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Page 57
But, with Sir Walter and Mary, he followed the ministrant, and
left him at the open door of the Grey Room. The electric light
shone steadily; but the storm seemed to beat its fists at the
windows, and the leaded panes shook and chattered. With no bell
and candle, but his Bible alone, Septimus May entered the room,
having first made the sign of the Cross before him; then he turned
and bade good-night to all.
"Be of good faith!" were the last words he spoke to them.
Having done so he shut the door, and they heard his voice
immediately uplifted in prayer. They waited a little, and the
sound roiled steadily on. Sir Walter then bade Masters extinguish
all the lights and send the household to bed, though the time was
not more than ten o'clock.
As for Masters, the glamour and appeal of those strenuous words at
the dinner-table had now passed, and presently, as he prepared to
retire, he found himself far less confident and assured than his
recent words had implied. He sank slowly from hope to fear, even
pictured the worse, and asked himself what would follow if the
worst happened. He believed that it might mean serious disaster
for Sir Walter. If another life were sacrificed to this unknown
peril, and it transpired that his master had sanctioned what
would amount to suicide in the eyes of reason; then he began to
fear that grave trouble must result. Already the burning words
of Septimus May began to cool and sound unreal, and Masters
suspected that, if they were repeated in other ears, which had not
heard him utter them, or seen the fervor of religious earnestness
and reverence in which they had been spoken, this feverish business
of exorcising a ghost in the twentieth century might only awake
derision and receive neither credence nor respect. His entire
concern was for Sir Walter, not Mr. May. He could not sleep,
lighted a pipe, considered whether it was in his power to do
anything, felt a sudden impulse to take certain steps, yet
hesitated--from no fear to himself, but doubt whether action might
not endanger another. Mary did not sleep either, and she suffered
more, for she had never approved, and now she blamed herself not a
little for her weak opposition. A thousand arguments occurred to
her while she lay awake. Then, for a time, she forgot present
tribulations, and her own grief overwhelmed her, as it was wont to
do by night. For while the events that had so swiftly followed
each other since her husband's death banished him now and again,
save from her subconscious mind, when alone he was swift to return
and her sorrow made many a night sleepless. She was herself ill,
but did not know it. The reaction had yet to come, and could not
be long delayed, for her nervous energy was worn out now. She wept
and lived days with the dead; then the present returned to
her mind, and she fretted and prayed--for Septimus May and for
daylight. She wondered why stormy nights were always the longest.
She heard a thousand unfamiliar sounds, and presently leaped from
her bed, put on a dressing-gown, and crept out into the house.
To know that all was well with the watcher would hearten her.
But then her feet dragged before she had left the threshold of
her own room, and she stood still and shuddered a little. For how
if all were not well? How if his voice no longer sounded?
She hesitated to make the experiment, and balanced the relief of
reassurance against the horror of silence. She remembered a storm
at sea, when through a long night, not lacking danger to a
laboring steamer with weak engines, she had lain awake and felt
her heart warm again when the watch shouted the hour.
She set out, then, determined to know if all prospered with her
father-in-law. Nor would she give ear to misgiving or ask herself
what she would do if no voice were steadily uplifted in the Grey
Room.
The great wind seemed to play upon Chadlands like a harp. It
roared and reverberated, now stilled a moment for another leap,
now died away against the house, yet still sounded with a steady
shout in the neighbor trees. At the casements it tugged and
rattled; against them it flung the rain fiercely. Every bay and
passage of the interior uttered its own voice, and overhead was
creaking of old timbers, rattling of old slates, and rustling of
mortar fragments dislodged by sudden vibrations.
Mary proceeded on her way, and then, to her astonishment, heard a
footfall, and nearly ran into an invisible figure approaching from
the direction of the Grey Room. Man and woman startled each other,
but neither exclaimed, and Mrs. May spoke.
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