Page:Richard Marsh--The joss, a reversion.djvu/121

Rh keep out? Spectres? My dear, spectres will walk through stone walls. They pay no heed to trivial obstacles. Creatures of flesh and blood? You may take my word for it that if there are any of that sort alive and kicking in this house to-night, and they mean to come in here, they’ll come in just when and how they choose, and they’ll treat your ingenious barricade as if it wasn’t there.”

“Do you really think that there’s anyone in the house beside ourselves?”

She shrugged her shoulders.

“I tell you what I do think, that if I’d known as much before as I do now, I’d have treated myself to a revolver, and you should have had one too.”

“A revolver! Whatever should I have done with a revolver?”

“I can’t say what you’d have done. I know what I’d have tried to do. I only wish that I had something loaded handy at this moment, there’s more persuasive power in bullets than in your barricade, my dear. If the worst does come to the worst, and we have to protect ourselves against goodness alone knows what, if I could only have had my grip upon a pistol I don’t fancy that all the scoring would have been upon the other side.”

Whether she talked like that simply to make my hair stand up on end, or whether she was really in earnest, was more than I was able to determine. But as I looked at her I felt a curious something creep all over me. There was an expression on her face, a smile on her lips, a light in her eyes, which made me think of her Uncle Benjamin, to whose peculiarities we owed our presence there, and wonder if not only his blood, but something of his spirit too, was in her veins. I was persuaded that she perceived something actually agreeable in a situation in which I saw nothing but horror. And it was I who had supposed myself to be romantic!