“I do not think that it was grief, or that it was ever grief, that he felt or still feels. His brain received a violent blow, from which it has never recovered.”
“But he can transact business in his own way—by brief written instructions.”
“We are not physicians, to explain the working of a disordered brain. We can, however, understand that such a shock may have produced all the effect of a blow from a hammer or a club. His brain is not destroyed: but it is benumbed. I believe that he felt no sorrow, but only a dead weight of oppression—the sense of suffering without pain—the consciousness of gloom which never lifts. Is not the story capable of such effects?”
“Perhaps. There is, however, one thing which we have forgotten, Constance. It is that we are cousins. This discovery makes us cousins.”
She took his proffered hand under the eyes of her ancestor, who looked kindly upon them from his dusty and faded frame. “We are cousins—not first or second cousins—but still—cousins—which is something. You have found another relation. I hope, sir, that you will not be ashamed of her, or connect her with your family misfortunes. This tragedy belongs to both of us. Come, Leonard, let us leave this room. It is haunted. I hear again the shrieks of the woman, and I see the white face of the man—the young man in his bereavement. Come.”
She drew him from the room, and closed the door softly.
Leonard led the way up the broad oaken staircase, which no neglect could injure, and no flight of time. On the first floor there were doors leading to various rooms. They opened one: it was a room filled with things belonging to children: there were toys and dolls: there were dresses and boots and hats: there was a children’s carriage, the predecessor of the perambulator and the cart: there were nursery-cots: there were slates and pencils and colour-boxes. It looked like a place which had not been deserted: children had lived in it and had grown out of it: all the old playthings were left in when the children left it.
“After the blow,” said Leonard, “life went on somehow in the House. The Recluse lived by himself in his bedroom and the library: the dining-room and the drawing-room were locked up: his wife’s room—the room where she died—was locked up: the boys went away: the girl ran away with her young man, Mr. Galley; then the whole place was deserted.” He shut the door and unlocked another. “It was her room,” he whispered.
Constance looked into the room. It was occupied by a great four-poster bed with steps on either side in order that the occupant might ascend to the feather-bed with the dignity due to her position. One cannot imagine a gentlewoman of 1820, or thereabouts, reduced to the indignity of climbing into a high bed. Therefore the steps were placed in position. We have lost this point of difference which once distinguished the “Quality” from the lower sort: the former walked up these steps with dignity into bed: the latter flopped or climbed: everybody now seeks the nightly repose by the latter methods. The room contained a great amount of mahogany: the doors were open, and showed dresses hanging up as they had waited for seventy years to be taken down and worn: fashions had come and gone: they remained waiting. There was a chest of drawers with cunningly-wrought boxes upon it: silver patch-boxes: snuff-boxes in silver and in silver gilt: a small collection of old-world curiosities, which had belonged to the last occupant’s forefather. There was a dressing-table, where all the toilet tools and instruments were lying as they had been left. Constance went into the room on tiptoe, glancing at the great bed, which stood like a funeral hearse of the fourteenth century, with its plumes and heavy carvings, as if she half expected to find a tenant. Beside the looking-glass stood open, just as it had been left, the lady’s jewel-box. Constance took out the contents, and looked at them with admiring eyes. There were rings and charms, necklaces of pearl, diamond brooches, bracelets, sprays, watches—everything that a rich gentlewoman would like to have. She put them all back, but she did not close the box; she left everything as she found it, and crept away. “These things belonged to Langley’s sister,” she whispered; “and she was one of my people—mine.”
They shut the door and descended the stairs. Again they stood together in the great empty hall, where their footsteps echoed up the broad staircase and in the roof above, and their words were repeated by mocking voices, even when they whispered, from wall to answering wall, and from the ceilings of the upper place.