NEW PETRA, April 1st.
Sir--During my last examination of your chimney, possibly you may have noted that I frequently applied my rule to it in a manner apparently unnecessary. Possibly, also, at the same time, you might have observed in me more or less of perplexity, to which, however, I refrained from giving any verbal expression.
I now feel it obligatory upon me to inform you of what was then but a dim suspicion, and as such would have been unwise to give utterance to, but which now, from various subsequent calculations a.s.suming no little probability, it may be important that you should not remain in further ignorance of.
It is my solemn duty to warn you, sir, that there is architectural cause to conjecture that somewhere concealed in your chimney is a reserved s.p.a.ce, hermetically closed, in short, a secret chamber, or rather closet. How long it has been there, it is for me impossible to say.
What it contains is hid, with itself, in darkness. But probably a secret closet would not have been contrived except for some extraordinary object, whether for the concealment of treasure, or for what other purpose, may be left to those better acquainted with the history of the house to guess.
But enough: in making this disclosure, sir, my conscience is eased.
Whatever step you choose to take upon it, is of course a matter of indifference to me; though, I confess, as respects the character of the closet, I cannot but share in a natural curiosity. Trusting that you may be guided aright, in determining whether it is Christian-like knowingly to reside in a house, hidden in which is a secret closet, I remain, with much respect,
Yours very humbly,
HIRAM SCRIBE.
My first thought upon reading this note was, not of the alleged mystery of manner to which, at the outset, it alluded-for none such had I at all observed in the master-mason during his surveys--but of my late kinsman, Captain Julian Dacres, long a ship-master and merchant in the Indian trade, who, about thirty years ago, and at the ripe age of ninety, died a bachelor, and in this very house, which he had built. He was supposed to have retired into this country with a large fortune. But to the general surprise, after being at great cost in building himself this mansion, he settled down into a sedate, reserved and inexpensive old age, which by the neighbors was thought all the better for his heirs: but lo! upon opening the will, his property was found to consist but of the house and grounds, and some ten thousand dollars in stocks; but the place, being found heavily mortgaged, was in consequence sold. Gossip had its day, and left the gra.s.s quietly to creep over the captain"s grave, where he still slumbers in a privacy as unmolested as if the billows of the Indian Ocean, instead of the billows of inland verdure, rolled over him. Still, I remembered long ago, hearing strange solutions whispered by the country people for the mystery involving his will, and, by reflex, himself; and that, too, as well in conscience as purse. But people who could circulate the report (which they did), that Captain Julian Dacres had, in his day, been a Borneo pirate, surely were not worthy of credence in their collateral notions. It is queer what wild whimsies of rumors will, like toadstools, spring up about any eccentric stranger, who settling down among a rustic population, keeps quietly to himself. With some, inoffensiveness would seem a prime cause of offense.
But what chiefly had led me to scout at these rumors, particularly as referring to concealed treasure, was the circ.u.mstance, that the stranger (the same who razeed the roof and the chimney) into whose hands the estate had pa.s.sed on my kinsman"s death, was of that sort of character, that had there been the least ground for those reports, he would speedily have tested them, by tearing down and rummaging the walls.
Nevertheless, the note of Mr. Scribe, so strangely recalling the memory of my kinsman, very naturally chimed in with what had been mysterious, or at least unexplained, about him; vague flashings of ingots united in my mind with vague gleamings of skulls. But the first cool thought soon dismissed such chimeras; and, with a calm smile, I turned towards my wife, who, meantime, had been sitting nearby, impatient enough, I dare say, to know who could have taken it into his head to write me a letter.
"Well, old man," said she, "who is it from, and what is it about?"
"Read it, wife," said I, handing it.
Read it she did, and then--such an explosion! I will not pretend to describe her emotions, or repeat her expressions. Enough that my daughters were quickly called in to share the excitement. Although they had never dreamed of such a revelation as Mr. Scribe"s; yet upon the first suggestion they instinctively saw the extreme likelihood of it.
In corroboration, they cited first my kinsman, and second, my chimney; alleging that the profound mystery involving the former, and the equally profound masonry involving the latter, though both acknowledged facts, were alike preposterous on any other supposition than the secret closet.
But all this time I was quietly thinking to myself: Could it be hidden from me that my credulity in this instance would operate very favorably to a certain plan of theirs? How to get to the secret closet, or how to have any certainty about it at all, without making such fell work with my chimney as to render its set destruction superfluous? That my wife wished to get rid of the chimney, it needed no reflection to show; and that Mr. Scribe, for all his pretended disinterestedness, was not opposed to pocketing five hundred dollars by the operation, seemed equally evident. That my wife had, in secret, laid heads together with Mr. Scribe, I at present refrain from affirming. But when I consider her enmity against my chimney, and the steadiness with which at the last she is wont to carry out her schemes, if by hook or crook she can, especially after having been once baffled, why, I scarcely knew at what step of hers to be surprised.
Of one thing only was I resolved, that I and my chimney should not budge.
In vain all protests. Next morning I went out into the road, where I had noticed a diabolical-looking old gander, that, for its doughty exploits in the way of scratching into forbidden enclosures, had been rewarded by its master with a portentous, four-p.r.o.nged, wooden decoration, in the shape of a collar of the Order of the Garotte. This gander I cornered and rummaging out its stiffest quill, plucked it, took it home, and making a stiff pen, inscribed the following stiff note:
CHIMNEY SIDE, April 2.
MR. SCRIBE Sir:-For your conjecture, we return you our joint thanks and compliments, and beg leave to a.s.sure you, that we shall remain, Very faithfully, The same, I AND MY CHIMNEY.
Of course, for this epistle we had to endure some pretty sharp raps. But having at last explicitly understood from me that Mr. Scribe"s note had not altered my mind one jot, my wife, to move me, among other things said, that if she remembered aright, there was a statute placing the keeping in private of secret closets on the same unlawful footing with the keeping of gunpowder. But it had no effect.
A few days after, my spouse changed her key.
It was nearly midnight, and all were in bed but ourselves, who sat up, one in each chimney-corner; she, needles in hand, indefatigably knitting a sock; I, pipe in mouth, indolently weaving my vapors.
It was one of the first of the chill nights in autumn. There was a fire on the hearth, burning low. The air without was torpid and heavy; the wood, by an oversight, of the sort called soggy.
"Do look at the chimney," she began; "can"t you see that something must be in it?"
"Yes, wife. Truly there is smoke in the chimney, as in Mr. Scribe"s note."
"Smoke? Yes, indeed, and in my eyes, too. How you two wicked old sinners do smoke!--this wicked old chimney and you."
"Wife," said I, "I and my chimney like to have a quiet smoke together, it is true, but we don"t like to be called names."
"Now, dear old man," said she, softening down, and a little shifting the subject, "when you think of that old kinsman of yours, you KNOW there must be a secret closet in this chimney."
"Secret ash-hole, wife, why don"t you have it? Yes, I dare say there is a secret ash-hole in the chimney; for where do all the ashes go to that drop down the queer hole yonder?"
"I know where they go to; I"ve been there almost as many times as the cat."
"What devil, wife, prompted you to crawl into the ash-hole? Don"t you know that St. Dunstan"s devil emerged from the ash-hole? You will get your death one of these days, exploring all about as you do. But supposing there be a secret closet, what then?"
"What then? why what should be in a secret closet but--"
"Dry bones, wife," broke in I with a puff, while the sociable old chimney broke in with another.
"There again! Oh, how this wretched old chimney smokes," wiping her eyes with her handkerchief. "I"ve no doubt the reason it smokes so is, because that secret closet interferes with the flue. Do see, too, how the jambs here keep settling; and it"s down hill all the way from the door to this hearth. This horrid old chimney will fall on our heads yet; depend upon it, old man."
"Yes, wife, I do depend on it; yes indeed, I place every dependence on my chimney. As for its settling, I like it. I, too, am settling, you know, in my gait. I and my chimney are settling together, and shall keep settling, too, till, as in a great feather-bed, we shall both have settled away clean out of sight. But this secret oven; I mean, secret closet of yours, wife; where exactly do you suppose that secret closet is?"
"That is for Mr. Scribe to say."
"But suppose he cannot say exactly; what, then?"
"Why then he can prove, I am sure, that it must be somewhere or other in this horrid old chimney."
"And if he can"t prove that; what, then?"
"Why then, old man," with a stately air, "I shall say little more about it."
"Agreed, wife," returned I, knocking my pipe-bowl against the jamb, "and now, to-morrow, I will for a third time send for Mr. Scribe. Wife, the sciatica takes me; be so good as to put this pipe on the mantel."
"If you get the step-ladder for me, I will. This shocking old chimney, this abominable old-fashioned old chimney"s mantels are so high, I can"t reach them."
No opportunity, however trivial, was overlooked for a subordinate fling at the pile.
Here, by way of introduction, it should be mentioned, that besides the fireplaces all round it, the chimney was, in the most haphazard way, excavated on each floor for certain curious out-of-the-way cupboards and closets, of all sorts and sizes, clinging here and there, like nests in the crotches of some old oak. On the second floor these closets were by far the most irregular and numerous. And yet this should hardly have been so, since the theory of the chimney was, that it pyramidically diminished as it ascended. The abridgment of its square on the roof was obvious enough; and it was supposed that the reduction must be methodically graduated from bottom to top.
"Mr. Scribe," said I when, the next day, with an eager aspect, that individual again came, "my object in sending for you this morning is, not to arrange for the demolition of my chimney, nor to have any particular conversation about it, but simply to allow you every reasonable facility for verifying, if you can, the conjecture communicated in your note."
Though in secret not a little crestfallen, it may be, by my phlegmatic reception, so different from what he had looked for; with much apparent alacrity he commenced the survey; throwing open the cupboards on the first floor, and peering into the closets on the second; measuring one within, and then comparing that measurement with the measurement without. Removing the fireboards, he would gaze up the flues. But no sign of the hidden work yet.
Now, on the second floor the rooms were the most rambling conceivable.
They, as it were, dovetailed into each other. They were of all shapes; not one mathematically square room among them all--a peculiarity which by the master-mason had not been un.o.bserved. With a significant, not to say portentous expression, he took a circuit of the chimney, measuring the area of each room around it; then going down stairs, and out of doors, he measured the entire ground area; then compared the sum total of the areas of all the rooms on the second floor with the ground area; then, returning to me in no small excitement, announced that there was a difference of no less than two hundred and odd square feet--room enough, in all conscience, for a secret closet.
"But, Mr. Scribe," said I, stroking my chin, "have you allowed for the walls, both main and sectional? They take up some s.p.a.ce, you know."
"Ah, I had forgotten that," tapping his forehead; "but," still ciphering on his paper, "that will not make up the deficiency."