Mildred Arkell: A Novel. Vol. 2 (of 3)Wood, Henry, Mrs.
General
Mildred Arkell: A Novel. Vol. 2 (of 3)
Wood, Henry, Mrs.
Fiction
"And I must be here until morning," his conviction whispered. "O God!
keep this terror from me! Send thine Holy Spirit to come near and
strengthen me! Oh, yes, yes," he resumed, after a pause; "I shall be
all right if I do but trust in God. He is everywhere; He is with me now.
I will go up to the organ again."
He groped his way up, sat down, and began to play as well as he could in
the perfect darkness. He played some of the cathedral chants, and sang
to them; it was a curious sound, echoing there in the dark and lonely
night; and it was a positive fact that, in so doing, his superstitious
alarm passed, from his mind.
But oh, how long the hours were! how long the quarters, as the slow
clock gave them out! He still kept on playing, dreading to leave off
lest the terror should come back again. When it struck nine, he could
have thought it four in the morning, judging by the dreary time that
seemed to have elapsed. "The boys will be going up to bed directly," he
said, thinking of the master's; "oh, why don't they send out to look for
me? But they'd never think of looking here!"
He kept on playing. About ten o'clock he knelt down to say his prayers,
as if preparing to retire for the night, and then ensconced himself as
comfortably as he could on the seat of the singers, which was well
cushioned. "If I could but go to sleep, and sleep till daylight,"
thought he, "there would be no chance of that foolish terror coming back
again. Foolish indeed! How very absurd I am!"
He fell into a train of thought; not happy thought: schoolboys have
trouble as well as grown people: and Henry Arkell had plenty just then,
as you know. The superstitious feeling did not come back, and at length
he sank into sleep.
He did not know what roused him: something did. The first thing he heard
distinctly was a scuffling noise, followed by a "hush-sh-sh!" breathed
from a human voice. He felt a cramped sensation all over, but that arose
from his inconvenient couch, and he could not for the life of him
remember where he was.
He stretched out his hand, and it came in contact with the front of the
gallery; it was close to him, for the singers' seat was very narrow: he
raised himself to look over, still not remembering what had passed. He
seemed to be in a church, for one of two male figures, walking up the
aisle, carried a lighted taper, which threw its glimmering upon the
pews, though the man shaded it with his hand. Whether Henry Arkell had
been dreaming of robbers, certain it is, he judged these men to be such:
they turned off to the vestry, which was on the side of the church,
nearly at the top; and he rubbed his eyes, and full recollection
returned to him.
"What has put robbers in my head?" he debated. "They are not robbers:
they must be come to look for me. But they stole up as if they were
robbers!" he added after a pause. "And why did they not call out to me?"
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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