At that moment a knock came to the door, and Madame’s nasal ‘in moment’ answered promptly, and she opened the door, stealthily popping out her head.
‘Oh, that is all right; go you long, no ting more, go way.’
‘Who’s there?’ I cried.
‘Hold a your tongue,’ said Madame imperiously to the visitor, whose voice I fancied I recognised— ‘go way.’
Out slipped Madame again, locking the door; but this time she returned immediately, bearing a tray with breakfast.
I think she fancied that I would perhaps attempt to break away and escape; but I had no such thought at that moment. She hastily set down the tray on the floor at the threshold, locking the door as before.
My share of breakfast was a little tea; but Madame’s digestion was seldom disturbed by her sympathies, and she ate voraciously. During this process there was a silence unusual in her company; but when her meal was ended she proposed a reconnaissance, professing much uncertainty as to whether my Uncle had been arrested or not.
‘And in case the poor old gentleman be poot in what you call stone jug, where are we to go my dear Maud — to Knowl or to Elverston? You must direct.’
And so she disappeared, turning the key in the door as before. It was an old custom of hers, locking herself in her room, and leaving the key in the lock; and the habit prevailed, for she left it there again.
With a heavy heart I completed my simple toilet, wondering all the while how much of Madame’s story might be false and how much, if any, true. Then I looked out upon the dingy courtyard below, in its deep damp shadow, and thought, ‘How could an assassin have scaled that height in safety, and entered so noiselessly as not to awaken the slumbering gamester?’ Then there were the iron bars across my window. What a fool had I been to object to that security!
I was labouring hard to reassure myself, and keep all ghastly suspicions at arm’s length. But I wished that my room had been to the front of the house, with some view less dismal.
Lost in these ruminations of fear, as I stood at the window I was startled by the sound of a sharp tread on the lobby, and by the key turning in the lock of my door.
In a panic I sprang back into the corner, and stood with my eyes fixed upon the door. It opened a little, and the black head of Meg Hawkes was introduced.
‘Oh, Meg!’ I cried; ‘thank God!’
‘I guessed’twas you, Miss Maud. I am feared, Miss.’
The miller’s daughter was pale, and her eyes, I thought, were red and swollen.
‘Oh, Meg! for God’s sake, what is it all?’
‘I darn’t come in. The old un’s gone down, and locked the cross-door, and left me to watch. They think I care nout about ye, no more nor themselves. I donna know all, but summat more nor her. They tell her nout, she’s so gi’n to drink; they say she’s not safe, an’ awful quarrelsome. I hear a deal when fayther and Master Dudley be a-talkin’ in the mill. They think, comin’ in an’ out, I don’t mind; but I put one think an’ t’other together. An’ don’t ye eat nor drink nout here, Miss; hide away this; it’s black enough, but wholesome anyhow!’ and she slipt a piece of a coarse loaf from under her apron. ‘Hide it mind. Drink nout but the water in the jug there — it’s clean spring.’
‘Oh, Meg! Oh, Meg! I know what you mean,’ said I, faintly.
‘Ay, Miss, I’m feared they’ll try it; they’ll try to make away wi’ ye somehow. I’m goin’ to your friends arter dark; I darn’t try it no sooner. I’ll git awa to Ellerston, to your lady-cousin, and I’ll bring ‘em back wi’ me in a rin; so keep a good hairt, lass. Meg Hawkes will stan’ to ye. Ye were better to me than fayther and mother, and a’;’ and she clasped me round the waist, and buried her head in my dress; ‘an I’ll gie my life for ye, darling, and if they hurt ye I’ll kill myself.’
She recovered her sterner mood quickly —
‘Not a word, lass,’ she said, in her old tone. ‘Don’t ye try to git away — they’ll kill ye — ye can’t do’t. Leave a’ to me. It won’t be, whatever it is, till two or three o’clock in the morning. I’ll ha’e them a’ here long afore; so keep a brave heart — there’s a darling.’
I suppose she heard, or fancied she heard, a step approaching, for she said —
‘Hish!’
Her pale wild face vanished, the door shut quickly and softly, and the key turned again in the lock.
Meg, in her rude way, had spoken softly — almost under her breath; but no prophecy shrieked by the Pythoness ever thundered so madly in the ears of the hearer. I dare say that Meg fancied I was marvellously little moved by her words. I felt my gaze grow intense, and my flesh and bones literally freeze. She did not know that every word she spoke seemed to burst like a blaze in my brain. She had delivered her frightful warning, and told her story coarsely and bluntly, which, in effect, means distinctly and concisely; and, I dare say, the announcement so made, like a quick bold incision in surgery, was more tolerable than the slow imperfect mangling, which falters and recedes and equivocates with torture. Madame was long away. I sat down at the window, and tried to appreciate my dreadful situation. I was stupid — the imagery was all frightful; but I beheld it as we sometimes see horrors — heads cut off and houses burnt — in a dream, and without the corresponding emotions. It did not seem as if all this were really happening to me. I remember sitting at the window, and looking and blinking at the opposite side of the building, like a person unable but striving to see an object distinctly, and every minute pressing my hand to the side of my head and saying —
‘Oh, it won’t be — it won’t be — Oh no! — never! — it could not be!’ And in this stunned state Madame found me on her return.
But the valley of the shadow of death has its varieties of dread. The ‘horror of great darkness’ is disturbed by voices and illumed by sights. There are periods of incapacity and collapse, followed by paroxysms of active terror. Thus in my journey during those long hours I found it — agonies subsiding into lethargies, and these breaking again into frenzy. I sometimes wonder how I carried my reason safely through the ordeal.
Madame locked the door, and amused herself with her own business, without minding me, humming little nasal snatches of French airs, as she smirked on her silken purchases displayed in the daylight. Suddenly it struck me that it was very dark, considering how early it was. I looked at my watch; it seemed to me a great effort of concentration to understand it. Four o’clock, it said. Four o’clock! It would be dark at five — night in one hour!
‘Madame, what o’clock is it? Is it evening?’ I cried with my hand to my forehead, like a person puzzled.
‘Two three minutes past four. It had five minutes to four when I came upstairs,’ answered she, without interrupting her examination of a piece of darned lace which she was holding close to her eyes at the window.
‘Oh, Madame! Madame! I’m frightened,’ cried I, with a wild and piteous voice, grasping her arm, and looking up, as shipwrecked people may their last to heaven, into her inexorable eyes. Madame looked frightened too, I thought, as she stared into my face. At last she said, rather angrily, and shaking her arm loose —
‘What you mean, cheaile?’
‘Oh save me, Madame! — oh save me! — oh save me, Madame!’ I pleaded, with the wild monotony of perfect terror, grasping and clinging to her dress, and looking up, with an agonised face, into the eyes of that shadowy Atropos.
‘Save a you, indeed! Save! What niaiserie!’
‘Oh, Madame! Oh, dear Madame! for God’s sake, only get me away — get me from this, and I’ll do everything you ask me all my life — I will — indeed, Madame, I will! Oh save me! save me! save me!’
I was clinging to Madame as to my guardian angel in my agony.
‘And who told you, cheaile, you are in any danger?’ demanded Madame, looking down on me with a black and witchlike stare.
‘I am, Madame — I am — in great danger! Oh, Madame, think of me — take pity on me! I have none to help me — there is no one but God an
d you!’
Madame all this time viewed me with the same dismal stare, like a sorceress reading futurity in my face.
‘Well, maybe you are — how can I tell? Maybe your uncle is mad — maybe you are mad. You have been my enemy always — why should I care?’
Again I burst into wild entreaty, and, clasping her fast, poured forth my supplications with the bitterness of death.
‘I have no confidence in you, little Maud; you are little rogue — petite traîtresse! Reflect, if you can, how you ‘av always treat Madame. You ‘av attempt to ruin me — you conspire with the bad domestics at Knowl to destroy me — and you expect me here to take a your part! You would never listen to me — you ‘ad no mercy for me — you join to hunt me away from your house like wolf. Well, what you expect to find me now? Bah!’
This terrific ‘Bah!’ with a long nasal yell of scorn, rang in my ears like a clap of thunder.
‘I say you are mad, petite insolente, to suppose I should care for you more than the poor hare it will care for the hound — more than the bird who has escape will love the oiseleur. I do not care — I ought not care. It is your turn to suffer. Lie down on your bed there, and suffer quaitely.’
CHAPTER LXIII
SPICED CLARET
I did not lie down; but I despaired. I walked round and round the room, wringing my hands in utter distraction. I threw myself at the bedside on my knees. I could not pray; I could only shiver and moan, with hands clasped, and eyes of horror turned up to heaven. I think Madame was, in her malignant way, perplexed. That some evil was intended me I am sure she was persuaded; but I dare say Meg Hawkes had said rightly in telling me that she was not fully in their secrets.
The first paroxysm of despair subsided into another state. All at once my mind was filled with the idea of Meg Hawkes, her enterprise, and my chances of escape. There is one point at which the road to Elverston makes a short ascent: there is a sudden curve there, two great ash-trees, with a roadside stile between, at the right side, covered with ivy. Driving back and forward, I did not recollect having particularly remarked this point in the highway; but now it was before me, in the thin light of the thinnest segment of moon, and the figure of Meg Hawkes, her back toward me, always ascending towards Elverston. It was constantly the same picture — the same motion without progress — the same dreadful suspense and impatience.
I was now sitting on the side of the bed, looking wistfully across the room. When I did not see Meg Hawkes, I beheld Madame darkly eyeing first one then another point of the chamber, evidently puzzling over some problem, and in one of her most savage moods — sometimes muttering to herself, sometimes protruding, and sometimes screwing up her great mouth.
She went into her own room, where she remained, I think, nearly ten minutes, and on her return there was that in the flash of her eyes, the glow of her face, and the peculiar fragrance that surrounded her, that showed she had been partaking of her favourite restorative.
I had not moved since she left my room.
She paused about the middle of the floor, and looked at me with what I can only describe as her wild-beast stare.
‘You are a very secrete family, you Ruthyns — you are so coning. I hate the coning people. By my faith, I weel see Mr. Silas Ruthyn, and ask wat he mean. I heard him tell old Wyat that Mr. Dudley is gone away tonight. He shall tell me everything, or else I weel make echec et mat aussi vrai que je vis.’
Madame’s words had hardly ceased, when I was again watching Meg Hawkes on the steep road, mounting, but never reaching, the top of the acclivity, on the way to Elverston, and mentally praying that she might be brought safely there. Vain prayer of an agonised heart! Meg’s journey was already frustrated: she was not to reach Elverston in time.
Madame revisited her apartment, and returned, not, I think, improved in temper. She walked about the room, hustling the scanty furniture hither and thither as she encountered it. She kicked her empty box out of her way, with a horrid crash, and a curse in French. She strode and swaggered round the room, muttering all the way, and turning the corners of her course with a furious whisk. At last, out of the door she went. I think she fancied she had not been sufficiently taken into confidence as to what was intended for me.
It was now growing late, and yet no succour! I was seized, I remember, with a dreadful icy shivering.
I was listening for signals of deliverance. At ever distant sound, half stifled with a palpitation, these sounds piercing my ear with a horrible and exaggerated distinctness— ‘Oh Meg! — Oh cousin Monica! — Oh come! Oh Heaven, have mercy! — Lord, have mercy!’ I thought I heard a roaring and jangle of voices. Perhaps it came from Uncle Silas’s room. It might be the tipsy violence of Madame. It might — merciful Heaven! — be the arrival of friends. I started to my feet; I listened, quivering with attention. Was it in my brain? — was it real? I was at the door, and it seemed to open of itself. Madame had forgotten to lock it; she was losing her head a little by this time. The key stood in the gallery door beyond; it too, was open. I fled wildly. There was a subsiding sound of voices in my uncle’s room. I was, I know not how, on the lobby at the great stairhead outside my uncle’s apartment. My hand was on the banisters, my foot on the first step, when below me and against the faint light that glimmered through the great window on the landing I saw a bulky human form ascending, and a voice said ‘Hush!’ I staggered back, and at that instant fancied, with a thrill of conviction, I heard Lady Knollys’s voice in Uncle Silas’ room.
I don’t know how I entered the room; I was there like a ghost. I was frightened at my own state.
Lady Knollys was not there — no one but Madame and my guardian.
I can never forget the look that Uncle Silas fixed on me as he cowered, seemingly as appalled as I.
I think I must have looked like a phantom newly risen from the grave.
‘What’s that? — where do you come from?’ whispered he.
‘Death! death!’ was my whispered answer, as I froze with terror where I stood.
‘What does she mean? — what does all this mean?’ said Uncle Silas, recovering wonderfully, and turning with a withering sneer on Madame. ‘Do you think it right to disobey my plain directions, and let her run about the house at this hour?’ ‘Death! death! Oh, pray to God for you and me!’ I whispered in the same dreadful tones.
My uncle stared strangely at me again; and after several horrible seconds, in which he seemed to have recovered himself, he said, sternly and coolly —
‘You give too much place to your imagination, niece. Your spirits are in an odd state — you ought to have advice.’
‘Oh, uncle, pity me! Oh, uncle, you are good! you’re kind; you’re kind when you think. You could not — you could not — could not! Oh, think of your brother that was always so good to you! He sees me here. He sees us both. Oh, save me, uncle — save me! — and I’ll give up everything to you. I’ll pray to God to bless you — I’ll never forget your goodness and mercy. But don’t keep me in doubt. If I’m to go, oh, for God’s sake, shoot me now!’
‘You were always odd, niece; I begin to fear you are insane,’ he replied, in the same stern icy tone.
‘Oh, uncle — oh! — am I? Am I mad?’
‘I hope not; but you’ll conduct yourself like a sane person if you wish to enjoy the privileges of one.’
Then, with his finger pointing at me, he turned to Madame, and said, in a tone of suppressed ferocity —
‘What’s the meaning of this? — why is she here?’
Madame was gabbling volubly, but to me it was only a shrilly noise. My whole soul was concentrated in my uncle, the arbiter of my life, before whom I stood in the wildest agony of supplication.
That night was dreadful. The people I saw dizzily, made of smoke or shining vapour, smiling or frowning, I could have passed my hand through them. They were evil spirits.
‘There’s no ill intended you; by —— there’s none,’ said my uncle, for the first time violently agitated. ‘Madame told yo
u why we’ve changed your room. You told her about the bailiffs, did not you? ‘with a stamp of fury he demanded of Madame, whose nasal roullades of talk were running on like a accompaniment all the time. She had told me indeed only a few hours since, and now it sounded to me like the echo of something heard a month ago or more.
‘You can’t go about the house, d — n it, with bailiffs in occupation. There now — there’s the whole thing. Get to your room, Maud, and don’t vex me. There’s a good girl.’
He was trying to smile as he spoke these last words, and, with quavering soft tones, to quiet me; but the old scowl was there, the smile was corpse-like and contorted, and the softness of his tones was more dreadful than another man’s ferocity.
‘There, Madame, she’ll go quite gently, and you can call if you want help. Don’t let it happen again.’
‘Come, Maud,’ said Madame, encircling but not hurting my arm with her grip; ‘let us go, my friend.’
I did go, you will wonder, as well you may — as you may wonder at the docility with which strong men walk through the pressroom to the drop, and thank the people of the prison for their civility when they bid them goodbye, and facilitate the fixing of the rope and adjusting of the cap. Have you never wondered that they don’t make a last battle for life with the unscrupulous energy of terror, instead of surrendering it so gently in cold blood, on a silent calculation, the arithmetic of despair?
I went upstairs with Madame like a somnambulist. I rather quickened my step as I drew near my room. I went in, and stood a phantom at the window, looking into the dark quadrange. A thin glimmering crescent hung in the frosty sky, and all heaven was strewn with stars. Over the steep roof at the other side spread on the dark azure of the night this glorious blazonry of the unfathomable Creator. To me a dreadful scroll — inexorable eyes — the cloud of cruel witnesses looking down in freezing brightness on my prayers and agonies.
I turned about and sat down, leaning my head upon my arms. Then suddenly I sat up, as for the first time the picture of Uncle Silas’s littered room, and the travelling bags and black boxes plied on the floor by his table — the desk, hat-case, umbrella, coats, rugs, and mufflers, all ready for a journey — reached my brain and suggested thought. The mise en scène had remained in every detail fixed upon my retina; and how I wondered— ‘When is he going — how soon? Is he going to carry me away and place me in a madhouse?’
Complete Works of Sheridan Le Fanu (Illustrated) Page 261
