The Red Room | Page 2

together, dark against the firelight,
staring at me over their shoulders, with an intent expression on their

ancient faces.
"Good-night," I said, setting the door open.. "It's your own choosing,"
said the man with the withered arm.
I left the door wide open until the candle was well alight, and then I
shut them in, and walked down the chilly, echoing passage.
I must confess that the oddness of these three old pensioners in whose
charge her ladyship had left the castle, and the deep-toned,
old-fashioned furniture of the housekeeper's room, in which they
foregathered, had affected me curiously in spite of my effort to keep
myself at a matter-of-fact phase. They seemed to belong to another age,
an older age, an age when things spiritual were indeed to be feared,
when common sense was uncommon, an age when omens and witches
were credible, and ghosts beyond denying. Their very existence,
thought I, is spectral; the cut of their clothing, fashions born in dead
brains; the ornaments and conveniences in the room about them even
are ghostly--the thoughts of vanished men, which still haunt rather than
participate in the world of to-day. And the passage I was in, long and
shadowy, with a film of moisture glistening on the wall, was as gaunt
and cold as a thing that is dead and rigid. But with an effort I sent such
thoughts to the right-about. The long, drafty subterranean passage was
chilly and dusty, and my candle flared and made the shadows cower
and quiver. The echoes rang up and down the spiral staircase, and a
shadow came sweeping up after me, and another fled before me into the
darkness overhead. I came to the wide landing and stopped there for a
moment listening to a rustling that I fancied I heard creeping behind me,
and then, satisfied of the absolute silence, pushed open the unwilling
baize-covered door and stood in the silent corridor.
The effect was scarcely what I expected, for the moonlight, coming in
by the great window on the grand staircase, picked out everything in
vivid black shadow or reticulated silvery illumination. Everything
seemed in its proper position; the house might have been deserted on
the yesterday instead of twelve months ago. There were candles in the
sockets of the sconces, and whatever dust had gathered on the carpets
or upon the polished flooring was distributed so evenly as to be

invisible in my candlelight. A waiting stillness was over everything. I
was about to advance, and stopped abruptly. A bronze group stood
upon the landing hidden from me by a corner of the wall; but its
shadow fell with marvelous distinctness upon the white paneling, and
gave me the impression of some one crouching to waylay me. The
thing jumped upon my attention suddenly. I stood rigid for half a
moment, perhaps. Then, with my hand in the pocket that held the
revolver, I advanced, only to discover a Ganymede and Eagle,
glistening in the moonlight. That incident for a time restored my nerve,
and a dim porcelain Chinaman on a buhl table, whose head rocked as I
passed, scarcely startled me.
The door of the Red Room and the steps up to it were in a shadowy
corner. I moved my candle from side to side in order to see clearly the
nature of the recess in which I stood, before opening the door. Here it
was, thought I, that my predecessor was found, and the memory of that
story gave me a sudden twinge of apprehension. I glanced over my
shoulder at the black Ganymede in the moonlight, and opened the door
of the Red Room rather hastily, with my face half turned to the pallid
silence of the corridor.
I entered, closed the door behind me at once, turned the key I found in
the lock within, and stood with the candle held aloft surveying the
scene of my vigil, the great Red Room of Lorraine Castle, in which the
young Duke had died; or rather in which he had begun his dying, for he
had opened the door and fallen headlong down the steps I had just
ascended. That had been the end of his vigil, of his gallant attempt to
conquer the ghostly tradition of the place, and never, I thought, had
apoplexy better served the ends of superstition. There were other and
older stories that clung to the room, back to the half-incredible
beginning of it all, the tale of a timid wife and the tragic end that came
to her husband's jest of frightening her. And looking round that huge
shadowy room with its black window bays, its recesses and alcoves, its
dusty brown-red hangings and dark gigantic furniture, one could well
understand the legends that had sprouted in its black corners,