THE GROWTH OF A MYSTERY.
We started at five o'clock to walk back to Deepley 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 old
soldier. 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 Chillington'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 Hall. "I hope, Miss Janet, 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 Chillington 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," 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
Chillington, 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 Deepley 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 Deepley
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 Hope 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
Deepley 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 Chillington,
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 Chillington," 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 Chillington drew herself up haughtily. "To please you in a whim,
Major Strickland, which I cannot characterise 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 Deepley 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 Janet, for the present. Even at this, the eleventh hour, I
must intercede with Lady Chillington 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 bed-room, I burst into
an uncontrollable fit of crying. How cruel had been Lady Chillington'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 Eastbury. 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 Chillington 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 Deepley 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 Hope."
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, my 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 Deepley 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 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 Chillington. 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 Deepley 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
Chillington, 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 Chillington 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 Chillington. 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 Chillington 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 Deepley 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 little figures as
usual.
"Perhaps they only came 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 someone 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 anyone 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 someone 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 rays of the moon, I saw and recognised the mysterious midnight
visitor to the room over mine. I saw and recognised Sister Agnes.