Without warning, these quiet, melancholy sounds are disturbed by another, loud and startling. It is like a groan, dominating all other sounds and awakening its counterpart in every portion of the building.
Immediately uncertain footsteps, marked by many shufflings, as of some person laboring beneath a burden, approach the dining-room door; a load of some nature is eased to the floor without; next, the door itself turns on screaming hinges to reveal a dim form. The form enters, drags a prodigious bundle after it, upon which it collapses as if its endurance were quite spent, and discloses the sallow, marasmic countenance of Mr. William Slade.
He presents a spectacle of utter physical exhaustion as he sits all huddled together on his recent burden. But after a while he gets unsteadily to his feet and busies himself about the apartment.
Strange is this final scene upon which the shadows, marshalled in wonder in the farthest corners, are destined to look to-night; stranger still and more weird are the sounds that echo and re-echo through the empty, dark rooms. In all its history of comedy and tragedy the mouldering roof has never sheltered an act so incongruous as this.
Behold the heavy table spread for a feast and lighted with the soft glow of many wax candles; behold the flames on the cluttered, mossy hearth struggling for access up the choked chimney; and above all, behold the solitary figure seated at the board, fingering a wine-glass and seeking with rheumy eyes to penetrate the darker limits of the vast room—indeed, a spectre at the board. Mad, mad, clearly mad!
Yet, look closer still and this madness reveals a certain method: a ghastly significance may be traced in the details, in the man's actions and the words he mutters ceaselessly; and although the spectacle remains incongruous, it ceases to be ludicrous. The fire on the hearth and the wan light of the tapers only accentuate the cheerlessness and squalid ruin of the place—of Slade himself, and of that spread table which is a thing to shrink from.
There are two covers laid—even a bouquet of hothouse roses, somewhat wilted and crushed from having been too tightly packed in the bundle. But where is the guest of this eerie banquet? Has one of the shadows been summoned forth from the dismal chambers to share it?
The second chair is oddly decked with fabrics of faded hue and ancient design, inasmuch as they are plainly articles of feminine apparel marking a mode dead these twoscore years. Most conspicuous of these decorations is a faded lavender skirt of silk with many flounces, cut long, long ago, not to fit any woman's shape, but with the prodigality demanded by the wide hoop of the period. The garments were arranged on the chair with an obvious attempt to suggest a human occupant; but the effect is ghostly and repulsive, the semblance pitiful.
It is unlikely that Mr. Slade could have found anything with which he was less familiar than champagne, unless indeed it were the art of presiding at such a feast as this one pretended to be; for, witness!—merely two spoons and forks and glasses served all requirements. Mere ghost of a dinner—a shadow among the innumerable other shadows of the place Slade's gaucherie was not even relieved by a hint that he had ever been present at an actuality of the kind. The wine mounted quickly to his head and infused a temporary vitality into his dry frame; the lack-lustre eyes became jet-like once more; even a tinge of color glowed feverishly in his sallow cheek; more wonderful still, his tongue was loosened to an unwonted loquacity. But his voice remained harsh and rasping, his movements stiff and awkward, and no slumbering trace of amiability was quickened into life.
Clumsily he opened the bottles, losing half their contents as he dodged to escape the flying corks.