The clergyman soon arrived--a man of ascetic countenance and venerable age--one whom Gerard Douw respected much,forasmuch as he was a veteran polemic,though one,perhaps,more dreaded as a combatant than beloved as a Christian--of pure morality,subtle brain,and frozen heart.He entered the chamber which communicated with that in which Rose reclined,and immediately on his arrival she requested him to pray for her,as for one who lay in the hands of Satan,and who could hope for deliverance--only from heaven.
That our readers may distinctly understand all the circumstances of the event which we are about imperfectly to describe,it is necessary to state the relative position of the parties who were engaged in it.
The old clergyman and Schalken were in the anteroom of which we have already spoken;Rose lay in the inner chamber,the door of which was open;and by the side of the bed,at her urgent desire,stood her guardian;a candle burned in the bed-chamber,and three were lighted in the outer apartment The old man now cleared his voice,as if about to commence;but before he had time to begin,a sudden gust of air blew out the candle which served to illuminate the room in which the poor girl lay,and she,with hurried alarm,exclaimed:
'Godfrey,bring in another candle;the darkness is unsafe.'
Gerard Douw,forgetting for the moment her repeated injunctions in the immediate impulse,stepped from the bedchamber into the other,in order to supply what she desired.
'O God I do not go,dear uncle!'
shrieked the unhappy girl;and at the same time she sprang from the bed and darted after him,in order,by her grasp,to detain him.
But the warning came too late,for scarcely had he passed the threshold,and hardly had his niece had time to utter the startling exclamation,when the door which divided the two rooms closed violently after him,as if swung to by a strong blast of wind.
Schalken and he both rushed to the door,but their united and desperate efforts could not avail so much as to shake it.
Shriek after shriek burst from the inner chamber,with all the piercing loudness of despairing terror.Schalken and Douw applied every energy and strained every nerve to force open the door;but all in vain.
There was no sound of struggling from within,but the screams seemed to increase in loudness,and at the same time they heard the bolts of the latticed window withdrawn,and the window itself grated upon the sill as if thrown open.
One LAST shriek,so long and piercing and agonised as to be scarcely human,swelled from the room,and suddenly there followed a death-like silence.
A light step was heard crossing the floor,as if from the bed to the window;and almost at the same instant the door gave way,and,yielding to the pressure of the external applicants,they were nearly precipitated into the room.It was empty.
The window was open,and Schalken sprang to a chair and gazed out upon the street and canal below.He saw no form,but he beheld,or thought he beheld,the waters of the broad canal beneath settling ring after ring in heavy circular ripples,as if a moment before disturbed by the immersion of some large and heavy mass.
No trace of Rose was ever after discovered,nor was anything certain respecting her mysterious wooer detected or even suspected;no clue whereby to trace the intricacies of the labyrinth and to arrive at a distinct conclusion was to be found.But an incident occurred,which,though it will not be received by our rational readers as at all approaching to evidence upon the matter,nevertheless produced a strong and a lasting impression upon the mind of Schalken.
Many years after the events which we have detailed,Schalken,then remotely situated,received an intimation of his father's death,and of his intended burial upon a fixed day in the church of Rotterdam.
It was necessary that a very considerable journey should be performed by the funeral procession,which,as it will readily be believed,was not very numerously attended.Schalken with difficulty arrived in Rotterdam late in the day upon which the funeral was appointed to take place.The procession had not then arrived.
Evening closed in,and still it did not appear.
Schalken strolled down to the church--
be found it open--notice of the arrival of the funeral had been given,and the vault in which the body was to be laid had been opened.The official who corresponds to our sexton,on seeing a well-dressed gentleman,whose object was to attend the expected funeral,pacing the aisle of the church,hospitably invited him to share with him the comforts of a blazing wood fire,which,as was his custom in winter time upon such occasions,he had kindled on the hearth of a chamber which commu-nicated,by a flight of steps,with the vault below.
In this chamber Schalken and his entertainer seated themselves,and the sexton,after some fruitless attempts to engage his guest in conversation,was obliged to apply himself to his tobacco-pipe and can to solace his solitude.
In spite of his grief and cares,the fatigues of a rapid journey of nearly forty hours gradually overcame the mind and body of Godfrey Schalken,and he sank into a deep sleep,from which he was awakened by some one shaking him gently by the shoulder.He first thought that the old sexton had called him,but HEwas no longer in the room.
He roused himself,and as soon as he could clearly see what was around him,he perceived a female form,clothed in a kind of light robe of muslin,part of which was so disposed as to act as a veil,and in her hand she carried a lamp.She was moving rather away from him,and towards the flight of steps which conducted towards the vaults.
Schalken felt a vague alarm at the sight of this figure,and at the same time an irresistible impulse to follow its guidance.