The Argosy | Page 8

have deepened into absolute dislike. I was forbidden to
enter her apartments, and I took care not to be seen by her when she
was walking or riding out. I was sorry for her dislike, and yet glad that
she dispensed with my presence. I was far happier in the housekeeper's
room, where I was treated like a little queen. Dance and I soon learned
to love each other very heartily.
Those who have accompanied me thus far may not have forgotten the
account of my first night at Deepley Walls, nor how frightened I was
by the sound of certain mysterious footsteps in the room over mine.
The matter was explained simply enough by Dance next day as a whim
of Lady Chillington, who, for some reason best known to herself, chose
that room out of all the big old house as the scene of her midnight

perambulations. When, therefore, on one or two subsequent occasions,
I was disturbed in a similar way, I was no longer frightened, but only
rendered sleepless and uncomfortable for the time being. I felt at such
times, so profound was the surrounding silence, as if every living
creature in the world, save Lady Chillington and myself, were asleep.
But before long that room over mine acquired for itself in my mind a
new and dread significance. A consciousness gradually grew upon me
that there was about it something quite out of the common way; that its
four walls held within themselves some grim secret, the rites
appertaining to which were gone through when I and the rest of the
uninitiated were supposed to be in bed and asleep. I cannot tell what it
was that first made me suspect the existence of this secret. Certainly
not the midnight walks of Lady Chillington. Perhaps a certain
impalpable atmosphere of mystery, which, striking keenly on the
sensitive nerves of a child, strung by recent events to a higher pitch
than usual, broke down the first fine barrier that separates things
common and of the earth earthy, from those dim intuitions which even
the dullest of us feel at times of things spiritual and unseen. But
however that may be, it so fell out that I, who at school had been one of
the soundest of sleepers, had now become one of the worst. It often
happened that I would awake in the middle of the night, even when
there was no Lady Chillington to disturb me, and would so lie,
sleepless, with wide-staring eyes, for hours, while all sorts of weird
pictures would paint themselves idly in the waste nooks and corners of
my brain. One fancy I had, and for many nights I thought it nothing
more than fancy, that I could hear soft and muffled footsteps passing up
and down the staircase just outside my door; and that at times I could
even faintly distinguish them in the room over mine, where, however,
they never stayed for more than a few minutes at any one time.
In one of my daylight explorations about the old house I ventured up
the flight of stairs that led from the landing outside my door to the
upper rooms. At the top of these stairs I found a door that differed from
every other door I had seen at Deepley Walls. In colour it was a dull
dead black, and it was studded with large square-headed nails. It was
without a handle of any kind, but was pierced by one tiny keyhole. To

what strange chamber did this terrible door give access? and who was
the mysterious visitor who came here night after night with hushed
footsteps and alone? These were two questions that weighed heavily on
my mind, that troubled me persistently when I lay awake in the dark,
and even refused by day to be put entirely on one side.
By-and-by the mystery deepened. In a recess close to the top of the
flight of stairs that led to the black door was an old-fashioned case
clock. When this clock struck the hour, two small mechanical figures
dressed like German burghers of the sixteenth century came out of two
little turrets, bowed gravely to each other, and then retired, like court
functionaries, backwards. It was a source of great pleasure to me to
watch these figures go through their hourly pantomime But after a time
it came into my head to wonder whether they did their duty by night as
well as by day; whether they came out and bowed to each other in the
dark, or waited quietly in their turrets till morning. In pursuance of this
inquiry, I got out of bed one night after Dance had left me, and
relighted my candle. I knew that it was just on the stroke of eleven, and