Von Funkelstein merely replied:

"I beg your pardon, Mr. Sutherland, for misunderstanding you. The ring is quite an equivalent." And making him a respectful bow, he turned and left him.

CHAPTER XXIV.

THE LADY EUPHRASIA.

The black jades of swart night trot foggy rings 'Bout heaven's brow. 'Tis now stark dead night.

JOHN MARSTON.--Second Part of Antonio and Mellida.

As soon as Hugh was alone, his first action was to lock the door by which he had entered; his next to take the key from the lock, and put it in his pocket. He then looked if there were any other fastenings, and finding an old tarnished bra.s.s bolt as well, succeeded in making it do its duty for the first time that century, which required some persuasion, as may be supposed. He then turned towards the other door. As he crossed the room, he found four candles, a decanter of port, and some biscuits, on a table--placed there, no doubt, by the kind hands of Euphra. He vowed to himself that he would not touch the wine. "I have had enough of that for one night," said he. But he lighted the candles; and then saw that the couch was provided with plenty of wraps for the night. One of them--he recognised to his delight--was a Cameron tartan, often worn by Euphra. He buried his face in it for a moment, and drew from it fresh courage. He then went into the furthest recess, lifted the tapestry, and proceeded to fasten the concealed door. But, to his discomfiture, he could find no fastening upon it. "No doubt,"

thought he, "it does fasten, in some secret way or other." But he could discover none. There was no mark of bolt or socket to show whence one had been removed, nor sign of friction to indicate that the door had ever been made secure in such fashion. It closed with a spring.

"Then," said Hugh, apostrophising the door, "I must watch you."

As, however, it was not yet near the time when ghosts are to be expected, and as he felt very tired, he drank one gla.s.s of the wine, and throwing himself on the couch, drew Euphra's shawl over him, opened his book, and began to read. But the words soon vanished in a bewildering dance, and he slept.

He started awake in that agony of fear in which I suppose most people have awaked in the night, once or twice in their lives. He felt that he was not alone. But the feeling seemed, when he recalled it, to have been altogether different from that with which we recognise the presence of the most unwelcome bodily visitor. The whole of his nervous skeleton seemed to shudder and contract. Every sense was intensified to the acme of its acuteness; while the powers of volition were inoperative. He could not move a finger.

The moment in which he first saw the object I am about to describe, he could not recall. The impression made seemed to have been too strong for the object receiving it, destroying thus its own traces, as an overheated brand-iron would in dry timber. Or it may be that, after such a pre-sensation, the cause of it could not surprise him.

He saw, a few paces off, bending as if looking down upon him, a face which, if described as he described it, would be p.r.o.nounced as far past the most liberal boundary-line of art, as itself had pa.s.sed beyond that degree of change at which a human countenance is fit for the upper world no longer, and must be hidden away out of sight.

The lips were dark, and drawn back from the closed teeth, which were white as those of a skull. There were spots--in fact, the face corresponded exactly to the description given by Funkelstein of the reported ghost of Lady Euphrasia. The dress was point for point correspondent to that in the picture. Had the portrait of Lady Euphrasia been hanging on the wall above, instead of the portrait of the unknown nun, Hugh would have thought, as far as dress was concerned, that it had come alive, and stepped from its frame--except for one thing: there was no ring on the thumb.

It was wonderful to himself afterwards, that he should have observed all these particulars; but the fact was, that they rather burnt themselves in upon his brain, than were taken notice of by him.

They returned upon him afterwards by degrees, as one becomes sensible of the pain of a wound.

But there was one sign of life. Though the eyes were closed, tears flowed from them; and seemed to have worn channels for their constant flow down this face of death, which ought to have been lying still in the grave, returning to its dust, and was weeping above ground instead. The figure stood for a moment, as one who would gaze, could she but open her heavy, death-rusted eyelids.

Then, as if in hopeless defeat, she turned away. And then, to crown the horror literally as well as figuratively, Hugh saw that her hair sparkled and gleamed goldenly, as the hair of a saint might, if the aureole were combed down into it. She moved towards the door with a fettered pace, such as one might attribute to the dead if they walked;--to the dead body, I say, not to the living ghost; to that which has lain in the prison-hold, till the joints are decayed with the grave-damps, and the muscles are stiff with more than deathly cold. She dragged one limb after the other slowly and, to appearance, painfully, as she moved towards the door which Hugh had locked.

When she had gone half-way to the door, Hugh, lying as he was on a couch, could see her feet, for her dress did not reach the ground.

They were bare, as the feet of the dead ought to be, which are about to tread softly in the realm of Hades, But how stained and mouldy and iron-spotted, as if the rain had been soaking through the spongy coffin, did the dress show beside the pure whiteness of those exquisite feet! Not a sign of the tomb was upon them. Small, living, delicately formed, Hugh, could he have forgot the face they bore above, might have envied the floor which in their nakedness they seemed to caress, so lingeringly did they move from it in their noiseless progress.

She reached the door, put out her hand, and touched it. Hugh saw it open outwards and let her through. Nor did this strike him as in the smallest degree marvellous. It closed again behind her, noiseless as her footfalls.

The moment she vanished, the power of motion returned to him, and Hugh sprang to his feet. He leaped to the door. With trembling hand he inserted the key, and the lock creaked as he turned it.

In proof of his being in tolerable possession of his faculties at the moment, and that what he was relating to me actually occurred, he told me that he remembered at once that he had heard that peculiar creak, a few moments before Euphra and he discovered that they were left alone in this very chamber. He had never thought of it before.

Still the door would not open: it was bolted as well, and the bolt was very stiff to withdraw. But at length he succeeded.

When he reached the pa.s.sage outside, he thought he saw the glimmer of a light, perhaps in the picture-gallery beyond. Towards this he groped his way.--He could never account for the fact, that he left the candles burning in the room behind him and went forward into the darkness, except by supposing that his wits had gone astray, in consequence of the shock the apparition had occasioned them.--When he reached the gallery, there was no light there; but somewhere in the distance he saw, or fancied, a faint shimmer.

The impulse to go towards it was too strong to be disputed with. He advanced with outstretched arms, groping. After a few steps, he had lost all idea of where he was, or how he ought to proceed in order to reach any known quarter. The light had vanished. He stood.--Was that a stealthy step he heard beside him in the dark? He had no time to speculate, for the next moment he fell senseless.

CHAPTER XXV.

NEXT MORNING.

Darkness is fled: look, infant morn hath drawn Bright silver curtains 'bout the couch of night; And now Aurora's horse trots azure rings, Breathing fair light about the firmament.

Stand; what's that?

JOHN MARSTON.--Second Part of Antonio and Mellida.

When he came to himself, it was with a slow flowing of the tide of consciousness. His head ached. Had he fallen down stairs?--or had he struck his head against some projection, and so stunned himself?

The last he remembered was--standing quite still in the dark, and hearing something. Had he been knocked down? He could not tell.--Where was he? Could the ghost have been all a dream? and this headache be nature's revenge upon last night's wine?--For he lay on the couch in the haunted chamber, and on his bosom lay the book over which he had dropped asleep.

Mingled with all this doubt, there was another. For he remembered that, when consciousness first returned, he felt as if he had seen Euphra's face bending down close over his.--Could it be possible?

Had Euphra herself come to see how he had fared?--The room lay in the grey light of the dawn, but Euphra was nowhere visible. Could she have vanished ashamed through the secret door? Or had she been only a phantasy, a projection outwards of the form that dwelt in his brain; a phenomenon often occurring when the last of sleeping and the first of waking are indistinguishably blended in a vague consciousness?

But if it was so, then the ghost?--what of it? Had not his brain, by the events of the preceding evening, been similarly prepared with regard to it? Was it not more likely, after all, that she too was the offspring of his own imagination--the power that makes images--especially when considered, that she exactly corresponded to the description given by the Bohemian?--But had he not observed many points at which the Count had not even hinted?--Still, it was as natural to expect that an excited imagination should supply the details of a wholly imaginary spectacle, as that, given the idea of Euphra's presence, it should present the detail of her countenance; for the creation of that which is not, belongs as much to the realm of the imagination, as the reproduction of that which is.

It seemed very strange to Hugh himself, that he should be able thus to theorize, before even he had raised himself from the couch on which, perhaps, after all, he had lain without moving, throughout that terrible night, swarming with the horrors of the dead that would not sleep. But the long unconsciousness, in which he had himself visited the regions of death, seemed to have restored him, in spite of his aching head, to perfect mental equilibrium. Or, at least, his brain was quiet enough to let his mind work. Still, he felt very ghastly within. He raised himself on his elbow, and looked into the room. Everything was the same as it had been the night before, only with an altered aspect in the dawn-light. The dawn has a peculiar terror of its own, sometimes perhaps even more real in character, but very different from the terrors of the night and of candle-light. The room looked as if no ghost could have pa.s.sed through its still old musty atmosphere, so perfectly reposeful did it appear; and yet it seemed as if some umbra, some temporary and now cast-off body of the ghost, must be lying or lingering somewhere about it. He rose, and peeped into the recess where the cabinet stood. Nothing was there but the well remembered carving and blackness. Having once yielded to the impulse, he could not keep from peering every moment, now into one, and now into another of the many hidden corners. The next suggesting itself for examination, was always one he could not see from where he stood:--after all, even in the daylight, there might be some dead thing there--who could tell? But he remained manfully at his post till the sun rose; till bell after bell rang from the turret; till, in short, Funkelstein came to fetch him.

"Good morning, Mr. Sutherland," said he. "How have you slept?"

"Like a--somnambulist," answered Hugh, choosing the word for its intensity. "I slept so sound that I woke quite early."

"I am glad to hear it. But it is nearly time for breakfast, for which ceremony I am myself hardly in trim yet."

So saying, Funkelstein turned, and walked away with some precipitation. What occasioned Hugh a little surprise; was, that he did not ask him one question more as to how he had pa.s.sed the night.

He had, of course, slept in the house, seeing he presented himself in deshabille.

Hugh hastened to his own room, where, under the anti-ghostial influences of the bath, he made up his mind not to say a word about the apparition to any one.

"Well, Mr. Sutherland, how have you spent the night?" said Mr.

Arnold, greeting him.

"I slept with profound stupidity," answered Hugh; "a stupidity, in fact, quite worthy of the folly of the preceding wager."

This was true, as relating to the time during which he had slept, but was, of course, false in the impression it gave.

"Bravo!" exclaimed Mr. Arnold, with an unwonted impulsiveness. "The best mood, I consider, in which to meet such creations of other people's brains! And you positively pa.s.sed a pleasant night in the awful chamber? That is something to tell Euphra. But she is not down yet. You have restored the character of my house, Mr.

Sutherland; and next to his own character, a man ought to care for that of his house. I am greatly in your debt, sir."

At this moment, Euphra's maid brought the message, that her mistress was sorry she was unable to appear at breakfast.

Mrs. Elton took her place.