any business for a century.
Catherine said:
“Tradition says that these ghosts have never been seen–they have
merely been heard. It is plain that this room was once larger than it
is now, and that the wall at this end was built in some bygone time
to make and fence off a narrow room there. There is no
communication anywhere with that narrow room, and if it
exists–and of that there is no reasonable doubt–it has no light and
no air, but is an absolute dungeon. Wait where you are, and take
note of what happens.”
That was all. Then she and her parents left us. When their footfalls
had died out in the distance down the empty stone corridors an
uncanny si8lence and solemnity ensued which was dismaler to me
than the mute march past the bastilles. We sat loking vacantly at
each other, and it was easy to see that no one there was
comfortable. The longer we sat so, the more deadly still that
stillness got to be; and when the wind began to moan around the
house presently, it made me sick and miserable, and I wished I had
been brave enough to be a coward this time, for indeed it is no
proper shame to be afraid of ghosts, seeing how helpless the living
are in their hands. And then these ghosts were invisible, which
made the matter the worse, as it seemed to me. They might be in
the room with us at that moment–we could not know. I felt airy
touches on my shoulders and my hair, and I shrank from them and
cringed, and was not ashamed to show this fear, for I saw the
others doing the like, and knew that they were feeling those faint
contacts too. As this went on–oh, eternities it seemed, the time
dragged so drearily–all those faces became as wax, and I seemed
sitting with a congress of the dead.
At last, faint and far and weird and slow, came a
“boom!–boom!–boom!”–a distant bell tolling midnight. When the
last stroke died, that depressing stillness followed again, and as
before I was staring at those waxen faces and feeling those airy
touches on my hair and my shoulders once more.
One minute–two minutes–three minutes of this, then we heard a
long deep groan, and everybody sprang up and stood, with his legs
quaking. It came from that little dungeon. There was a pause, then
we herd muffled sobbings, mixed with pitiful ejaculations. Then
there was a second voice, low and not distinct, and the one seemed
trying to comfort the other; and so the two voices went on, with
moanings, and soft sobbings, and, ah, the tones were so full of
compassion and sorry and despair! Indeed, it made one’s heart sore
to hear it.
But those sounds were so real and so human and so moving that
the idea of ghosts passed straight out of our minds, and Sir Jean de
Metz spoke out and said:
“Come! we will smash that wall and set those poor captives free.
Here, with your ax!”
The Dwarf jumped forward, swinging his great ax with both hands,
and others sprang for torches and brought them.
Bang!–whang!–slam!–smash went the ancient bricks, and there
was a hole an ox could pass through. We plunged within and held
up the torches.
Nothing there but vacancy! On the floor lay a rusty sword and a
rotten fan.
Now you know all that I know. Take the pathetic relics, and weave
about them the romance of the dungeon’s long-vanished inmates as
best you can.
Chapter 20 Joan Makes Cowards Brave Victors
THE NEXT day Joan wanted to go against the enemy again, but it
was the feast of the Ascension, and the holy council of bandit
generals were too pious to be willing to profane it with bloodshed.
But privately they profaned it with plottings, a sort of industry just
in their line. They decided to do the only thing proper to do now in
the new circumstances of the case–feign an attack on the most
important bastille on the Orleans side, and then, if the English
weakened the far more important fortresses on the other side of the