Country homes -- Fiction; England -- Fiction; Revenge -- Fiction
"It was my father's room, hey?--when I was a boy, as you say. It's good
enough for his son, I suppose; and I don't ask _you_ to lie in the green
chamber."
"_I'll_ be no party, sir, if you please, to any one lying there," she
observed, with a stiff courtesy, and a sudden hectic in her cheek.
"Perhaps you mean because my door's a hundred and fifty feet away from
the front of the house, if any mischief should happen, I'm too far
away--as others were before me--to prevent it, eh?" said he, with a
flurried sneer.
"What I mean, I mean, sir--you ought not; that's all. You won't take it
amiss, Sir Jekyl--I'm an old servant--I'm sorry, sir; but I'a made up my
mind what to do."
"You're not thinking of any folly, surely? You seemed to me always too
much afraid, or whatever you call it, of the remembrance, you know, of
what you _saw_ there--eh?--_I_ don't know, of course, _what_--to speak
of it to me. I never pressed you, because you seemed--you know you
did--to have a horror; and surely you're not going now to talk among the
servants or other people. You can't be far from five-and-thirty years in
the family."
"Four-and-thirty, Sir Jekyl, next April. It's a good while; but I won't
see no more o' that; and unless the green chamber be locked up, at the
least, and used no more for a bed-room, I'd rather go, sir. Nothing may
happen, of course, Sir Jekyl--it's a hundred to one nothing _would_
happen; but ye see, sir, I've a feeling about it, sir; and there has
been these things ordered by your father that was, and by your poor
lady, as makes me feel queer. Nothing being done accordingly, and I
could not rest upon it, for sooner or later it would come to this, and
stay I could not. I judge no one--Heaven forbid,--Sir Jekyl--oh, no! my
own conscience is as much as I can look to; so sir, if you please, so
soon as you can suit yourself I'll leave, sir."
"Stuff! old Gwynn; don't mind talking to-night," said the Baronet, more
kindly than he had spoken before; "we'll see about it in the morning.
Good-night. We must not quarrel about nothing. I was only a school-boy
when you came to us, you know."
But in the morning "old Gwynn" was resolute. She was actually going, so
soon as the master could suit himself. She was not in a passion, nor in
a panic, but in a state of gloomy and ominous obstinacy.
"Well, you'll give me a little time, won't you, to look about me?" said
the Baronet, peevishly.
"Such is my intention, sir."
"And see, Gwynn, not a word about that--that green chamber, you know, to
Miss Beatrix."
"As you please, sir."
"Because if you begin to talk, they'll all think we are haunted."
"Whatever you please to order, sir."
"And it was not--it was my grandfather, you know, who built it."
"Ah, so it was, sir;" and Gwynn looked astonished and shook her head, as
though cowed by the presence of a master-spirit of evil.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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