The Haunted Chamber - Margaret Wolfe Hungerford (latest books to read .TXT) 📗

to encounter his. Their eyes meet. As they do so, Dora shudders and turns deadly pale. There is that in Arthur Dynecourt's dark and sullen eyes that strikes her cold with terror and vague forebodings of evil. It is a wicked look that overspreads the man's face--a cruel, implacable look that seems to freeze her as she gazes at him spell-bound. Slowly, even while she watches him, she sees him turn his glance from her to Sir Adrian in a meaning manner, as though to let her know that the vile thought that is working in his brain and is betraying itself on his face is intended for him, not her. And yet, with this too, he gives her silently to understand that, if she shows any treachery toward him, he will not leave it unrewarded.

Cowed, frightened, trembling at what she knows not, Dora staggers backward, and, laying a hand upon the wall beside her, tries to regain her self-possession. The others are all talking together, she is therefore unobserved. She stands, still panting and pallid, trying to collect her thoughts.

Only one thing comes clearly to her, filling her with loathing of herself and an unnamed dread--it is that, by her own double-dealing and falseness toward Florence, she has seemed to enter into a compact with this man to be a companion in whatever crime he may decide upon. His very look seems to implicate her, to drag her down with him to his level. She feels herself chained to him--his partner in a vile conspiracy. And what further adds to the horror of the situation is the knowledge that she knows herself to be blindly ignorant of whatever plans he may be forming.

After a few seconds she rouses herself, and wins back some degree of composure. It is of course a mere weakness to believe herself in the power of Arthur Dynecourt, she tries to convince herself. He is no more than any other ordinary acquaintance. If indeed she has helped him a little in his efforts to secure the love of Florence, there was no great harm in that, though of course it served her own purpose also.

"How pale you are, Mrs. Talbot?" remarks Sir Adrian suddenly, wheeling round to look at her more closely. "Has this damp old place really affected your nerves? Come, let us go down again, and forget in the sunshine that bloody deeds were ever committed here or elsewhere."

"I am nervous, I confess," responds Dora, in a low tone. "Yes, yes--let us leave this terrible room forever."

"So be it," says Sir Adrian gayly. "For my part, I feel no desire to ever re-enter it."

"It is very high art, I suppose," observes Ethel Villiers, glancing round the walls. "Uncomfortable places always are. It would be quite a treasure to Lady Betty Trefeld, who raves over the early Britons. It seems rather thrown away upon us. Captain Ringwood, you look as if you had been suddenly turned into stone. Let me pass, please."

"It was uncommonly friendly of Ringwood not to have let the door slam, and so imprisoned us for life," says Sir Adrian, with a laugh. "I am sure we owe him a debt of gratitude."

"I hope you'll all pay it," laughs Ringwood. "It will be a nice new experience for you to give a creditor something for once. I never pay my own debts; but that doesn't count. I feel sure you are all going to give me something for my services as door-keeper."

"What shall I give you?" asks Ethel coquettishly.

"I'll tell you by and by," he replies, with such an expressive look that for once the saucy girl has no answer ready, but, blushing crimson, hurries past him down the stone stairs, where she waits at the bottom for the others.

As Florence reaches the door she pauses and stoops to examine the lock.

"I wish," she says to Sir Adrian, a strange subdued excitement in her tone, "you would remove this lock. Do."

"But why?" he asks, impressed in spite of himself, by her manner.

"I hardly know myself; it is a fancy--an unaccountable one, perhaps--but still a powerful one. Do be guided by me, and have it removed."

"What--the fancy?" he asks, laughing.

"No--the lock. Humor me in this," she pleads earnestly, far more earnestly than the occasion seems to warrant. "Call it a silly presentiment, if you like, but I honestly think that lock will work you evil some day. Therefore it is that I ask you to do away with it."

"You ask me?" he queries.

"Yes, if only to please me--for my sake."

She has evidently forgotten her late distrust of him, for she speaks now in the old sweet tone, and with tears in her eyes. Sir Adrian flushes warmly.

"For your sake," he whispers. "What is there I would not do, if thus requested?"

A bitter sneer contracts Arthur Dynecourt's lips as he listens to the first part of this conversation and guesses at the latter half. He notes correctly the kindling of their eyes, the quick breath that comes and goes like happy sighs from the breast of Florence. He hears the whisper, sees the warm blush, and glances expressively at Dora. Meeting her eyes he says his finger on his lips to caution her to silence, and then, when passing by her, whispers:

"Meet me in half an hour in the lower gallery."

Bowing her acquiescence in this arrangement, fearing indeed to refuse, Dora follows the others from the haunted chamber.

At the foot of the small stone staircase--before they go through the first iron-bound door that leads to the corridor without--they find Ethel Villiers awaiting them. She had been looking round her in the dimly lighted stone passage, and has discovered another door fixed mysteriously in a corner, that had excited her curiosity.

"Where does this lead to, Sir Adrian?" she asks now, pointing to it.

"Oh, that is an old door connected with another passage that leads by a dark and wearying staircase to the servants' corridor beneath! I am afraid you won't be able to open it, as it is rusty with age and disuse. The servants would as soon think of coming up here as they would of making an appointment with the Evil One; so it has not been opened for years."

"Perhaps I can manage it," says Arthur Dynecourt, trying with all his might to force the ancient lock to yield to him. At length his efforts are crowned with success; the door flies creakingly open, and a cloud of dust uprising covers them like a mist.

"Ah!" exclaims Ethel, recoiling; but Arthur, stooping forward, carefully examines the dark staircase that lies before him wrapped in impenetrable gloom. Spider-nets have been drawn from wall to wall and hang in dusky clouds from the low ceiling; a faint, stale, stifling smell greets his nostrils, yet he lingers there and looks carefully around him.

"You'll fall into it, if you don't mind," remarks Captain Ringwood. "One would think uncanny spots had an unwholesome attraction for you."

Ringwood, ever since the memorable night in the smoking-room, when Sir Adrian was so near being killed, has looked askance at Arthur Dynecourt, and, when taking the trouble to address him at all, has been either sharp or pointed in his remarks. Arthur, contenting himself with a scowl at him, closes the little door again, and turns away from it.

"At night," says Sir Adrian, in an amused tone, "the servants, passing by the door below that leads up to this one, run by it as though they fear some ghostly ancestors of mine, descending from the haunted chamber, will pounce out upon them with their heads under their arms, or in some equally unpleasant position. You know the door, don't you, Arthur--the second from the turning?"

"No," replies Arthur, with his false smile, "I do not; nor, indeed, do I care to know it. I firmly believe I should run past it too after nightfall, unless well protected."

"That looks as if you had an evil conscience," says Ringwood carelessly, but none the less purposely.

"It looks more as if I were a coward, I think," retorts Arthur, laughing, but shooting an angry glance at the gallant captain as he speaks.

"Well, what does the immortal William say?" returns Ringwood coolly. "'Conscience doth make cowards of us all!'"

"You have a sharp wit, sir," says Arthur, with apparent lightness, but pale with passion.

"I say, look here," breaks in Sir Adrian hastily, pulling out his watch; "it must be nearly time for tea. By Jove, quite half past four, and we know what Lady FitzAlmont will say to us if we keep her deprived of her favorite beverage for even five minutes. Come, let us run, or destruction will light upon our heads."

So saying, he leads the way, and soon they leave the haunted chamber and all its gloomy associations far behind them.


CHAPTER VII.

Reluctantly, yet with a certain amount of curiosity to know what it is he may wish to say to her, Dora wends her way to the gallery to keep her appointment with Arthur. Pacing to and fro beneath the searching eyes of the gaunt cavaliers and haughty dames that gleam down upon him from their canvases upon the walls, Dynecourt impatiently awaits her coming.

"Ah, you are late!" he exclaims as she approaches. There is a tone of authority about him that dismays her.

"Not very, I think," she responds pleasantly, deeming conciliatory measures the best. "Why did you not come to the library? We all missed you so much at tea!"

"No doubt," he replies sarcastically. "I can well fancy the disappointment my absence caused; the blank looks and regretful speeches that marked my defection. Pshaw--let you and me at least be honest to each other! Did Florence, think you, shed tears because of my non-coming?"

This mood of his is so strange to her that, in spite of the natural false smoothness that belongs to her, it renders her dumb.

"Look here," he goes on savagely, "I have seen enough to-day up in that accursed room above--that haunted chamber--to show me our game is not yet won."

"Our game--what game?" asks Dora, with a foolish attempt at misconception.

He laughs aloud--a wild, unpleasant, scornful laugh, that makes her cheek turn pale. Its mirth, she tells herself, is demoniacal.

"You would get out of it now, would you?" he says. "It is too late, I tell you. You have gone some way with me, you must go the rest. I want your help, and you want mine. Will you draw back now, when the prize is half won, when a little more labor will place it within your grasp?"

"But there must be no violence," she gasps; "no attempt at--"

"What is it you would say?" he interrupts stonily. "Collect yourself; you surely do not know what you are hinting at. Violence! what do you mean by that?"

"I hardly know," she returns, trembling. "It was your look, your tone, I think, that frightened me."

"Put your nerves in your pocket for the future," he exclaims coarsely; "they are not wanted where I am. Now to business. You want to marry Sir Adrian, as I understand, whether his desire lies in the same direction or not?"

At this plain speaking the dainty little lady winces openly.

"My own opinion is that his desire does not run in your direction," continues Arthur remorselessly. "We both know where his heart would gladly find its home, where he would seek a