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

name falling from his lips touches a chord in her breast, and wakes her to passionate life.

"You too," she says in a whisper that reaches his strained ears. There seems to her a subtle joy in the thought that they two of all the household are awake, are here talking together alone in the pale light of the moon.

Yet she is wrong in imagining that no others are up in the house, as his next words tell her.

"It is not a matter of wonder in my case," he responds; "a few fellows are still in the smoking-room. It is early, you know--not yet three. But you--why are you keeping a lonely vigil like this?"

"The moon tempted me to the window," answers Florence. "See how calm she looks riding majestically up there. See"--stretching out her bare white arm until the beams fall full upon it, and seem to change it to purest marble--"does it not make one feel as if all the world were being bathed in its subdued glow?"

A pale tremulous smile widens her lips. Sir Adrian, plucking a tall pale lily growing near him, flings it upward with such an eager aim that it alights upon her window-sill. She sees it. Her fingers close upon it.

"Fit emblem of its possessor," says Adrian softly, and rather unsteadily. "Do you know of what you remind me, sitting there in your white robes? A medieval saint cut in stone--a pure angel, too good, too far above all earthly passion to enter into it, or understand it, and the grief that must ever attend upon it."

He speaks bitterly. It seems to him that she is indeed cold not to have guessed before this the intensity of his love for her. However much she may have given her affection to another, it still seems to him inexpressibly hard that she can have no pity for his suffering. He gazes at her intently. Do the mystic moonbeams deceive him, or are there tears in her great dark eyes? His heart beats quickly. Once again he remembers her emotion of the past evening. He hears again her passionate sobs. Is she unhappy? Are there thorns in her path that are difficult to remove?

"Florence, once again I entreat you to confide in me," he says, after a pause.

"I can not," she returns, sadly but firmly. "But there is one thing I must say to you--think of me as you may for saying it--I am not cold as you seemed to imply a moment since; I am not made of stone; and, alas, the grief you think me incapable of understanding is mine already! You have wronged me in your thoughts. I have here," she exclaims with some vehemence, laying the hand in which she still holds the drooping lily upon her breast, "what I would gladly be without--a heart."

"Nay," says Adrian hastily; "you forget. It is no longer yours, you have given it away."

For an instant she glances at him keenly, while her breath comes and goes with painful quickness.

"You have no right to say so," she murmurs at last.

"No, of course not; I beg your pardon," he says apologetically. "It is your own secret."

"There is no secret," she declares nervously. "None."

"I have offended you. I should not have said that. You will forgive me?" he entreats, with agitation.

"You are quite forgiven;" and, as a token of the truth of her words, she leans a little further out of the window, and looks down at him with a face pale indeed, but full of an unutterable sweetness.

Her beauty conquers all his resolutions.

"Oh, Florence," he whispers in an impassioned tone, "if I only dare to tell you what--"

She starts and lays a finger on her lips, as though to enforce silence.

"Hush!" she says, in trembling accents. "You forget! The hour, the surroundings, have momentarily led you astray. I ought not to have spoken with you. Go! There is nothing you dare to tell me--there is nothing I would wish to hear. Remember your duty to another--and--good-night."

"Stay, I implore you, for one moment," he cries; but she is firm, and presently the curtains are drawn close and he is alone.

Slowly he walks back toward the smoking-room, her last words ringing in his ears--"Remember your duty to another." What other? He is puzzled, but, reaching the window of the room, he dismisses these thoughts from his mind, and determines to get rid of his guests without delay, so as to be able to enjoy a little quiet and calm for reflection.

They are all noisily discussing a suicide that had recently taken place in a neighboring county, and which had, from its peculiar circumstances, caused more than usual interest.

One of the guests to-night is an army-surgeon, and he is giving them an explanation as to how the fatal wound had been inflicted. It appeared at the inquest that the unfortunate man had shot himself in such a peculiar manner as to cause considerable doubt as to whether he had been murdered or had died by his own hand. Evidence, however, of a most convincing nature had confirmed the latter theory.

Captain Ringwood, with a revolver in his hand, is endeavoring to show that the man could not have shot himself, just as Adrian re-enters.

"Be careful with that revolver," he exclaims hastily; "it is loaded!"

"All right, old fellow, I know it," returns Ringwood. "Look here, doctor, if he held it so, how could he make a wound here?"

"Why not? Sir Adrian, take the revolver for a moment, will you?" says the surgeon, anxious to demonstrate his theory beyond the possibility of doubt. "I want to convince Ringwood. Now stand so, and hold the weapon so"--placing it with the muzzle presented in a rather awkward position almost over his heart.

"I thought fellows always put the muzzles of their revolvers in their mouths and blew their brains out when they committed suicide," Ringwood remarks lightly.

"This fellow evidently did not," says the surgeon calmly. "Now, Sir Adrian, you see, by holding it thus, you could quite easily blow yourself to--"

Before he can finish the sentence, there is a sudden confusion of bodies, a jostling as it were, for Arthur Dynecourt, who had been looking on attentively with one foot on a footstool close to Sir Adrian's elbow, had slipped from the stool at this inopportune moment, and had fallen heavily against his cousin.

There is a shout from somebody, and then a silence. The revolver in the scuffle had gone off! Through the house the sharp crack of a bullet rings loudly, rousing many from their slumbers.

Lights can be seen in the passages; terrified faces peep out from half-opened doors. Dora Talbot, coming into the corridor in a pale pink cashmere dressing-gown trimmed with swan's-down, in which she looks the very personification of innocence and youth, screams loudly, and demands hysterically to be informed as to the cause of the unusual noise.

The servants have rushed from their quarters in alarm. Ethel Villiers, with a pale scared face, runs to Florence Delmaine's room, and throws her arms round that young lady as she comes out, pale but composed, to ask in a clear tone what has happened.

As nobody knows, and as Florence in her heart is more frightened than she cares to confess, being aware through Adrian that some of the men are still up in the smoking-room, and fearing that a quarrel had arisen among them, she proposes that they should go to the smoking-room in a body and make inquiries.

Old Lady FitzAlmont, with Lady Gertrude sobbing on her arm, seconds this proposal, and, being a veteran of much distinction, takes the lead. Those following close behind, are glad of this, and hopeful because of it, her appearance being calculated to rout any enemy. The awful character of her dressing-gown and the severity of the nightcap that crowns her martial head would strike terror to the hearts of any midnight marauders. They all move off in a body, and, guided unconsciously by Florence, approach the smoking-room.

Voices loud in conversation can be heard as they draw near; the door is slightly ajar. Florence drawing back as they come quite up to it, the old lady waves her aside, and advances boldly to the front. Flinging wide open the door, she bursts upon the astonished company within.

"Where is he?" she asks, with a dignity that only heightens the attractions of the cap and gown. "Have you secured him? Sir Adrian, where is the constable? Have you sent for him?"

Sir Adrian, whose gaze is fixed upon the fair vision in the trailing white gown standing timidly in the door-way, forgets to answer his interrogator, and the others, taken by surprise, maintain a solemn silence.

"Why this mystery?" demands Lady FitzAlmont sternly. "Where is the miscreant? Where is the man that fired that murderous shot?"

"Here, madame," replies the surgeon dryly, indicating Arthur Dynecourt by a motion of the hand.

"He--who? Mr. Dynecourt?" ejaculates her ladyship in a disappointed tone. "It was all a mistake, then? I must say, Mr. Dynecourt," continues the old lady in an indignant tone, "that I think you might find a more suitable time in which to play off your jokes, or to practice target-shooting, than in the middle of the night, when every respectable household ought to be wrapped in slumber."

"I assure you," begins Arthur Dynecourt, who is strangely pale and discomposed, "it was all an accident--an--"

"Accident! Nonsense, sir; I don't believe there was any accident whatsoever!"

As these words pass the lips of the irascible old lady, several men in the room exchange significant glances. Is it that old Lady FitzAlmont has just put their own thoughts into words?

"Let me explain to your ladyship," says Sir Adrian courteously. "We were just talking about that unfortunate affair of the Stewarts, and Maitland was showing us how it might have occurred. I had the revolver in my hand so"--pointing the weapon toward himself.

"Put down that abominable weapon at once, sir!" commands Lady FitzAlmont, in a menacing tone, largely mingled with abject fear. As she speaks she retreats precipitately behind Florence, thus pushing that young lady to the fore.

"When my cousin unhappily stumbled against me, and the revolver went off," goes on Sir Adrian. "I'm deeply grieved, Lady FitzAlmont, that this should have occurred to disturb the household; but, really, it was a pure accident."

"A pure accident," repeats Arthur, from between his colorless lips.

He looks far more distressed by this occurrence than Sir Adrian, who had narrowly escaped being wounded. This only showed his tenderness and proper feeling, as almost all the women present mutually agreed. Almost all, but not quite. Dora Talbot, for example, grows deadly pale as she listens to the explanation and watches Arthur's ghastly face. What is it like? The face of a murderer?

"Oh, no, no," she gasps inwardly; "surely not that!"

"It was the purest accident, I assure you," protests Arthur again, as though anxious to impress this conviction upon his own mind.

"It might have been a very serious one," says the surgeon gravely, regarding him with a keen glance. "It might have meant death to Sir Adrian!"

Florence changes color and glances at her host with parted lips. Dora Talbot, pressing her way through the group in the door-way, goes straight up to him as if impulsively, and takes his hand in both hers.

"Dear Sir Adrian, how can we be thankful enough for your escape?" she says