She was full of apologies for the trouble she was giving me. I told her that the apologies were due to my maid and to her own servants rather than to me; "and besides," I added, glancing round, "I am distinctly a gainer by the change."
"You know, of course," she said, lightly, "that this is the haunted room of the house, and that you have no right to be here?"
"I know it is the haunted room," I answered; "but why have I no right to be here?"
"Oh, I don't know," she said. "There is one of those tiresome3 Mervyn traditions against allowing unmarried girls to sleep in this room. I believe two girls died in it a hundred and fifty years ago, or something of that sort."
"But I should think that people, married or unmarried, must have died in nearly every room in the house," I objected.
"Oh, yes, of course they have," said Lucy; "but once you come across a bit of superstition4 in this family, it is of no use to ask for reasons. However, this particular bit is too ridiculous even for George. Owing to Mr. Leslie having come to-day, we must use every room in the house: it is intolerable having a stranger here, and you are the only relation staying with us. I pointed5 all that out to George, and he agreed that, under the circumstances, it would be absurd not to put you here."
"I am quite agreeable," I answered; "and, indeed, I think I am rather favored in having a room where the last recorded death appears to have taken place a hundred and fifty years ago, particularly as I should think that there can be scarcely anything now left in it which was here then, except, of course, the cabinet."
The room had, in fact, been entirely6 done up and refurnished by my uncle, and was as bright and modern-looking an apartment as you could wish to see. It was large, and the walls were covered with one of those white and gold papers which were fashionable thirty years ago. Opposite us, as we stood warming our backs before the fire, was the bed—a large double one, hung with a pretty shade of pale blue. Material of the same color covered the comfortable modern furniture, and hung from gilded7 cornices before the two windows which pierced the side of the room on our left. Between them stood the toilet-table, all muslin, blue ribbons, and silver. The carpet was a gray and blue Brussels one. The whole effect was cheerful, though I fear inartistic, and sadly out of keeping with the character of the house. The exception to these remarks was, as I had observed, the famous closed cabinet, to which I have more than once alluded8. It stood against the same wall of the room as that in which the fireplace was, and on our right—that is, on that side of the fireplace which was farthest from the windows. As I spoke9, I turned to go and look at it, and Lucy followed me. Many an hour as a child had I passed in front of it, fingering the seven carved brass10 handles, or rather buttons, which were ranged down its center. They all slid, twisted, or screwed with the greatest ease, and apparently11 like many another ingeniously contrived12 lock; but neither I nor any one else had ever yet succeeded in sliding, twisting, or screwing them after such a fashion as to open the closed doors of the cabinet. No one yet had robbed them of their secret since first it was placed there three hundred years ago by the old lady and her faithful Italian. It was a beautiful piece of workmanship, was this tantalizing13 cabinet. Carved out of some dark foreign wood, the doors and panels were richly inlaid with lapis- lazuli, ivory, and mother-of-pearl, among which were twisted delicately chased threads of gold and silver. Above the doors, between them and the cornice, lay another mystery, fully14 as tormenting15 as was the first. In a smooth strip of wood about an inch wide, and extending along the whole breadth of the cabinet, was inlaid a fine pattern in gold wire. This at first sight seemed to consist of a legend or motto. On looking closer, however, though the pattern still looked as if it was formed out of characters of the alphabet curiously16 entwined together, you found yourself unable to fix upon any definite word, or even letter. You looked again and again, and the longer that you looked the more certain became your belief that you were on the verge17 of discovery. If you could approach the mysterious legend from a slightly different point of view, or look at it from another distance, the clew to the puzzle would be seized, and the words would stand forth18 clear and legible in your sight. But the clew never had been discovered, and the motto, if there was one, remained unread.
For a few minutes we stood looking at the cabinet in silence, and then Lucy gave a discontented little sigh. "There's another tiresome piece of superstition," she exclaimed; "by far the handsomest piece of furniture in the house stuck away here in a bedroom which is hardly ever used. Again and again have I asked George to let me have it moved downstairs, but he won't hear of it."
"Was it not placed here by Dame19 Alice herself?" I inquired a little reproachfully, for I felt that Lucy was not treating the cabinet with the respect which it really deserved.
"Yes, so they say," she answered; and the tone of light contempt in which she spoke was now pierced by a not unnatural20 pride in the romantic mysteries of her husband's family. "She placed it here, and it is said, you know, that when the closed cabinet is opened, and the mysterious motto is read, the curse will depart from the Mervyn family."
"But why don't they break it open?" I asked, impatiently. "I am sure that I would never have remained all my life in a house with a thing like that, and not found out in some way or another what was inside it."
"Oh, but that would be quite fatal," answered she. "The curse can only be removed when the cabinet is opened as Dame Alice intended it to be, in an orthodox fashion. If you were to force it open, that could never happen, and the curse would therefore remain for ever."
"And what is the curse?" I asked, with very different feelings to those with which I had timidly approached the same subject with Alan. Lucy was not a Mervyn, and not a person to inspire awe21 under any circumstances. My instincts were right again, for she turned away with a slight shrug22 of her shoulders.
"I have no idea," she said. "George and Alan always look portentously23 solemn and gloomy whenever one mentions the subject, so I don't. If you ask me for the truth, I believe it to be a pure invention, devised by the Mervyns for the purpose of delicately accounting24 for some of the disreputable actions of their ancestors. For you know, Evie," she added, with a little laugh, "the less said about the character of the family into which your aunt and I have married the better."
The remark made me angry, I don't know why, and I answered stiffly, that as far as I was acquainted with them, I at least saw nothing to complain of.
"Oh, as regards the present generation, no,—except for that poor, wretched Jack," acquiesced25 Lucy, with her usual imperturbable26 good- humor.
"And as regards the next?" I suggested, smiling, and already ashamed of my little temper.
"The next is perfect, of course,—poor dear boys." She sighed as she spoke, and I wondered whether she was really as unconscious as she generally appeared to be of the strange dissatisfaction with which her husband seemed to regard his children. Anyhow the mention of them had evidently changed her mood, and almost directly afterwards, with the remark that she must go and look after her guests, who had all arrived by now, she left me to myself.
For some minutes I sat by the bright fire, lost in aimless, wandering thought, which began with Dame Alice and her cabinet, and which ended somehow with Alan's face, as I had last seen it looking up at me in front of the hall-door. When I had reached that point, I roused myself to decide that I had dreamt long enough, and that it was quite time to go down to the guests and to tea. I accordingly donned my best teagown, arranged my hair, and proceeded towards the drawing-room. My way there lay through the great central hall. This apartment was approached from most of the bedrooms in the house through a large, arched doorway27 at one end of it, which communicated directly with the great staircase. My bedroom, however, which, as I have said, lay among the private apartments of the house, opened into a passage which led into a broad gallery, or upper chamber28, stretching right across the end of the hall. From this you descended29 by means of a small staircase in oak, whose carved balustrade, bending round the corner of the hall, formed one of the prettiest features of the picturesque30 old room. The barrier which ran along the front of the gallery was in solid oak, and of such a height that, unless standing2 close up to it, you could neither see nor be seen by the occupants of the room below. On approaching this gallery I heard voices in the hall. They were George's and Alan's, evidently in hot discussion. As I issued from the passage, George was speaking, and his voice had that exasperated31 tone in which an angry man tries to bring to a close an argument in which he has lost his temper. "For heaven's sake leave it alone, Alan; I neither can nor will interfere32. We have enough to bear from these cursed traditions as it is, without adding one which has no foundation whatever to justify33 it—a mere34 contemptible35 piece of superstition."
"No member of our family has a right to call any tradition contemptible which is connected with that place, and you know it," answered Alan; and though he spoke low, his voice trembled with some strong emotion. A first impulse of hesitation36 which I had had I checked, feeling that as I had heard so much it was fairer to go on, and I advanced to the top of the staircase. Alan stood by the fireplace facing me, but far too occupied to see me. His last speech had seemingly aroused George to fury, for the latter turned on him now with savage37 passion.
"Damn it all, Alan!" he cried, "can't you be quiet? I will be master in my own house. Take care, I tell you; the curse may not be quite fulfilled yet after all."
As George uttered these words, Alan lifted his eyes to him with a glance of awful horror: his face turned ghastly white; his lips trembled for a moment; and then he answered back with one half- whispered word of supreme38 appeal—"George!" There was a long- drawn39, unutterable anguish40 in his tone, and his voice, though scarcely audible, penetrated41 to every corner of the room, and seemed to hang quivering in the air around one after the sound had ceased. Then there was a terrible stillness. Alan stood trembling in every limb, incapable42 apparently of speech or action, and George faced him, as silent and motionless as he was. For an instant they remained thus, while I looked breathlessly on. Then George, with a muttered imprecation, turned on his heel and left the room. Alan followed him as he went with dull lifeless eyes; and as the door closed he breathed deeply, with a breath that was almost a groan43.
Taking my courage in both hands, I now descended the stairs, and at the sound of my footfall he glanced up, started, and then came rapidly to meet me.
"Evie! you here," he said; "I did not notice you. How long have you been here?" He was still quite white, and I noticed that he panted for breath as he spoke.
"Not long," I answered, timidly, and rather spasmodically; "I only heard a sentence or two. You wanted George to do something about some tradition or other,—and he was angry,—and he said something about the curse."
While I spoke Alan kept his eyes fixed44 on mine, reading through them, as I knew, into my mind. When I had finished he turned his gaze away satisfied, and answered very quietly, "Yes, that was it." Then he went back to the fireplace, rested his arm against the high mantelpiece above it, and leaning his forehead on his arm, remained silently looking into the fire. I could see by his bent45 brow and compressed lips that he was engaged upon some earnest train of thought or reasoning, and I stood waiting—worried, puzzled, curious, but above all things, pitiful, and oh! longing46 so intensely to help him if I could. Presently he straightened himself a little, and addressed me more in his ordinary tone of voice, though without looking round. "So I hear they have changed your room."
"Yes," I answered. And then, flushing rather, "Is that what you and George have been quarreling about?" I received no reply, and taking this silence for assent47, I went on deprecatingly, "Because you know, if it was, I think you are rather foolish, Alan. As I understand, two girls are said to have died in that room more than a hundred years ago, and for that reason there is a prejudice against putting a girl to sleep there. That is all. Merely a vague, unreasonable48 tradition."
Alan took a moment to answer.
"Yes," he said at length, speaking slowly, and as if replying to arguments in his own mind as much as to those which I had uttered. "Yes, it is nothing but a tradition after all, and that of the very vaguest and most unsupported kind."
"Is there even any proof that girls have not slept there since those two died?" I asked. I think that the suggestion conveyed in this question was a relief to him, for after a moment's pause, as if to search his memory, he turned round.
"No," he answered, "I don't think that there is any such proof; and I have no doubt that you are right, and that it is a mere prejudice that makes me dislike your sleeping there."
"Then," I said, with a little assumption of sisterly superiority,
"I think George was right, and that you were wrong."
Alan smiled,—a smiled which sat oddly on the still pale face, and in the wearied, worn-looking eyes. "Very likely," he said; "I daresay that I am superstitious49. I have had things to make me so." Then coming nearer to me, and laying his hands on my shoulders, he went on, smiling more brightly, "We are a queer-tempered, bad- nerved race, we Mervyns, and you must not take us too seriously, Evie. The best thing that you can do with our odd ways is to ignore them."
"Oh, I don't mind," I answered, laughing, too glad to have won him back to even temporary brightness, "as long as you and George don't come to blows over the question of where I am to sleep; which after all is chiefly my concern,—and Lucy's."
"Well, perhaps it is," he replied, in the same tone; "and now be off to the drawing-room, where Lucy is defending the tea-table single-handed all this time."
I obeyed, and should have gone more cheerfully had I not turned at the doorway to look back at him, and caught one glimpse of his face as he sank heavily down into the large arm-chair by the fireside.
However, by dinner-time he appeared to have dismissed all painful reflections from his mind, or to have buried them too deep for discovery. The people staying in the house were, in spite of my sense of grievance50 at their arrival, individually pleasant, and after dinner I discovered them to be socially well assorted51. For the first hour or two, indeed, after their arrival, each glared at the other across those triple lines of moral fortification behind which every well-bred Briton takes refuge on appearing at a friend's country-house. But flags of truce52 were interchanged over the soup, an armistice53 was agreed upon during the roast, and the terms of a treaty of peace and amity54 were finally ratified55 under the sympathetic influence of George's best champagne56. For the achievement of this happy result Alan certainly worked hard, and received therefor many a grateful glance from his sister-in-law. He was more excited than I had ever seen him before, and talked brilliantly and well—though perhaps not as exclusively to his neighbors as they may have wished. His eyes and his attention seemed everywhere at once: one moment he was throwing remarks across to some despairing couple opposite, and the next he was breaking an embarrassing pause in the conversation by some rapid sally of nonsense addressed to the table in general. He formed a great contrast to his brother, who sat gloomy and dejected, making little or no response to the advances of the two dowagers between whom he was placed. After dinner the younger members of the party spent the evening by Alan's initiative, and chiefly under his direction, in a series of lively and rather riotous57 games such as my nursery days had delighted in, and my schoolroom ones had disdained58. It was a great and happy surprise to discover that, grown up, I might again enjoy them. I did so, hugely, and when bedtime came all memories more serious than those of "musical chairs" or "follow my leader" had vanished from my mind. I think, from Alan's glance as he handed me my bed candle, that the pleasure and excitement must have improved my looks.
"I hope you have enjoyed your first evening of gayety, Evie," he said.
"I have," I answered, with happy conviction; "and really I believe that it is chiefly owing to you, Alan." He met my smile by another; but I think that there must have been something in his look which recalled other thoughts, for as I started up the stairs I threw a mischievous59 glance back at him and whispered, "Now for the horrors of the haunted chamber."
He laughed rather loudly, and saying "Good-night, and good-luck," turned to attend to the other ladies.
His wishes were certainly fulfilled. I got to bed quickly, and—as soon as my happy excitement was sufficiently60 calmed to admit of it— to sleep. The only thing which disturbed me was the wind, which blew fiercely and loudly all the earlier portion of the night, half arousing me more than once. I spoke of it at breakfast the next morning; but the rest of the world seemed to have slept too heavily to have been aware of it.
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1
housekeeper
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| n.管理家务的主妇，女管家 | |
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standing
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| n.持续，地位；adj.永久的，不动的，直立的，不流动的 | |
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tiresome
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| adj.令人疲劳的，令人厌倦的 | |
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superstition
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| n.迷信，迷信行为 | |
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pointed
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| adj.尖的，直截了当的 | |
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entirely
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| ad.全部地，完整地；完全地，彻底地 | |
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gilded
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| a.镀金的，富有的 | |
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alluded
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| 提及，暗指( allude的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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spoke
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| n.（车轮的）辐条；轮辐；破坏某人的计划；阻挠某人的行动 v.讲，谈（speak的过去式）；说；演说；从某种观点来说 | |
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brass
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| n.黄铜；黄铜器，铜管乐器 | |
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apparently
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| adv.显然地；表面上，似乎 | |
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contrived
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| adj.不自然的，做作的；虚构的 | |
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tantalizing
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| adj.逗人的；惹弄人的；撩人的；煽情的v.逗弄，引诱，折磨( tantalize的现在分词 ) | |
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14
fully
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| adv.完全地，全部地，彻底地；充分地 | |
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tormenting
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| 使痛苦的，使苦恼的 | |
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curiously
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| adv.有求知欲地；好问地；奇特地 | |
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verge
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| n.边，边缘；v.接近，濒临 | |
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forth
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| adv.向前；向外，往外 | |
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dame
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| n.女士 | |
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unnatural
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| adj.不自然的；反常的 | |
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awe
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| n.敬畏，惊惧；vt.使敬畏，使惊惧 | |
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shrug
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| v.耸肩(表示怀疑、冷漠、不知等) | |
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portentously
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accounting
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| n.会计，会计学，借贷对照表 | |
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acquiesced
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| v.默认，默许( acquiesce的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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imperturbable
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| adj.镇静的 | |
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doorway
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| n.门口，(喻)入门；门路，途径 | |
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chamber
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| n.房间，寝室；会议厅；议院；会所 | |
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descended
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| a.为...后裔的，出身于...的 | |
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picturesque
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| adj.美丽如画的，（语言）生动的，绘声绘色的 | |
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exasperated
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| adj.恼怒的 | |
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interfere
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| v.(in)干涉，干预；(with)妨碍，打扰 | |
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justify
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| vt.证明…正当(或有理)，为…辩护 | |
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mere
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| adj.纯粹的；仅仅，只不过 | |
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contemptible
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| adj.可鄙的，可轻视的，卑劣的 | |
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hesitation
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| n.犹豫，踌躇 | |
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savage
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| adj.野蛮的；凶恶的，残暴的；n.未开化的人 | |
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supreme
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| adj.极度的，最重要的；至高的，最高的 | |
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drawn
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| v.拖，拉，拔出；adj.憔悴的，紧张的 | |
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anguish
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| n.(尤指心灵上的)极度痛苦，烦恼 | |
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penetrated
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| adj. 击穿的，鞭辟入里的 动词penetrate的过去式和过去分词形式 | |
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42
incapable
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| adj.无能力的，不能做某事的 | |
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43
groan
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| vi./n.呻吟，抱怨；(发出)呻吟般的声音 | |
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fixed
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| adj.固定的，不变的，准备好的；(计算机)固定的 | |
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bent
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| n.爱好，癖好；adj.弯的；决心的，一心的 | |
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longing
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| n.（for）渴望 | |
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assent
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| v.批准，认可；n.批准，认可 | |
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48
unreasonable
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| adj.不讲道理的，不合情理的，过度的 | |
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49
superstitious
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| adj.迷信的 | |
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50
grievance
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| n.怨愤，气恼，委屈 | |
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51
assorted
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| adj.各种各样的，各色俱备的 | |
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52
truce
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| n.休战，(争执，烦恼等的)缓和；v.以停战结束 | |
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53
armistice
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| n.休战，停战协定 | |
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54
amity
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| n.友好关系 | |
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55
ratified
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| v.批准，签认（合约等）( ratify的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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56
champagne
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| n.香槟酒；微黄色 | |
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57
riotous
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| adj.骚乱的；狂欢的 | |
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58
disdained
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| 鄙视( disdain的过去式和过去分词 )； 不屑于做，不愿意做 | |
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mischievous
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| adj.调皮的，恶作剧的，有害的，伤人的 | |
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sufficiently
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| adv.足够地，充分地 | |
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