The Haunted Room Part 9

As Emmie was languidly gazing around, while Susan, on her knees by the sofa, was chafing her young lady's feet, there was heard a tap at the door. A woman then entered the apartment, bearing a steaming tumblerful of wine and hot water. As this person will reappear in the story, I will briefly describe her appearance.

She was dressed in mourning, and wore a black bonnet covered with c.r.a.pe flowers and pendants of bugles. Her person was short and somewhat stout.

The round eyes, above which the sandy-coloured brows formed not arches but an upward-turned angle, gave her a cat-like look, which resemblance to the feline race was increased by the peculiar form of her lower jaw, and the noiseless softness of her movements.

In an obsequious manner this personage not only gave the reviving beverage to Miss Trevor, but volunteered her unasked aid to make the young lady comfortable, beating up her pillow, stirring the fire, and making inquiries about her health in a pitying tone, as if the fear of Emmie's having caught any chill were to her a matter of tender concern.

Emmie guessed that the stranger must be the confidential attendant of the late Mrs. Myers, and her conjecture was soon confirmed by the woman's introducing herself as Mrs. Jael Jessel. The young lady did not like to give Mrs. Jessel a hint to depart, though the tired girl would have been glad to have been left to the quiet attentions of Susan. Jael herself was in no haste to quit the apartment; and leaning against the mantelpiece, began to converse in a voluble way.

"I could not help running over from my new home to see that everything was arranged comfortable-like for the niece of my dear departed lady,"

began Mrs. Jessel. "I know the ins and outs of this place so well,--it seems so natural to come about a house in which one has lived for years."

"My brother has arranged everything comfortably," observed Miss Trevor.

"He came down before the rest of the family on purpose to do so."

"Ah, yes; I see. Master Bruce is a clever young gentleman, and he has done all that he could _under the circ.u.mstances_," said Mrs. Jessel, lowering her tone, as she uttered the last three words, to a mysterious whisper. The black bugles in her bonnet trembled with the shake of her head, as the late attendant went on,--"But if young Mr. Trevor had taken the advice of one who knows what I know, he'd have had this room shut up as closely as the one which is next to it,--I mean _the haunted chamber_!" Jael Jessel's round eyes glanced stealthily from one side to another, as if she were afraid of being overheard by some invisible listener.

Susan saw a look of uneasiness pa.s.s over the face of her young mistress, and could not help breaking silence.

"Hannah has told me this evening," she said, "that Mrs. Myers always slept in this room, and that you, Mrs. Jessel, were on a couch beside her. Since the room was chosen for her own by the mistress of the house, it must have been considered the best one."

Mrs. Jessel did not condescend to address herself to Susan, but in speaking to Emmie virtually gave a reply to the observation made by the servant.

"My poor dear lady was perfectly deaf, she could not hear what _I_ heard; her eyes were dim, she could not see what _I_ saw,--or she would not have rested a second night with only a wall between her and"--again Jael glanced furtively around as she murmured--"that fearful chamber!"

"What did you see,--what did you hear?" asked Emmie, shuddering as she recalled to mind the warnings given by old Harper.

Mrs. Jessel did not wait to be asked twice; she was ready enough to impart to any credulous listener her tale of horrors. Susan was hardly restrained, by her respect for her young mistress, from repeatedly interrupting the stranger, who was doing her worst to fill the mind of a nervous girl with superst.i.tious fears at a time when bodily weariness had prepared it for their reception. At last the indignant lady's-maid could keep silence no longer.

"What you bore for years, Mrs. Jessel, and without being any the worse for it, could have been nothing very dreadful," said Susan bluntly. "My lady knows that a good Providence is as near her in this room as anywhere else, and that they who keep a clear conscience need fear neither goblin nor ghost!"

"Ah, well, we shall see, we shall see," observed Mrs. Jessel, drawing her black shawl closer around her, as a preparation for departure. "I don't believe there's a being who knows the place that would go through the wood at night but myself; but, as you say, a clear conscience gives courage. I wish you a good night, Miss Trevor," added Jael, courtesying formally to the lady; "but, to my mind, you'd have a better chance of one if you were to sleep in a different room."

Mrs. Jessel quitted the apartment; but she left behind her the painful impression which her words were calculated to make on a mind such as Emmie's,--a mind not yet sufficiently disciplined by self-control, or influenced by faith, to bring reason and religion to bear upon superst.i.tious fears and nervous forebodings.

Emmie rose from the sofa, and took two or three turns up and down her apartment; while Susan occupied herself in tr.i.m.m.i.n.g the fire. The young lady then stopped abruptly in her walk.

"Susan," she said, "I cannot sleep in this room!" It was humiliating to utter such a confession, even to a domestic.

"Oh, Miss Emmie, if you would let me be beside you to-night--" began Susan; but Emmie did not heed her attendant's suggestion.

"I could not close my eyes all the night, and I do so sadly need rest. I will go to my brother and ask him to make arrangements for at once changing my room."

"But Master Bruce will be so much disappointed," expostulated Susan. "He has spared no pains to have everything just as you would like it to be."

"I cannot sleep here," repeated Emmie, who was trembling with nervous excitement. "You will soon move my things--I care not whither--so that it be to the other side of the house, as far as possible from the bricked-up room."

Emmie hastily quitted the apartment, and drawing back the tapestry curtain, pa.s.sed on to the head of the staircase. The house appeared to her dreary, empty, and cold, as she glided down the broad oaken steps, almost afraid to look behind her. Emmie soon reached the wide hall, and, guided by the light of the lamp in the drawing-room, of which the door was open, she entered it, and found Bruce Trevor alone.

"I hope that you feel rested, Emmie," said her brother, advancing to meet her. The clouded brow of Bruce still showed token of the angry altercation which had pa.s.sed between him and Vibert.

"I cannot rest in that room, dear," faltered Emmie, avoiding meeting her brother's inquiring gaze.

"Not rest--why not?" asked Bruce in surprise.

Emmie coloured with shame as she stammered forth her reply. "I know that you will think it so silly--it--it _is_ silly, I own, but--but I would rather be in any other part of the house than next door to the haunted chamber!"

"This is folly, Emmie, pure folly," expostulated Bruce. "You know that a great part of the dwelling is at present uninhabitable, and cannot be used for months. There are but two upper rooms fitted up comfortably; the one is my father's--he chose it himself; the other is given to you.

Vibert and I can put up anywhere; our two little rooms, just beyond my father's, have been left as I found them, save that the housemaid has been induced to clear a few cobwebs away. I could not possibly allow you, accustomed as you are to have comforts around you, to occupy one of those bare cells at the coldest side of the house."

"I should prefer--oh, so greatly prefer one of those small rooms to my present one!" exclaimed Emmie. "Where I now am expected to sleep, that horrid tapestry curtain divides me from every other living being, and I am so close to the bricked-up room, that if so much as a mouse stirred in it, the sound would keep me awake. Dear Bruce, you who are so firm, and brave, and wise, you cannot tell what I feel. If you love me, let us exchange our rooms at once; you are not fearful and foolish like me."

Emmie was trembling; her hands were clasped, and tears rose into her eyes.

"Have your own way!" exclaimed Bruce, with some impatience of manner. He was annoyed at his sister's betraying such weakness, provoked at his own arrangements being altered, and disappointed at having taken in vain a good deal of trouble to please. Without uttering another word to Emmie, the young man quitted the room to give needful orders, and did not return till the clang of the hall gong summoned the Trevors to a late dinner.

The meal was very unsociable and dull. The storm of anger between the two brothers had not pa.s.sed off, and Emmie was too much disheartened by what had occurred to be able to act her usual part of peacemaker between them. Bruce had not forgiven Vibert his foolish prank of driving off with Emmie, which had been the primal cause of the accident which had occurred; and Vibert, stung to the quick, had not forgiven Bruce his bitter rebukes. During the whole of dinner-time neither of the young men addressed a word to the other.

The awkward waiting of the country lad hired as a servant, which, at another time, might have afforded some amus.e.m.e.nt to the young Trevors, now only provoked their patience. Bruce disliked the clumping tread and the creaking boots of Joe; Emmie started when the noisy clatter of plates ended at last in a crash. Vibert, whose lively conversation usually added so much to the cheerfulness of the family circle, scarcely uttered a syllable, save to find fault with the cookery, which was certainly none of the best. No one, under these circ.u.mstances, cared to prolong unnecessarily the time spent at the dinner-table.

But matters were little improved when the party had retired to the drawing-room, to spend there the remainder of the first evening pa.s.sed together by them in their new home. Neither reading aloud nor music, neither playful converse nor game, lightened the heavy time which intervened before the accustomed hour for family prayers. Emmie thought that the large drawing-room of Myst Court was but dimly lighted by the lamp which had shed such cheerful radiance in Summer Villa. The light scarcely sufficed to enable her to trace the outlines of the time-darkened family portraits which hung on the dingy walls. The apartment was so s.p.a.cious that one fire could hardly warm it, so that it was chilly as well as dark. The small-sized furniture which had suited Summer Villa would have looked mean in the handsome old saloon of Myst Court; therefore faded carpet and more faded tapestry remained, high-backed heavy chairs of carved oak, and narrow old-fas.h.i.+oned mirrors whose frames the lapse of two centuries had rendered dingy and dull.

Emmie's only occupation on that first evening was examining these relics of the past. She thought to herself that Myst Court was as gloomy as any cloister could be, and sighed when she remembered that she must regard it now as her permanent home.

At last Bruce, who had repeatedly glanced at his watch, saw that it was time to call up the servants for prayers. They came in answer to the summons of the bell which he rang--the three new members of the household looking awkward and shy, being evidently unaccustomed to be present at family wors.h.i.+p. Bruce read the prayers, as was his custom whenever his father was absent from home. But there was a coldness, on that night, even in the family devotions, of which no one was more sensible than was he who had to conduct them. It was not because the room felt dreary and cold, nor because a death-bed scene had so lately occurred in the house, that a chilling damp fell over even the observance of a religious duty: Bruce, Vibert, and their sister had all on that day been overcome by their several besetting sins, and those sins were haunting them still. Pride, selfishness, and mistrust cast deeper shadows on the pathway of life than those merely external circ.u.mstances which we connect with ideas of gloom.

The spirit of Bruce was out of tune, and the n.o.blest words of prayer were, as it were, turned into discord by the imperfection of the human instrument that gave them sound. The leaven of hypocrisy marred pet.i.tions in which the heart had no share. Bruce had to ask for the grace of meekness, whilst he was inwardly scorning a sister for weakness and a brother for folly. Had he been struggling to subdue the pride of his heart, such a prayer would have been a cry for help from above; but Bruce was attempting no such struggle. He was not seeking to imitate One who was meek and lowly; the sinner on his knees was preferring a prayer for a grace which he did not care to possess. If a remembrance of his uncle's warning against pride had pa.s.sed through Bruce's mind on that evening, it had roused anger rather than contrition. "What is Captain Arrows, that he should probe the hearts of others; let him look to his own!"

Thus the high-principled young man, who was so ready to act or to suffer for what he deemed the cause of truth; he whose character was in human sight almost without a blemish, was in a state in which, according to Scripture, all his faith, knowledge, and zeal could profit him nothing.

Death, if death had met him now, would not have found Bruce with his face turned heavenwards, though he had long since, with sincerity of purpose, entered on the pilgrim's narrow path. He stood condemned by the solemn words of inspiration, _If any man have not the spirit of Christ, he is none of His_.

Emmie noticed with pain, after family prayers were over, that her brothers went to their respective apartments without so much as bidding each other good-night.

CHAPTER XI.

EVENING AND MORNING.

"How foolish--how weak--how wrong has been my conduct through this day!"

murmured Emmie to herself, as, after dismissing her attendant, she sat alone in the small apartment which she had chosen for her own. The room was a contrast to that which had at first been a.s.signed to the young maiden. The cell, as Bruce had called it, did not possess even a fireplace, and might have belonged to some cloistered ascetic. The stained, dusky, peeling-off paper on the narrow walls had its blots and patches made only more visible by the whiteness of three large unframed maps, which the practical Bruce had fastened up for his own convenience.

The young man had rather a contempt for the luxuries in which Vibert always indulged if he could; to the idea of Bruce they were only suitable for ladies, or those to whom age or ill-health rendered them needful. Bruce considered it unworthy of a man in the prime of his life to care about the softness of a cus.h.i.+on, or the temperature of an apartment. Thus, in making household arrangements, Bruce had selected his own quarters with very little regard to personal comfort, while he had spared no pains in trying to secure that of his sister.

Emmie now suffered from her brother's unselfishness, as well as from her own nervous fears. Hasty arrangements had indeed been made to improve the appearance of the cell. Some of Emmie's books had been transferred to the bookcase by Susan, nor had footstool or guitar been forgotten; but for her sofa there was no s.p.a.ce, and the young lady's toilette-table, draped with white muslin, looked incongruous in so mean an apartment. Perhaps the discomfort of that fireless room on a damp November night was not without its effect on the spirits of Emmie, who was accustomed to the refinements and elegances of civilized life, and who was not indifferent to them; but the melancholy which oppressed the maiden chiefly rose from a deeper source, a profound discontent with herself.

It was Emmie's custom to review, every night ere she went to rest, the events of the preceding day, with self-examination as to the part which she had acted. The review had hitherto been very imperfect, for she had never traced her errors in practice to the source from whence most of them had proceeded. Instead of recognizing _mistrust_ as a besetting sin, it had hardly occurred to Emmie that it was anything meriting blame. The occurrences of that Friday had been a striking comment upon the words of her uncle, which Emmie now recalled to memory.

"Unreasonable fear,--uncontrolled fear,--what has it done for me to-day?" mused Emmie. "It has destroyed my peace, most utterly destroyed it, and cast needless gloom over my arrival in my new home. Fear has made me displease both my brothers, has lowered me in the eyes even of my servants; it has caused an accident which has been painful, and which, but for Heaven's mercy, might have even been fatal. Should I have lost self-command in the storm, had I recognized the presence of Him who grasps the lightning in His hand, and whose voice is heard in the thunder? If my heart were indeed the abode of His Spirit, would that heart fail me at the bare thought of--hark! what was that sound?" Emmie started and turned pale at the cry of an owl outside her window; in her home near London she had never heard the hoot of the bird of night. The cry was repeated, and though the nervous girl now guessed its cause, in her superst.i.tious mind it was still linked with fearful fancies.

Emmie, to compose herself, took up her Bible, and opening it, turned to the Twenty-seventh Psalm. She read the heart-stirring verse: _The Lord is my light and my salvation; whom shall I fear? the Lord is the strength of my life; of whom shall I be afraid?_