Oliver hesitated a moment, and then entered the cavernous blackness beyond. There he stopped again, and stood looking about him by the dusky glimmer of the lantern, which threw round swaying patches of light upon the floor and on the ceiling above, and three large squares of yellow light upon the walls around.
Oliver wondered dully whether he was in a dream, for such a place he had never beheld before in all his life. Upon the floor lay soft, heavy rugs and carpets, blackened and mildewed with age, but still showing here and there gorgeous patches of coloring. Upon the wall hung faded tapestry and silken hangings draped in dark, motionless, mysterious folds. Around stood divans and couches covered with soft and luxurious cushions embroidered with silk long since faded, and silver thread long since tarnished to an inky blackness.
In the middle of the room stood an ebony table inlaid with ivory and mother-of-pearl; above it hung a lamp inlaid with gold and swung from the arched stone ceiling above by three golden chains. Beside the table stood a chair of some dark red wood, richly inlaid like the table, with ivory and mother-of-pearl, and by the chair leaned a lute ready strung, as though just laid aside by the performer, though the strings, long untouched, were thick and fuzzy with green mildew. Upon the chair was a tasselled cushion, one time rich and ornate, now covered with great blotches of decay. Upon the table were two golden trays—one of them containing a small mass of mildew that might at one time have been fruit or confections of some sort; the other, an empty glass vase or decanter as clear as crystal, but stained with the dry dregs of wine, and two long crystal glasses, one of them overset and with the stem broken. In a dim distant corner of this one-time magnificent room stood a draped couch or bed, with heavy hangings tattered and stained with rot, the once white linen mildewed and smeared with age.
All these things Oliver saw as he stood in the door-way looking slowly and breathlessly around him; then, of a sudden, his heart tightened and shrunk together, the lantern in his hand trembled and swayed, for upon the bed, silent and motionless, he saw the dim, dark outline of a woman's figure lying still and silent.
"Who—who is there?" he quavered, tremulously; but no answering voice broke the silence.
As he stood there, with his heart beating and thumping in his throat, with beads of cold sweat standing on his forehead, and now and then swallowing at the dryness in his throat, a fragment of the hangings above the bed, loosened perhaps by the breath of air that had come in through the open door behind, broke from its rotten threads, and dropped silent and bat-like to the floor. Oliver winked rapidly in the intensity of high-keyed nervous strain. How long he stood there he could never tell, but suddenly the voice of the master breathed through the stillness behind him and from above: "Hast thou found the bottles of water?"
Oliver started, and then, with the same jerky automaton-like steps with which he had descended the stone stair-way from above, he began crossing the room to the arrased door-way which he dimly distinguished upon the other side of the apartment.
Midway he stopped, and, turning his head, looked again at the silent figure lying upon the bed. He was nearer to it now, and could see it more clearly in the dim yellow light of the lantern. The face was hidden, but the floating, wavy hair, loosened from a golden band which glimmered faintly in the raven blackness, lay spread in shadow-like masses over the stained and faded surface of the silken pillow upon which the head lay.
Impelled by a sudden impulse of a grotesque curiosity, Oliver, after a moment's hesitation, crept slowly and stealthily towards that silent occupant of the silent room, holding his lantern forward at arm's-length before him.