THE GROWTH OF A MYSTERY.
We started at five o'clock to walk back to Dupley Walls, the major,
and I, and George. It was only two miles away across the fields. I was
quite proud to be seen in the company of so stately a gentleman as
Major Strickland, who was dressed this afternoon as for a visit of
ceremony. He had on a blue frock-coat tightly buttoned, to which the
builder had imparted an intangible something that smacked undeniably
of the vieux soldat. He wore a hat rather wide in the brim; a high
stiff checked cravat; a white vest; and lacquered military boots, over
which his tightly strapped trousers fell without a crease. He had
white buckskin gloves, a stout silver-headed malacca cane, and carried
a choice geranium in his button-hole.
There was not much conversation among us by the way. The major's usual
flow of talk seemed to have deserted him this afternoon, and his mood
seemed unconsciously to influence both George and me. Lady Pollexfen's
threat to send me to a French school weighed down my spirits. I had
found dear friends--Sister Agnes, the kind-hearted major, and his
nephew, only to be torn from them--to be plunged back into the cold
cheerless monotony of school-girl life, where there would be no one to
love me, but many to find fault.
We went back by way of the plantation. George would not go any farther
than the wicket at its edge, and it was agreed that he should there
await the major's return from the hail. "I hope, Miss Holme, that we
shall see you at Rose Cottage again before many days are over," he
said, as he took my hand to bid me farewell. "Uncle has promised to
ask her ladyship to spare you for a few days."
"I shall be very, very glad to come, Mr. George. As long as I live I
shall be in your debt, for I cannot forget that I owe you my life."
"The fairy godmother is whispering in her ear," said the major in a
loud aside. "She talks like a woman of forty."
While still some distance away we could see Lady Pollexfen sunning
herself on the western terrace. With a pang of regret I saw that
Sister Agnes was not with her. The major quickened his pace; I clung
to his hand, and felt without seeing that her ladyship's eyes were
fixed upon me severely.
"I have brought back your wandering princess, my lady," said the
major, in his cheery way, as he lifted his hat. Then, as he took her
proffered hand, "I hope your ladyship is in perfect health."
"No princess, Major Strickland, but a base beggar brat," said Lady
Pollexfen, without heeding his last words. "From the first moment of
my seeing her I had a presentiment that she would cause me nothing
but trouble and annoyance. That presentiment has been borne out by
facts--by facts!" She nodded her head at the major, and rubbed one
lean hand viciously within the other.
"Your ladyship forgets that the child herself is here. Pray consider
her feelings."
"Were my feelings considered by those who sent her to Dupley Walls? I
ought to have been consulted in the matter--to have had time given me
to make fresh arrangements. It was enough to be burdened with the cost
of her maintenance, without the added nuisance of having her before me
as a continual eyesore. But I have arranged. Next week she leaves
Dupley Walls for the Continent, and if I never see her face again, so
much the better for both of us."
"With all due respect to your ladyship, it seems to me that your tone
is far more bitter than the occasion demands. What may be the
relationship between Miss Holme and yourself it is quite impossible
for me to say; but that there is a tie of some sort between you I
cannot for a moment doubt."
"And pray, Major Strickland, what reason may you have for believing
that a tie of any kind exists between this young person and the
mistress of Dupley Walls?"
"I will take my stand on one point: on the extraordinary resemblance
which this child bears to----"
"To whom, Major Strickland?"
"To one who lies buried in Elvedon churchyard. You know whom I mean.
Such a likeness is far too remarkable to be the result of accident."
"I deny the existence of any such likeness," said Lady Pollexfen,
vehemently. "I deny it utterly. You are the victim of your own
disordered imagination. Likeness, forsooth!" She laughed a bitter
contemptuous laugh, and seemed to think that she had disposed of the
question for ever.
"Come here, child," said the major, taking me kindly by the hand, and
leading me close up to her ladyship. "Look at her, Lady Pollexfen," he
added; "scan her features thoroughly, and tell me then that the
likeness of which I speak is nothing more than a figment of my own
brain."
Lady Pollexfen drew herself up haughtily. "To please you in a whim,
Major Strickland, which I cannot characterize as anything but
ridiculous, I will try to discover this fancied resemblance." Speaking
thus, her ladyship carried her glass to her eye, and favoured me with
a cold critical stare, under which I felt my blood boil with grief and
indignation.
"Pshaw! Major Strickland, you are growing old and foolish. I cannot
perceive the faintest trace of such a likeness as you mention.
Besides, if it really did exist it would prove nothing. It would
merely serve to show that there may be certain secrets within Dupley
Walls which not even Major Strickland's well-known acumen can fathom."
"After that, of course I can only bid your ladyship farewell," said
the offended major, with a ceremonious bow. Then turning to me:
"Good-bye, my dear Miss Holme, for the present. Even at this, the
eleventh hour, I must intercede with Lady Pollexfen to grant you
permission to come and spend part of next week with us at Rose
Cottage."
"Oh! take her, and welcome; I have no wish to keep her here. But you
will stop to dinner, major, when we will talk of these things further.
And now, Miss Pest, you had better run away. You have heard too much
already."
I was glad enough to get away, so after a hasty kiss to Major
Strickland I hurried indoors, and once in my own bedroom, I burst into
an uncontrollable fit of crying. How cruel had been Lady Pollexfen's
words! and her looks had been more cruel than they.
I was still weeping when Sister Agnes came into the room. She had but
just returned from Tydsbury. She knelt beside me, and took me in her
arms and kissed me, and wiped away my tears. "Why was I crying?" she
asked. I told her of all that Lady Pollexfen had said.
"Oh! cruel, cruel of her to treat you thus!" she said. "Can nothing
move her--nothing melt that heart of adamant? But, Janet, dear, you
must not let her sharp words wound you so deeply. Would that my love
could shield you from such trials in future. But that cannot always
be. You must strive to regard such things as part of that stern
discipline of life which is designed to tutor our wayward hearts and
rebellious spirits, and bring them into harmony with a will superior
to our own. And now you must tell me all about your voyage down the
Adair, and your rescue by that brave George Strickland. Ah! how
grieved I was, when the news was brought to Dupley Walls, that I could
not hasten to you, and see with my own eyes that you had come to no
harm! But I was chained to my post, and could not stir."
Scarcely had Sister Agnes done speaking when the air was filled with a
strain of music that seemed to be more sweet and solemn than anything
I had ever heard before. All the soreness melted out of my heart as I
listened; all my troubles seemed to take to themselves wings, and life
to put on an altogether different aspect from any it had ever worn to
me before. I saw clearly that I had not been so good a girl in many
ways as I might have been. I would try my best not to be so
inattentive at church in future, and I would never, no, not even on
the coldest night in winter, neglect to say my prayers before getting
into bed.
"What is it? Where does it come from?" I whispered into the ear of
Sister Agnes.
"It is Father Spiridion playing the organ in the west gallery."
"And who is Father Spiridion?"
"A good man, and my friend. Presently you shall be introduced to him."
No word more was spoken till the playing ceased. Then Sister Agnes
took me by the hand and we went towards the west gallery. Father
Spiridion saw us, and paused on the top of the stairs.
"This is the child, holy father, of whom I have spoken to you once or
twice; the child, Janet Holme."
The father's shrewd blue eyes took me in from head to foot at a
glance. He was a tall, thin, and slightly cadaverous-looking man, with
high aquiline features; and with an indefinable something about him
that made me recognise him on the spot as a gentleman. He wore a
coarse brown robe that reached nearly to his feet, the cowl of which
was drawn over his head. When Sister Agnes had spoken he laid his hand
gently on my head, and said something I could not understand. Then
placing his hand under my chin, he said, "Look me straight in the
face, child."
I lifted my eyes and looked him fairly in the face, till his blue eyes
lighted up with a smile. Then patting me on the cheek, he said,
addressing Sister Agnes, "Nothing shifty there, at any rate. It is a
face full of candour, and of that innocent fearlessness which
childhood should always have, but too often loses in an evil world. I
dare be bound now, little Janet, that thou art fond of sweetmeats?"
"Oh yes, sir, if you please."
"By some strange accident I find here in my _soutane_ a tiny box of
bonbons. They might have been put there expressly for a little sweet
tooth of a Janet. Nothing could be more opportune. Take them, child,
with Father Spiridion's blessing; and sometimes remember his name in
thy prayers."
I did not see Father Spiridion again before I was sent away to school,
but in after years our threads of life crossed and re-crossed each
other strangely, in a way that neither he nor I even dreamed of at
that first interview.
My life at Dupley Walls lengthened out from day to day, and in many
ways I was exceedingly happy. My chief happiness lay in the love of
dear Sister Agnes, with whom I spent at least one or two hours every
day. Then I was very fond of Major Strickland, who, I felt sure, liked
me in return--liked me for myself, and liked me still more, perhaps,
for the strange resemblance which he said I bore to some dear one whom
he had lost many long years before. Of George Strickland, too, I was
very fond, but with a shy and diffident sort of liking. I held him as
so superior to me in every way that I could only worship him from a
distance. The major fetched me over to Rose Cottage several times.
Such events were for me holidays in the true sense of the word.
Another source of happiness arose from the fact that I saw very little
of Lady Pollexfen. The indifference with which she had at first
regarded me seemed to have deepened into absolute dislike. I was
forbidden to enter her apartments, and I took care not to be seen by
her when she was walking or riding out. I was sorry for her dislike,
and yet glad that she dispensed with my presence. I was far happier in
the housekeeper's room, where I was treated like a little queen. Dance
and I soon learned to love each other very heartily.
Those who have accompanied me thus far may not have forgotten the
account of my first night at Dupley Walls, nor how frightened I was by
the sound of certain mysterious footsteps in the room over mine. The
matter was explained simply enough by Dance next day as a whim of Lady
Pollexfen, who, for some reason best known to herself, chose that room
out of all the big old house as the scene of her midnight
perambulations. When therefore, on one or two subsequent occasions, I
was disturbed in a similar way, I was no longer frightened, but only
rendered sleepless and uncomfortable for the time being. I felt at
such times, so profound was the surrounding silence, as if every
living creature in the world, save Lady Pollexfen and myself, were
asleep.
But before long that room over mine acquired for itself in my mind a
new and dread significance. A consciousness gradually grew upon me
that there was about it something quite out of the common way; that
its four walls held within themselves some grim secret, the rites
appertaining to which were gone through when I and the rest of the
uninitiated were supposed to be in bed and asleep. I cannot tell what
it was that first made me suspect the existence of this secret.
Certainly not the midnight walks of Lady Pollexfen. Perhaps a certain
impalpable atmosphere of mystery, which, striking keenly on the
sensitive nerves of a child, strung by recent events to a higher pitch
than usual, broke down the first fine barrier that separates things
common and of the earth earthy, from those dim intuitions which even
the dullest of us feel at times of things spiritual and unseen. But
however that may be, it so fell out that I, who at school had been one
of the soundest of sleepers, had now become one of the worst. It often
happened that I would awake in the middle of the night, even when
there was no Lady Pollexfen to disturb me, and would so lie,
sleepless, with wide-staring eyes, for hours, while all sorts of weird
pictures would paint themselves idly in the waste nooks and corners of
my brain. One fancy I had, and for many nights I thought it nothing
more than fancy, that I could hear soft and muffled footsteps passing
up and down the staircase just outside my door; and that at times I
could even faintly distinguish them in the room over mine, where,
however, they never stayed for more than a few minutes at any one
time.
In one of my daylight explorations about the old house I ventured up
the flight of stairs that led from the landing outside my door to the
upper rooms. At the top of these stairs I found a door that differed
from every other door I had seen at Dupley Walls. In colour it was a
dull dead black, and it was studded with large square-headed nails. It
was without a handle of any kind, but was pierced by one tiny keyhole.
To what strange chamber did this terrible door give access? and who
was the mysterious visitor who came here night after night with hushed
footsteps and alone? These were two questions that weighed heavily on
my mind, that troubled me persistently when I lay awake in the dark,
and even refused by day to be put entirely on one side.
By-and-by the mystery deepened. In a recess close to the top of the
flight of stairs that led to the black door was an old-fashioned case
clock. When this clock struck the hour two small mechanical figures
dressed like German burghers of the sixteenth century came out of two
little turrets, bowed gravely to each other, and then retired, like
court functionaries, backwards. It was a source of great pleasure to
me to watch these figures go through their hourly pantomime. But after
a time it came into my head to wonder whether they did their duty by
night as well as by day, whether they came out and bowed to each other
in the dark, or waited quietly in their turrets till morning. In
pursuance of this inquiry I got out of bed one night after Dance had
left me, and relighted my candle. I knew that it was just on the
stroke of eleven, and here was a capital opportunity for studying the
customs of my little burghers by night. I stole up the staircase with
my candle, and waited for the clock to strike. It struck, and out came
the figures as usual.
"Perhaps they only came out because they saw my light," I said to
myself. I felt that the question as to their mode of procedure in the
dark was still an unsettled one.
But scarcely had the clock finished striking when I was disturbed by
the shutting of a door downstairs. Fearing that some one was coming,
and that the light might betray me, I blew out my candle and waited to
hear more. But all was silent in the house. I turned to go down, but
as I did so I saw with astonishment that a thin streak of light shone
from under the black door. I stood like one petrified. Was there any
one inside the room? Listening intently, I waited for full five
minutes without stirring a limb. Silence the most profound upstairs
and down. Stepping on tiptoe, I went back to my room, shut myself in,
and crept gladly into bed.
Next night my curiosity overmastered my fear. As soon as Dance was
gone I crept upstairs in the dark. One peep was enough. As on the
previous night, a thin streak of light shone from under the black
door--evidence that it was lighted up inside. Next night, and for
several nights afterwards, I put the same plan in operation with
precisely the same result. The light was always there.
Having my attention thus concentrated as it were upon this one room,
and lying awake so many hours when I ought to have been asleep, my
suspicions gradually merged into certainty that it was visited every
midnight by some one who came and went so lightly and quietly that
only by intently listening could I distinguish the exact moment of
their passing my door. Who was this visitor that came and went so
mysteriously? To discover this, without being myself discovered, was a
matter that required both tact and courage, but it was one on which I
was almost as much a monomaniac as a child well can be. To have opened
my door when the landing was perfectly dark would have been to see
nothing. To have opened the door with a candle in my hand would have
been to betray myself. I must wait for a moonlight night, which would
light up the landing sufficiently for my purpose. I waited. My
opportunity came. With my doorway in deep shadow, my door just
sufficiently open for me to peer through, and with the staircase
lighted up by the rays of the moon, I saw and recognised the
mysterious midnight visitor to the room over mine. I saw and
recognised Sister Agnes.