She seemed to shrink unaccountably from speaking the word which gave me the right to claim her, confessing that she dreaded it not for her own sake, but for mine alone, which struck me as an unpleasantly morbid trait in so young a girl.
Again and again I protested that I was willing to run all risks—as I was—and again and again she resisted, though always more faintly, until at last my efforts were successful, and I forced from her lips the assent which was of so much importance to me.
But it cost her a great effort, and I believe she even swooned immediately afterwards; but this is only conjecture, as I lost no time in seeking Sir Paul and clenching the matter before Chlorine had time to retract.
He heard what I had to tell him with a strange light of triumph and relief in his weary eyes. “You have made an old man very happy and hopeful,” he said. “I ought, even now to deter you, but I am too selfish for that. And you are young and brave and ardent; why need we despair? I suppose,” he added, looking keenly at me, “you would prefer as little delay as possible?”
“I should indeed,” I replied. I was pleased, for I had not expected to find him so sensible as that.
“Then leave all preliminaries to me; when the day and time have been settled, I will let you know. As you are aware, it will be necessary to have your signature to this document; and here, my boy, I must in conscience warn you solemnly that by signing you make your decision irrevocable—irrevocable, you understand?”
When I had heard this, I need scarcely say that I was all eagerness to sign; so great was my haste that I did not even try to decipher the somewhat crabbed and antiquated writing in which the terms of the agreement were set out.
I was anxious to impress the baronet with a sense of my gentlemanly feeling and the confidence I had in him, while I naturally presumed that, since the contract was binding upon me, the baronet would, as a man of honour, hold it equally conclusive on his own side.
As I look back upon it now, it seems simply extraordinary that I should have been so easily satisfied, have taken so little pains to find out the exact position in which I was placing myself; but, with the ingenuous confidence of youth, I fell an easy victim, as I was to realise later with terrible enlightenment.
“Say nothing of this to Chlorine,” said Sir Paul, as I handed him the document signed, “until the final arrangements are made; it will only distress her unnecessarily.”
I wondered why at the time, but I promised to obey, supposing that he knew best, and for some days after that I made no mention to Chlorine of the approaching day which was to witness our union.
As we were continually together, I began to regard her with an esteem which I had not thought possible at first. Her looks improved considerably under the influence of happiness, and I found she could converse intelligently enough upon several topics, and did not bore me nearly as much as I was fully prepared for.
And so the time passed less heavily, until one afternoon the baronet took me aside mysteriously. “Prepare yourself, Augustus” (they had all learned to call me Augustus), he said; “all is arranged. The event upon which our dearest hopes depend is fixed for tomorrow—in the Grey Chamber of course, and at midnight.”
I thought this a curious time and place for the ceremony, but I had divined his eccentric passion for privacy and retirement, and only imagined that he had procured some very special form of licence.
“But you do not know the Grey Chamber,” he added. “Come with me, and I will show you where it is.” And he led me up the broad staircase, and, stopping at the end of a passage before an immense door covered with black baize and studded with brass nails, which gave it a hideous resemblance to a gigantic coffin lid, he pressed a spring, and it fell slowly back.
I saw a long dim gallery, whose very existence nothing in the external appearance of the mansion had led me to suspect; it led to a heavy oaken door with cumbrous plates and fastenings of metal.
“Tomorrow night is Christmas Eve, as you are doubtless aware,” he said in a hushed voice. “At twelve, then, you will present yourself at yonder door—the door of the Grey Chamber—where you must fulfil the engagement you have made.”
I was surprised at his choosing such a place for the ceremony; it would have been more cheerful in the long drawing room; but it was evidently a whim of his, and I was too happy to think of opposing it. I hastened at once to Chlorine, with her father’s sanction, and told her that the crowning moment of both our lives was fixed at last.
The effect of my announcement was astonishing: she fainted, for which I remonstrated with her as soon as she came to herself. “Such extreme sensitiveness, my love,” I could not help saying, “may be highly creditable to your sense of maidenly propriety, but allow me to say that I can scarcely regard it as a compliment.”
“Augustus,” she said, “you must not think I doubt you; and yet—and yet—the ordeal will be a severe one for you.”
“I will steel my nerves,” I said grimly (for I was annoyed with her); “and, after all, Chlorine, the ceremony is not invariably fatal; I have heard of the victim surviving it—occasionally.”
“How brave you are!” she said earnestly. “I will imitate you, Augustus; I too will hope.”
I really thought her insane, which alarmed me for the validity of the marriage. “Yes, I am weak, foolish, I know,” she continued; “but oh, I shudder so when I think of you, away in that gloomy Grey Chamber, going through it all alone!”
This confirmed my worst fears. No wonder her parents felt grateful to me for relieving them of such a responsibility! “May I ask where you intend to be at the time?” I inquired very quietly.
“You will not think us unfeeling,” she replied, “but dear papa considered that such anxiety as ours would be scarcely endurable did we not seek some distraction from it; and so, as a special favour, he has procured evening orders for Sir John Soane’s Museum in Lincoln’s Inn Fields, where we shall drive immediately after dinner.”
I knew that the proper way to treat the insane was by reasoning with them gently, so as to place their own absurdity clearly before them. “If you are forgetting your anxiety in Sir John Soane’s Museum, while I cool my heels in the Grey Chamber,” I said, “is it probable that any clergyman will be induced to perform the marriage ceremony? Did you really think two people can be united separately?”
She was astonished this time. “You are joking!” she cried; “you cannot really believe that we are to be married in—in the Grey Chamber?”
“Then will you tell me where we are to be married?” I asked. “I think I have the right to know—it can hardly be at the Museum!”
She turned upon me with a sudden misgiving; “I could almost fancy,” she said anxiously, “that this is no feigned ignorance. Augustus, your aunt sent you a message—tell me, have you read it?”
Now, owing to McFadden’s want of consideration, this was my one weak point—I had not read it, and thus I felt myself upon delicate ground. The message evidently related to business of importance which was to be transacted in this Grey Chamber, and as the genuine McFadden clearly knew all about it, it would have been simply suicidal to confess my own ignorance.
“Why of course, darling, of course,” I said hastily. “You must think no more of my silly joke; there is something I have to arrange in the Grey Chamber before I can call you mine. But, tell me, why does it make you so uneasy?” I added, thinking it might be prudent to find out beforehand what formality was expected from me.
“I cannot help it—no, I cannot!” she cried, “the test is so searching—are you sure that you are prepared at all points? I overheard my father say that no precaution could safely be neglected. I have such a terrible foreboding that, after all, this may come between us.”
It