Never did I hear him willingly address his nephews, or in any way allude to their existence.I should have said that he simply ignored it, but for the heavy gloom which always overspread his spirits in their company, and for the glances which he would now and again cast in their direction--glances full of some hidden painful emotion, though of what nature it would have been hard to define.Indeed, Alan's attitude towards her children I soon found to be the only source of friction between Lucy and this otherwise much-loved member of her husband's family.I asked her one day why the boys never appeared at luncheon.
"Oh, they come when Alan is away," she answered; "but they seem to annoy him so much that George thinks it is better to keep them out of sight when he is here.It is very tiresome.I know that it is the fashion to say that George has got the temper of the family;but I assure you that Alan's nervous moods and fancies are much more difficult to live with."That was on the morning--a Friday it was--of the last day which we were to spend alone.The guests were to arrive soon after tea; and I think that with the knowledge of their approach Alan and Iprolonged our ride that afternoon beyond its usual limits.We were on our way home, and it was already dusk, when a turn of the path brought us face to face with the old ruined tower, of which I have already spoken as standing at the head of the valley.I had not been close up to it yet during this visit at Mervyn.It had been a very favorite haunt of ours as children, and partly on that account, partly perhaps in order to defer the dreaded close of our ride to the last possible moment, I proposed an inspection of it.
The only portion of the old building left standing in any kind of entirety was two rooms, one above the other.The tower room, level with the bottom of the moat, was dark and damp, and it was the upper one, reached by a little outside staircase, which had been our rendezvous of old.Alan showed no disposition to enter, and said that he would stay outside and hold my horse, so I dismounted and ran up alone.
The room seemed in no way changed.A mere stone shell, littered with fragments of wood and mortar.There was the rough wooden block on which Alan used to sit while he first frightened us with bogey-stories, and then calmed our excited nerves by rapid sallies of wild nonsense.There was the plank from behind which, erected as a barrier across the doorway, he would defend the castle against our united assault, pelting us with fir-cones and sods of earth.
This and many a bygone scene thronged on me as I stood there, and the room filled again with the memories of childish mirth.And following close came those of childish terrors.Horrors which had oppressed me then, wholly imagined or dimly apprehended from half-heard traditions, and never thought of since, flitted around me in the gathering dusk.And with them it seemed to me as if there came other memories too,--memories which had never been my own, of scenes whose actors had long been with the dead, but which, immortal as the spirit before whose eyes they had dwelt, still lingered in the spot where their victim had first learnt to shudder at their presence.Once the ghastly notion came to me, it seized on my imagination with irresistible force.It seemed as if from the darkened corners of the room vague, ill-defined shapes were actually peering out at me.When night came they would show themselves in that form, livid and terrible, in which they had been burnt into the brain and heart of the long ago dead.
I turned and glanced towards where I had left Alan.I could see his figure framed in by the window, a black shadow against the gray twilight of the sky behind.Erect and perfectly motionless he sat, so motionless as to look almost lifeless, gazing before him down the valley into the illimitable distance beyond.There was something in that stern immobility of look and attitude which struck me with a curious sense of congruity.It was right that he should be thus--right that he should be no longer the laughing boy who a moment before had been in my memory.The haunting horrors of that place seemed to demand it, and for the first time I felt that I understood the change.With an effort I shook myself free from these fancies, and turned to go.As I did so, my eye fell upon a queer-shaped painted board, leaning up against the wall, which Iwell recollected in old times.Many a discussion had we had about the legend inscribed upon it, which in our wisdom we had finally pronounced to be German, chiefly because it was illegible.Though I had loudly professed my faith in this theory at the time, I had always had uneasy doubts on the subject, and now half smiling Ibent down to verify or remove them.The language was English, not German; but the badly painted, faded Gothic letters in which it was written made the mistake excusable.In the dim light I had difficulty even now in deciphering the words, and felt when I had done so that neither the information conveyed nor the style of the composition was sufficient reward for the trouble I had taken.
This is what I read:
"Where the woman sinned the maid shall win;But God help the maid that sleeps within."What the lines could refer to I neither had any notion nor did Ipause then even in my own mind to inquire.I only remember vaguely wondering whether they were intended for a tombstone or for a doorway.Then, continuing my way, I rapidly descended the steps and remounted my horse, glad to find myself once again in the open air and by my cousin's side.
The train of thought into which he had sunk during my absence was apparently an absorbing one, for to my first question as to the painted board he could hardly rouse himself to answer.
"A board with a legend written on it? Yes, he remembered something of the kind there.It had always been there, he thought.He knew nothing about it,"--and so the subject was not continued.
