Chapter 2

When I had heard this, I need scarcely say that I was all eagerness to sign; so great was my haste that I did not even try to decipher the somewhat crabbed and antiquated writing in which the terms of the agreement were set out.

I was anxious to impress the baronet with a sense of my gentlemanly feeling and the confidence I had in him, while I naturally presumed that, since the contract was binding upon me, the baronet would, as a man of honor, hold it equally conclusive on his own side.

As I look back upon it now, it seems simply extraordinary that I should have been so easily satisfied, have taken so little pains to find out the exact position in which I was placing myself; but, with the ingenuous confidence of youth, I fell an easy victim, as I was to realize later with terrible enlightenment.

“Say nothing of this to Chlorine,” said Sir Paul, as I handed him the document signed, “until the final arrangements are made; it will only distress her unnecessarily.”

I wondered why at the time, but I promised to obey, supposing that he knew best, and for some days after that I made no mention to Chlorine of the approaching day which was to witness our union.

As we were continually together, I began to regard her with an esteem which I had not thought possible at first. Her looks improved considerably under the influence of happiness, and I found she could converse intelligently enough upon several topics, and did not bore me nearly as much as I was fully prepared for.

And so the time passed less heavily, until one afternoon the baronet took me aside mysteriously. “Prepare yourself, Augustus,” (they had all learned to call me Augustus), he said; “all is arranged. The event upon which our dearest hopes depend is fixed for tomorrow—in the Gray Chamber of course, and at midnight.”

I thought this a curious time and place for the ceremony, but I had divined his eccentric passion for privacy and retirement, and only imagined that he had procured some very special form of license.

“But you do not know the Gray Chamber,” he added.

“Come with me, and I will show you where it is.” And he led me up the broad staircase, and, stopping at the end of a passage before an immense door covered with black baize and studded with brass nails, which gave it a hideous resemblance to a gigantic coffin lid, he pressed a spring, and it fell slowly back.

I saw a long dim gallery, whose very existence nothing in the external appearance of the mansion had led me to suspect; it led to a heavy oaken door with cumbrous plates and fastenings of metal.

“Tomorrow night is Christmas eve, as you are doubtless aware,” he said in a hushed voice. “At twelve, then, you will present yourself at yonder door—the door of the Gray Chamber—where you must fulfill the engagement you have made.”

I was surprised at his choosing such a place for the ceremony; it would have been more cheerful in the long drawing room; but it was evidently a whim of his, and I was too happy to think of opposing it. I hastened at once to Chlorine, with her father’s sanction, and told her that the crowning moment of both our lives was fixed at last.