A far bolder man than I have ever claimed to be might have felt his heart stand still at this speech; and its effect on me was greatly heightened by Calbot’s tone and manner, and by the way he fastened his eyes upon me. Nor were the circumstances in other respects reassuring—alone at night, with a man three or four times my physical equal, who was wholly emancipated from rational control. I sat quite still for a few moments—very long moments they seemed to me—staring helplessly at Calbot, who took a small notebook out of his pocket, tore out a leaf with something scrawled on it, and handed it to me. I read it mechanically—“Archibald Armstrong. Died February 6th, 1698.” Meanwhile Calbot helped himself to another glass of wine; but I was too much unnerved to restrain him, and, indeed, too much bewildered.
“Archibald Armstrong,” muttered I, repeating the name aloud; “died February 6th—yes; but it was this present year 1875—not 1698. Why, I went to the auction-sale of his effects this very afternoon!”
“Keep the paper,” said Calbot, not noticing my observation, “it may possibly lead to something. And now I wish you to listen to my statement. I am neither crazy, Drayton, nor intoxicated. But I am not the same man you have known heretofore; my life has been seared—blasted. Perhaps you think my language extravagant; but after what I have experienced there can be no such thing as extravagance for me. It is an awful thing,” he added, with a long involuntary sigh, “to have been face to face with an evil spirit!”
“In Heaven’s name, Calbot,” cried I, starting up from my chair, and trembling all over, I believe, from nervous excitement, “don’t go on talking and looking like that. If you can tell me a straightforward, consistent story, I’ll listen to it; but these hints and interjections of yours will drive me mad!”
“I’m going to tell you, Drayton, though it will be the next worst thing to meeting that——Thing——itself, to tell about it. But the matter is too grim earnest to allow of trifling. You have a great deal of knowledge on queer and out-of-the-way subjects, Drayton, and I thought it not impossible that you might make some suggestions, for there must be some reason for this hideous visitation—some cause for it; and though all is over for me now, there would be a kind of satisfaction in knowing what that reason was. Besides, I must speak to someone, and you are a dear friend, and an old one.”
I was a good deal relieved to hear Calbot speak thus affectionately of our relations with each other; and indeed he appeared no way inclined to violence. Accordingly, having offered him a Cabana (which he refused), I put the box and the decanter back in the cupboard, and locked the door. Then, relighting my own cigar, and putting a lump or two of coal on the fire, I resumed my chair, and bade my friend begin his story.
VI.
“There was an intermarriage between the Burleighs and the Calbots four or five generations ago,” said he; “I found the record of it in our family papers, shortly before Miss Burleigh and I were engaged; but it appears not to have turned out well. I don’t know whether the husband and wife quarrelled, or whether their troubles came from some outside interference; but they had not been long married before a separation took place—not a regular divorce, but the wife went quietly back to her fathers house, and my ancestor is supposed to have gone abroad. But this was not the end of it, Drayton; for, some years later, the husband returned, and he and his wife lived together again.”
“Was there any further estrangement between them, afterwards?”
“It is an ugly story,” said Calbot, gloomily, getting up from his chair, and taking his old place before the fire. “No; they lived together—as long as they did live! But it was about the era of the witchcraft mania—or delusion, if you choose to call it so—and it is strongly hinted in some of the documents in my possession that the Calbots were—not witches—but victims of witchcraft. They accused no one, but they seemed to have been shunned by everybody like persons under the shadow of a curse. Well—it wasn’t a great while before Mrs. Calbot died, and her husband went mad soon afterwards. There were two children. One of them, the son, was born before the first separation. The other, a daughter, came into the world after the reunion, and she was an idiot!”