It was just the same with our
chaplain when I spoke to him. He said the portrait had been done
centuries before my uncle was born, and called the prophecy
doggerel and nonsense. I used to argue with him on the latter
point, asking why we Catholics, who believed that the gift of
working miracles had never departed from certain favored persons,
might not just as well believe that the gift of prophecy had
never departed, either? He would not dispute with me; he would
only say that I must not waste time in thinking of such trifles;
that I had more imagination than was good for me, and must
suppress instead of exciting it. Such advice as this only
irritated my curiosity. I determined secretly to search
throughout the oldest uninhabited part of the Abbey, and to try
if I could not find out from forgotten family records what the
portrait was, and when the prophecy had been first written or
uttered. Did you ever pass a day alone in the long-deserted
chambers of an ancient house?"
"Never! such solitude as that is not at all to my taste."
"Ah! what a life it was when I began my search. I should like to
live it over again. Such tempting suspense, such strange
discoveries, such wild fancies, such inthralling terrors, all
belonged to that life. Only think of breaking open the door of a
room which no living soul had entered before you for nearly a
hundred years; think of the first step forward into a region of
airless, awful stillness, where the light falls faint and sickly
through closed windows and rotting curtains; think of the ghostly
creaking of the old floor that cries out on you for treading on
it, step as softly as you will; think of arms, helmets, weird
tapestries of by-gone days, that seem to be moving out on you
from the walls as you first walk up to them in the dim light;
think of prying into great cabinets and iron-clasped chests, not
knowing what horrors may appear when you tear them open; of
poring over their contents till twilight stole on you and
darkness grew terrible in the lonely place; of trying to leave
it, and not being able to go, as if something held you; of wind
wailing at you outside; of shadows darkening round you, and
closing you up in obscurity within--only think of these things,
and you may imagine the fascination of suspense and terror in
such a life as mine was in those past days.
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