But the room he was in seemed to him the most fearful place he had ever beheld. His memory of the spare room at home, with all its age and worn stateliness and evil report, showed mere innocence beside this small common-looking, square room. If a room dead and buried for years, then dug up again, be imaginable, that is what this was like. It was furnished like a little drawing-room, and many of the niceties of work and ornament that are only to be seen in a lady’s room, were yet recognizable here and there, for everything in it was plainly as it had been left by the person who last occupied it. But the aspect of the whole was indescribably awful. The rottenness and dust and displacement by mere decay, looked enough to scare even the ghosts, if they had any scare left in them. No doubt the rats had at one time their share in the destruction, but it was long since they had forsaken the house. There was no disorder. The only thing that looked as if the room had been abandoned in haste, was the door of a closet standing wide open. The house had a worse repute than ghost could give it—worse than Joan knew, for no one had ever told her what must add to her father’s discredit.
Something in a corner of the closet just mentioned, caught Cosmo’s eye, and he had taken one step towards it, when a sharp moan from the lips of his companion arrested him. He turned, saw her face agonized with fresh fear, and was rushing to the window, when she ran at him, pushed him back, and stood shaking. He thought she would have fallen, and supported her. They stood listening speechless, with faces like two moons in the daytime. Presently Cosmo heard the rustling of twigs, and the sounds of back-swinging branches. These noises came nearer and nearer. Joan gazed with expanding eyes of terror in Cosmo’s face, as if anywhere else she must see what would kill her.
“Joan!” cried the same voice Cosmo had heard in the garden. She shook, and held so to Cosmo’s arm that she left as sure marks of her fingers there as ever did ghost. The sympathy of her fear invaded him. He would have darted to meet the enemy, but she would not let him go. The shudder of a new resolve passed through her, and she began to pull him towards the closet. Involuntarily for a moment he resisted, for he feared the worse risk to her; but her action and look were imperative, and he yielded.
They entered the closet and he pulled the door to close it upon them. It resisted; he pulled harder; a rusted hinge gave way, and the door dropped upon its front corner, so that he had partly to lift it to get it to. Just as he succeeded, Joan’s name on the voice of her fear echoed awfully through the mouldy silences of the house. In the darkness of the closet, where there was just room for two to stand, she clung like a child to Cosmo, trembling in his arms like one in a fit of the ague. It is mournful to think what a fear many men are to the women of their house. The woman-fear in the world is one of its most pitiful outcries after a saviour.
Hesitating steps were heard below. They went from one to another of the rooms, then began to ascend the stair.
“Now, Joan,” said Cosmo, holding her to him, “whatever you do, keep quiet. Don’t utter a sound. Please God, I will take care of you.”
She pressed his shoulder, but did not speak.
The steps entered the room. Both Cosmo and Joan seemed to feel the eyes that looked all about it. Then the steps came towards the closet. Now was the decisive moment! Cosmo was on the point of bursting out, with the cry of a wild animal, when something checked him, and suddenly he made up his mind to keep still to the very last. He put a hand on the lock, and pressed the door down against the floor. In the faint light that came through the crack at the top of it, he could see the dark terror of Joan’s eyes fixed on his face. A hand laid hold of the lock, and pulled, and pulled, but in vain. Probably then Mergwain saw that the door was fallen from its hinge. He turned the key, and the door had not altered its position too far for his locking them in. Then they heard him go down the stair, and leave the house.
“He’s not gone far!” said Cosmo. “He will have this closet open presently. You heard him lock it! We must get out of it at once! Please, let me go, Joan, dear! I must get the door open.”
She drew back from him as far as the space would allow. He put his shoulder to the door, and sent it into the middle of the room with a great crash, then ran and lifted it.