The Secret Chamber at Chad

by Evelyn Everett-Green

The brother looked puzzled when he heard what one of his young charges proposed to do. Edred looked him full in the face as he answered:

"Brother Emmanuel taught us that it were not well that all within the house should be sleeping. We know not when the Lord may appear--at midnight, at cock crowing, or in the morning; and methinks whenever He may come, He would gladly find one soul holding vigil and waiting for His appearing. Lock the door of the chantry upon me, my father. Thou canst see that there is but the one door by which we may come or go. If thou fearest to leave me here, lock the door upon me until such time as it pleases thee to release me."

The brother regarded the boy with perplexed looks, and slowly shook his head, as though such an attitude of mind were wholly incomprehensible. But he did not oppose his resolve. It would not do to appear astonished at the idea of keeping vigil. He passed out of the chantry muttering to himself, and Edred prostrated himself before the altar, above which the solitary lamp burned clear and bright, and offered up most earnest prayers for the safety of Brother Emmanuel, for the failure and discomfiture of his foes, and for his safe escape when the time was ripe into some country where his enemies were not like to find him.

How the hours of the night passed he scarcely knew. He might perhaps have slept at his post awhile, or have remained in a dreamy and passive state; for it did not seem long before the morning sun came glinting in at the eastern window, and the boy saw that the day had come which was to be a momentous one to Chad.

Before very long, sounds of life about, and later on within the house, warned him that he was not the only watcher now; and feeling very drowsy and weary, he resolved to creep upstairs and share Julian's couch for the remaining hours before the working day should commence.

He had not been locked into the chantry. Perhaps Brother Fabian felt a little shame in his suspicions, or perhaps he forgot to take the precaution. The door yielded to his touch, and he found himself at liberty to go where he would.

But before turning his steps to his room upstairs, he made an expedition to an outhouse on what appeared to be a curious errand. It was a dirty, neglected place, and was full of dust and flue and cobweb. The boy began deliberately collecting masses of this flue and web, and presently he swept up carefully a good-sized heap of dust, which he as deliberately placed in a wooden box, and proceeded to make in one end a number of small holes.

Carefully carrying away this strange load, and bearing it with great secrecy, the boy mounted the stairs very softly, and put down the handkerchief in which the flue was placed in the small unused room beside their sleeping chamber. With the box still in his hands he stole on tiptoe into the room and looked carefully round him.

His brothers were sleeping lightly, looking as though they would be easily and speedily aroused. But the monk was snoring deeply, and the bloated face which was turned towards him displayed that abandonment of repose which bespeaks a very sound and even sottish slumber.

The boy looked with repulsion at the flushed face, the open mouth, and dropped jaw. Something in the expression of that sleeping face filled him with scorn and loathing. No danger of this man's awakening; his half-drunken sleep was far too heavy and sodden.