Neither my husband nor I had encountered the Smell, but it was not very long before the servants did—and—one by one they LEFT, nor could we find any that were willing to take their place, the Abbey bearing a very evil reputation in the neighbourhood.
The question of our daughters’ health began to cause us some anxiety; were we doing right in remaining in the house and exposing them to the danger of some serious malady? for although the origin of the Smell was a mystery, the effect of so horrible a stench could not prove otherwise than injurious.
We decided, therefore, to give up our tenancy at the expiration of another week, the idea of quitting such palatial quarters and retiring to the meanness of some petty villa or four-room cottage not disturbing us half so much as our inability to arrive at the cause of that Smell.
In the silence of the night, when no other sounds were to be heard, save the gentle beating of the branches against our window and the occasional hooting of an owl, we lay awake and wondered, wondered why it never came to us, but always to Mary and Eunice.
The house, I have said, was liberally furnished; both rooms and passages were covered with soft if somewhat faded carpets; there was no lack of tables, couches, chairs, &c., whilst the walls were adorned with pictures which, though darkened by dust and blistered by the sun, revealed the art of old and well-known masters; but it was the library that attracted and pleased us most.
There arranged methodically in the ample bookcases were volumes of every description; books of ancient lore, Spectators, Tatlers, Richardson’s “Pamela,” Defoe’s “Moll of Flanders,” Tyndale’s Bible, Dryden’s and Gifford’s Translations from the Classics, the Mysticisms of Swedenborg, Behmen and Plotinus and countless others, many, even of greater rarity and value, bound uniformly in those covers of rich Moroccan leather so characteristic of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.
One among all others had riveted our attention from the very first. I have already alluded to the peculiar and ghastly phenomenon produced by the sun’s rays penetrating the coloured glass in the corridors and on the staircases; here it was even more pronounced though only very locally, the full force of the rays being focussed in the most startling manner on the metal clasp of a volume of stupendous size and apparently vast antiquity; the result being that whereas the entire book was bathed in a bloody halo, the others were left in a comparatively clear and normal light.
Appalled yet fascinated by this unaccountable anomaly, we had several times attempted to remove the volume in order to pry into its contents but we were unable to do so, owing, we imagined, to its having stuck or being fastened in some peculiar manner to the shelf—and we were afraid to use any great force for fear of damaging the cover; consequently our curiosity had to remain unsatisfied.
The night, however, preceding our departure from the Abbey (August 11) my husband had already left by a mid-day train, I was whiling away the few remaining hours in the study—Mary and Eunice being as I thought, engaged in packing—when—suddenly—I heard some one approach the door as if on tiptoe. The next moment there came a loud knock and the sonorous sound of the grandfather clock in the alcove beside me commencing to strike seven, the two noises were almost simultaneous.