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They turned the light of the lantern on to the chamber-floor, and a strange sight indeed presented itself. Right across the room, in regular lines, were immense letters in red and black adhering to the boards. "Ben, you're a scholar," said Jones; "read 'em." Stone, thus appealed to, made the light travel slowly along the words, and read in a low and faltering voice,
The first was a "spousal verse," made for the double wedding of the Ladies Catherine and Elizabeth Somerset, whom the poet figures as two white swans that come swimming down the Thames, the surface of which the nymphs strew with lilies, till it appears "like a bride's chamber-floor." Sweet Thames, run softly till I end my song, is the burden of each stanza.
As the moon was up and full, I could not rest until I had ascertained whether I was right or wrong; so I put a twenty-foot tapeline in my pocket, and hurried off to the hill where the house was to stand. Foundation three feet, height of parlor ceilings twelve feet, allow for floors two feet more, made the chamber-floor seventeen feet above the level of the ground.
For my own part, whether I see it scattered down among tangled woods, or beaming broad across the fields, or hemmed in between brick buildings, or tracing out the figure of the casement on my chamber-floor, still I recognize the Sabbath sunshine. And ever let me recognize it! Some illusions, and this among them, are the shadows of great truths.
I have been twice to Eleanor's chamber. The door is half ground-glass, and I can see her black shadow as she walks to and fro across the room. She has been walking so ever since she entered it. "October 4. What shall I do? Where shall I go? All night and all day Eleanor has walked her chamber-floor. I have been to the door. I have knocked. I have called her by name.
So one night Tommy and his Betty went clean off, and nobody's heard nothing no more on 'em, nor of their Sammul neither; and what's strangest thing of all, when they came to search the house arter it were known as Tommy had flitted, they found some great letters sticking to the chamber-floor in black and red; they was verses out of the Bible and Testament.
You must know as he'd a large quantity of old posters by him as had been soiled or torn. So he cuts what black letters he wants out of these, and some red 'uns too, enough to make the two texts, `No drunkard shall inherit the kingdom of God, and `Prepare to meet thy God. Then Job and me goes quietly up-stairs, and I holds the candle while he pastes the words on the chamber-floor.
To such as these, it has happened in their dying hours afar off, that they have imagined their chamber-floor to be strewn with the autumnal leaves fallen from the elm-trees in the Close: so have the rustling sounds and fresh scents of their earliest impressions revived when the circle of their lives was very nearly traced, and the beginning and the end were drawing close together.
Even the Jester, on his bed of straw, With haggard eyes the unwonted splendour saw, He felt within a power unfelt before, And, kneeling humbly on his chamber-floor, He heard the rushing garments of the Lord Sweep through the silent air, ascending heavenward.
But, now, supposing I have relatives, family connections, then who knows but what there may be property coming to me? That's an idea worth looking after, surely." There's no saying with what vividness ideas and images go through one's wakeful brain when the midnight moon is making an exact shadow of your window-sash, with panes of light, on your chamber-floor.
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