“I felt no curiosity about them; they were certain to be both commonplace, prosaic and dusty: every time I passed them I smelt dust—and I cannot endure a particle of dust. If I had believed any of them to be a library, I might have been tempted to pick the lock; I am passionately fond of books—that is to say, of some books—when I am exiled in the country and it is always raining.
“I was in search of a book which I had laid down somewhere, when I crossed the hall one afternoon, and left my mother dozing in a big armchair before the drawing-room fire.
“Marie said she had seen it on the oak settle; most likely, for I often took my book and lounged on it. You see I had grown fond of the oak settle naturally, for it was the only piece of furniture in that monster house that stirred in me any friendly feeling whatever. But Marie must have been dreaming, it was certainly not there. I would have called to Marie to come and help me search for it, had I not remembered that she and Eugenie had gone into the village to do a little shopping on their own account. They laugh in their grandest manner at those ‘silly little shops,’ but with a true woman’s instinct they cannot resist ‘buying.’
“I felt indignant, provoked, angry! never had I wanted to read so much and never had I been at such a loss to find a book.
“Oh! I recollected there was one upstairs—an ancient and musty edition of ‘Eugene Aram’—(proof positive, this, that the place was once a school; would any one save a schoolmaster read ‘Eugene Aram’)? I had seen it lying on the floor of a disused cupboard—alone and forsaken: a solitary relic of the Academical bookshelf.
“Were I in a library, ‘Eugene Aram’ would probably be the last book I would choose to read; Lytton’s tales are horrible; I abominate horrors. I thought of the staircase, I glanced at it; it was really very dark. I shuddered!
“I did not understand why I shuddered, unless it was on account of a draught! Of course, a draught. The house was full of draughts. The hour was late, the afternoon was cold, it was March, and undoubtedly a door was open somewhere; the book was not worth the trouble, I was over-tired, I would return to my mother. This I was actually preparing to do when the sudden appearance of a light made me pause—it came from the disused wing overhead.
“I can assure you I wanted very much to go to my mother; I would have given all I possessed to have gone to my mother; I could not: I could not stir; that light enthralled me.
“I had never seen such a light—such a queer, unaccountable light—a light that to anyone less sceptical might have seemed an ‘UNNATURAL’ Light! Perhaps it was an unnatural light—and I laughed. But what—what in the name of Heaven could it be?
“Drawing rapidly nearer and quickly assuming the appearance and proportions of a FIRE, it filled me with the most unusual, the most preposterously unusual, doubts and fears.