Guy Deverell. Volume 1 of 2. Le Fanu Joseph Sheridan
they reached the front gallery which runs parallel to that at the head of the stairs.
"Where have you put Beatrix?"
"She wished the room next mine, please, sir, up-stairs," answered the housekeeper.
"Near the front – eh?"
"The left side, please, sir, as you look from the front," replied she.
"From the front?" he repeated.
"From the front," she reiterated.
"Over there, then?" he said, pointing upward to the left.
"That will be about it, sir," she answered.
"How many rooms have we here in a row?" he asked, facing down the gallery, with its file of doors at each side.
"Four bed-rooms and three dressing-rooms at each side."
"Ay, well now, I'll tell you who's coming, and how to dispose of them."
So Sir Jekyl quartered his friends, as he listed, and then said he —
"And the large room at the other end, here to the right – come along."
And Sir Jekyl marched briskly in the direction indicated.
"Please, sir," said the slim, pale housekeeper, with the odd leer in her eye, overtaking him quietly.
"Ay, here it is," said he, not minding her, and pushing open the door of a dressing-room at the end of the gallery. "Inside this, I remember."
"But that's the green chamber, sir," continued Mrs. Gwynn, gliding beside him as he traversed the floor.
"The room we call Sir Harry's room, I know – capital room – eh?"
"I don't suppose," began the pale lady, with a sinister sharpness.
"Well?" he demanded, looking down in her face a little grimly.
"It's the green chamber, sir," she said, with a hard emphasis.
"You said so before, eh?" he replied.
"And I did not suppose, sir, you'd think of putting anyone there," she continued.
"Then you're just as green as the chamber," said Sir Jekyl, with a chuckle.
And he entered the room, holding the candle high in air, and looking about him a little curiously, the light tread and sharp pallid face of Donica Gwynn following him.
CHAPTER V
Sir Jekyl bethinks him of Pelter and Crowe
The Baronet held his candle high in air, as I have said, as he gazed round him inquisitively. The thin housekeeper, with her pale lips closed, and her odd eyes dropped slantingly toward the floor, at the corner of the room, held hers demurely in her right finger and thumb, her arms being crossed.
The room was large, and the light insufficient. Still you could not help seeing at a glance that it must be, in daylight, a tolerably cheerful one. It was roomy and airy, with a great bow-window looking to the front of the building, of which it occupied the extreme left, reaching about ten feet from the level of the more ancient frontage of the house. The walls were covered with stamped leather, chiefly green and gold, and the whole air of the room, even in its unarranged state, though somewhat quaint and faded, was wonderfully gay and cozy.
"This is the green chamber, sir," she repeated, with her brows raised and her eyes still lowered askance, and some queer wrinkles on her forehead as she nodded a sharp bitter emphasis.
"To be sure it is, damme! – why not?" he said, testily, and then burst into a short laugh.
"You're not a going, I suppose, Sir Jekyl, to put anyone into it?" said she.
"I don't see, for the life of me, why I should not – eh? a devilish comfortable room."
"Hem! I can't but suppose you are a joking me, Sir Jekyl," persisted the gray silk phantom.
"Egad! you forget how old we're growing; why the plague should I quiz you! I want the room for old General Lennox, that's all – though I'm not bound to tell you for whom I want it – am I?"
"There's a plenty o' rooms without this one, Sir Jekyl," persevered the lady, sternly.
"Plenty, of course; but none so good," said he, carelessly.
"No one ever had luck that slept in it," answered the oracle, lifting her odd eyes and fixing them on Sir Jekyl.
"I don't put them here for luck. We want to make them comfortable," answered Sir Jekyl, poking at the furniture as he spoke.
"You know what was your father's wish about it, sir?" she insisted.
"My father's wish – egad, he did not leave many of his wishes unsatisfied – eh?" he answered, with another chuckle.
"And your poor lady's wish," she said, a good deal more sharply.
"I don't know why the devil I'm talking to you, old Gwynn," said the Baronet, turning a little fiercely about.
"Dying wishes," emphasised she.
"It is time, Heaven knows, all that stuff should stop. You slept in it yourself, in my father's time. I remember you, here, Donica, and I don't think I ever heard that you saw a ghost – did I?" he said, with a sarcastic chuckle.
She darted a ghastly look to the far end of the chamber, and then, with a strange, half-frozen fury, she said —
"I wish you good-night, Sir Jekyl," and glided like a shadow out of the room.
"Saucy as ever, by Jupiter," he ejaculated, following her with his glance, and trying to smile; and as the door shut, he looked again down the long apartment as she had just done, raising the candle again.
The light was not improved of course by the disappearance of Mrs. Gwynn's candle, and the end of the room was dim and unsatisfactory. The great four-poster, with dark curtains, and a plume at each corner, threw a vague shadow on the back wall and up to the ceiling, as he moved his candle, which at the distance gave him an uncomfortable sensation, and he stood for a few seconds sternly there, and then turned on his heel and quitted the room, saying aloud, as he did so —
"What a d – d fool that old woman is – always was!"
If there was a ghost there, the Baronet plainly did not wish it to make its exit from the green chamber by the door, for he locked it on the outside, and put the key in his pocket. Then, crossing the dressing-room I have mentioned, he entered the passage which crosses the gallery in which he and Mrs. Gwynn, a few minutes before, had planned their dispositions. The dressing-room door is placed close to the window which opens at the end of the corridor in the front of the house. Standing with his back to this, he looked down the long passage, and smiled.
For a man so little given to the melodramatic, it was a very well expressed smile of mystery – the smile of a man who knows something which others don't suspect, and would be surprised to learn.
It was the Baronet's fancy, as it had been his father's and his grandfather's before him, to occupy very remote quarters in this old house. Solitary birds, their roost was alone.
Candle in hand, Sir Jekyl descended the stairs, marched down the long gaunt passage, which strikes rearward so inflexibly, and at last reaches the foot of a back staircase, after a march of a hundred and forty feet, which I have measured.
At top of this was a door at his left, which he opened, and found himself in his own bed-room.
You would have said on looking about you that it was the bed-room of an old campaigner or of a natty gamekeeper – a fellow who rather liked roughing it, and had formed tastes in the matter like the great Duke of Wellington. The furniture was slight and plain, and looked like varnished deal; a French bed, narrow, with chintz curtains, and a plain white coverlet, like what one might expect in a barrack dormitory or an hospital; a little strip of carpet lying by the bed, and a small square of Turkey carpet under the table by the fire, hardly broke the shining uniformity of the dark oak floor; a pair of sporting prints decorated the sides of the chimneypiece, and an oil-portrait of a grey hunter hung in the middle. There were fishing-rods and gun-cases, I dare say the keys were