The Haunted Room Part 4

CHAPTER V.

HAUNTED ROOMS.

November has come with nights of drizzle and mornings of fog. The dreariness of the weather without adds to the sense of discomfort within the half-dismantled house. The carpet has been taken from the staircase, and the old family clock no longer is heard striking the hours. The drawing-room is much changed in appearance from what it was when the reader was first introduced into the Trevors' cheerful abode. It is evening, and the family are sitting together, with the exception of the master of the house, who is busy in his study with lawyers' papers and parchment deeds before him. The light of the drawing-room lamp falls on a scanty amount of furniture; for sofa, arm-chair, and piano have all been packed up for removal to the new home. No ornament of china, no graceful vase relieves the bareness of the white mantelpiece; the mirror has been taken away, no trace remains of pictures except square marks on the wall. The guitar has vanished from view; the globe of gold-fish is now the property of a friend; the ferns have been sent to the greenhouse of an aunt in Grosvenor Square.

Emmie sits at the table with her lace-work beside her, but her needle is idle. Bruce, the most actively occupied of the party, is drawing plans of cottages, and jotting down in his note-book estimates of expenses.

The captain has a book in his hand, but makes slow progress with its contents. Vibert is glancing over a number of _Punch_. The party have been for the last ten minutes so silent that the pattering of the November rain on the window-panes is distinctly heard.

"I hope that we shall not have such weather as this when we go to our new home," said Vibert, as with a yawn he threw down his paper. "The place will need at least suns.h.i.+ne to make it look a degree more lively than a lunatic asylum. 'Tis lucky that our queer old great-aunt did not take it into her head to paint the house black, inside and outside, and put in her will that it must remain so, as a compliment to her husband, who has been dead for the last fifty years. Fancy bricking up the best bed-room!"

"Such an act proves that Mrs. Myers was in a very morbid state of mind,"

said the captain.

"What a misfortune!" observed Emmie.

"Misfortune! I should rather call it weakness--absurdity," said Bruce, sternly glancing up from his drawing.

"I should call it a sin, a downright sin," cried Vibert. "Such a shame it is to make what might have been a jolly country-house into a sort of rural Newgate! I'm afraid that even our best friends will not care to visit us there. Why, I asked pretty little Alice to-day whether she were coming to brighten us up at Christmas, and she actually answered that she was rather afraid of haunted houses, especially on dark winter nights."

Bruce smiled a little disdainfully; and the captain suggested that perhaps the fair lady was jesting.

"Not a bit of it," answered Vibert; "Alice was as much in earnest as were all our servants when they gave us warning, because not one of them but plucky Susan would go to Myst Court. Why, I'd bet that Emmie herself is s.h.i.+very-shakery at the idea of the house being haunted, and that she'll not care to walk at night along the pa.s.sages lest she should meet some tall figure in white."

Emmie coloured, and looked so uncomfortable, that her uncle, who noticed her embarra.s.sment, effected a diversion in her favour by giving a turn to the conversation.

"I have been tracing a parallel in my mind," he observed, "between the human soul and the so-called haunted dwelling. Most persons have in the deepest recess of the spiritual man some secret chamber, where prejudice shuts out the light, where self-deception bricks up the door. Into this chamber the possessor himself in some cases never enters to search out and expel the besetting sin, which, unrecognized, perhaps lurks there in the darkness."

"You speak of our hearts?" asked Emmie.

"I do," replied her uncle. "It is my belief that not one person in ten thousand knows the ins and outs, the dark corners, the hidden chambers, of that which he bears in his own bosom."

"Every Christian must," said Bruce; "for every Christian is bound to practise the duty of self-examination."

"I hope that you don't call every one who does not practise it a heathen or a Turk," cried Vibert. "All that dreadful hunting up of petty peccadilloes, and confessing a string of them at once, is, at least to my notion, only fit work for hermits and monks!"

"We are not talking about confession, but simply about self-knowledge,"

observed the captain.

"Oh, where ignorance is bliss," began Vibert gaily; but his brother cut short the misapplied quotation with the remark, "Ignorance of ourselves must be folly."

Vibert took up again the comic paper which he had laid down, and pretended to re-examine the pictures. But for the captain's presence the youth would have begun to whistle, to show how little he cared for Bruce's implied rebuke; for, as Vibert had often told Emmie, he had no notion of being "put down" by his brother.

"Do you think it easy to acquire self-knowledge?" asked Arrows, fixing his penetrating glance upon Bruce, who met it with the calm steadiness which was characteristic of the young man.

"Like any other kind of knowledge, it requires some study," replied Bruce Trevor; "but it is not more difficult to acquire than those other kinds of knowledge would be."

"In that you come to a different conclusion from that of the writer of this book," observed Arrows; and he read aloud the following lines from Dr. Goulburn's "Thoughts on Personal Religion," the volume which he held in his hand:--

"'One of the first properties of the bosom sin with which it behoves us to be well acquainted, as our first step in the management of our spiritual warfare, is its property of concealing itself. In consequence of this property, it often happens that a man, when touched in his weak point, answers that whatever other faults he may have, this fault, at least, is no part of his character.'"

The captain read the quotation so emphatically that Vibert again threw down his paper, and listened whilst Arrows thus went on:--

"'This circ.u.mstance, then, may furnish us with a clue to the discovery: of whatever fault you feel that, if accused of it, you would be stung and nettled by the apparent injustice of the charge, suspect yourself of that fault, in that quarter very probably lies the black spot of the bosom sin. If the skin is in any part sensitive to pressure, there is probably mischief below the surface.'"

"I doubt that the author is right," observed Bruce. "Besetting sins cannot hide themselves thus from those who honestly search their own hearts."

"Perhaps some search all but the haunted chamber," suggested Vibert.

Captain Arrows smiled a.s.sent to the observation.

"By way of throwing light on the question," said he, "suppose that each of you were to set down in writing what you suppose to be your besetting sin; and that I--who have watched your characters from your childhood--should also put down on paper what I believe to be the bosom temptation of each. Is it likely that your papers and mine would agree; that the same 'black spot' would be touched by your hands and mine; that we should point out the same identical fault as the one which most easily and frequently besets the soul of each of you three?"

"It would be curious to compare the two papers," cried Vibert. "I wish, captain, that you really would write down what you think of us all. It would be like consulting a phrenological professor, without the need of having a stranger's fingers reading off our characters from the b.u.mps on our heads."

"I am not speaking of the whole character, but of the one sin that most easily besets," said the captain. "Would a close observer's view of its nature agree with that held by the person within whose heart it might lurk?"

"Perhaps not," said Bruce, after a pause for reflection. "But the person beset by the sin would know more about its existence than the most acute observer, who could judge but by outward signs."

"That is the very point on which we differ," remarked Captain Arrows.

"The property of the bosom sin is to conceal itself, but only from him to whom the knowledge of its presence would be of the highest importance. I should be half afraid," the captain added with a smile, "to tell even my nephews and niece what I thought the besetting sin of each, lest they should be 'stung and nettled by the apparent injustice of the charge,' and feel, though they might not say it aloud, that 'whatever other faults they may have, this fault, at least, forms no part of the character in question.'"

The captain's hearers looked surprised at his words. Vibert burst out laughing. "You must think us a desperately bad lot!" cried he.

"Uncle, I wish that you would write down what you think is the besetting sin of each of us," said Emmie, "and give the little paper quietly to the person whom it concerns, not, of course, to be read by any one else.

I am sure that I would not be offended by anything you would write, and it might do me good to know what you believe to be my greatest temptation."

"As you are going away to-morrow, you would escape the rage and fury of the indignant Emmie, however 'stung and nettled' she might be!" laughed Vibert Trevor. "Now, Bruce," added the youth sarcastically, "would you not like the captain to inform you confidentially what he considers the tiny 'black spot' in your almost perfect character?"

"I have no objection to my uncle's writing down what he chooses,"

replied Bruce coldly. "All that I keep to is this,--neither he nor any other man living can tell me a fact regarding my own character which I have not known perfectly well before."

"Were I to agree to write down my impressions, it would be to induce you all to give the subject serious reflection," observed the captain. "It matters little whether I am or am not correct in my conclusions; but it is of great importance that no one should be deceived regarding himself.

I wish to lead you to think."

"Oh, I'll not engage to do that! I hate thinking; it's a bore!" cried Vibert gaily. "I know I'm a thoughtless dog,--ah, I've hit the 'black spot' quite unawares! Thoughtlessness is my besetting sin!"

"My difficulty would be to single out one amongst my many faults," said Emmie.

"Now that is humbug; you know that it is!" exclaimed her youngest brother. "You have no fault at all, except the fault of being a great deal too good. I should like you better if you were as lively and larky as Alice!"

"Saucy boy!" said Emmie, and she smiled.

"But, captain," continued Vibert, addressing himself to his uncle, "though we are willing enough to read what you write, we won't be driven to anything in the shape of confession. You may tell us what is your notion of what lurks in our haunted rooms, but we won't invite you in and say, 'Behold there's my besetting sin!'"

"I want no confessions," said Captain Arrows. "I repeat that my only object is to induce you to pull down your brickwork, draw back your curtains, and search for yourselves; or, to drop metaphor and speak in plain words, to lead you to make the discovery of the weakest point in your respective characters the subject of candid investigation and serious thought."