BY JULIA MAGRUDER.
WHEN I became the occupant of the Chateau Blanc, in the neighborhood of Fontainebleau, I found that my wish for a place of complete seclusion was likely to be realized to the full. I was not in a state of mind for society, and I had deliberately given myself three months in which to fight out a certain battle with myself, for which I needed solitude and reflection.
When the old woman who acted as keeper and caretaker of the place took me through it, on a tour of inspection, there were three things which, in spite of my preoccupation with my own affairs, struck me very forcibly. The first was the forlorn remnants of the body of a white swan, which must once have been a creature of splendid size and shape. My informant told me that this swan had been a great pet of the former owner of the chateau, until some accident had killed it; after which it had been stuffed and fastened in its place upon the surface of the little lake under his window. There it was still—what remained of it—a mass of weather-beaten and dirty feathers.
Another thing that compelled my strong attention was a certain picture which hung in the bedroom of the late owner, and which I was informed was his own portrait, painted by himself. This room, by the way, was sinister and mysterious in its effect beyond any I had ever entered. One reason for this was the fact that all the furniture, which was elaborately carved and which must once have been of beautiful polish and color, had been ruthlessly covered with a coat of black paint,—the bed, the table, chairs, wardrobe, chests of drawers, and even the great leather easy-chair which was placed just under the picture, facing the opposite wall.
It was a wretched piece of work, that picture, representing a man dressed in some sort of court dress of the last century, and it would have seemed ineffectual and amateurish to the last degree but for the truly marvelous expression of the eyes, which were fixed on a certain spot in the wall opposite with an earnestness and intensity which made me feel that there was some hidden significance in this look. The man not only looked at the spot himself, but he compelled me to do the same, and forced me, by the insistent command of his eyes, to look again and again.
And yet there was nothing to see. The wall was perfectly bare in that place and covered with a meaningless sort of wallpaper, which gave me no encouragement whatever.
Another thing that I noticed specially, with a feeling of being imperiously directed to do so, was a large rusty key that hung on the wall directly under the picture. When I inquired of the old woman what this key belonged to she answered that she had never known, but that it had been hung there by the late proprietor and had been undisturbed since his death. That event had occurred a great many years ago, and it was owing to the provisions of the will left by him that no one had ever occupied the house in the interval. The prescribed time had only just expired, and I was the first person to rent the chateau, the revenue from which was to go to a nephew, who lived abroad.
The somberness of the black chamber suited my frame of mind, and I decided on taking it for my room. Besides this, the picture, the key, and the white swan all interested me, and, as it was the first time that an outside interest had made any headway against the melancholy of my own thoughts, these objects, far from cheerful as they were in themselves, afforded a grateful diversion.
So continually did I wonder why the picture looked always and could compel me to look at that one spot, and why the key had been hung in that place and had kept its position so many years undisturbed, as if some ghostly guardian watched over it, and why, ever and always, the old white swan compelled me, as if by some irresistible power, to connect it with these other things, that I kept myself awake at night, weaving all sorts of stories concerning these objects, and spent half my days in looking from the picture to the wall, and back again to the key, and then out of the window at the battered effigy of a noble bird beneath it, until the confusion of mind thus produced seemed likely to drive me crazy.