第124章

The carpet was a gray and blue Brussels one.The whole effect was cheerful, though I fear inartistic, and sadly out of keeping with the character of the house.The exception to these remarks was, as I had observed, the famous closed cabinet, to which I have more than once alluded.It stood against the same wall of the room as that in which the fireplace was, and on our right--that is, on that side of the fireplace which was farthest from the windows.As Ispoke, I turned to go and look at it, and Lucy followed me.Many an hour as a child had I passed in front of it, fingering the seven carved brass handles, or rather buttons, which were ranged down its center.They all slid, twisted, or screwed with the greatest ease, and apparently like many another ingeniously contrived lock; but neither I nor any one else had ever yet succeeded in sliding, twisting, or screwing them after such a fashion as to open the closed doors of the cabinet.No one yet had robbed them of their secret since first it was placed there three hundred years ago by the old lady and her faithful Italian.It was a beautiful piece of workmanship, was this tantalizing cabinet.Carved out of some dark foreign wood, the doors and panels were richly inlaid with lapis-lazuli, ivory, and mother-of-pearl, among which were twisted delicately chased threads of gold and silver.Above the doors, between them and the cornice, lay another mystery, fully as tormenting as was the first.In a smooth strip of wood about an inch wide, and extending along the whole breadth of the cabinet, was inlaid a fine pattern in gold wire.This at first sight seemed to consist of a legend or motto.On looking closer, however, though the pattern still looked as if it was formed out of characters of the alphabet curiously entwined together, you found yourself unable to fix upon any definite word, or even letter.You looked again and again, and the longer that you looked the more certain became your belief that you were on the verge of discovery.

If you could approach the mysterious legend from a slightly different point of view, or look at it from another distance, the clew to the puzzle would be seized, and the words would stand forth clear and legible in your sight.But the clew never had been discovered, and the motto, if there was one, remained unread.

For a few minutes we stood looking at the cabinet in silence, and then Lucy gave a discontented little sigh."There's another tiresome piece of superstition," she exclaimed; "by far the handsomest piece of furniture in the house stuck away here in a bedroom which is hardly ever used.Again and again have I asked George to let me have it moved downstairs, but he won't hear of it.""Was it not placed here by Dame Alice herself?" I inquired a little reproachfully, for I felt that Lucy was not treating the cabinet with the respect which it really deserved.

"Yes, so they say," she answered; and the tone of light contempt in which she spoke was now pierced by a not unnatural pride in the romantic mysteries of her husband's family."She placed it here, and it is said, you know, that when the closed cabinet is opened, and the mysterious motto is read, the curse will depart from the Mervyn family.""But why don't they break it open?" I asked, impatiently."I am sure that I would never have remained all my life in a house with a thing like that, and not found out in some way or another what was inside it.""Oh, but that would be quite fatal," answered she."The curse can only be removed when the cabinet is opened as Dame Alice intended it to be, in an orthodox fashion.If you were to force it open, that could never happen, and the curse would therefore remain for ever.""And what is the curse?" I asked, with very different feelings to those with which I had timidly approached the same subject with Alan.Lucy was not a Mervyn, and not a person to inspire awe under any circumstances.My instincts were right again, for she turned away with a slight shrug of her shoulders.

"I have no idea," she said."George and Alan always look portentously solemn and gloomy whenever one mentions the subject, so I don't.If you ask me for the truth, I believe it to be a pure invention, devised by the Mervyns for the purpose of delicately accounting for some of the disreputable actions of their ancestors.

For you know, Evie," she added, with a little laugh, "the less said about the character of the family into which your aunt and I have married the better."The remark made me angry, I don't know why, and I answered stiffly, that as far as I was acquainted with them, I at least saw nothing to complain of.

"Oh, as regards the present generation, no,--except for that poor, wretched Jack," acquiesced Lucy, with her usual imperturbable good-humor.

"And as regards the next?" I suggested, smiling, and already ashamed of my little temper.

"The next is perfect, of course,--poor dear boys." She sighed as she spoke, and I wondered whether she was really as unconscious as she generally appeared to be of the strange dissatisfaction with which her husband seemed to regard his children.Anyhow the mention of them had evidently changed her mood, and almost directly afterwards, with the remark that she must go and look after her guests, who had all arrived by now, she left me to myself.