SOMETHING FORGOTTEN.
I will not trouble my reader with the thoughts that kept rising,
flickering, and fading, one after another, for two or three dismal
hours, as he lay with eyes closed but sleepless. At length he opened
them wide, and looked out into the room. It was a bright moonlit
night; the wind had sunk to rest; all the world slept in the exhaustion
of the storm; he only was awake; he could lie no longer; he would
go out, and discover, if possible, the mischief the tempest had
done.
He crept down the little spiral stair used only by the servants,
and knowing all the mysteries of lock and bar, was presently in the
open air. First he sought a view of the building against the sky,
but could not see that any portion was missing. He then proceeded
to walk round the house, in order to find what had fallen.
There was a certain neglected spot nearly under his own window, where
a wall across an interior angle formed a little court or yard; he
had once peeped in at the door of it, which was always half open,
and seemed incapable of being moved in either direction, but had
seen nothing except a broken pail and a pile of brushwood; the flat
arch over this door was broken, and the door itself half-buried
in a heap of blackened stones and mortar. Here was the avalanche
whose fall had so terrified the household! The formless mass had
yesterday been a fair-proportioned and ornate stack of chimneys.
He scrambled to the top of the heap and sitting down on a stone
carved with a plaited Celtic band, yet again fell a-thinking. The
marquis must dismiss him in the morning; would it not be better to
go away now, and spare poor old Duncan a terrible fit of rage? He
would suppose he had fled from the pseudo-maternal net of Mrs Stewart;
and not till he had found a place to which he could welcome him
would he tell him the truth. But his nature recoiled both from the
unmanliness of such a flight, and from the appearance of conscious
wrong it must involve, and he dismissed the notion. Scheme after
scheme for the future passed through his head, and still he sat
on the heap in the light of the high-gliding moon, like a ghost on
the ruins of his earthly home, and his eyes went listlessly straying
like servants without a master. Suddenly he found them occupied
with a low iron-studded door in the wall of the house, which he
had never seen before. He descended, and found it hardly closed,
for there was no notch to receive the heavy latch. Pushing it open
on great rusty hinges, he saw within what in the shadow appeared
a precipitous descent. His curiosity was roused; he stole back
to his room and fetched his candle; and having, by the aid of his
tinder-box, lighted it in the shelter of the heap, peeped again
through the doorway, and saw what seemed a narrow cylindrical pit,
only, far from showing a great yawning depth, it was filled with
stones and rubbish nearly to the bottom of the door. The top of the
door reached almost to the vaulted roof, one part of which, close
to the inner side of the circular wall, was broken. Below this
breach, fragments of stone projected from the wall, suggesting the
remnants of a stair. With the sight came a fore-sight of discovery.
One foot on the end of a long stone sticking vertically from the
rubbish, and another on one of the stones projecting from the wall,
his head was already through the break in the roof; and in a minute
more he was climbing a small, broken, but quite passable spiral
staircase, almost a counterpart of that already described as going
like a huge augerbore through the house from top to bottom--that
indeed by which he had just descended. There was most likely more
of it buried below, probably communicating with an outlet in some
part of the rock towards the burn, but the portion of it which, from
long neglect, had gradually given way, had fallen down the shaft,
and cut off the rest with its ruins.
At the height of a storey, he came upon a built-up doorway, and
again, at a similar height, upon another; but the parts filled in
looked almost as old as the rest of the wall. Not until he reached
the top of the stair, did he find a door. It was iron-studded, and
heavily hinged, like that below. It opened outward--noiselessly
he found, as if its hinges had been recently oiled, and admitted
him to a small closet, the second door of which he opened hurriedly,
with a beating heart. Yes! there was the check-curtained bed! it
must be the wizard’s chamber! Crossing to another door, he found
it both locked and further secured by a large iron bolt in a strong
staple. This latter he drew back, but there was no key in the lock.
With scarce a doubt remaining, he shot down the one stair and flew
up the other to try the key that lay in his chest. One moment and
he stood in the same room, admitted by the door next his own.
Some exposure was surely not far off! Anyhow here was room for counter
plot, on the chance of baffling something underhand--villainy
most likely, where Mrs Catanach was concerned!--And yet, with
the control of it thus apparently given into his hands, he must
depart, leaving the house at the mercy of a low woman--for the
lock of the wizard’s door would not exclude her long if she wished
to enter and range the building! He would not go, however, without
revealing all to the marquis, and would at once make some provision
towards her discomfiture.
Going to the forge, and bringing thence a long bar of iron to use
as a lever, he carefully drew from the door-frame the staple of
the bolt, and then replaced it so, that, while it looked just as
before, a good push would now send it into the middle of the room.
Lastly, he slid the bolt into it, after having carefully removed
all traces of disturbance, left the mysterious chamber by its own
stair, and once more ascending to the passage, locked the door,
and retired to his room with the key.
He had now plenty to think about beyond himself! Here certainly
was some small support to the legend of the wizard earl. The stair
which he had discovered, had been in common use at one time; its
connection with other parts of the house had been cut off with an
object; and by degrees it had come to be forgotten altogether; many
villainies might have been effected by means of it. Mrs Catanach
must have discovered it the same night on which he found her there,
had gone away by it then, and had certainly been making use of it
since. When he smelt the sulphur, she must have been lighting a
match.
It was now getting towards morning, and at last he was tired. He
went to bed and fell asleep. When he woke, it was late, and as he
dressed, he heard the noise of hoofs and wheels in the stable yard.
He was sitting at breakfast in Mrs Courthope’s room, when she came
in full of surprise at the sudden departure of her lord and lady.
The marquis had rung for his man, and Lady Florimel for her maid,
as soon as it was light; orders were sent at once to the stable;
four horses were put to the travelling carriage; and they were
gone, Mrs Courthope could not tell whither.
Dreary as was the house without Florimel, things had turned out a
shade or two better than Malcolm had expected, and he braced himself
to endure his loss.