The House of Whispers

"Not often enough for me, Gabrielle," he declared, halting in the darkness and raising her soft little hand to his eager lips. "You know well enough how fondly I love you, how—"

"I know," she said in a sad, blank tone. Her own heart beat fast at his passionate words.

"Then why do you treat me like this?" he asked. "Is it because I have annoyed you, that you perhaps think I am not keeping faith with you? I know I was absent a long time, but it was really not my own fault. My people made me go round the world. I didn't want to, I assure you. I'd far rather have been up here at Connachan all the time, and near you, my own well-beloved."

"I believe you would, Walter," she answered, turning towards him with her hand upon his shoulder. "But I do wish you wouldn't reproach me for my undemonstrativeness each time we meet. It saddens me."

"I know I ought not to reproach you," he hastened to assure her. "I have no right to do so; but somehow you have of late grown so sphinx-like that you are not the Gabrielle I used to know."

"Why not?" And she laughed, a strange, hollow laugh. "Explain yourself."

"In the days gone by, before I went abroad, you were not so particular about our meetings being clandestine. You did not care who saw us or what people might say."

"I was a girl then. I have now learnt wisdom, and the truth of the modern religion which holds that the only sin is that of being found out."

"But why are you so secret in all your actions?" he demanded. "Whom do you fear?"

"Fear!" she echoed, starting and staring in his direction. "Why, I fear nobody! What—what makes you think that?"

"Because it has lately struck me that you meet me in secret because—well, because you are afraid of someone, or do not wish us to be seen."

"Why, how very foolish!" she laughed. "Don't my father and mother both know that we love each other? Besides, I am surely my own mistress. I would never marry a man I don't love," she added in a tone of quiet defiance.

"And am I to take it that you really do love me, after all?" he inquired very earnestly.

"Why, of course," she replied without hesitation, again placing her arm about his neck and kissing him. "How foolish of you to ask such a question, Walter! When will you be convinced that the answer I gave you long ago was the actual truth?"

"Men who love as fervently as I do are apt to be somewhat foolish," he declared.

"Then don't be foolish any longer," she urged in a matter-of-fact voice, lifting her lips to his and kissing him. "You know I love you, Walter; therefore you should also know that it I avoid you in public I have some good reason for doing so."

"A reason!" he cried. "What reason? Tell me."

She shook her head. "That is my own affair," she responded. "I repeat again that my affection for you is undiminished, if such repetition really pleases you, as it seems to do."

"Of course it pleases me, dearest," he declared. "No words are sweeter to my ears than the declaration of your love. My only regret is that, now I am at home again, I do not see so much of you, sweetheart, as I had anticipated."

"Walter," she exclaimed in a slow, changed voice, after a brief silence, "there is a reason. Please do not ask me to tell you—because—well, because I can't." And, drawing a long breath, she added, "All I beg of you is to remain patient and trust in me. I love you; and I love no other man. Surely that should be, for you, all-sufficient. I am yours, and yours only."

In an instant he had folded her slight, dainty form in his arms. The young man was satisfied, perfectly satisfied.

They strolled on together through the wood, and out across the open corn-fields. The moon had come forth again, the storm-clouds had passed, and the night was perfect. Though she was trying against her will to hold aloof from Walter Murie, yet she loved him with all her heart and soul. Many letters she had addressed to him in his travels had remained unanswered. This had, in a measure, piqued her. But she was in ignorance that much of his correspondence and hers had fallen into the hands of her ladyship and been destroyed.

As they walked on, talking as lovers will, she was thinking deeply, and full of regret that she dared not tell the truth to this man who, loving her so fondly, would, she knew, be prepared to make any sacrifice for her sake. Suppose he knew the truth! Whatever sacrifice he made would, alas! not alter facts. If she confessed, he would only hate her. Ah, the tragedy of it all! Therefore she held her silence; she dared not speak lest she might lose his love. She had no friend in whom she could confide. From her own father, even, she was compelled to hide the actual facts. They were too terrible. What would he think if the bitter truth were exposed?

The man at her side, tall, brave, strong—a lover whom she knew many girls coveted—believed that he was to marry her. But, she told herself within her grief-stricken heart, such a thing could never be. A barrier stood between them, invisible, yet nevertheless one that might for ever debar their mutual happiness.

An involuntary sigh escaped her, and he inquired the reason. She excused herself by saying that it was owing to the exertion of walking over the rough path. Therefore they halted, and, with the bright summer moonbeams falling upon her beautiful countenance, he kissed her passionately upon the lips again and yet again.

They remained together for over an hour, moving along slowly, heedless of where their footsteps led them; heedless, too, of being seen by any of the keepers who, at night, usually patrolled the estate. Their walk, however, lay at the farther end of the glen, in the coverts remote from the house and nearer the high-road; therefore there was but little danger of being observed.

Many were the pledges of affection they exchanged before parting. On Walter's part they were fervent and passionate, but on the part of his idol they were, alas! only the pretence of a happiness which she feared could never be permanent.

Presently they retraced their steps to the edge of the wood beyond which lay the house. They found the path, and there, at her request, he left her. It was not wise that he should approach the house at that hour, she urged.

So, after a long and fervent leave-taking, he held her in a last embrace, and then, raising his cap, and saying, "Good-night, my darling, my own well-beloved!" he turned away and went at a swinging pace down the farm-road where he had left his car with lights extinguished.

She watched him disappear. Then, sighing, she turned into the dark, winding path beneath the trees, the end of which came out upon the drive close to the house.

Half-way down, however, with sudden resolve, she took a narrower path to the left, and was soon on the outskirts of the wood and out again in the bright moonlight.

The night was so glorious that she had resolved to stroll alone, to think and devise some plan for the future. Before her, silhouetted high against the steely sky, rose the two great, black, ivy-clad towers of the ancient castle. The grim, crumbling walls stood dark and frowning amid the fairy-like scene, while from far below came up the faint rippling of the Ruthven Water. A great owl flapped lazily from the ivy as she approached those historic old walls which in bygone days had held within them some of Scotland's greatest men. She had explored and knew every nook and cranny in those extensive ruins. With Walter's assistance, she had once made a perilous ascent to the top of the highest of the two square towers, and had often clambered along the broken walls of the keep or descended into those strange little subterranean chambers, now half-choked with earth and rubbish, which tradition declared were the dungeons in which prisoners in the old days had been put to the rack, seared with red-hot irons, or submitted to other horrible tortures.

Her feet falling noiselessly, she entered the grass-grown courtyard, where stood the ancient spreading yew, the "dule-tree," under which the Glencardine charters had been signed and justice administered. Other big trees had sprung from seedlings since the place had fallen into ruin; and, having entered, she paused amidst its weird, impressive silence. Those high, ponderous walls about her spoke mutely of strength and impregnability. Those grass-grown mounds hid ruined walls and broken foundations. What tales of wild lawlessness and reckless bloodshed they all could tell!

Many of the strange stories she had heard concerning the old place—stories told by the people in the neighbourhood—were recalled as she stood there gazing wonderingly about her. Many romantic legends had, indeed, been handed down in Perthshire from generation to generation concerning old Glencardine and its lawless masters, and for her they had always possessed a strange fascination, for had she not inherited the antiquarian tastes of her father, and had she not read many works upon folklore and such-like subjects.

Suddenly, while standing in the deep shadow, gazing thoughtfully up at those high towers which, though ruined, still guarded the end of the glen, a strange thing occurred—something which startled her, causing her to halt breathless, petrified, rooted to the spot. She stared straight before her. Something uncanny was happening there, something that was, indeed, beyond human credence, and quite inexplicable.

CHAPTER XI

CONCERNS THE WHISPERS

What had startled Gabrielle was certainly extraordinary and decidedly uncanny. She was standing near the southern wall, when, of a sudden, she heard low but distinct whispers. Again she listened. Yes. The sounds were not due to her excited imagination at the recollection of those romantic traditions of love and hatred, or of those gruesome stories of how the Wolf of Badenoch had been kept prisoner there for five years and put to frightful tortures, or how the Laird of Weem was deliberately poisoned in that old banqueting-hall, the huge open fireplace of which still existed near where she stood.

There was the distinct sound of low, whispered words! She held her breath to listen. She tried to distinguish what the words were, but in vain. Then she endeavoured to determine whence they emanated, but was unable to do so. Again they sounded—again—and yet again. Then there was another voice, still low, still whispering, but not quite so deep as the first. It sounded like a woman's.

Local tradition had it that the place held the ghosts of those who had died in agony within its noisome dungeons; but she had always been far too matter-of-fact to accept stories of the supernatural. Yet at that moment her ears did not deceive her. That pile of grim, gaunt ruins was a House of Whispers!

Again she listened, never moving a muscle. An owl hooted weirdly in the ivy far above her, while near, at her feet, a rabbit scuttled away through the grass. Such noises she was used to. She knew every night-sound of the country-side; for when she had finished her work in the library she often went, unknown to the household, with Stewart upon his nocturnal rounds, and walked miles through the woods in the night. The grey-eyed, thin-nosed head-keeper was her particular favourite. He knew so much of natural history, and he taught her all he knew. She could distinguish the cries of birds in the night, and could tell by certain sounds made by them, as they were disturbed, that no other intruders were in the vicinity. But that weird whispering, coming as it did from an undiscovered source, was inhuman and utterly uncanny.

Was it possible that her ears had deceived her? Was it one of the omens believed in by the superstitious? The wall whence the voices appeared to emanate was, she knew, about seven feet thick—an outer wall of the old keep. She was aware of this because in one of the folio tomes in the library was a picture of the castle as it appeared in 1510, taken from some manuscript of that period preserved in the British Museum. She, who had explored the ruins dozens of times, knew well that at the point where she was standing there could be no place of concealment. Beyond that wall, the hill, covered with bushes and brushwood, descended sheer for three hundred feet or so to the bottom of the glen. Had the voices sounded from one or other of the half-choked chambers which remained more or less intact she would not have been so puzzled; but, as it was, the weird whisperings seemed to come forth from space. Sometimes they sounded so low that she could scarcely hear them; at others they were so loud that she could almost distinguish the words uttered by the unseen. Was it merely a phenomenon caused by the wind blowing through some crack in the ponderous lichen-covered wall?

She looked beyond at the great dark yew, the justice-tree of the Grahams. The night was perfectly calm. Not a leaf stirred either upon that or upon the other trees. The ivy, high above and exposed to the slightest breath of a breeze, was motionless; only the going and coming of the night-birds moved it. No. She decided once and for all that the noise was that of voices, spectral voices though they might be.

Again she strained her eyes, when still again those soft, sibilant whisperings sounded weird and quite inexplicable.

Slowly, and with greatest caution, she moved along beneath the wall, but as she did so she seemed to recede from the sound. So back she went to the spot where she had previously stood, and there again remained listening.

There were two distinct voices; at least that was the conclusion at which she arrived after nearly a quarter of an hour of most minute investigation.

Once she fancied, in her excitement, that away in the farther corner of the ruined courtyard she saw a slowly moving form like a thin column of mist. Was it the Lady of Glencardine—the apparition of the hapless Lady Jane Glencardine? But on closer inspection she decided that it was merely due to her own distorted imagination, and dismissed it from her mind.

Those low, curious whisperings alone puzzled her. They were certainly not sounds that could be made by any rodents within the walls, because they were voices, distinctly and indisputably voices, which at some moments were raised in argument, and then fell away into sounds of indistinct murmuring. Whence did they come? She again moved noiselessly from place to place, at length deciding that only at one point—the point where she had first stood—could the sounds be heard distinctly. So to that spot once more the girl returned, standing there like a statue, her ears strained for every sound, waiting and wondering. But the Whispers had now ceased. In the distance the stable-clock chimed two. Yet she remained at her post, determined to solve the mystery, and not in the least afraid of those weird stories which the country-folk in the Highlands so entirely believed. No ghost, of whatever form, could frighten her, she told herself. She had never believed in omens or superstitions, and she steeled herself not to believe in them now. So she remained there in patience, seeking some natural solution of the extraordinary enigma.

But though she waited until the chimes rang out three o'clock and the moon was going down, she heard no other sound. The Whispers had suddenly ended, and the silence of those gaunt, frowning old walls was undisturbed. A slight wind had now sprung up, sweeping across the hills, and causing her to feel chill. Therefore, at last she was reluctantly compelled to quit her post of observation, and retrace her steps by the rough byroad to the house, entering by one of the windows of the morning-room, of which the burglar-alarm was broken, and which on many occasions she had unfastened after her nocturnal rambles with Stewart. Indeed, concealed under the walls she kept an old rusted table-knife, and by its aid it was her habit to push back the catch and so gain entrance, after reconcealing the knife for use on a future occasion.

On reaching her own room she stood for a few moments reflecting deeply upon her remarkable and inexplicable discovery. Had the story of those whisperings been told to her she would certainly have scouted them; but she had heard them with her own ears, and was certain that she had not been deceived. It was a mystery, absolute and complete; and, regarding it as such, she retired to bed.