I say inexplicable--would that it had always remained so!
It was August when my next definite adventure occurred. I use the word definite as I had had several other experiences, but of too brief and uncertain a nature to enable me to draw any precise conclusions.
Once, as I had been walking along one of the passages, I had heard the noise of something clanking, and had been put to instant flight by the sound of heavy footsteps echoing suddenly in my rear, and again--but this isn’t really worth recording; let me proceed with that night in August.
Well, I slept in a room at the end of a corridor, my nearest neighbour, Miss Dovecot our governess, occupying a chamber some dozen yards away. I do not think I need describe any article of furniture the room contained; every piece was strictly modern, and had been brought with us from a newly furnished house in Sevenoaks. The fireplace and cupboard are, however, deserving of comment; the former was one of those old-fashioned ingles Burns delights in describing, and which are now so seldom to be seen; an inn at Dundry, near Bristol, containing, I believe, the finest specimen in the kingdom; whilst the latter, which I always kept securely locked at night, was of such far-reaching dimensions that it might well be termed in modern phraseology a linen room.
On the night in question, I had gone to bed at my usual time--eight--and I had speedily fallen to sleep, as I was in the habit of doing; but my slumber was by no means normal.
I was tortured with a series of disturbing dreams, from which I awoke with a start to hear some clock outside sonorously strike twelve. As an additional proof of my wakefulness, I might add (pardon my explicitness) I was sensibly affected by a constant irritation of the skin, due, I believe, to a disordered state of the liver, which in itself was a sufficient preventive to further sleep.
It must have been half-past twelve when I heard, to my intense horror, the cupboard door--which I distinctly recollect locking--slowly, very slowly, open.
My first impulse was to make a precipitate rush for the door, but, alas! I soon became aware that I was powerless to act; a kind of catalepsy, coming on suddenly, held my body as in a vice, whilst my senses, on the other hand, had grown abnormally acute.