Chapter 20: Bride’s Vigil

BRIDE was awakened from sleep by the sound of a voice.

“Bride! Bride! Oh, my love, farewell! God grant we meet again in the eternal haven of rest! Farewell, my love, farewell!”

The voice sounded so loud in her ears that the girl started wide awake in bed, and found herself sitting up, gazing across the dimly-lighted room, in the expectation of seeing some one beside her.

But there was nothing. The room was empty, save for her own presence. The fire was not yet out, and the night-lamp on the table in the corner burned with a steady ray. Outside, the voice of the storm wailed round the corners of the house; but Bride was too well used to the voice of wind and water to think she had been deceived by that. There was nothing in the voice of the gale to-night different from what she was used to hear wherever the winter days had come. Often and often the tempest raged with double and treble power about the exposed castle, and yet she was not disturbed. What, then, had happened to-night?

She passed her hands across her eyes, as if to clear away the mists of sleep.

“It was Eustace’s voice!” she said in her heart, and a light shiver ran through her.

Perhaps she had been thinking of Eustace at sea before she slept, for her dreams had been of a ship ploughing through the waves. She could not recall all that she had dreamed; but she was vaguely conscious that her visions had been uneasy ones of terror and peril. She could not be sure whether she had dreamed of Eustace: everything was confused in her mind. But that voice calling her name through the darkness had been utterly different from anything that had gone before, and had effectually aroused her from sleep.

“Is he in peril? Is he thinking of me?” she asked herself; and even as she put the question she rose from her bed and began mechanically to dress herself; for there was only one thing now possible for Bride, and that was to pour out her soul in prayer for the man she loved—the man she believed to be in danger at this very moment. Why that conviction of his peril came so strongly upon her she could hardly have explained. She had had no vivid dream; she had gone to rest with no presentiment of evil. That dream-cry was the only cause of her uneasiness; but the conviction was so strong that there could be no more sleep for her that night. She was absolutely certain of that, and she quickly dressed herself, as though to be ready for a call when it came; and when she had stirred the fire into a glow, and had trimmed and lighted her larger lamp, she knelt down beside the little table whereon lay her books of devotion, and the Bible which had been her mother’s, and laid bare her soul in supplication and prayer for the man she now knew that she loved, and whom she fully believed to be in peril to-night, though whether this peril were physical or spiritual she could not tell.

And yet it mattered not, for God knew, and He would hear her supplication, and answer it in His own way. Bride did not know whether Eustace had yet learned to pray for himself; but she had been praying so long that there was nothing strange in this long and impassioned prayer for him to-night. How the time passed the girl did not know; nor did she know what it was that prompted her at last to go to the window and draw aside the curtain to look out into the night.

When she did this, however, she became aware that the darkness without was something unwonted, and for a moment she could not understand the cause of this. There was no moon, and the sky was obscured by a wrack of drifting cloud; why should there be anything but black darkness? and yet it was not always so, even on the pitchiest nights. And then a sudden cry broke from her pale lips—

“The lantern-tower is not lighted to-night!”

That was it. That was what she missed—the faint refulgence she was accustomed to see shining from the turret where the great lamp always burned. What had happened? Had the old fisherman neglected to come? or had he been negligent of his charge and suffered the lamp to go out? She felt sure the light must have been burning as usual earlier in the night. It was lighted at five now, and numbers of persons would have noticed had it not been lighted, and news would certainly have quickly reached the castle. No, it must be that the old fisherman had gone to sleep, and had omitted to fill up the lamp, which had burned down and gone out. And ah! suppose some vessel even now was beating down Channel, and anxiously looking out for the beacon! Oh, suppose some vessel was already in peril for want of the guiding light! Suppose that vessel were the one in which Eustace was journeying to them! Ah!—was that the meaning of that cry? Had it indeed been sent as a sign—as a warning?

With a sense of sudden comprehension Bride turned back into the room and hastily took up her lamp. Without waiting to summon any other person—without a moment of needless delay—she made her way along the dark still corridors, where the heavy shadows lay sleeping, but woke and fled away like spectres at her approach; through the blank silence of the great house she stepped, followed silently by the faithful hound, who always slept at her door, till she reached a heavy oaken door, studded with brass nails, and fastened on the inside with heavy bolts and clamps, that led from the castle into that corner turret which had for so many years been given up to the beacon light and its custodian.

Bride used as a child to go frequently into the tower with her mother. Latterly she had been much less often, but she was familiar with the fastenings of the door, and knew her way to the upper chamber where the great lamp burned.

The place was perfectly dark as she entered, and as silent as the grave; but as she ascended the spiral staircase which led to the chamber where the great lamp burned, she was aware of a peculiar moaning sound, she hardly knew whether human or not, and a thrill of horror ran through her, though she did not pause in her rapid ascent.

The hound heard it too, and sped past her with a low whimper of curiosity, bounding upwards and into the room overhead, where he broke into a loud bay.

Bride was keenly excited, too much excited to feel any personal fear; moreover, she knew that if the dog had found any unknown occupant in that upper chamber, he would have flown at him at once and pinned him, and she should be warned by the sounds as to what was going on. Hastily mounting the last flight, she entered the room, which, as she fully expected, was in utter darkness. The sound of inarticulate moaning grew louder as she approached, and the moment her lamp threw its beams within the chamber, she saw the old custodian lying on the floor, gagged, and bound with cruel cords, his head bleeding a little from some cuts upon it, and his face drawn and white.