she muttered. "I forget who it was who said
'Temptation is so pleasing because it need never be resisted.'"
He uttered an impatient exclamation under his breath.
"Let's sit down on the staircase," she pleaded, "I'm warmer now. I think
this would be a nice place to sit down."
She sank down on one of the broad, low steps just below the landing, and
pulled him down, nestling up close to him. "Oh, Bill," she whispered,
"it _is_ a comfort to be with you--a real comfort. You don't know what
I've gone through since I came up to bed. I felt all the time as if
Something was trying to get at me--something cruel, revengeful,
miserable!"
"You ate too much at dinner," he said shortly. "You oughtn't to have
taken that brandy-cherries ice."
They had very soon got past the stage during which Donnington had tried
to say pretty things to Bubbles.
"Perhaps I did"--he felt the gurgle of amusement in her voice. "I was
very hungry, and the food here is very good. It must be costing a lot of
money--all this sort of thing. How nice to be rich! Oh, Bill, how _very_
nice to be rich!"
"I don't agree," he said sharply. "Varick doesn't look particularly
happy, that I can see."
"I wonder if Aunt Blanche would marry him _now_?"
"I don't suppose he'd give her the chance--now."
It wasn't a very chivalrous thing to say, or hear said, and Bubbles
pinched him so viciously that he nearly cried out.
"You're not to talk like that of my Aunt Blanche. Quite lately--not
three months ago--someone asked her to marry him for the thousandth
time! But of course she said no--as I shall do to you, a thousand times
too, if we live long enough."
She waited a moment, then said slowly: "Her man's rather like you. He's
very much what you will be, Bill, in about thirty years from now--a
plain, good, priggish old fellow. Of course you know who it is? Mark
Gifford, of the Home Office. Aunt Blanche only keeps in with him because
he's very useful to her sometimes."
And then she added, with a touch of strange cruelty, "Just as _I_ shall
always keep in with you, Bill, however tiresome and disagreeable you may
be! Just because I find you so useful. You're being useful now; I don't
feel frightened any more."
She drew herself from the shelter of his strong, protecting arm, and
slid along the polished step till she leant against the banister. He
could just see the whiteness of her little face shining out of the big
fur collar.
"If you're feeling all right again," he said rather coolly, "I think
we'd both better go to bed. Speaking for myself, I feel sleepy!"
But she was sliding towards him again, and again she clutched his arm.
"No, no," she whispered. "Let's wait just a little longer, Bill. I--I
don't feel quite comfortable in that room. I wonder if they'd give me a
new room to-morrow? It's funny, I'm not a bit frightened at what they
call the haunted room here--the room that's next to Aunt Blanche's, in
the other wing of the house. A woman who killed her little stepson is
supposed to haunt that room."
"I know," said Donnington shortly. "I've been reading about it in a book
downstairs. _I_ shouldn't care to sleep in a room where such a thing had
been done--ghost or no ghost!"
And then Bubbles said something which rather startled him. "Bill," she
whispered, leaning yet closer to him, "_I_ raised that ghost two nights
ago."
"What do you mean?" he asked sternly.
"I mean that Aunt Blanche and that tiresome Pegler of hers had already
been here a week and nothing had happened. And then--the first night I
was in the house the ghost appeared!"
She was shivering now, and, almost unwillingly, he put his arm round
her again. "Rot!" he exclaimed. "Don't let yourself think such things,
Bubbles--"
"I know you don't believe it, Bill, but I _have_ got the power of
raising Them."
"I don't know whether I believe it or not," he said slowly. "And I--I
sometimes wonder if _you_ believe it, Bubbles, or if you're only
pretending?"
There was a pause. And then Bubbles said in a strange tone: "'Tisn't a
question of believing it now, Bill. I _know_ it's true! I wish it
wasn't."
"If it's true," he said, "or even if you only believe it's true, what on
earth made you do what you did to-night?"
"It was so deadly," she exclaimed, "so deadly dull!" She yawned. "You
see, I can't help yawning even at the recollection of it!"
And in the darkness her companion smiled.
"I felt as if I wanted to wake them all up! Also I felt as if I wanted
to know something more about them than I did. Also"--she hesitated.
"Yes?" he said questioningly.
"I rather wanted to impress Aunt Blanche." The words came slowly,
reluctantly.
"I wonder what made you want to do that?" asked Donnington dryly.
"Somehow--well, you know, Bill, that sort of cool unbelief of hers
stings me. She's always thought I make it all up as I go along."
"You do sometimes," he said in a low voice.
"I used to, Bill--but I don't now: it isn't necessary."
He turned rather quickly. "Honest Injun, Bubbles?"
"Yes. Honest Injun!" There was a pause. "What do you think of Varick?"
she suddenly whispered.
"I think _Mr._ Varick," answered Donnington coldly, "is a thoroughly
nice sort of chap. I like his rather elaborate, old-fashioned manners."
"He's a queer card for all his pretty manners," muttered Bubbles; and
somehow Donnington felt that something else was on the tip of her tongue
to say, but that she had checked herself, just in time.
"I wish," he said earnestly, "I do wish, Bubbles, that you and I could
have a nice, old-fashioned Christmas. They sent up to-night to know if
Mr. Varick would allow some of his holly to be cut for decorating the
church--why shouldn't we go down to-morrow and help? Do, Bubbles--to
please me!"
"I will," she said penitently. "I will, dearest."
Donnington sighed--a short, quick sigh. He could remember the exquisite
thrill it had given him when she had first uttered the word--in a crowd
of careless people. Now, when Bubbles called him "dearest" it did not
thrill him at all, for he knew she said it to a great many people--and
yet it always gave him pleasure to hear her utter the dear, intimate
little word to him.
"Get up and go to bed, you naughty girl!" he said good-humouredly, but
there was a great deal of tenderness in his low, level tone.
She rose quickly to her feet. All her movements were quick and lightsome
and free. There was a touch of Ariel about Bubbles, so Bill Donnington
sometimes told himself.
They walked up the few shallow steps together, she still very close to
him. And then, when they were opposite her door, she exclaimed, but in
a very low whisper: "Now you must say the prayer with me--for me!"
"The prayer? What _do_ you mean, Bubbles?"
"You know," she muttered:
"Matthew, Mark, Luke and John,
Bless the bed that I lie on--
"What's after that?" she asked.
He went on, uttering the quaint words very seriously, very reverently:
"Four corners to my bed,
Four Angels round my head;
One to watch and one to pray,
One to keep all fears away"--
"No," she exclaimed fretfully. "'One to keep my soul in bed.' That's
what _I_ say. I don't want my poor little soul to go wandering about
this beautiful, terrible old house when I'm asleep. Good-night, Goody
goody!"
She put up her face as a child might have done, and he bent down and
kissed her, as he might have kissed a wilful, naughty child who had just
told him she was sorry for something she had done.
"God bless you," he said huskily. "God bless and keep you from any real
harm, Bubbles my darling."