"O Time! thou must untangle this, not I,
'Tis too hard a knot for me to untie."
When I awoke, it was to the pleasant reality of morning and sunshine,
that had found their way through the light curtains of my pleasant room,
and made it pleasanter than ever. Kitty was at my side in an instant,
and a brighter fresher face to greet one's waking vision could not be
desired. She managed, by prompt and clever measures, to keep off Mrs.
Roberts till I had had my breakfast, and risen and been dressed. It was
matter of great astonishment to me to find myself so absurdly weak, my
strength and spirits at school having passed into a proverb. This sudden
illness had reduced me extremely, however, as I found whenever I
attempted any exertion, and all Kitty's services were required.
While she was dressing me, she chatted very confidentially, though
always with a tone of deference that counterbalanced the liberty she
took in talking at all. Our distaste for Mrs. Roberts was potent in
putting us on as good terms as young lady and young lady's maid could
well be, and there is a sort of freemasonry in youth that sets at
defiance the restrictions of rank, and that drew us, the two youngest
things in the stately old house, together, naturally and irresistibly.
I call it an old house, because it impressed me at first as such. It was
solid and dark, and excepting my room and one or two others on the same
floor, had very little that was light and modern-looking about it. It
had been built, Kitty said, in the time of Mr. Rutledge's father, and
was called the finest house in the country. Loads of money, she
informed me, he had spent upon it; workmen had been sent for, hundreds
of miles, to do the carving and paint the walls, and no money and no
labor was spared to make it a fine place, and indeed there was none like
it anywhere around; and now to think of its being shut up like a prison
half the year, and sometimes all the year; it was a shame, Kitty
thought, upon her honor it was.
I asked her why Mr. Rutledge did not live there?
She did not know; she supposed it was lonesome; he never stayed home for
over a couple of months, and then would be off, for no one knew how
long. Sometimes he went to Europe, and was gone two or three years at a
time. And such dull times as it was _then_ at Rutledge, if you please!
Nobody but Mrs. Roberts, and the cook, and dairy-woman, besides the farm
hands. Nothing to do but stand Mrs. Roberts' preaching from morning till
night. She only wished she'd lived in the old times that her father
talked about, when Rutledge was the gayest of the gay. (Her father, she
explained, had been gardener there for thirty years, and had lived on
the place from a boy.) Such fine doings! Ah! if Mr. Rutledge would only
take it into his head to have such times now! It was when he was very
young, and Mr. Richard and Miss Alice, and there was nothing but balls
and picnics and pleasure-parties all the time, company staying in the
house, and visitors from the neighborhood for miles around. Ah! it was
mighty different now!
"What has become of the others? Is Mr. Rutledge the only one left?"
Mr. Rutledge, Kitty told me, was the youngest of the three. Mr. Richard
died when he was just twenty-four--a month after his father--and so Mr.
Rutledge came into the property when he was a mere lad.
"But the daughter, Alice, what became of her?"
"I don't know exactly," said Kitty, lowering her voice, and looking
anxiously toward the door. "They never talk about her; something must
have happened very strange, for there's always a mystery about Miss
Alice. The old servants on the place will never say a word about her;
and though I've teased father again and again, I never could get
anything out of him."
"But, Kitty," I exclaimed eagerly, my curiosity thoroughly excited,
"what makes you think she isn't dead?"
"Oh! that much I know, that she didn't die then, and that she didn't die
at home in this house, and isn't buried there below in the churchyard by
the others; and I know she was away when old Mr. Rutledge died; because
once father said it was an awful thing, when he lay so ill, and out of
his head, to hear him call upon her to come home. All that night before
he died, he would call 'Alice! Alice!' till you could hear it all over
the house. And father says," continued the girl, in a still lower tone,
"that sometimes of wild dark nights, when he's coming past the house
late from his work, he could swear for all the world that he hears the
old man still calling 'Alice! Alice!' till it makes his blood freeze to
listen to it. And then, when I say 'Where was she, father, all the time,
and why didn't she come to him?' he always says, 'that's not for the
like of you to hear about; it's none of your business, child, nor mine,'
and sends me off about something else."
"But, Kitty," I persisted, "is that all you know of her? Tell me all
you've ever heard; was she pretty?"
"Oh, so pretty! You can't think how white her skin was, and her eyes
like violets, so large and blue, and curls all over her head--loose,
shiny curls."
"How do you know," I said quickly; "surely you never saw her, did you?"
Kitty blushed and stammered, and said, "No, not exactly; but there was
something she had seen she'd never told anybody about; she didn't know
whether she ought to;" but the result was, she at last imparted to me
the following:
When Kitty was about twelve years old, it appeared, from her account,
the demon of curiosity was stronger in her even than it was now, and her
keen young eyes had detected long before that time, what had escaped
many maturer observers, viz., that at the end of the upper hall there
was a room, that was ignored in all descriptions of the house, and might
well, indeed, have been overlooked. A huge wardrobe stood in the middle
of the space between the corner room on the east, and the corner room on
the west, of the hall; and none but a very inquiring mind like Kitty's
would have investigated the exact dimensions of these rooms, whether
they met and were separated but by a partition, or whether a distinct
room, the width of the hall, and corresponding to Mr. Rutledge's
dressing-room at the opposite end, existed between them. Kitty crept
down on the lawn and looked up on the outside, and discovered a large
window, the shutters of which were closed and dusty; and on exploring
the corner rooms, they corroborated her suspicions--they did not extend
across the hall. Behind that wardrobe, Kitty knew, then, existed a door;
and night and day the insane desire to penetrate beyond it, haunted the
child.
At length, circumstances seemed to favor the fulfillment of her wishes.
It was a beautiful, mild May day, and the untiring energy of Mrs.
Roberts was enjoying a full swing in the pursuit of her favorite
_divertissement_ of house-cleaning. Doors and windows were thrown open;
all manner of scouring and scrubbing was going on in all parts of the
house. Step-ladders and water-pails graced the hall; the odor of
soap-suds and lime filled the air. Serene amid the confusion, Mrs.
Roberts applied herself to the overlooking and rearranging the identical
wardrobe in the hall, that had so long been the fascination and torment
of little Kitty, who, it may well be supposed, was "on hand" during the
operation. Demure and useful, she made herself very officious in
assisting Mrs. Roberts in her labors, standing, for hours together, to
be loaded with the heavy piles of rich old curtains from the shelves,
faded long ago, and antiquated table-covers, heavy Marseilles coverlets,
that must have made the sleepers of old time ache to turn over under;
great packages folded up in linen, through the ends of which Kitty's
eager eyes caught glimpses of satin and brocade, and the tarnished
buttons of military clothes. Kitty never thought of her aching arms, or
her tired little feet; she never took her eyes away, and never lost a
movement of Mrs. Roberts, nor a sight of anything before her; and after
dinner, following like a kitten at the housekeeper's heels, came back to
the fascinating business of disinterring the faded glories of the past.
By three o'clock, the shelves were all emptied and the drawers all taken
out; and Mrs. Roberts was just beginning the important business of
dusting and wiping them, and restoring their precious contents, when a
man from the fields came posting up to the house in the greatest haste,
with the intelligence that a pair of the farm-horses had run away, and
done no end of damage to themselves and to the man who was driving them,
who was now lying below the barn in a state of insensibility, and Mrs.
Roberts' assistance was instantly required. It was not a case that
admitted of a demur, and the housekeeper bustled off, leaving Kitty with
orders to stay where she was, and take care of the things left about
till she came back, and, taking the only woman who was upstairs with
her, left Kitty in possession of the field.
She did not mean to move the wardrobe, but it was so natural just to try
how heavy it was, and if it would really stir! And to her surprise and
guilty pleasure, the wardrobe, lightened of its weighty contents,
yielded to her touch, and moved a little--a very little--way forward;
but enough to show to her eager eyes, in the dark wood-work, a door,
over which generations of painstaking spiders had spun their webs
unchecked, and where the scourge of Mrs. Roberts' eye had failed, or
feared to penetrate. Kitty, holding her breath for fear, turned the
knob; it resisted; it was locked, of course, possibly on the outside,
and the key might have been taken out. An expedient struck the child's
fertile brain; and she darted across the hall, and, possessing herself
of the key of the corresponding room, darted back again and applied it
to the lock. It fitted, and turned in it; the knob yielded to her eager
grasp, and, too near the completion of her wishes now to pause, she
wound her lithe figure through the narrow aperture, and pushing open the
door, stood within the mysterious room! For a moment, Kitty's heart beat
quick; an awe crept over her; for a moment she longed to be out in the
sunshine again. But her elastic spirits and indomitable curiosity soon
triumphed over the transitory dread inspired by the darkness and
solemnity of the deserted chamber, and the close, dead atmosphere, and
the unearthly stillness; and, gaining courage every moment, she made her
way, with what caution she might, toward the window, undid the
fastening, and, pushing up a very little way the heavy sash, turned the
blind, and let in a ray of God's blessed sunlight, dim and dull enough,
though, through the dusty panes, into this strange room, deserted these
many, many years, it would seem, both of God and man. Kitty was a bold
child, little given to nervousness or timidity, or she would have shrunk
in terror from the weird, fantastic shadows that the dim light showed
about the room. But that was not Kitty's way; and, sitting down on a
divan by the window, she rested her elbows on her knees and her chin
upon her hands, in contemplative fashion, and proceeded to look about
her.
What a strange sight it must have been! the slow sunbeam creeping over
the faded carpet, and lighting up the dust-covered furniture and the
dusky walls. Kitty's glance first turned, naturally enough, to the bed,
which, richly curtained and spacious, stood on the left of the door. The
curtains were swept back and the bed was made, but it was apparent that
some one had occupied it, lying on the outside; the pillows were
displaced and crushed, and the coverlet was deranged. That, since the
occupation of that _some one_, the room had never been arranged or
touched, seemed evident, from the confusion and disorder that prevailed.
The door of the wardrobe on the right was partly open, and a dress was
hanging out from it. A shawl, faded beyond recognition, hung upon the
chair near Kitty, and at her feet lay a slipper--such a slim, pretty
little slipper! while on the toilette table, you could have sworn, a
hasty hand had just dropped the stopper in that odor-bottle, and pushed
back the glove-box that stood open under the glass.
Pins rusted in the embroidered cushion; dust inch thick on the mirror
and over all, told of a dreary space since any human face had been
reflected there. Upon a little table by the window stood a work-box and
some books, and in a slender vase, the ghosts of some flowers that fell
to dust at Kitty's touch. But what most excited her wonder, was a
picture, that, with its face to the wall, was placed on the floor near
the door. It evidently did not belong to the furniture of the room, and
had been put there hastily, and to be out of the way. Kitty surveyed it
from her seat curiously, and at last crept up to it, and turned it
around, then slipping down on the carpet before it, was soon lost in
admiration of the lovely face it presented to her.
The lustre of the dark-blue eyes, and the delicate outline of the oval
face, from which large wavy curls of fair hair were pushed back with
girlish freedom, stamped themselves indelibly upon Kitty's retentive
memory. It must have been an odd sight; the eager child, in that dark,
uncanny room, upon her hands and knees before the picture, watching it
in utter fascination, forgetful of the passing moments, and of all save
the sweet face so strangely banished from the light.
But the heavy shutting of the hall door, and the sound of voices in the
hall below, put a sudden period to these fancies, and brought her to
her feet with a desperate start and a pang of genuine fear. This was a
tangible terror, and as such, Kitty's common sense succumbed to it. With
nervous haste, she restored the picture, flew across the room and drew
down the window, and made the best of her way back toward the door. But
in her haste, her feet became entangled in something, and tripping up,
in an instant she lay at full length on the floor. She disengaged her
feet from the impediment that had caused her fall; it was a long ribbon,
and a locket was attached to it; hastily thrusting them into her bosom,
she picked herself up, and sprang toward the door. Steps were already
mounting the stairs; a voice she knew too well was already audible; the
unused lock grated and creaked cruelly under the nervous hands that
struggled with it; but, with the strength of terror, she mastered it at
last--locked it, dropped the key in her pocket, slipped through the
narrow space between the wall and the wardrobe, with an eager push
restored the latter to its place, and before Mrs. Roberts reached the
landing, stood, a pallid, trembling, but undetected culprit, among the
piles of valuables she had been left to guard. The habitual darkness of
that end of the hall, increased by the near approach of twilight,
screened her white cheeks from the scrutiny of Mrs. Roberts' searching
eyes, and the haste that lady was in to restore the wardrobe to its
ancient and uninterrupted order, further favored her escape.
But she fully paid the penalty of her crime--she acknowledged, in the
dread she felt lest it should be discovered, and the unaccustomed alarm
she endured, when on dark nights, her ruthless mistress sent her
candleless to bed; and she, with suspended breath and strained ear,
would creep past the mysterious chamber to her own little loft above, to
lie whole hours awake and trembling. Her fertile imagination had
supplied the wanting links in the chain of fact; and the fair-haired
Alice, the banished daughter of the house, was her dream of beauty by
day and her haunting terror by night.
"But Kitty," I exclaimed, breathlessly, "does no one else know of the
room? Does no one ever go in it?"
"Oh yes! Mrs. Roberts must know of it, for she lived here long before
the present Mr. Rutledge was master; she knows all the family secrets,
I'll warrant. But neither she nor any one else ever troubles _that_
room, I'm pretty sure. I've watched it close enough, and the wardrobe
never has been stirred since that day I did it, six years ago last
spring. Hardly any one goes to that end of the hall; the corner rooms
are shut up and not used, and Mr. Rutledge's own rooms, and Mrs.
Roberts', and this one for visitors, being all on this side of the
house, there's very little occasion for anybody to go near the others in
the rear."
"What was in the locket you picked up?" I asked.
"It was a miniature, tied by a long narrow blue ribbon, and that night,
when I got upstairs, I bolted the door and looked at it; it was the
picture of a gentleman, young and so"----