But neither high nor low, nor far nor near, was there to be found the smallest trace of my host or any living mortal. At last, weary and wet, and oppressed with those vast echoing solitudes, I went back to the great hall—passed all the untouched litter I had made in the morning—and so to the banquet-place. I walked up the long black tables set solemn with double rows of empty chairs, and lit the lamp that stood at top. It burned up brightly in a minute—and there beneath I saw the morning meal had been removed, the supper napkin neatly laid, and bread, wine, and cheese laid out afresh for one!
So unexpected was that neat array, so quaint, so out of keeping with the desolate mansion, that I laughed aloud, then paused, for down in the great vaulty interior of that house the echo took my laughter up, and the lone merriment sounded wicked and infernal in those soulless corridors. Well! there was supper, while I was tired and hungry I would not be balked of it though all hell were laughing outside. In the vast empty grate I made a merry fire with some old broken chairs, a jolly, roaring blaze that curled about the mighty iron dogs as though glad to warm the chilly hearth again, and went flaming and twisting up the spacious chimney in right gallant kind. Then I lifted the stopper of the wine-jar, and, finding it full of a good Rhenish vintage, set to work to mull it. I fetched a steel gorget from the trophy in the hall, poured the liquor therein, and put it by the blaze to warm. And to make the drink the more complete I spit an apple on my rapier point and toasted the pippin by the embers, thus making a wassail bowl of most superior sort.
I ate, and drank, and supped very pleasantly that evening, while the strong wind whistled among the chimney-stacks and rattled with unearthly persistence upon the casements, or opened and shut, now soft, now fiercely, a score of creaking distant doors. The spluttering rain came down upon the fire by which I sat in my quaint finery, warming my Tudor legs by that Tudor blaze; the tall, spectral things of the garden beyond the curtainless windows nodded and bent before the storm; loose strands of ivy beat gently upon the panes like the wet long fingers of ghostly vagrants imploring admission; the water fell with measured beat upon the empty courtyard stones from broken gargoyle and spout, like the fall of gently pattering feet, and the strangest sobbing noises came from the hollow wainscoting of that strange old dwelling-place. But do you think I feared?—I, who had lived so long and known so much—I, who four times had seen the substantial world dissolve into nothing, and had awoke to find a new earth, born from the dusty ashes of the past—I, who had stocked four times the void air with all I loved—I, for whom the shadowy fields of the unknown were so thickly habited—I, to whom the teeming material world again was so unpeopled, so visionary, and desolate? I mocked the wild gossip of the storm, and grimly wove the infernal whispers of that place into the thread of my fancies.
Hour by hour I sat and thought—thought of all the rosy pictures of the past, of all the bright beams of love I had seen shine for me in maiden eyes, all the wild glitter and delight of twenty fiery combats, all the joy and success, all the sorrow and pleasure, of my wondrous life; and thus thought and thought until I wore out even the storm, that went sighing away over the distant woodlands, and the fire, that died down to a handful of white ashes, and the wine-pot, that ran dry and empty with the last flames in the grate; and then I took my sword and the taper, and, leaving the care of to-morrow to the coming sunrise, went up the solemn staircase and threw myself upon the first dim couch in the first black chamber that I met with.
I threw myself upon a bed dressed as I was, but could not sleep as soon as I wished. Instead, a heavy drowsiness possessed me, and now I would dream for a minute or two, and then start up and listen as some distant door was opened, or to the quaint gusts that roamed about those corridors and seemed now and then to hold whispered conclave outside my door. It was like a child, I knew, to be so restless; but yet he who lives near to the unknown grows by nature watchful. It did not seem possible I had fathomed all the mystery there was in that gloomy mansion, and so I dozed, and waked, and wondered, waiting in spite of myself for something more all in the deep shadow of my rotten bed-hangings; now speculating upon my host, and why he tenanted such a life-forsaken cavern, and ate and drank from ancient crockery, and had store of moldy finery and rusty weapons; and then idly guessing who had last slept on this creaking, somber bed, and why the pillows smelled so much of moldiness, and mildew; or again listening to the wail of the expiring wind among the chimneys overhead, and the dismal sodden drip of water falling somewhere. Perhaps I had amused myself like that an hour, and it was as near as might be midnight: the low, white moon was just a-glimpse over the sighing treetops in the wilderness outside. I had been dozing lightly, when, on a sudden, my soldier ear distinctly caught a footfall in the passage without, and, starting up upon my elbow in the black shadow of the bed, I gripped the hilt of the sword that lay along under the pillows and held my breath, as slowly the door was opened wide, and, before my astounded eyes, a tall, dark figure entered!
It was all done so quietly that, beyond the first footfall and the soft click of the lifting latch, I do not think a sound broke the heavy stillness that, between two pauses of the wind, reigned throughout the empty house. Very gently that dusky shadow by my portal shut the door behind, and it might have been only the outer air that entered with him, or something in that presence itself, but a cold, damp breath of air pervaded all the room as the latch fell back.
I did not fear, and yet my heart set off a-thumping against my ribs, and my fingers tightened upon the fretted hilt of my Toledo blade as that thing came slowly forward from the door, and, big and tall, and so far indistinct, stalked slowly to the bed-foot, touching the posts like one who, in an uncertain light, reassures him by the feel of well-known landmarks, and so went round toward the latticed window. I did not stir, but held my breath and stared hard at that black form, that, all unconscious of my presence, slowly sauntered to the light and took form and shape. In a minute it was by the lattice and, to my stern, wondering awe, there, in the pale white moonshine, looking down into the desolate garden beyond with melancholy steadfastness, was the figure of a tall, black Spanish gallant. In that white radiance, against the ebony setting of the room, he was limned with extraordinary clearness. Indeed, he was a great silver column now of stenciled brightness against the black void beyond, and I could see every point and detail in his dress and features as though it were broad daylight. He was—or must I say, he had been?—a tall, slim man, long-jointed and sparse after the manner of his nation, and to-night he wore something like the fashion of his time—black hose and shoes, a black-seeming waistcoat, a loose outdoor hood above it, a slouch cap, a white ruffle, and a broad black-leather belt with a dagger dangling from it. So much was ordinary about him, but—Jove!—his face in that uncertain twilight was frightful! It was cadaverous beyond expression, and tawny and mean, and all the shadows on it were black and strong; and out of that dreary parchment mask, making its lifelessness the more deadly by their glitter, shone two restless, sunken eyes. He kept those yellow orbs turned upon the garden, and then presently put up a hand and began stroking his small pointed beard, still seeming lost in thought, and next, stretching out a finger—and, Hoth! what a wicked-looking talon it did seem!—the shape began drawing signs upon the mistiness of the diamond panes. At the same time he began to mutter, and there was something quaintly gruesome about those disconnected syllables in the midnight stillness; yet, though I leaned forward and peered and listened, nothing could I learn of what he wrote or said. He fascinated me. I forgot to speak or act, and could only regard with dumb wonder that outlined figure in the moonlight and the long-dead face so dreadfully ashine with life. So bewitched was I that had that vision turned and spoken I should have made the best shift to answer that were possible; there was some tie, I felt, between him and me more than showed upon the surface of this chance meeting of ours—something which even as I write I feel is not yet quite explained, though I and that shadow now know each other well. But, instead of speaking, that presence, man or spirit, from the outer spaces, left off his scratching on the window, and, with a shrug of his Spanish shoulders and a malediction in guttural Bisque, turned from the window-cell and walked across the room. As he did so I noticed—what had been invisible before—in his left hand a canvas bag, and, by the shape and weight of it, that bag seemed full of money. I watched him as he stalked across the room, watched him disappear into the shadow, and then listened, with every sense alert, to the click of the latch and the creak of the door as he left my chamber by the opposite side to that whereat he entered.
He kept those yellow orbs turned upon the garden
As those faint, ghostly footsteps died away slowly down the corridor, my native sense came back, and, in a trice, I was on foot, dressed as I had lain me down, and, snatching my sword and cloak in a fever of expectation, I ran over to the window and looked upon the writing. It was figures—figures and sums in ancient Moorish Arabesque; and the long, sharp nail-marks of that hideous midnight mathematician were still penciled clearly on the moonlit dew.