The Grey Room Part 2

Ernest Travers, Felix Fayre-Mich.e.l.l, Tom May, and Colonel Vane followed Sir Walter upstairs to a great corridor, which ran the length of the main front, and upon which opened a dozen bedrooms and dressing-rooms.

They proceeded to the eastern extremity. It was lighted throughout, and now their leader took off an electric bulb from a sconce on the wall outside the room they had come to visit.

"There is none in there," he explained, "though the light was installed in the Grey Room as elsewhere when I started my own plant twenty years ago. My father never would have it. He disliked it exceedingly, and believed it aged the eyes."

Henry arrived with the key. The door was unlocked, and the light established. The party entered a large and lofty chamber with ceiling of elaborate plaster work and silver-grey walls, the paper on which was somewhat tarnished. A pattern of dim, pink roses as large as cabbages ran riot over it. A great oriel window looked east, while a smaller one opened upon the south. Round the curve of the oriel ran a cus.h.i.+oned seat eighteen inches above the ground, while on the western side of the room, set in the internal wall, was a modern fireplace with a white Adams mantel above it. Some old, carved chairs stood round the walls, and in one corner, stacked together, lay half a dozen old oil portraits, grimy and faded. They called for the restorer, but were doubtfully worth his labors. Two large chests of drawers, with rounded bellies, and a very beautiful was.h.i.+ng-stand also occupied places round the room, and against the inner wall rose a single, fourposter bed of Spanish chestnut, also carved. A grey, self-colored carpet covered the floor, and on one of the chests stood a miniature bronze copy of the Faun of Praxiteles.

The apartment was bright and cheerful of aspect. Nothing gloomy or depressing marked it, nor a suggestion of the sinister.

"Could one wish for a more amiable looking room?" asked Fayre-Mich.e.l.l.

They gazed round them, and Ernest Travers expressed admiration at the old furniture.

"My dear Walter, why hide these things here?" he asked. "They are beautiful, and may be valuable, too."

"I've been asked the same question before," answered the owner. "And they are valuable. Lord Bolsover offered me a thousand guineas for those two chairs; but the things are heirlooms in a sort of way, and I shouldn't feel justified in parting with them. My grandfather was furniture mad--spent half his time collecting old stuff on the Continent. Spain was his happy hunting ground."

"It's positively a shame to doom these chairs to a haunted room, uncle,"

declared Henry.

But the other shook his head and smothered a yawn.

"The house is too full as it is." he said.

"Mary wants you to sc.r.a.p dozens of things," replied his nephew. "Then there'd be plenty of room."

"You'll do what you please when your turn comes, and no doubt cast out my tusks and antlers and tiger-skins, which I know you don't admire.

Wait in patience, Henry. And we will now go to bed," answered the elder.

"I am fatigued, and it must be nearly midnight."

Then Tom May brought their thoughts back to the reason of the visit.

"Look here, governor," he said. "It's a scandal to give a champion room like this a bad name and shut it up. You've fallen into the habit, but you know it's all nonsense. Mary loves this room. I'll make you a sporting offer. Let me sleep in it to-night, and then, when I report a clean bill to-morrow, you can throw it open again and announce it is forgiven without a stain on its character. You've just said you don't believe spooks have the power to hurt anybody. Then let me turn in here."

Sir Walter, however, refused.

"No, Tom; most certainly not. It's far too late to go over the ground again and explain why, but I don't wish it."

"A milder-mannered room was never seen," said Ernest Travers. "You must let me look at it by daylight, and bring Nelly. The ceiling, too, is evidently very fine--finer even than the one in my room."

"The ceilings here were all the work of Italians in Tudor times,"

explained his friend. "They are Elizabethan. The plaster is certainly wonderful, and my ceilings are considered as good as anything in the country, I believe."

He turned, and the rest followed him.

Henry removed the electric bulb, and restored it to its place outside.

Then his uncle gave him the key.

"Put it back in the cabinet," he said. "I won't go down again."

The party broke up, and all save Lennox and the sailor went to their rooms. The two younger men descended together and, when out of ear-shot of his uncle, Henry spoke.

"Look here, Tom," he said, "you've given me a tip. I'm going to camp out in the Grey Room to-night. Then, in the morning, I'll tell Uncle Walter I have done so, and the ghost's number will be up."

"Quite all right, old man--only the plan must be modified. I'll sleep there. I'm death on it, and the brilliant inspiration was mine, remember."

"You can't. He refused to let you."

"I didn't hear him."

"Oh, yes, you did--everybody did. Besides, this is fairly my task--you won't deny that. Chadlands will be mine, some day, so it's up to me to knock this musty yarn on the head once and for all. Could anything be more absurd than shutting up a fine room like that? I'm really rather ashamed of Uncle Walter."

"Of course it's absurd but, honestly, I'm rather keen about this. I'd dearly love to add a medieval phantom to my experiences, and only wish I thought anything would show up. I beg you'll raise no objection. It was my idea, and I very much wish to make the experiment. Of course, I don't believe in anything supernatural."

They went back to the billiard-room, dismissed Fred Caunter, the footman, who was waiting to put out the lights, and continued their discussion. The argument began to grow strenuous, for each proved determined, and who owned the stronger will seemed a doubtful question.

For a time, since no conclusion could satisfy both, they abandoned the centre of contention and debated, as their elders had done, on the general question. Henry declared himself not wholly convinced. He adopted an agnostic att.i.tude, while Tom frankly disbelieved. The one preserved an open mind, the other scoffed at apparitions in general.

"It's humbug to say sailors are superst.i.tious now," he a.s.serted. "They might have been, but my experience is that they are no more credulous than other people in these days. Anyway, I'm not. Life is a matter of chemistry. There's no mumbo jumbo about it, in my opinion. Chemical a.n.a.lysis has reached down to hormones and enzymes and all manner of subtle secretions discovered by this generation of inquirers; but it's all organic. n.o.body has ever found anything that isn't. Existence depends on matter, and when the chemical process breaks down, the organism perishes and leaves nothing. When a man can't go on breathing, he's dead, and there's an end of him."

But Henry had read modern science also.

"What about the vital spark, then? Biologists don't turn down the theory of vitalism, do they?"

"Most of them do, who count, my dear chap. The presence of a vital spark--a spark that cannot be put out--is merely a theory with nothing to prove it. When he dies, the animating principle doesn't leave a man, and go off on its own. It dies too. It was part of the man--as much as his heart or brain."

"That's only an opinion. n.o.body can be positive. We don't know anything about what life really means, and we haven't got the machinery to find out."

"By a.n.a.logy we can," argued Tom. "Where are you going to draw the line?

Life is life, and a sponge is just as much alive as a herring; a nettle is just as much alive as an oak-tree; and an oak-tree is just as much alive as you are. What becomes of its vital spark when you eat an oyster?"

"You wouldn't believe in a life after death at all, then?"

"It's a pure a.s.sumption, Henry. I'd like to believe in it--who wouldn't?

Because, if you honestly did, it would transform this life into something infinitely different from what it is."

"It ought to--yet it doesn't seem to."

"It ought to, certainly. If you believe this life is only the portal to another of much greater importance, then--well, there you are. Nothing matters but trying to make everybody else believe it, too. But as a matter of fact, the people who do believe it, or think they do, seem to me just as concentrated on this life and just as much out to get the very best they can from it, and wring it dry, as I am, who reckon it's all."

"They believe as a matter of course, and don't seem to realize how much their belief ought to imply," confessed Henry.

"Why do they believe? Because most of them haven't really thought about it more than a turnip thinks. They dwell in a foggy sort of way on the future life when they go to church on Sundays; then they return home and forget all about it till next Sunday."

Lennox brought him back to the present difference.

"Well, seeing you laugh at ghosts, and I remain doubtful, it's only fair that I sleep in the Grey Room. You must see that. Ghosts hate people who don't believe in them. They'd cold shoulder you; but in my case they might feel I was good material, worth convincing. They might show up for me in a friendly spirit. If they show for you, it will probably be to bully you."