CHAPTER XIII.

THE DEPARTURE OF SIR JOHN POLLEXFEN.

But now the day was drawing near which had been fixed by Sir John Pollexfen in his will as that on which his body should be committed to the vault where the bones of several generations of his ancestors already reposed. Sir John would soon have been dead twenty years. On the twentieth anniversary of his decease, his body would leave Dupley Walls for ever.

That this day had long been looked forward to by Lady Pollexfen, Janet was well aware.

The fierce old woman had often declared that not till the dead body of her husband should be removed from Dupley Walls, would the curse that had rested on the house from the day of his death be lifted off it, and rendered powerless for further harm.

In one of the galleries was a portrait of Sir John, which during the last twelve months had been visited daily by Lady Pollexfen. Every time she visited it, she made a practice of sticking a pin through some part of the figure, and leaving it there.

"One day less, Sir John, before the worms claim you as their own," was her usual remark on these occasions.

And then she would nod her head and jeer at the painted semblance of her dead husband.

"We shall have quite a little jubilee the day you leave us, by which you may judge how grieved we shall be to part from you. Another pin. Oh! that you could feel them, and that I could thus repay you in part for some of the thousands of heart-aches you caused me when you were alive!"

After she began to recover from the state of mental and bodily prostration into which she had sunk when no longer sustained by the excitement consequent on the search for the Diamond, she was not long before she was about again, apparently as well and strong as she had been for the last year or two. But to Janet it seemed that much of her strength was factitious, and that it did not arise from any real improvement in her health, but rather from the necessity which seemed to sit so heavily upon her of being up and doing on the day of Sir John's departure. To be lying weak and ill in bed on such a day would have seemed like an acknowledgment of regret for the departure of her husband to which her proud spirit could by no means submit.

She spoke nothing but the truth when she said that she so thoroughly detested the memory of the man, that it would be a day of jubilee for her when his body was borne out of her sight for ever.

She was probably influenced in her determination by another reason, but one which she would have been slow to acknowledge even to herself.

Her mind was powerfully impressed with the idea, that not only was the lifeless body of her husband under the roof of Dupley Walls, but that the house was haunted by his incorporeal presence; that, in fact, his spirit was doomed to wander unrestingly in and about the old house so long as his body--in accordance with his own foolish wish--remained unburied and unsanctified by the rites of Christian sepulture.

Hence the strange habit into which she had fallen of addressing her husband as though he were standing, an invisible presence, close by her elbow, and was cognizant of all she said.

It could not be other than a source of satisfaction to Janet to know that her midnight visits to the Black Room were so soon to come to an end. The duty she had there to perform was one which not even the custom of years could have rendered otherwise than distasteful to her. She never could quite conquer the superstitious thrill which touched her from head to foot every time she opened the door of the dreaded room. She never could quite get over the feeling that an unseen pair of eyes was watching her from behind the funereal drapery that clothed the walls. She could never descend the stairs on her way back to the habitable regions of the house without a nervous shiver at the thought that perhaps some shadowy hand was being put forth to clutch her from behind, Janet could not, therefore, be otherwise than pleased to think that the silent tenant of Dupley Walls would so soon have to find another and a more permanent home.

Lady Pollexfen had named the date a month beforehand which was fixed for the removal of Sir John.

At length the last midnight arrived. Janet had been reading to her ladyship, and when the clock pointed to five minutes to twelve she shut the book and rose to go.

"I will go with you to-night," said her ladyship, who to all appearance had been dozing for the last half hour, although Janet had not on that account been allowed to lay down her book.

So arm-in-arm the two went slowly up the long staircases with many a halt to gather breath. At length the door of the Black Room was reached and opened. Preceded by her ladyship Janet went in. While she went about her customary duty, Lady Pollexfen stood sternly erect, resting her crossed hands on the head of her cane, and gazing with hard unmoved countenance on the coffin of her dead husband.

Janet in her twilight walk through the garden a few hours previously had found a couple of late roses. These she had plucked and had fastened them into the bosom of her dress: she now took them out of her dress, and laid them reverently on the coffin.

"What are you about, child?" cried Lady Pollexfen in her most imperious tones. "Flowers are not for such as he. Take them away. For him you should bring the deadly nightshade and hemlock, and all plants that are hurtful to human life. There are some men, child, that, like the fatal upas tree, have power to blight and poison all who come within their influence. Such a man was he who is nailed up in that box. He blighted my life; he poisoned my son's life, and drove him abroad to die in a strange land; he withered the lives of my two daughters, and not content with the evil which he did while living, he left his dead body as a curse that should haunt my life for twenty wretched years. That term is now at an end, and after to-morrow I shall grow twenty years younger, feeling and knowing that neither in time nor in eternity will his baneful presence ever haunt me again."

Suddenly she clutched Janet by the arm, and drew the girl closer to her. "He is there!" she said--"there, behind the black curtains, watching me, listening to every word that I say--as he used to watch and listen when he was alive. There is the same meanness, the same low trickery about him now that he is dead that marked him when he was living. He often visits me--often talks to me--and although he will not acknowledge it, I know that when once his body shall be laid in the vault at Dene Folly, I shall have seen and spoken with him for the last time. To-night, child, you must sit by my bedside all night long, and read aloud from some godly book. Then he will have no power to come near me or harm me. But you must not go to sleep nor cease your reading till you see the first streaks of daylight in the east: after that we are safe. I said he was there. See how yonder curtain stirs and flutters. He will not show himself because you are here. It is only I, I who was his miserable wife for twenty-three long years, that he cares to torment. But come. Let us tarry here no longer. This is his last night, thank heaven! beneath the roof of Dupley Walls."

They went downstairs together as they had come, arm-in-arm, her ladyship shaking her head and mumbling to herself all the way as she went. Then she got into bed, and Janet sat by her side all night, reading aloud from a "godly book," while the old woman lay without stirring, with wide-staring solemn eyes that seemed to be gazing on some far-away picture, the subject of which was known to herself alone.

To Mr. Madgin was entrusted the charge of conveying the body of Sir John Pollexfen to its final resting-place at Dene Folly, forty miles away; and Mr. Madgin was to be the sole "mourner" on the occasion. So Lady Pollexfen willed it. The body was to leave Dupley Walls at midnight, and be conveyed to the nearest railway station. After a journey of thirty miles by rail it would be met by another hearse and mourning-coach by means of which the third and last stage of the journey would be accomplished.

At a quarter to twelve precisely a hearse and mourning-coach drew up before the main entrance to Dupley Walls. The door was thrown open, and Mr. Madgin--solemn, dignified--glided in, followed by a number of familiars in black. Still led by Mr. Madgin, they trooped up the grand staircase like so many birds of evil omen hastening to some unholy feast. Not long were they away. Presently they reappeared, carrying on their shoulders the burden for which they had come. Slowly and carefully they descended the stairs, and were just crossing the hall on their way out, when an imperious voice commanded, them to halt.

There, in the opposite gallery, stood the weird figure of Lady Pollexfen, her palsied head working awfully, her skinny hands trembling with nervous excitement, and the gems on her fingers scintillating in the lamplight. She was attired in her bridal dress of white satin and lace--a dress which she had not worn for forty-three years. Her black wig was gaily trimmed with flowers and scraps of lace, and in one hand she carried a large bouquet. A foot or two behind her stood Miss Holme.

She had commanded the bearers to halt, and they now stood gazing with wonder on this strange apparition. "In that shell lies the body of my husband, Sir John Pollexfen," she began, speaking in clear high-bred tones that could be plainly heard by everyone there. "He died twenty years ago this very day. When he died, there was not even one eye to weep for him, or one heart to mourn for him. All who had known him were glad that they should never see him more. By a most unholy will he devised that his body should be kept unburied for the space of twenty years, and that under whatever roof I might choose to reside he also should there find a resting-place for the time being; the dead and the living were, in fact, to keep each other company all that time. Should I fail in carrying out his commands, the whole of the property left thus conditionally to me, was to pass away to others. I have carried out his commands; but here, to-night, in presence of you strangers, and with my eyes fixed for the last time on that coffin, I say to you, deliberately and solemnly: Would that I had never been born rather than have married that man! Would that I had died on my wedding-day rather than have had children to call him father! Would that I had died on the day that he died rather than have undertaken the burden which his wicked commands laid on my shoulders! I hate myself because I bear his name. I hate this house because it has sheltered him. Take his wretched body away out of my sight for ever!"

The procession moved slowly forward across the hall, and out through the great door. A minute or two later, and hearse and coach set out on their midnight journey through the park. Then the great door was shut and locked by the solemn butler; and the same moment Lady Pollexfen staggered, and would have fallen to the ground had not Janet sprung forward in time to catch her as she fell.