The Filigree Ball | Page 6

shutter. Certainly
there was nothing moving near us.
"Shall we go upstairs?" whispered Hibbard.
"Not till we have made sure that all is right down here"
A door stood slightly ajar on our left.
Pushing it open, we looked in. A well furnished parlor was before us.
"Here's where the wedding took place," remarked Hibbard, straining his
head over my shoulder.
There were signs of this wedding on every side. Walls and ceilings had
been hung with garlands, and these still clung to the mantelpiece and
over and around the various doorways. Torn-off branches and the
remnants of old bouquets, dropped from the hands of flying guests,
littered the carpet, adding to the general confusion of overturned chairs
and tables. Everywhere were evidences of the haste with which the
place had been vacated as well as the superstitious dread which had
prevented it being re-entered for the commonplace purpose of cleaning.
Even the piano had not been shut, and under it lay some scattered
sheets of music which had been left where they fell, to the probable
loss of some poor musician. The clock occupying the center of the
mantelpiece alone gave evidence of life. It had been wound for the
wedding and had not yet run down. Its tick-tick came faint enough,
however, through the darkness, as if it too had lost heart and would
soon lapse into the deadly quiet of its ghostly surroundings.
"It's it's funeral-like," chattered Hibbard.

He was right; I felt as if I were shutting the lid of a coffin when I finally
closed the door.
Our next steps took us into the rear where we found little to detain us,
and then, with a certain dread fully justified by the event, we made for
the door defined by the two Corinthian columns.
It was ajar like the rest, and, call me coward or call me fool - I have
called Hibbard both, you will remember - I found that it cost me an
effort to lay my hand on its mahogany panels. Danger, if danger there
was, lurked here; and while I had never known myself to quail before
any ordinary antagonist, I, like others of my kind, have no especial
fondness for unseen and mysterious perils.
Hibbard, who up to this point had followed me almost too closely, now
accorded me all the room that was necessary. It was with a sense of
entering alone upon the scene that I finally thrust wide the door and
crossed the threshold of this redoubtable room where, but two short
weeks before, a fresh victim had been added to the list of those who
had by some unheard-of, unimaginable means found their death within
its recesses.
My first glance showed me little save the ponderous outlines of an old
settle, which jutted from the corner of the fireplace half way out into
the room. As it was seemingly from this seat that the men, who at
various times had been found lying here, had fallen to their doom, a
thrill passed over me as I noted its unwieldy bulk and the deep shadow
it threw on the ancient and dishonored hearthstone. To escape the
ghastly memories it evoked and also to satisfy myself that the room
was really as empty as it seemed, I took another step forward. This
caused the light from the lantern I carried to spread beyond the point on
which it had hitherto been so effectively concentrated; but the result
was to emphasize rather than detract from the extreme desolation of the
great room. The settle was a fixture, as I afterwards found, and was
almost the only article of furniture to be seen on the wide expanse of
uncarpeted floor. There was a table or two in hiding somewhere amid
the shadows at the other end from where I stood, and possibly some
kind of stool or settee; but the general impression made upon me was

that of a completely dismantled place given over to moth and rust.
I do not include the walls. They were not bare like the floor, but
covered with books from floor to ceiling. These books were not the
books of to-day; they had stood so long in their places unnoted and
untouched, that they had acquired the color of fungus, and smelt - Well,
there is no use adding to the picture. Every one knows the spirit of
sickening desolation pervading rooms which have been shut up for an
indefinite length of time from air and sunshine.
The elegance of the heavily stuccoed ceiling, admitted to be one of the
finest specimens of its kind in Washington, as well as the richness of
the carvings ornamenting the mantel of Italian marble rising above the
accursed hearthstone, only served to make more evident the extreme
neglect into