The Second Macabre Megapack

by Various Writers

  After this, then, I could no longer restrain my ardour, and so, one foggy afternoon about the middle of December, I found myself driving towards the house in which I reckoned upon achieving a comfortable independence.

  Parson’s Green was reached at last; a small triangular open space bordered on two of its sides by mean and modern erections, but on the third by some ancient mansions, gloomy and neglected-looking indeed, but with traces on them still of their former consequence.

  My cab stopped before the gloomiest of them all—a square grim house with dull and small-paned windows, flanked by two narrow and projecting wings, and built of dingy brick, faced with yellow-stone. Some old scroll-work railings, with a corroded frame in the middle for a long departed oil-lamp, separated the house from the road; inside was a semicircular patch of rank grass, and a damp gravel sweep led from the heavy gate to a square portico supported by two wasted black wooden pillars.

  As I stood there, after pulling the pear-shaped bell-handle, and heard the bell tinkling and jangling fretfully within, and as I glanced up at the dull house-front looming cheerless out of the fog-laden December twilight, I felt my confidence beginning to abandon me for the first time, and I really was almost inclined to give the whole thing up and run away.

  Before I could make up my mind, a mouldy and melancholy butler had come slowly down the sweep and opened the gate—and my opportunity had fled. Later I remembered how, as I walked along the gravel, a wild and wailing scream pierced the heavy silence—it seemed at once a lamentation and a warning. But as the District Railway was quite near, I did not attach any particular importance to the sound at the time.

  I followed the butler through a dank and chilly hall, where an antique lamp hung glimmering feebly through its panes of dusty stained glass, up a broad carved staircase, and along some tortuous panelled passages, until at length I was ushered into a long and rather low reception room, scantily furnished with the tarnished mirrors and spindle-legged brocaded furniture of a bygone century.

  A tall and meagre old man, with a long white beard, and haggard, sunken black eyes, was seated at one side of the high chimney-piece, while opposite him sat a little limp old lady with a nervous expression, and dressed in trailing black robes relieved by a little yellow lace about the head and throat. As I saw them, I recognised at once that I was in the presence of Sir Paul Catafalque and his wife.

  They both rose slowly, and advanced arm-in-arm in their old-fashioned way, and met me with a stately solemnity. “You are indeed welcome,” they said in faint hollow voices. “We thank you for this proof of your chivalry and devotion. It cannot be but that such courage and such self-sacrifice will meet with their reward!”

  And although I did not quite understand how they could have discerned, as yet, that I was chivalrous and devoted, I was too glad to have made a good impression to do anything but beg them not to mention it.

  And then a slender figure, with a drooping head, a wan face, and large sad eyes, came softly down the dimly-lighted room towards me, and I and my destined bride met for the first time.

  As I had expected, after she had once anxiously raised her eyes, and allowed them to rest upon me, her face was lighted up by an evident relief, as she discovered that the fulfilment of my aunt’s wishes would not be so distasteful to her, personally, as it might have been.

  For myself, I was upon the whole rather disappointed in her; the portrait had flattered her considerably—the real Chlorine was thinner and paler than I had been led to anticipate, while there was a settled melancholy in her manner which I felt would prevent her from being an exhilarating companion.

  And I must say I prefer a touch of archness and animation in womankind, and, if I had been free to consult my own tastes, should have greatly preferred to become a member of a more cheerful family. Under the circumstances, however, I was not entitled to be too particular, and I put up with it.

  From the moment of my arrival I fell easily and naturally into the position of an honoured guest, who might be expected in time to form nearer and dearer relations with the family, and certainly I was afforded every opportunity of doing so.

  I made no mistakes, for the diligence with which I had got up McFadden’s antecedents enabled me to give perfectly satisfactory replies to most of the few allusions or questions that were addressed to me, and I drew upon my imagination for the rest.

  But those days I spent in the baronet’s family were far from lively: the Catafalques went nowhere; they seemed to know nobody; at least no visitors ever called or dined there while I was with them, and the time dragged slowly on in a terrible monotony in that dim tomb of a house, which I was not expected to leave except for very brief periods, for Sir Paul would grow uneasy if I walked out alone—even to Putney.

  There was something, indeed, about the attitude of both the old people towards myself which I could only consider as extremely puzzling. They would follow me about with a jealous care, blended with anxious alarm, and their faces as they looked at me wore an expression of tearful admiration, touched with something of pity, as for some youthful martyr; at times, too, they spoke of the gratitude they felt, and professed a determined hopefulness as to my ultimate success.

  Now I was well aware that this is not the ordinary bearing of the parents of an heiress to a suitor who, however deserving in other respects, is both obscure and penniless, and the only way in which I could account for it was by the supposition that there was some latent defect in Chlorine’s temper or constitution, which entitled the man who won her to commiseration, and which would also explain their evident anxiety to get her off their hands.

  But although anything of this kind would be, of course, a drawback, I felt that forty or fifty thousand pounds would be a fair set-off—and I could not expect everything.

  When the time came at which I felt that I could safely speak to Chlorine of what lay nearest my heart, I found an unforeseen difficulty in bringing her to confess that she reciprocated my passion.

  She seemed to shrink unaccountably from speaking the word which gave me the right to claim her, confessing that she dreaded it not for her own sake, but for mine alone, which struck me as an unpleasantly morbid trait in so young a girl.

  Again and again I protested that I was willing to run all risks—as I was—and again and again she resisted, though always more faintly, until at last my efforts were successful, and I forced from her lips the assent which was of so much importance to me.

  But it cost her a great effort, and I believe she even swooned immediately afterwards; but this is only conjecture, as I lost no time in seeking Sir Paul and clenching the matter before Chlorine had time to retract.

  He heard what I had to tell him with a strange light of triumph and relief in his weary eyes. “You have made an old man very happy and hopeful,” he said. “I ought, even now to deter you, but I am too selfish for that. And you are young and brave and ardent; why need we despair? I suppose,” he added, looking keenly at me, “you would prefer as little delay as possible?”

  “I should indeed,” I replied. I was pleased, for I had not expected to find him so sensible as that.

  “Then leave all preliminaries to me; when the day and time have been settled, I will let you know. As you are aware, it will be necessary to have your signature to this document; and here, my boy, I must in conscience warn you solemnly that by signing you make your decision irrevocable—irrevocable, you understand?”

  When I had heard this, I need scarcely say that I was all eagerness to sign; so great was my haste that I did not even try to decipher the somewhat crabbed and antiquated writing in which the terms of the agreement were set out.

  I was anxious to impress the baronet with a sense of my gentlemanly feeling and the confidence I had in him, while I naturally presumed that, since the contract was binding upon me, the baronet would, as a man of honour, hold it equally conclusive on his own side.

  As I look back upon it now, it seems simply extraordinary that I should have been so easi
ly satisfied, have taken so little pains to find out the exact position in which I was placing myself; but, with the ingenuous confidence of youth, I fell an easy victim, as I was to realise later with terrible enlightenment.

  “Say nothing of this to Chlorine,” said Sir Paul, as I handed him the document signed, “until the final arrangements are made; it will only distress her unnecessarily.”

  I wondered why at the time, but I promised to obey, supposing that he knew best, and for some days after that I made no mention to Chlorine of the approaching day which was to witness our union.

  As we were continually together, I began to regard her with an esteem which I had not thought possible at first. Her looks improved considerably under the influence of happiness, and I found she could converse intelligently enough upon several topics, and did not bore me nearly as much as I was fully prepared for.

  And so the time passed less heavily, until one afternoon the baronet took me aside mysteriously. “Prepare yourself, Augustus” (they had all learned to call me Augustus), he said; “all is arranged. The event upon which our dearest hopes depend is fixed for tomorrow—in the Grey Chamber of course, and at midnight.”

  I thought this a curious time and place for the ceremony, but I had divined his eccentric passion for privacy and retirement, and only imagined that he had procured some very special form of licence.

  “But you do not know the Grey Chamber,” he added. “Come with me, and I will show you where it is.” And he led me up the broad staircase, and, stopping at the end of a passage before an immense door covered with black baize and studded with brass nails, which gave it a hideous resemblance to a gigantic coffin lid, he pressed a spring, and it fell slowly back.

  I saw a long dim gallery, whose very existence nothing in the external appearance of the mansion had led me to suspect; it led to a heavy oaken door with cumbrous plates and fastenings of metal.

  “Tomorrow night is Christmas Eve, as you are doubtless aware,” he said in a hushed voice. “At twelve, then, you will present yourself at yonder door—the door of the Grey Chamber—where you must fulfil the engagement you have made.”

  I was surprised at his choosing such a place for the ceremony; it would have been more cheerful in the long drawing room; but it was evidently a whim of his, and I was too happy to think of opposing it. I hastened at once to Chlorine, with her father’s sanction, and told her that the crowning moment of both our lives was fixed at last.

  The effect of my announcement was astonishing: she fainted, for which I remonstrated with her as soon as she came to herself. “Such extreme sensitiveness, my love,” I could not help saying, “may be highly creditable to your sense of maidenly propriety, but allow me to say that I can scarcely regard it as a compliment.”

  “Augustus,” she said, “you must not think I doubt you; and yet—and yet—the ordeal will be a severe one for you.”

  “I will steel my nerves,” I said grimly (for I was annoyed with her); “and, after all, Chlorine, the ceremony is not invariably fatal; I have heard of the victim surviving it—occasionally.”

  “How brave you are!” she said earnestly. “I will imitate you, Augustus; I too will hope.”

  I really thought her insane, which alarmed me for the validity of the marriage. “Yes, I am weak, foolish, I know,” she continued; “but oh, I shudder so when I think of you, away in that gloomy Grey Chamber, going through it all alone!”

  This confirmed my worst fears. No wonder her parents felt grateful to me for relieving them of such a responsibility! “May I ask where you intend to be at the time?” I inquired very quietly.

  “You will not think us unfeeling,” she replied, “but dear papa considered that such anxiety as ours would be scarcely endurable did we not seek some distraction from it; and so, as a special favour, he has procured evening orders for Sir John Soane’s Museum in Lincoln’s Inn Fields, where we shall drive immediately after dinner.”

  I knew that the proper way to treat the insane was by reasoning with them gently, so as to place their own absurdity clearly before them. “If you are forgetting your anxiety in Sir John Soane’s Museum, while I cool my heels in the Grey Chamber,” I said, “is it probable that any clergyman will be induced to perform the marriage ceremony? Did you really think two people can be united separately?”

  She was astonished this time. “You are joking!” she cried; “you cannot really believe that we are to be married in—in the Grey Chamber?”

  “Then will you tell me where we are to be married?” I asked. “I think I have the right to know—it can hardly be at the Museum!”

  She turned upon me with a sudden misgiving; “I could almost fancy,” she said anxiously, “that this is no feigned ignorance. Augustus, your aunt sent you a message—tell me, have you read it?”

  Now, owing to McFadden’s want of consideration, this was my one weak point—I had not read it, and thus I felt myself upon delicate ground. The message evidently related to business of importance which was to be transacted in this Grey Chamber, and as the genuine McFadden clearly knew all about it, it would have been simply suicidal to confess my own ignorance.

  “Why of course, darling, of course,” I said hastily. “You must think no more of my silly joke; there is something I have to arrange in the Grey Chamber before I can call you mine. But, tell me, why does it make you so uneasy?” I added, thinking it might be prudent to find out beforehand what formality was expected from me.

  “I cannot help it—no, I cannot!” she cried, “the test is so searching—are you sure that you are prepared at all points? I overheard my father say that no precaution could safely be neglected. I have such a terrible foreboding that, after all, this may come between us.”

  It was clear enough to me now; the baronet was by no means so simple and confiding in his choice of a son-in-law as I had imagined, and had no intention, after all, of accepting me without some inquiry into my past life, my habits, and my prospects.

  That he should seek to make this examination more impressive by appointing this ridiculous midnight interview for it, was only what might have been expected from an old man of his confirmed eccentricity.

  But I knew I could easily contrive to satisfy the baronet, and with the idea of consoling Chlorine, I said as much. “Why will you persist in treating me like a child, Augustus?” she broke out almost petulantly. “They have tried to hide it all from me, but do you suppose I do not know that in the Grey Chamber you will have to encounter one far more formidable, far more difficult to satisfy, than poor dear papa?”

  “I see you know more than I—more than I thought you did,” I said. “Let us understand one another, Chlorine—tell me exactly how much you know.”

  “I have told you all I know,” she said; “it is your turn to confide in me.”

  “Not even for your sweet sake, my dearest,” I was obliged to say, “can I break the seal that is set upon my tongue. You must not press me. Come, let us talk of other things.”

  But I now saw that matters were worse than I had thought; instead of the feeble old baronet I should have to deal with a stranger, some exacting and officious friend or relation perhaps, or, more probably, a keen family solicitor who would put questions I should not care about answering, and even be capable of insisting upon strict settlements.

  It was that, of course; they would try to tie my hands by a strict settlement, with a brace of cautious trustees; unless I was very careful, all I should get by my marriage would be a paltry life-interest, contingent upon my surviving my wife.

  This revolted me; it seems to me that when law comes in with its offensively suspicious restraints upon the husband and its indelicately premature provisions for the offspring, all the poetry of love is gone at once. By allowing the wife to receive the income “for her separate use and free from the control of her husband,” as the phrase runs, you infallibly brush the bloom from the peach, and implant the “little speck within the fruit” which, as Tennyson beautifully says, will widen by-and-by a
nd make the music mute.

  This may be overstrained on my part, but it represents my honest conviction; I was determined to have nothing to do with law. If it was necessary, I felt quite sure enough of Chlorine to defy Sir Paul. I would refuse to meet a family solicitor anywhere, and I intended to say so plainly at the first convenient opportunity.

  III.

  The opportunity came after dinner that evening when we were all in the drawing-room, Lady Catafalque dozing uneasily in her arm-chair behind a firescreen, and Chlorine, in the further room, playing funereal dirges in the darkness, and pressing the stiff keys of the old piano with a languid uncertain touch.

  Drawing a chair up to Sir Paul’s, I began to broach the subject calmly and temperately. “I find,” I said, “that we have not quite understood one another over this affair in the Grey Chamber. When I agreed to an appointment there, I thought—well, it doesn’t matter what I thought, I was a little too premature. What I want to say now is, that while I have no objection to you, as Chlorine’s father, asking me any questions (in reason) about myself, I feel a delicacy in discussing my private affairs with a perfect stranger.”

  His burning eyes looked me through and through; “I don’t understand,” he said. “Tell me what you are talking about.”

  I began all over again, telling him exactly what I felt about solicitors and settlements. “Are you well?” he asked sternly. “What have I ever said about settlements or solicitors?”

  I saw that I was wrong again, and could only stammer something to the effect that a remark of Chlorine’s had given me this impression.

  “What she could have said to convey such an idea passes my comprehension,” he said gravely; “but she knows nothing—she’s a mere child. I have felt from the first, my boy, that your aunt’s intention was to benefit you quite as much as my own daughter. Believe me, I shall not attempt to restrict you in any way; I shall be too rejoiced to see you come forth in safety from the Grey Chamber.”