第56章

The servants who took care of me found this out, and used to threaten me with my Uncle Stephen whenever I was perverse and difficult to manage.As I grew up, I still retained my vague dread and abhorrence of our absent relative.I always listened intently, yet without knowing why, whenever his name was mentioned by my father or my mother--listened with an unaccountable presentiment that something terrible had happened to him, or was about to happen to me.This feeling only changed when I was left alone in the Abbey; and then it seemed to merge into the eager curiosity which had begun to grow on me, rather before that time, about the origin of the ancient prophecy predicting the extinction of our race.Are you following me?""I follow every word with the closest attention.""You must know, then, that I had first found out some fragments of the old rhyme in which the prophecy occurs quoted as a curiosity in an antiquarian book in the library.On the page opposite this quotation had been pasted a rude old wood-cut, representing a dark-haired man, whose face was so strangely like what I remembered of my Uncle Stephen that the portrait absolutely startled me.When I asked my father about this--it was then just before his death--he either knew, or pretended to know, nothing of it; and when I afterward mentioned the prediction he fretfully changed the subject.It was just the same with our chaplain when I spoke to him.He said the portrait had been done centuries before my uncle was born, and called the prophecy doggerel and nonsense.I used to argue with him on the latter point, asking why we Catholics, who believed that the gift of working miracles had never departed from certain favored persons, might not just as well believe that the gift of prophecy had never departed, either? He would not dispute with me; he would only say that I must not waste time in thinking of such trifles;that I had more imagination than was good for me, and must suppress instead of exciting it.Such advice as this only irritated my curiosity.I determined secretly to search throughout the oldest uninhabited part of the Abbey, and to try if I could not find out from forgotten family records what the portrait was, and when the prophecy had been first written or uttered.Did you ever pass a day alone in the long-deserted chambers of an ancient house?""Never! such solitude as that is not at all to my taste.""Ah! what a life it was when I began my search.I should like to live it over again.Such tempting suspense, such strange discoveries, such wild fancies, such inthralling terrors, all belonged to that life.Only think of breaking open the door of a room which no living soul had entered before you for nearly a hundred years; think of the first step forward into a region of airless, awful stillness, where the light falls faint and sickly through closed windows and rotting curtains; think of the ghostly creaking of the old floor that cries out on you for treading on it, step as softly as you will; think of arms, helmets, weird tapestries of by-gone days, that seem to be moving out on you from the walls as you first walk up to them in the dim light;think of prying into great cabinets and iron-clasped chests, not knowing what horrors may appear when you tear them open; of poring over their contents till twilight stole on you and darkness grew terrible in the lonely place; of trying to leave it, and not being able to go, as if something held you; of wind wailing at you outside; of shadows darkening round you, and closing you up in obscurity within--only think of these things, and you may imagine the fascination of suspense and terror in such a life as mine was in those past days."(I shrank from imagining that life: it was bad enough to see its results, as I saw them before me now.)"Well, my search lasted months and months; then it was suspended a little; then resumed.In whatever direction I pursued it Ialways found something to lure me on.Terrible confessions of past crimes, shocking proofs of secret wickedness that had been hidden securely from all eyes but mine, came to light.Sometimes these discoveries were associated with particular parts of the Abbey, which have had a horrible interest of their own for me ever since; sometimes with certain old portraits in the picture-gallery, which I actually dreaded to look at after what Ihad found out.There were periods when the results of this search of mine so horrified me that I determined to give it up entirely;but I never could persevere in my resolution; the temptation to go on seemed at certain intervals to get too strong for me, and then I yielded to it again and again.At last I found the book that had belonged to the monks with the whole of the prophecy written in the blank leaf.This first success encouraged me to get back further yet in the family records.I had discovered nothing hitherto of the identity of the mysterious portrait; but the same intuitive conviction which had assured me of its extraordinary resemblance to my Uncle Stephen seemed also to assure me that he must be more closely connected with the prophecy, and must know more of it than any one else.I had no means of holding any communication with him, no means of satisfying myself whether this strange idea of mine were right or wrong, until the day when my doubts were settled forever by the same terrible proof which is now present to me in this very room."He paused for a moment, and looked at me intently and suspiciously; then asked if I believed all he had said to me so far.My instant reply in the affirmative seemed to satisfy his doubts, and he went on.