The Hidden Door and Other Strange Stories E-Book

Vernon Lee

• Herausgeber: Librorium Editions
• Kategorie: Abenteuer, Thriller, Horror
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2023

Beschreibung

It seemed to Decimus Little that there could be no doubt left. His only wonder was whether anyone else had been near making that discovery. As he sat in a deep window of the big drawing-room, the light of the candles falling yellow upon the shining white arms and shoulders, the shining white expanses of shirt-front, the lustrous silks and lustrous black cloth within doors; the great wave of moor and fell unfurling greyish-green in the pale-blue twilight without; as he sat there alone in the window, he wondered how it would be if any of these creatures assembled for the coming of age of the heir of Hotspur Hall could guess that he knew. His eyes mechanically followed the tall figure of his host, as his broad shoulders and grey beard appeared and reappeared in the crowd; they sought out the yellow ridge of curls of the son and heir, as his head rose and fell while talking to the ladies in the corner. What if either of them could guess? If old Sir Hugh Hotspur could guess that there was in the world another creature beside himself who knew the position of that secret door; if young Hotspur could guess that there existed close by another man who might, any day, penetrate into that secret chamber to which, at the close of these merry-making days, the youth must be solemnly admitted, to lose, during that fatal hour among unspeakable mysteries, all lightness of heart forever?

Leseprobe

THE HIDDEN DOOR

AND OTHER STRANGE STORIES

VERNON LEE 

1881 – 1913

© 2023 Librorium Editions

ISBN : 9782385740610

CONTENTS:

The Hidden Door

Winthrop’s Adventure

The Doll

The Virgin of the Seven Daggers

The Legend of Madame Krasinska

Sister Benvenuta and the Christ Child

Marsyas in Flanders

The Gods and Ritter Tanhûser

The Hidden Door

(1896)

It seemed to Decimus Little that there could be no doubt left. His only wonder was whether anyone else had been near making that discovery. As he sat in a deep window of the big drawing-room, the light of the candles falling yellow upon the shining white arms and shoulders, the shining white expanses of shirt-front, the lustrous silks and lustrous black cloth within doors; the great wave of moor and fell unfurling greyish-green in the pale-blue twilight without; as he sat there alone in the window, he wondered how it would be if any of these creatures assembled for the coming of age of the heir of Hotspur Hall could guess that he knew. His eyes mechanically followed the tall figure of his host, as his broad shoulders and grey beard appeared and reappeared in the crowd; they sought out the yellow ridge of curls of the son and heir, as his head rose and fell while talking to the ladies in the corner. What if either of them could guess? If old Sir Hugh Hotspur could guess that there was in the world another creature beside himself who knew the position of that secret door; if young Hotspur could guess that there existed close by another man who might, any day, penetrate into that secret chamber to which, at the close of these merry-making days, the youth must be solemnly admitted, to lose, during that fatal hour among unspeakable mysteries, all lightness of heart forever?

Mr. Little was not at all surprised at the fact of having made this extraordinary discovery. Although in no way a conceited man, he was accustomed to think of himself as connected with extraordinary matters, and in some way destined for an extraordinary end. He was one of those men who, without ever having done, or even said, or perhaps even thought, anything especially remarkable, are yet remarkable men. Whenever he came into a room, he felt people’s eyes upon him, and knew that they were asking, “Who is that young man? ” And still Mr. Decimus Little did not consider himself handsome, nor did anyone else consider him so, to his knowledge. From the matter-of-fact point of view, all one could say was that he was of middle height, more inclined to be fat than thin, with small not irregular features, hair varying between yellow and grey, a slight stoop, a somewhat defective sight, and a preference for clothes of ample cut and of neutral tints. But then the matter-of-fact eye just missed that something indefinable which constituted the remarkable character of Mr. Little’s appearance. As it was with his person, so likewise was it with his history; there was more significance therein than could easily be defined. A distant relative, on the female side, of the illustrious border house of Hotspur, Mr. Little possessed a modest income and the education of a gentleman. He had never been to school, and had left college without taking his degree. He had begun reading for the law, and left off. He had tried writing for the magazines, but without success. He had at one time inclined to High-Church asceticism and the moralizing of Whitechapel; he had also been addicted to socialism, and spent six months learning to make a chest of drawers in a Birmingham co-operative workshop. He had begun writing a biography of Ninon de Lenclos, studying singing, and forming a collection of rare medals; and he was now considerably interested in Esoteric Buddhism and the Society for Psychical Research, although he felt by no means prepared to accept the new theosophy, nor to indorse the conclusions concerning thought transference.

And finally, and quite lately, Mr. Decimus Little had also been in love, and had become engaged to a cousin of his, a young lady studying at Girton College; but he was not quite sure whether the engagement was absolutely binding on either side, or whether marriage would be certainly conducive to the happiness of both parties. For Mr. Decimus Little was gradually maturing a theory to the effect of his being a person with a double nature, reflective and idealistic on the one hand, and capable, on the other, of extraordinary impulses of lawlessness; and it is notorious that such persons, and indeed, perhaps, all very complex and out-of-the-common personalities are not very fit for the marriage state.

It was consonant with what Mr. Little often lamented as the excessive scepticism of his temper, that he should not have made up his mind about the hidden chamber at Hotspur Hall, and the strange stories concerning it. He had often discussed the matter, which, as he remarked, was a crucial one in all questions of the supernatural. He had triumphantly argued with a physiologist at his club that mere delusion could not be a sufficient explanation for so old and diffused a belief, as, indeed, mere delusion could not account for any belief of any kind. He had argued equally triumphantly with a clergyman in the train against the notion that the occupant of the secret chamber was the Evil One, and had added that the existence of evil spirits offered serious, very serious, difficulties to a thoughtful mind. And Mr. Little, being, as he often remarked, open to arguments and evidence on all points, had elaborated various explanations of the mystery of the hidden chamber, and had even attempted to sound the inhabitants of Hotspur Hall on the subject. But the servants had not understood his polished but rather shadowy Oxford English, or he had not understood their thick Northumbrian, and the members of the family had dropped the subject with a somewhat disconcerting sharpness of manner; and Mr. Little was the last man in the world to rudely invade the secrets of others, by experiments of towels hung out of windows, and such like; indeed, the person capable of such courses would have inspired him with horror.

And by an irony of fate – Mr. Little believed in the irony of fate, and was occasionally ironical himself – it had been given to him, to this sceptical and unobtrusive man, to discover that room hidden in the thickness of the Norman wall, and whose position had baffled so much ingenious, pertinacious, and impertinent inquiry.

There could no longer be any doubt about it; this door, revealed only by its hollow sound and its rusty iron bolt, against which Mr. Little had accidentally leaned that day when the shame of having intruded upon a flirtation (and a flirtation, too, between the heir of Hotspur and the heiress of his hereditary foes the Bleukiusops) had made him rush, like a mad creature, along unknown passages and up the winding staircase of the peel tower – this door, whitewashed to look like stone and hidden just under the highest battlements of Hotspur, could only be that of the mysterious chamber. It had flashed across Mr. Little’s mind when first he had leaned, confused and panting, against the wall of the staircase, and the wall had yielded to his pressure and creaked perceptibly; and the certainty had grown with every subsequent examination of the spot, and of the exterior of the castle. People had hitherto wasted their ingenuity upon seeking a window in Hotspur Hall which should correspond with no ostensible room; accident had revealed to Mr. Little a room which corresponded with no window visible from without. It now seemed so simple that it was impossible to conceive how the secret could so long have been kept. The secret chamber was, could be, only in the oldest portion of the castle, in the peel tower, built for the protection of stock and goods from the Scottish raids; and it was, it could be, only under the very roof of the tower, taking air and light through some chimney or trapdoor from the battlements above. There could be no doubt about it; and as Mr. Decimus Little sat in the window-seat of the great drawing-room at Hotspur, with on the one side the crowd of guests brilliant in the yellow candlelight, and the great darkwave of fell and moor rising into the blue twilight on the other, he thought how strange it was that of all these people there was only one, besides the master of Hotspur,, who knew the position of the fatal room: only one besides the heir of Hotspur who might – who knows? – penetrate into its secrets, and that one person should be himself. Strange; and yet, somehow, it did not take him by surprise.

And, after all, what was the secret of that chamber? A monstrous creature, or race of creatures, hidden away by the unrightful heirs? An ancient ancestor, living on by diabolic arts throughout the centuries? A demon, a specter, some horror nameless because inconceivable to those who had not seen it, or perhaps some almost immaterial evil, some curse lurking in the very atmosphere of the place? It was notorious that the something, whatever it was, made it impossible for a Hotspur ever to marry a Blenkinsop; that the heir of Hotspur was introduced to this mystery on coming of age; and that no Hotspur, after coming of age, had ever been known to smile: these were well authenticated facts; but what mystery or horror upon earth or in hell could be sufficient cause for these well ascertained results, no one had ever discovered. Every explanation was futile and insufficient.

These were the thoughts which went on in Mr. Little’s mind throughout that week of coming of age at Hotspur Hall. All day and all night – at least, as much of the night as he could account for – these questions kept going round and round in his mind, presenting now one surface, now another, but ever present and ever active. He walked about, ate his dinner, talked, danced automatically, knowing that he did it all, but as one knows what another person is doing, or what one is reading in a book, without any sense of its being one’s self or its being real; nay, with a sense of being removed miles and miles from it all, living in a different time and place, to which this present is as the past and the distant. The secret chamber – its mystery; the door, the colour of the wall, the shape of the iron bolt, the slant of the corkscrew steps – these were reality in the midst of all this unrealness. And withal a strange longing: to stand again before that door, to handle once more that rusty bolt; a wish like that for some song, or some beloved presence, the desire for that ineffable consciousness, that overwhelming sense of concentrated life and feeling, of being there, of realizing the thing. No one, reflected Mr. Little, can know what strange joys are reserved for strange natures; how certain creatures, too delicate and unreal for the everyday interests and pleasures of existence to penetrate through the soul-atmosphere in which they wander, will vibrate, with almost agonized joy, live their full life on contact with certain mysteries.

Every day Mr. Little would seek that winding staircase in the peel tower; at first with hesitation and shyness, stealing up almost ashamed of himself; then secretly and stealthily, but excited, resolute, like a man seeking the woman he loves, bent upon the joy of his life. Once a day at first, then twice, then thrice, counting the hours between the visits, longing to go back as soon as he had left, as a drunkard longs to drink again when he has just drunk. He would watch for the moment when the way was clear, steal along the corridors and up the winding stairs. Then, having reached close to the top of the staircase, near a trapdoor in the ceiling which led on to the battlements of the tower, he would stop, and lean against the shelving turning wall opposite the door, or sit down on the steps, his eyes fixed on the tower wall, where a faint line and the rusty little bolt revealed the presence of the hidden chamber.

What he did it would be hard to say; indeed, he did nothing, he merely felt. There was nothing at all to see, in the material sense; and this piece of winding staircase was just like any other piece of winding staircase in the world: it was not anything external that he wanted, it was that ineffable something within himself. So at least Mr. Little imagined at first, frequently persuading himself that, to a nature like his, all baser satisfaction of curiosity was as nothing; telling himself that he did not care what was inside the room, that he did not even wish to know. Why, if by the pulling of that bolt he might see and know all, he would not pull it. And, saying this to himself, by way of proving it, he laid his fingers gently on the bolt. And in so doing he discovered the depth of his self-delusion. How different was this emotion when he felt – he actually felt – the bolt begin to slide in his hand, from what he had experienced before, while merely contemplating it! The blood seemed to rush through his veins, he felt almost faint. This was reality, this was possession. The mystery lay there, with the bolt, in the hollow of his hand; at any instant he might … Mr. Little had no intention of drawing the bolt. He never reasoned about it, but he knew that that bolt never must, never should, be drawn by him. But in proportion to this knowledge was the entrancing excitement of feeling that the bolt might be drawn, that he grasped it in his fingers, that a little electric current through some of his nerves, a little twitch in some of his muscles, and the mystery would be disclosed.

It was the last of the seven days’ revelry of the coming of age. All the other neighbouring properties of the Hotspurs had been visited in turn; tenants had been made to dine and dance on one lawn after another; innumerable grouse had been massacred on the moors; endless sets of Venetian lanterns had been lighted, had caught fire, and tumbled on to people’s heads; Sir Hugh’s old port and Johannisberg, and the strange honey-beer, called Morocco, brewed for centuries at Hotspur, had flowed like water, or rather like the rain, which freely fell, but did not quench that northern ardour. There was to be a grand ball that night, and a grand display of fireworks. But Mr. Little’s soul was not attuned to merriment, nor were the souls, as he suspected, of Sir Hugh Hotspur and his son. For, according to popular tradition, it was on this last night of the seven days’ merry-making that the heir of Hotspur must be introduced into the hidden chamber.

Throughout lunch Mr. Little kept his eyes on the face of his host and his host’s son. What might be passing in their mind? Was it hidden terror or a daredevil desperation at the thought of what the night must bring? But neither Sir Hugh nor young Harry showed the slightest emotion; their faces, it seemed to Mr. Little, were imperturbable like stone.

Mr. Little waited till the family and guests were safely assembled on the tennis-lawn, then hastened along the corridor and up the steps of the peel tower. The afternoon, after all the rain, was hot and steamy, clearly foreboding a storm; and as Mr. Little groped his way up the tower steps, he felt his heart moving slackly and irregularly, and a clamminess spread over his face and hands; he had to stop several times in order to take breath. As usual, he seated himself on the topmost step, holding his knees with his arms, and looking at the piece of wall opposite, which concealed the mysterious door.

Mr. Little sat there a long time, while the tower stairs grew darker and darker, the faint line betraying the door grew invisible, and even the bolt was lost in the general darkness. Tonight – the thought, nay, almost the sentence in which it was framed, went on like a bell in Mr. Little’s mind – tonight they would creep up those stairs, they would stand before that door. Sir Hugh’s hand would be upon that bolt: he saw it all so plainly, he felt every tingle and shudder that would pass through their bodies. Mr. Little rose and gently grasped the bolt; how easily it would move! Sir Hugh would not require the smallest effort. Or would it be young Harry Hotspur? No; it would doubtless be Sir Hugh. He would pause like that a moment, his hand on the bolt, whispering a few words of encouragement, perhaps a prayer. No; he would be silent. He would hold the bolt, little guessing how recently another hand had been upon it, little dreaming that, but a few hours before another member of the family of Hotspur (for Mr. Little always regarded himself in that light) had had it in his power to…

The thought remained unfinished in Mr. Little’s mind. With a cry he fell all of a heap upon the steps, a blinding light in his eyes, a deafening roar in his ears. He had opened the secret door.

He came slowly to his senses, and with life there returned an overwhelming, vague sense of horror. What he had done he did not know; but he knew he had done something terrible. He slid, it seemed to him that he almost trickled – for his limbs had turned to water – down the stairs. He ran, and yet seemed to be dragging himself, along the corridors and out of one of the many ivy-grown doorways of the old border castle. To the left hand of the gate, at a little distance, was the tennis-court; a long beam of sun, yellow among the storm-clouds, fell upon the grass, burnishing it into metallic green, and making the white, red, yellow, and blue of the players’ dresses stand out like coloured enamel. Some of them shouted to him, among others young Harry Hotspur; but Mr. Little rushed on, heedless of their shouts, scaling the banks of grass, breaking through the hedges, scrambling up hillside after hillside, until he had got to the top of the fells, where the short greyish-green grass began to be variegated with brown patches of bog and lilac and black patches of heather, and cut in all directions by the low walls of loose black stones. He stopped and looked back. But he started off again, as he saw in the distance below, among the ashes and poplars of the narrow valley which furrowed those treeless undulations of moorland, the chimney-stacks of Hotspur Hall, the battlements of the square, black peel tower, reddened by the low light.

On he went, slower, indeed, but still onward, until every vestige of Hotspur and of every other human habitation was out of sight, and the chain of fells had closed round him, billow upon billow, under the fading light. On he went, looking neither to the right nor to the left, save when he was startled by the bubbling of a brook, spurting from the brown moor bog on to the stony road; or by the bleating of the sheep who wandered, vague white specks, upon the greyish grass of the hillside. The clouds accumulated in grey masses, with an ominous yellow clearing in their midst, and across the fells there came the sound of distant thunder. Presently a few heavy drops began to fall; but Mr. Little did not heed them, but went quickly on, among the bleating of the sheep and the cry of the curlews, along the desolate road across the fells; raindrop succeeding raindrop, till the hilltops were enveloped in a sheet of rain.

But Mr. Little did not turn back. He was dazed, vacant, quite unconscious of all save one thing: he had opened the hidden door at Hotspur Hall.

At length the road made a turn, began to descend, and in a dip of the fells some light shone forth in the darkness and the mist. Mr. Little started, and very nearly ran back: he had thought for a moment that these must be the lights of Hotspur: but a second’s reflection told him that Hotspur must lie far behind, and presently, among the blinding rain which fell in cold sheets, he found himself among some low black cottages. In the window of one of them was a light, and over the door, in the darkness, swung an inn sign. He knocked, and entered the inn kitchen, a trickle of water following him wherever he went, and, in the tone and with the look of a sleep-walker, said something about having been overtaken by a storm during a walk on the moors, and wanting a night’s shelter. The innkeeper and his wife were evidently too pastoral-minded to reflect that gentlemen do not usually walk on the fells without a hat, and in blue silk socks and patent-leather shoes; and they heaped up the fire, by the side of which Mr. Little collapsed into an armchair, indifferent to the charms of bacon and beer and hot griddlecakes.

He tried to settle his ideas. Of what had passed he knew but this much for certain, that he had opened the secret door.

The following morning Mr. Little summoned up his courage, and, after a great argument with himself, turned his steps toward Hotspur Hall. The day was fresh and blowy; a delicate blue haze hung over the hills, out of which, larger and larger, emerged a brilliant blue sky. In the valley the towers of Hotspur and its tall chimneys rose among the trees. Soon Mr. Little could see the bright patches of geranium on the lawn. All this, he argued with himself, must have been a delusion, a result of over-psychological study and a thunderstorm upon a nervous and poetical temperament. He tried to remember what he had read about delusions in Carpenter’s “Mental Physiology,” and about that supposed robbery, or burglary, which Shelley believed himself to have witnessed. Mr. Little couldn’t remember the details, but he was pleased it should have been Shelley. He felt quite foolish and almost happy as he passed through the rose garden, among the strawberry nets, and in at the by-entrance of Hotspur. He walked straight into the dining-room, where he knew the family was assembled at breakfast, jauntily, and one hand in his pocket. “Why, Little, where the deuce have you spent the night?” cried Sir Hugh Hotspur; and the question was echoed in various forms by the rest of the company. “Why, Little, have you been in the horse-pond? ” cried young’ Harry, pointing to his guest’s clothes, which, drenched the previous night, did indeed suggest some such immersion. Mr. Little did not answer; he felt himself grow cold and pale, and grasped a chair-back. In making this rude remark, the heir of Hotspur had burst into a peal of laughter.

Mr. Little understood; they had found the mysterious chamber empty, its horror fled; he had really opened that door; the heir of Hotspur could still laugh. He explained automatically how he had been caught by a storm on the fells, and been obliged to pass the night at a wayside inn; but the whole time, while he pretended to be eating his breakfast, his brain was on fire with a thought—

“Where had it gone – it, the something which he had let loose?”

That night Mr. Little slept, or rather, as our ancestors more correctly expressed it, lay, at Hotspur. For the word sleep was but a mockery. There was a second storm, and all night the wind howled in the trees, the drops fell from the eaves, and the room was illumined by fitful gleams of lightning. It seemed to Mr. Little that the evil spirit, or whatever else it might be, which had once been safely locked up in the hidden chamber, was now loose in the house. On reflection he could not doubt it: when he had fallen senseless on the stairs, something had passed out of the door; he had heard and felt the wind of its passage. It had issued from the room; it must now be somewhere else, at loose, free to wreak its will with every flash of lightning. Mr. Little expected that the solid masonry of Hotspur would catch fire and burn like a match; with every crash of thunder he expected that the great peel tower would come rattling on to the roof. He realized for the first time the tales of the companions of Ulysses opening the bag of the winds; of the Arabian fisherman breaking Solomon’s seal on the flask which held the djinn; they no longer struck him as in the least ridiculous, these stories. He too had done alike. For, after all, was it not possible that there existed in Nature forces, beings, unknown to our ordinary everyday life? Did not all modern investigations point in that direction, and was it not possible, then, that by the mercy of Providence such a force or being, fatal to our weak humanity, might have been permitted to be enclosed within four walls – one family, or rather, one unhappy member of one family, being sacrificed for the good of mankind, and facing this terror alone, that the rest of his kind might not look upon that ineffable mystery? And now he, in the lawlessness of his scepticism, had stepped in and opened that sacred door…. He understood now why he had often felt that he was destined to commit some terrible crime. Mr. Little sat up in bed, and as the lightning fitfully lit up the antique furniture of his room, he began mechanically to mutter some prayers of his childhood, and some Latin formulae of exorcism which he had learned at the time of his offering to do the article “Incubus” for the Encyclopaedia Britannica. What should he do? Confess to Sir Hugh Hotspur? or to Sir Hugh’s son? He felt terrified at the mere notion; but he understood that his terror was no mere vulgar fear of being reprimanded for a gross breach of hospitality and honour – that it was due to the sense that, having this terrible secret, he had no right to ruin therewith the lives of innocent men. The Hotspurs would know but too soon!

Meanwhile Mr. Little felt an imperative need to confess what he had done, to ask advice and assistance. He wished for once that he had been able to go over to Rome that time that Monsignor Tassel had tried to convert him, instead of being deterred by the oleographs in Monsignor Tassel’s chapel. What would he not give to kneel down in a confessional, and pour out the horrible secret through the perforated brass plate!

All of a sudden he jumped out of bed, struck a light, and dragged his portmanteau into the middle of the room. He had remembered Esmé St. John, and the fact that Esmé St. John, his former chum at Oxford, was working in the slums of Newcastle, not three hours hence. How could he ever, in the lawless hardness of his heart, have thought Esmé ridiculous, have actually tried to reason him out of his High Church asceticism? This was indeed the just retribution, the fall of the proud, that he should now seek shelter and peace in Esmé’s spiritual arms, and bring to the man, nay, rather to the saint, at whom he had once scoffed, a story which he would himself have once ridiculed as the most childish piece of superstition. The mere thought of that act of humiliation did him good; and the terrors of the night seemed to diminish as Mr. Little stooped over his portmanteau and folded his clothes with neat but feverish hands. As soon as it was light, he stole out of the house, walked to the neighbouring village, knocked up the half-idiotic girl who had charge of the post-office, and sent off a sixpenny telegram telling the Reverend Esmé St. John that he would join him at Newcastle that afternoon.

Mr. Little was rather surprised, and in truth rather dashed, when he met his old friend. He had spent the hours in the train framing his confession: a terrible tale to tell, yet which he felt a sudden disappointment at being prevented from telling. Prevented he did feel. He found the Reverend Esmé St. John making a round among his parishioners; they had told him so at Mr. St. John’s chapel, and he had realized vividly the whole scene: Esmé, emaciated, hollow-voiced, fresh from some deathbed, leaving the rest of his flock to follow the call of this pale creature, in whom he would scarcely recognize an old friend, and the very touch of whose hand would tell him that things more terrible than death were at stake. But it was otherwise. After wandering about various black and grimy slums under the thick black Newcastle sky, and up various precipitous alleys and flights of steps strewed with eggshells and herring-heads, Mr. Little found his old friend in a back yard sheltered by the crumbling red roof of The Musician’s Rest inn (where the first bars of “Auld Lang Syne” swung over the door). By his side was a fat, tattered, but extremely jovial red-haired woman washing in a tub, and opposite, an unkempt ragamuffin with his hands in his pockets, singing at the top of his little voice a comic song in Northumbrian dialect. Mr. Esmé St. John was leaning against the doorway, laughing with all his might; he was fat, bald, had a red face, and a very humorous eye – in fact, did not resemble in the least the hollow-cheeked, flashing-eyed young fanatic of ten years before. He stretched out his broad hand to Mr. Little, and said: “Do listen to this song, it’s about the Board School man – it’s really too delicious, and the little chap sings it quite nicely!”

Mr. Little listened, not understanding sword, and thinking how little this man, laughing over a foolish song sung by a street-boy, guessed the terrible confession he was about to receive.

When the song was finished, the Reverend Esmé St. John took Little’s arm, and began to overwhelm him with futile questions while leading him down the steep streets of Old Newcastle, until they got to the door of a large and gorgeous eating-house.

“You must be hungry,” said Mr. St. John. “I’ve ordered dinner here for a treat, because my old housekeeper, although an excellent creature, does not rise above mutton chops and boiled potatoes, and one should do honour to an old friend.”

Mr. Little shook his head. “I am not hungry,” he answered, while his friend unfolded his napkin opposite him. He felt inclined to say, grimly, “When a man has let loose a mysterious unknown terror that has been locked up in Hotspur Hall for centuries, he doesn’t feel inclined for roast mutton and Bass’s beer.”

But the place, the tables, plates, napkins, the smell of cooking, stopped him, and he felt stopped also by the face – the jovial, red face – of his old friend. This was not the Esmé to whom he had longed to unbosom himself. And he felt very irritated.

Mr. Little’s irritation began to subside when he followed his friend to his lodgings.

“You asked for a bed, in your telegram,” said the Reverend Esmé St. John, as they left the eating-rooms, “and I have had a bed put in a spare room of mine, just to show my hospitable intentions. But I shan’t be the least bit offended if you prefer to go to the hotel, my dear fellow. You see, I think a clergyman, trying to reclaim the people of these slums, ought to live among his flock, and no better than they. But there is no reason why anyone else should live in this crazy old barrack.”

They walked, in the twilight, along some precipitous streets, lined with tinkers’ dens and old-clothes shops, under the high-level bridge, over whose colossal span the square old castle stood out black against the sky.

Mr. Little crept through a battered wooden gateway, and picked his way among the puddles, the fallen beams, and the refuse heaps of a courtyard. A light appeared at a window.

“Here we are,” said Esmé, and they followed an old, witch-like woman, herself following a thin, black cat, up some crazy wooden stairs, and into a suite of low, large rooms. Mr. St. John held up a lantern. The room in which they stood was utterly dismantled, the very wainscoting torn out, the ceiling gaping in rent lath and plaster. In a corner stood a bed, a crazy chest of drawers, and washing apparatus, a table, and chair; and in the next room, where the old woman’s light had preceded them, was a similar bed, a shelf of books, a large black cross nailed to the wall, and a wooden step for kneeling.

“That’s my room,” said the clergyman. “You may have it if you prefer. But here’s a fireplace in this one, so you’d better keep it.”

So saying, Mr. St. John applied a match to the faggots, and the gaunt apartment was flooded with a red light.

“I must make some arrowroot for an old woman of mine,” said the clergyman, producing a tin can and saucepan. “May I make it on your fire? ”

Mr. Little watched him in silence, then suddenly said; “Esmé, I thought at first you were changed from old days, but I see you are still a saint. Alas! I fear it is I who have changed but too sadly,” and he sighed.

“You are growing too fat,” answered Mr. St. John good-humouredly, but quite missing the fact that this was the exordium of a confession. Then, to Mr. Little’s annoyance, he asked him leave to carry the arrowroot to his old woman, who lived in a lane hard by. Mr. Little remained seated by the fire, while the housekeeper (since she must be dignified by such a title) unpacked his portmanteau. Yes, indeed, this was the man to whom he could make his confession, and this was the place – this dismantled, tumbledown old mansion, tenanted now only by a few poor bargees’ families and by countless generations of rats. And Mr. Little put another piece of coal on, in preparation of the nightly conference he was about to have.

Presently Mr. St. John returned.

“Esmé,” said Mr. Little, putting his hand on his friend’s sleeve, “I wish to speak to you.”

“About what?” asked Mr. St. John. “It’s very late to begin talking.”

“About myself,” answered Mr. Little, gravely.

“Do you want anything else? Would you like some brandy and water, or another pillow? You may have mine – or an additional blanket?” asked his friend.

Mr. Little shook his head. “I have all I want in the way of material comforts.”

“In that case,” replied the clergyman, “I shall leave you at once. If, as you imply, you want spiritual comforts, you must wait till tomorrow, for I am perfectly worn out, and have to be up tomorrow at half-past four. I’ve been nursing a man from the chemical works these five nights. Good-night!” and, taking his candle, Mr. St. John walked into his room, leaving his friend greatly disconcerted by this want of sympathy.

The following day Mr. Little accompanied his friend on one of his rounds. After visiting a number of squalid places, where Mr. Little would certainly have thought about measles and small-pox had he not been thinking about the mystery of Hotspur Hall, they returned to the row of houses, once fashionable mansions, with their fronts on the river, among which loomed, next to the black and crumbling former Town Hall, the shell of a family mansion in which they were lodged.

“This was once the fashionable part of Newcastle,” said Mr. St. John. “An old lady of ninety once told me she could remember the time when this street used to be crowded with coaches and footmen and link boys of a winter’s night. I want to show you my mission-room; I’m very proud of it.”

They entered a black passage, close to an inexpressibly shabby public-house, and ascended a wide stone staircase, unswept for ages, as was attested by the cabbage-stalks and herring-heads which lay about in various stages of decomposition. On the first landing a rope was stretched, and a line of clothes, or rather rags, drying after the washtub, formed a picturesque screen before several open doors, whence issued squealing of babies, grind of sewing machines, and various unsavoury odours. Mr. St. John unlocked a door and admitted his friend into a large hall, gracefully decorated with pastoral stucco mouldings, but filled with church seats, and whose raised extremity, suggestive of the dais for an orchestra, was occupied by an altar duly appointed according to ritualistic notions. The place smelt considerably of stale tobacco and damp straw.

“These were the former assembly rooms,” explained Mr. St. John; “and this, which is now my little chapel for the lowest scum of Newcastle slums, was once the ballroom. What would those ladies in hoops and powder think of the change, I wonder?”

Mr. Little saw his opportunity.

“This place must be haunted,” he said. “By-the-way, Esmé, what are your views on the subject of ghosts and the supernatural? I should be very interested to know.”

Mr. St. John had locked the door behind them.

“Never mention the word ghost before me,” he exclaimed; “it drives me perfectly wild to see all the tom-fooling that has been going on of late about apparitions, haunted houses, secret chambers, and all that blasphemous rubbish. It is really a retribution of Heaven to see you agnostic wiseacres taking up such contemptible twaddle. Pm very sorry to hear that you have been in correspondence with those people, Little.”

“But—” objected Mr. Little.

“No buts for me!” cried the Reverend Esmé St. John, hotly; “I can not conceive how any man of education and character can fiddle-faddle about idiotic superstitions which it is the duty of every Christian and every gentleman to pluck out of the minds of the vulgar.”

It was clear that this was not the moment to begin a confession about the mysterious room at Hotspur.

“How surprised he will be,” thought Mr. Little (and a vague sense of satisfaction mingled with the horror of the thought), “when he hears that I, even I, the sceptical, antinomian Little, have come in contact with mysteries more strange and awful than any ever examined into by any society for psychical research.”

Despite his old friend’s want of sympathy, Mr. Decimus Little continued to lodge with the Reverend Esmé St. John, in the grimy and crumbling old mansion by the Tyneside, following him about on his various errands of mercy. “A man situated like me,” Mr. Little had said to himself, “a great sinner (if you like the pious formula of former ages), a character predestined to evil (if you prefer the more modern phraseology of determinism), does well to live in the shadow of a truly good man: his saintliness is a bulwark against evil spirits; or, at all events, the sight of perfect serenity and purity of mind must calm a deeply troubled spirit.” Indeed, he more than once began to make this remark, in terms even more subtle, to his friend; but Mr. St. John, whether from fear of Mr. Little’s dialectic power, which might shake some of his most cherished beliefs, or from some other reason, invariably turned a deaf ear to all such beginnings of confession.

But either the serenity of the ritualistic philanthropist was inadequate to calm a brain so over-excited or the evil spirits let loose by Mr. Little made short work of the bulwarks of Esmé’s saintliness. The thought of that opened door began to haunt him like a nightmare: the effort at guessing what had been liberated when that door was opened wore out his energies. Was it a monster – a poor, loathsome, half-human thing, hiding, perhaps lying starving at this moment, in some corner of the castle: a thing without mind, or speech, or shape, but endowed with monstrous strength, starting forth in the night and throttling the unrightful owner or his young children with stupid glee? Or, more horrible almost, forcing by its presence that honourable and kindly old man into crime; tempting him, with the fear lest this hideousness should become known to the world, into spilling the blood of what seemed but a loathly reptile, but might be his third cousin, or his great-uncle? Mr. Little buried his face in his pillow at the thought. But it might be worse still – in that room might have been enclosed some ghastly mediaeval plague, some crumbling long-dead corpse, whose every particle was ready to take wing and spread forgotten diseases over the country. Or was it something less tangible, less conceivable – a ghost, a demon, some fearful supernatural evil?

Every morning, when his tea was set down by the housekeeper upon the rickety table in his dismantled bedroom, Mr. Little would unfold, with trembling fingers, the local newspaper, half expecting that his eye would fall upon a notice headed “Hotspur Hall.” And there were moments when he could scarce resist the impulse of rushing to the station, and buying a ticket for the village nearest Hotspur.

But a stop was put to such fears about a week after his arrival at Newcastle; alas! only to be succeeded by fears much more terrible. Returning home one day he saw a letter on his table; a presentiment told him it was about that. Yet he shook all over when he saw the address on the back of the envelope, “Hotspur Hall, Northumberland.” He sank on to a chair, and was for some time unable to open the letter. It was from Sir Hugh – Sir Hugh writing to the guest, the cousin who had betrayed all the sacred laws of hospitality, to inform him of all the horrors in which his act had involved an innocent, honourable, and happy household. Mr. Little groaned, and held the letter unopened. Then suddenly he opened it, tore it open madly. It ran as follows:

My dear Little: – I have been too busy of late to let you know that Edwardes discovered in your room here, two days after your sudden departure from Hotspur, a whole outfit which you had apparently forgotten. It consists of a shirt, a pair of check breeches, two white ties, a coloured silk handkerchief, a sponge, and a razor-strop. Let us know where you wish all this to be sent. I write to relieve your mind on the subject, as you have doubtless missed these valuables. Lady Hotspur and Harry unite in hoping that you are enjoying yourself, and that we may see you soon again.

Yours, sincerely,

Hugh North Hotspur.

P.S. – I may tell you – but in strict confidence – a piece of news that will doubtless give you pleasure. Our Hal is engaged since the day before yesterday to the Honourable Cynthia Blenkinsop, whom you admired the evening of the Yeomanry ball. The wedding is for next May.