Help via Ko-Fi
THE CHAIR THAT SMILED
BY EDITH RICKERT
"THIS room," said the housekeeper, "is never shown."
The tourist whom she had been conducting through the long upper gallery of Selward House stood obstinately in front of the low oaken door to which she referred.
"It is not a private apartment?" he insinuated. "I should particularly like to see it." He held out a sovereign as inducement.
Mrs. Green turned her back upon the golden temptation and said haughtily: "It is not in my power, sir. The room has not been opened since I can remember."
She turned to move on, but the visitor remained standing with his feet wide apart and his hands in his pockets. His boots, his clothes and his chin proclaimed him a successful American.
"Indeed?" he said. "That is odd. But I suppose there is always a way to do these things. Is Sir Charles at home?"
She was obliged to come back to him: "No, sir, he has gone to the meet."
"And you are sure you have no key that would unlock the door?"
"I know my own keys, sir."
He shifted his ground: "Well, is there no other member of the family——?" He absently played with several gold coins in one palm.
"There's only Miss Elizabeth, sir; she's in the garden. But I couldn't trouble her——"
The American's face suddenly twinkled: "See here, my good woman, if you'll kindly get the young lady to step up here, I'll bet you fifty dollars—that's ten pounds—she'll find a way to let me into that room! And if she doesn't, you shall have the fifty anyway. So you stand to win in either case."
If Mrs. Green thought she was dealing with a madman, the two notes that he held out to her vouched for a degree of sanity. Besides, she reflected, she ran no risk except of Miss Elizabeth's anger. The young lady knew no more than herself where the key of the room was kept—if indeed it had not been lost before any of them was born.
She pressed a button in the wall, and to the footman who appeared gave the brief direction that he should look for Miss Elizabeth in the garden and ask her whether she would be so kind as to come to the house a moment.
She then conducted the persistent intruder back to the entrance-hall, and with him awaited her lady's pleasure.
He was especially interested in a full-length portrait that hung over the chimney-piece.
"That was the first Sir Charles," she told him, "who founded the fortune of the family and built the house in the days of Queen Elizabeth."
"Is it allowable to ask how he obtained the money?" asked the American, with a curious, dry smile.
"In the wars against Spain," she answered curtly.
"Indeed? And the present Sir Charles—any resemblance?"
"Sir Charles is clean-shaven." Only the promise of the two five-pound notes kept her civil.
He moved to the next portrait: "And the red-haired young lady dipped in pearls is the founder's daughter?"
"His wife," began the housekeeper, but was interrupted by a fresh voice, asking haughtily: "Did you wish to see me?" He turned to face a pretty girl in white linen, not so unlike the portrait he had been studying.
"Miss Selward?" He bowed and handed her a card upon which she read the name Ramon Stanley, and a New York address.
"I must plead a desire to see your secret chamber—not due, as you might suppose, to idle curiosity." He paused and began again, with his curious smile, "What should you say if I were to tell you exactly what is, in that room?"
SHE looked at him with some slight interest: "Cobwebs, I should say. How do you know? I never was in it myself and I don't know what's there—do you, Green?"
"No, madam," said the housekeeper, "but I have heard my grandfather tell as how it was haunted. He used to say as your grandmother, Lady Maria, was the last as ever entered the room. What she saw nobody ever knew, but she came out screaming and was took with convulsions and died within the day. It hasn't been unlocked in my time—not to my knowledge."
"Do you know whether there is a key?" asked Miss Elizabeth, with evident curiosity; and as Mrs. Green shook her head, she turned to the stranger: "At least, I should be interested to hear you tell what you think there is in the room."
"I don't think," said he. "I know, almost as well as if I'd seen 'em. I may be wrong in a few details. There's a Trig round table covered with gilt and embossed leather, supported by three lions of painted leather."
"Leather!" exclaimed the girl.
"And lions!" gasped the housekeeper.
"Over this should be hanging seven lamps—also of leather—representing the Seven Deadly Sins; if they were lighted, the flame would come out of the mouth of each——"
The girl was wide-eyed now and Mrs. Green dumb with amazement.
"On the table," he pursued calmly, "is a big wine flagon built like a Spanish galleon of the Armada—also of leather. And a dozen—there should be a dozen—tankards shaped and painted like grinning faces, with pointed hats for their covers."
"Still of leather?" asked Miss Selward.
"All of leather," said he. "And round the table are leather chairs, a dozen of them, shaped and painted to look like men, so that when you sit down you seem to sink into the arms of a human being—so I understand——"
"Of all the madness!" exclaimed Miss Selward.
"For that reason," said Mr. Stanley, "you can perhaps pardon my eagerness to learn whether I am right. Not that I have much doubt myself. But. I thought it worth a trip across the ocean to make sure."
"Tell me how you knew," she commanded.
He considered a moment: "There would be no point in my doing that until the case is proven. Afterward, I should be bound to explain." He added meditatively: "And each of the chairs has a ring on the forefinger of the left hand; and all the faces have eyes that follow you round the room, and one, it is said, has a smile that comes and goes——" He stopped and added with a change of tone, "I'm not making up all this stuff, you know."
Miss Selward hesitated: "Have you any theory as to how my grandmother came by her death?"
He answered without hesitation:. "Yes, a theory—which the room itself would prove or disprove."
Miss Selward made up her mind: "Green, I'm going to have a look for that key in the study. I know where father keeps all his keys—it can't do any harm. Do you suppose it's labeled 'Haunted Chamber'?"
She moved away, followed by the housekeeper's protest—words quickly muffled, however, by the arrival of the promised notes in her palm.
Stanley had had time to examine all the portraits in the hall before Miss Selward came back breathless: "They were all labeled but these," she said. "Father's most methodical. I don't believe he knows what these are himself. They are clumsy and old enough—it's a chance."
She ran up the wide oak stairway, quickly followed by Stanley; and by the time that Mrs. Green had labored up to them in the gallery they had already tried and rejected half the bunch.
Suddenly Stanley, who had been wrestling with the stiff lock, looked at the girl: "It turned!"
"Open—open!" she cried eagerly. Still he hesitated: "Do you know, I don't quite like to; I begin to doubt my own statements now. I'm afraid I shall be made out a liar after all."
However, he was perhaps unconsciously pushing harder than he realized, for a mere touch of her hand above his bent shoulder sent the door inward with a crash.
The room was darkened by a green curtain hung across a large window opposite the door, but this curtain was full of rifts and holes that admitted strong rays and patches of light.
Miss Selward, who had leaned eagerly forward, fell back with a suppressed scream and clutched the housekeeper's arm. Stanley himself, looking in, gripped the doorpost hard, so strong was the illusion upon him that a company of men sat drinking at the round table, while over their heads shadowy monstrous dragons or crocodiles threatened descent upon them.
The next moment, triumph was uppermost. "By George!" said he. "What did I tell you?"
"Mercy on us!" ejaculated the plump housekeeper, feeling that the emergency was altogether beyond her. "Shall I ring for help, madam?"
"What for?" asked Stanley. "No, we'll just wait to get a little live air into the place, so that we don't all die of suffocation; and then we'll look round and see how nearly I was right."
The air that came out into the draughty corridor was peculiarly dead, full of dry rot, attesting that the room and its windows had been shut for generations.
STANLEY was the first to enter. With a careful avoidance of the ghastly seated figures, he crossed to the large window and cautiously tugged to draw one of the green curtains aside. It first resisted, then tore under his hand with a great cloud of dust, then gave way above so that he had barely time to dodge its folds. Half blinded and choked, he groped his way back to the gallery, where the two women stood coughing, the younger with her handkerchief over her mouth.
"One good thing," said Stanley, when he could speak, "the germs are probably as dead as the air. Shall we explore further?"
"I'm not sure that we oughtn't to wait until my father returns," said Miss Selward. But curiosity overcame her: "There can be no harm in looking."
"I want to prove that my list was right," said Stanley, whose eyes had been busy. "Look now, isn't it so? Here is the leather table supported by lions; on it the galleon and the twelve leering mugs; above it the seven Deadly Sins to give light; and round it the twelve chairs like Elizabethan dandies with frills and slashes. They have even the rings that I spoke of on their forefingers. By George notice their eyes—they look alive! Can you make out which is the one that smiles?"
He went from one chair to another trying to discover minute differences in their seeming sameness. Suddenly Miss Selward said faintly: "Open—the window—please!"
While he struggled with the rusty catch he heard a slight thud and turned in time to see her sway and fall into the chair at the head of the table.
For a moment he was paralyzed, not at the sight of her fair head drooping sideways over the leather arm, but at the expression of the painted chair-back that looked and leered above her shoulder. There could be no doubt which chair it was that smiled!
"For God's sake," he cried to the housekeeper, as he rushed toward the two women, "get her out of that!"
But Mrs. Green stood like a wooden image, and Miss Selward straightened herself with an effort to speak naturally: "I'm all right; I was only a little faint. Do you know, this ring looks as if it were set with real rubies? And it's loose—I believe it would come off——"
She got no further, for Stanley was bending over her, white as chalk. Before she could exclaim, he had caught her by the arms and dragged her from her place so violently that they both nearly fell over. To save them, he clutched at the table and set all the tankards rattling. The nearest one rolled to the floor. From one of the dragons above something was jarred loose and fell with a snap on the table, but nobody looked at it. Both women stared at the stranger, who was wiping his forehead, with his eyes shut. "By George!" said he. "That was a near go!"
Miss Selward was the first to recover her composure. "Now," she said, "will you kindly explain?"
Stanley opened his eyes with a slight start: "It's all right—only don't sit down again. That was the Queen's chair. You mustn't sit in the Queen's chair."
"What queen?" said she.
"Elizabeth. That's the chair that smiled. No mistake about it. I saw it plain as day."
Miss Selward looked back at it. "It isn't smiling now," she said gravely. "You must have imagined. In fact, I'm not sure now which of these two I sat in. But I can soon tell; it was the one on which the ring was loose."
She turned to see, but Stanley caught her arm without ceremony: "Don't! Wait till I tell you something."
Her attention was diverted by a clatter of hoofs in the court below the open window. "That will be my father," she said, and then: "Green, will you go down and ask Sir Charles to step up here at once? And not a word to the servants, please."
The wooden image came to life with a gasp of relief and waited for no second telling.
"Now," said Miss Selward.
"Perhaps you did not notice," said Stanley, "that my Christian name is Ramon?"
She nodded. "Spanish," she said. "I wondered a little."
"I am of Spanish descent," said he, and in that moment she saw his race in the quality of his bearing. "But my people, have been settled in America for generations. You have no idea how this furniture came to be here? No? Well, I have the story of it in a small tin box full of parchments—three hundred years old and more. The family didn't know what was in them—we've always been country gentlemen, not scholars; but when I went home from Johns Hopkins I stumbled upon the box in my father's safe and tried to figure out the contents. They were written partly in Spanish and partly in Latin, but I couldn't make much of 'em, so I got the bright idea of bringing 'em over to an expert at the British Museum. Now I have neat copies in duplicate, one of which I shall be happy to lend your father some day—if he is interested. Among the papers was a plan of this house as built by the first Sir Charles, and an inventory of the contents of this room. Hence my visit to-day."
"But how in the world——?"
"It's easy when you know. Your ancestor happened to be an ardent admirer of Queen Elizabeth; mine, the first Raymond Stanley—he was an Irishman in the service of King Philip of Spain—happened to be one of the countless victims of Mary Stuart."
"It sounds like a fairy-tale!" she breathed with parted lips.
"IT'S plain history," said he, "the kind of fact that's stranger than fiction. Just listen to this. When poor old Philip found his Armada show was no good, he was pretty near broken-hearted; and that was the time Raymond Stanley went to him with a neat scheme for revenge on his old enemy Elizabeth—a little gift of furniture for her palace of Hampton Court, or Staines, or where you like. He had happened to come upon a leather-worker—of Cordova, I think it was—and between them they devised this pretty suite for the Queen and her maids of honor. There's a little delicate irony in the design, do you see?—a hint at the taste of the Virgin Queen and her ladies for the knees of courtiers, in the light of the Seven Deadly Sins—that's pretty near a brilliant idea, isn't it? Not to speak of serving the wine in a Spanish galleon.
"I don't know whether the plan was to drug the drink—plenty of dare-devils about, seminary priests and others, who would have undertaken it for a handful of silver. I could tell you the names of some of them—English and Irish soldiers of fortune, Harry Young and Hugh Cahill, Moody, Walpole, Edmund Yorke—a dozen or more, generally of Sir William Stanley's regiment. Sir William was Raymond's uncle—but never mind all that; you shall read it later. This splendid gift was shipped for England-under Captain Middleton, I believe; and Raymond Stanley and some of the others went with it. Off Ushant they encountered an English man-of-war, commanded by one Captain Charles Selward——"
"Ah!" said the girl. "Now I begin to——"
"They fought—naturally. Selward was the better seaman—the Maria Reina was pillaged and sunk—most of the crew drowned. Middleton and Raymond Stanley were picked up by French fishermen. Afterward Stanley came to England in disguise and by his own account haunted Selward House awhile, trying to get possession of his stuff or to take revenge on the English captain, whom he terms 'that insufferable pirate and enemy of God.' He failed. In fact, in our old papers—written for his son with the express command that that young man should follow up the feud as he saw his chance—he says that Selward, with the aid of the devil, saw through the plan and betrayed it to the Queen, who thereupon was so 'mewed up in her chamber' that no stranger could come into her presence. When he found that the Queen had not only knighted Sir Charles but had bestowed the furniture upon him for his pains, he lost heart, and went back to Spain. His son may have been a lazy rascal or a pious chap—anyway, nothing happened except that the papers and the name Raymond in its Spanish form have been handed down until now."
"But why did he want the Queen to have the furniture? And why were you so alarmed when I sat in that chair?" asked the practical Miss Selward.
"That's the cream of the plot," said Stanley, but was interrupted by the sound of heavy footsteps in the corridor. He turned to confront a short, stout man in mud-splashed hunting pink, whom he rightly assumed to be Sir Charles.
"Hoity-toity!" said this individual, after a hasty glance about the room. "What's all the row?"
Stanley's answer was to seize his gray felt hat and drop it on the floor. Then, seemingly oblivious of father and daughter, he knelt and fumbled for some seconds, rising rather flushed but calm. "I have just caught a mouse," he observed amiably, and showed a beady-eyed, gray snout wriggling between his thumb and forefinger. "It was a lucky chance I happened to see it. If you don't object, we will try an experiment before I explain myself."
He went up to the chair from which Miss Selward, when she had fallen into it, had brushed away some of the dust.
"If you will kindly stand by the table, you will be able to tell me whether my impression of a smile was a delusion or not."
He sat down deliberately and leaned back.
Miss Selward half put out her hand: "But don't—isn't it—dangerous?" she gasped.
The huntsman was speechless, seemingly on the verge of apoplexy at these strange doings in his house.
"I know the risk," said Stanley calmly. "Watch me. You observed that the ring was loose and were on the point of playing with it when I grabbed you. A loose ring is a great temptation for idle fingers—especially a beautiful ring set with rubies. Watch my hand." He leaned away from the chair-back as the girl had done, and, holding the squeaking mouse firmly between his thumb and first two fingers, set it upon the ring, using it as a sort of pad, and proceeded to twirl this round and round.
Miss Selward clung to her father's arm, rather faint.
In two or three seconds Stanley held out his palm toward them, with the mouse upon it, limp and dead!
Miss Selward was fast losing her self-control. "Father, father!" she sobbed hysterically. "He saved my life! I was going to play with the ring!"
"—— ——!" said Sir Charles, and nothing more.
"IT'S this way," said Stanley. "Each ruby is set in a circle of tiny stilettos—tipped with poison. I wasn't at all sure it would have kept its strength so long, but I thought best to be on the safe side. Old Raymond said it would kill a cat in ten minutes and a human being in several hours. All the other rings are of painted leather; this is of real gold and rubies, as you see. This fact was to be pointed out to the Queen, and the hope was that, with her love of priceless toys, she would sit down and grab it before she thought of a possible trap."
"Let us get away from this horrible room!" sobbed the girl.
"—— ——!" said the huntsman. "I think it's time!"
"But, say," asked Stanley, rising from his chair, "did either of you notice the smile?"
It seemed they had, not unnaturally, been absorbed in watching the mouse.
"Well, I guess we aren't in a state to experiment any more to-day. But I like to fancy that old Raymond planned the grin for the spectators after her Majesty had toyed with the ring long enough. We can look into that another day; there may be a spring that releases a smile upon the leather."
He perceived that the old gentleman, with his daughter on his arm, had halted majestically by the door and was adjusting a monocle, surveying the stranger as if he had that' very moment first discerned his presence.
"And what am I to do for you, young sir?" he demanded.
In an instant there was a curious atmospheric change. From the eyes of Ramon flashed the wild spirit of his Irish-Spanish ancestor encountering the choleric face of Elizabeth's old sea-dog; then the Twentieth Century returned, and the young American laughed: "Why, I guess you can sell me this lumber-room stuff—that's all. I've taken a fancy to it and I'll give you a good figure——"
"Sir," interrupted the enraged British householder, "I'll do nothing of the sort!"
"Oh, yes, I guess you will," said Stanley easily. "We don't want to rake up an old quarrel, but I've got about as good a claim to it as you have. I might get the British law to work on lost property—or treasure-trove, or some such thing. I can prove it belonged to us all right."
"I think," said Sir Charles, swallowing his indignation in an access of dignity, "that it is high time to prove something!"
"Quite right, papa," said Miss Selward, now recovered sufficiently to be her own mistress. "You shall have the whole story of how we came to break into the Bluebeard Chamber. But first you are going to ask Mr. Stanley to tea and let him wash and brush off the dust of centuries, and then we can have explanations by the drawing-room fire——"
"I will not sell him anything," growled the British father, marching ahead.
Miss Selward flung a look at Stanley that said quite plainly, "We shall bring him to time"; and to the hunched shoulders of the pink coat she remarked: "You seem to have forgotten how nearly your daughter shared the fate of the mouse. I should think you'd be glad to get rid of the chair that smiled; anyway——"
"—— the ——" was the growl that ensued.
But Miss Selward held out her hand to Stanley as a peace-offering. "I think we'd better bury the hatchet," said she. "Probably the ownership of the furniture will adjust itself in time."
IT WAS not a matter of great surprise in England and America when such an adjustment shortly after took place.
The bride insisted that the leather furniture be kept in seclusion, and the ruby ring thickly swathed in bandages and shown with great care. But whether the chair smiled in reality or in imagination is a point upon which there is dispute to the present day. Some people see it and some don't—that is all.