SHUTTING UP.
To say nothing of it, to frighten the house! Hetty had never encountered
in her own youthful person such a difficulty before. To keep the secret
of something which had happened, which now it was very clear to her was
not accidental--something perhaps that might be important, to keep the
secret from those whom it might concern! In a moment her little fiction
about the gardener disappeared, and she felt that she had never truly
believed it. Something of far greater meaning lay beneath. She
confronted it vaguely with frightened eyes; the conditions of her
coming, and of the life here, and of Miss Hofland’s wonder and
questioning, all flashing upon her in a moment. Everything went to
prove that there was a mystery involved, something connected with the
family that probably ought not to be concealed. She looked at Mr.
Darrell with eyes which woke from a sort of stupefaction of fear and
wonder into intelligence and acute anxiety. She did not speak, having
scarcely regained sufficient possession of herself to trust her voice,
but examined him with those awakened eyes.
“There is nothing wrong,” he said, with a slight tremulousness. “I would
not deceive you. Whatever may be the rights of the matter, nothing could
be gained by disturbing the house.”
“Oh, what is it?” cried Hetty, in spite of herself.
He shook his head with a smile. “Nothing,” he said, “that can affect
you, nothing indeed. You have seen or heard me going to my patient?”
“Oh, Mr. Darrell,” said Hetty, with the indignation of sincerity, “it
was not you.”
He shrank a little from her look. “I think you are mistaken,” he said;
“how can you tell in the night who it is? I have to be about at all
hours. I go through the park, or even across the garden, as the shortest
way.”
Hetty eyed him once more with the superiority of fact over fiction. She
looked at him as if she saw through him, he thought, and, what was
worse, undervalued him, and set him down as a deceiver. In reality Hetty
was far too much perplexed and disturbed in her mind to come to any such
decided conclusion. She was looking at him instinctively to try to make
him out. And in this look a great many things were communicated by the
one to the other which did not at all involve the immediate question.
Hetty saw a face which was full of anxiety, and perhaps of desire to
veil a certain secret, but which at the same time was open and true, the
countenance of a man in whom guile was not. The true recognise the true,
however different may be their mental altitude or position. She thought
he was deceiving her, and yet by instinct she believed in him. And he
saw, in the young face lifted to him with such troubled questioning, the
look of a judge before whose decision he trembled. If she should judge
him from the surface, as it was so natural she should--if she took the
fiction on his lips for the indication of his character, the young
doctor in a moment felt that the work in which he was engaged, and which
already his conscience disapproved, would cost him dear.
“Miss Asquith,” he said, hurriedly, “I must not stop to explain. Will
you remember, whatever may happen, that I am always about? even when you
don’t see anything of me, I’m near. Don’t let yourself be frightened;
whatever happens, I am always near.”
“It would be better to tell me what it is. Then I could not be
frightened,” said Hetty, with as much calm as she could muster. But
before he could reply, he no less than she started at the sound of a
step--one step and no more, at which she clutched his arm with terror
unspeakable, and he looked quickly round with a look of alarm in which
there was no counterfeit. There was but one step, which was a thing to
curdle the blood, as it seemed to Hetty, more than any succession of
footsteps--one single stealthy step and no more.
“Who is there? Speak,” cried the young doctor, with a voice which was
not loud, but seemed to penetrate the intense morning stillness like a
knife. And then, while Hetty stood speechless, there suddenly appeared
round the corner of the house the paltry figure of Mrs. Mills the
housekeeper, in extremely simple morning apparel, with a scared look in
her face.
“Oh, Mr. Darrell, is it you?” she cried in her turn, in a voice full of
relief.
It would have been embarrassing for an older and more experienced young
woman than Hetty to find herself discovered by the housekeeper in close
colloquy with young Mr. Darrell, in the early morning before the house
was astir. But Hetty was too young for any such feeling. She was
frightened, but relieved beyond measure. It is not pleasant to think
that even the housekeeper stands and looks in at your window in the grey
of the morning before any one is awake. But still this seemed to Hetty,
somehow, more possible than if it had been the doctor making mysterious,
impossible journeys round the house. Her hand dropped from that clutch
upon his arm. She felt restored at once to the practicable world.
“I am trying to persuade Miss Asquith,” he said, “that she heard nothing
worse than myself passing through the garden, and that she must not be
surprised if she hears me again.”
The woman, who looked pale, as if she had been up all night, melted into
an uneasy smile. “No, no, she mustn’t be afraid. There are a many noises
about this house,” she said.
“Nothing more than the doctor going his rounds, late or early,” said
Darrell; “you will believe Mrs. Mills? And now go back to your room, and
I hope you won’t let me disturb your rest again. Remember,” he said,
with emphasis, “I’m always about. I’m always near.”
“You’ve got your window all open, miss,” said the housekeeper. “Bless
me! it should always be well fastened and the shutters shut. I must give
the housemaid a piece of my mind.”
Hetty followed her in, unresisting, as she pushed into the privacy of
the room, which on ordinary occasions the girl was jealous of exposing
to vulgar eyes, with its little array of photographs and family
treasures. Mrs. Mills took no notice of these, but she quickly shut and
fastened the window. “It’s very early for you to be up. Don’t you know
it’s very awkward for the servants, Miss Asquith, when a young lady
takes to getting up at these unearthly hours?”
“I did not mean to trouble anybody. I heard a step, and I opened the
window to see what it was.”
“Dear me!” said the housekeeper; “I shouldn’t have done that. What a
daring thing for a young lady to do! Supposing it had been
housebreakers, and your window so nice and handy for them to step into
the house?”
“Do you think it was housebreakers?” Hetty cried.
“Bless you, my child, no, not in daylight. They’re not as bold as that.
But another time, Miss Asquith, take my advice, and don’t open your
window in that confiding way. You’re always a deal safer with everything
shut. And there are always sounds about an old house like this. For my
part, I never pay any attention. Have everything well shut and fastened,
and then you can’t take any harm, whoever may be about.”
“I thought perhaps,” said Hetty, timidly, “there might be some
danger--that it might be right to call some one--that I ought to ring
the bell, or something.”
“Bless me!” said the housekeeper again. “You would be as good as an
extra watchman for the family. But look here, my dear young lady, don’t
you take any trouble. What is the house to you? You’re only a stranger
in it. Shut up your window and lock your door, and nothing can harm you.
I’ll have it done myself to-night. As for the house, there are plenty
to see to that, and no danger of housebreakers here.”
Hetty was very much agitated by these interviews. She found no
satisfaction in them. The doctor’s repeated assurance that he was always
near was little more consolatory than the housekeeper’s injunctions to
shut herself up, and take no concern for the house. Hetty could not
understand anything of the kind. To be shut up in shivering safety, a
poor little atom of terrified consciousness in the midst of unknown
dangers, indifferent to and shut off from everybody around, seemed to
her so unnatural, so horrible. She remembered now the chill she had felt
when she heard Miss Hofland lock her door. Was it possible to live in a
house like this--each shut in, safe under lock and key, and no one
taking any interest in the panic or trouble which might be in the next
room?
This thought was more strange to Hetty than even the thought of danger.
Danger! She had known what it was to feel a thrill of terror when she
woke in the night and heard some of those sounds which are always
alarming to a watcher: the vague noises of the darkness, sounds
exaggerated by the surrounding silence into something inexplainable,
mysterious creaks and cracklings. But then there was the sense of
habitation in the house, the certainty of father and mother always ready
to be appealed to, and at whose appearance all dangers were disarmed. At
Horton the sensation was very different. The house felt empty, cold,
with a mysterious chill in it, and a few trembling individuals dotted
along the side of the house, each shut up in her separate room. This was
more dreadful to Hetty than words could say. She was very silent all
day, shivering from time to time, extremely pale, as unlike the
bright-faced girl she had been a little while before as it is possible
to conceive. And they were all very kind. Miss Hofland flew to her
favourite idea of a headache and to her favourite expedient of lying on
the sofa, which was her panacea for all troubles. “I’ll get you a book,
my dear,” she said. “I have a very nice book, which I brought with me.
I am sure you have never read it; and now you can lie quite comfortably,
and not be disturbed by anything. Going to bed may be better when you
have a headache; some people think so: but it _is_ giving in so when you
go to bed, and then it’s lonely, and unless you can sleep, I don’t see
the advantage. You are just as well on the sofa, and more cheerful. I am
afraid Horton is not going to agree with you: and that would be such a
bore when we have just got so nicely settled down.”
“I don’t wonder it does not agree with her,” said the housekeeper, “a
young lady that sleeps with her window open in this weather.”
“Oh, goodness!” cried Miss Hofland. “A window opening on the park in any
weather! You must not do it, my dear. Why, _anything_ might run in--a
rabbit or a squirrel out of the woods, or one of the sheep that’s
grazing about, or even a cow. Fancy being woke in the middle of the
night by a cow! I can’t conceive what I should do--shriek till I
brought the house down. Fancy a cow’s breath suddenly puffed out upon
you, and a great ‘Mo--oo’ in the middle of the night!”
“A cow’s an innocent thing,” said Mrs. Mills. The housekeeper kept
appearing all day, coming in with every meal, keeping an eye upon Hetty.
The girl felt this confusedly, though she could not think why it was.
“Oh yes! it is an innocent thing and a nice thing in its proper place.
But in your bedroom at the dead of night! My dear, you must consider, if
not for your own sake, yet for the sake of other people. I make it a
rule to shut up my windows, even in summer. When you get used to living
in strange houses that are nothing to you, where you are only for a
time, you have to be particular. Why, anybody might come in--a tramp
that had got into the park.”
“Don’t frighten the young ladies, Miss Hofland, please. There’s no such
thing possible. A tramp could no more get in here than at Windsor
Castle. It would be as much as their places were worth to the
lodge-keepers. And it’s a thing that never happened. No, it’s an old
house, and if any one says there are noises about, that can’t be quite
accounted for, well, I’ll not go against them: but as for tramps!” Mrs.
Mills cried, with a laugh. The derision in her tone seemed to Hetty to
be addressed to herself. What a little fool you are! but at least keep
it to yourself, that look seemed to say.
And at night, when they all went to bed, both Miss Hofland and the
housekeeper went with Hetty to her room. The latter had given
instructions to the housemaid, and everything was fastened in Hetty’s
room, the shutters closed, the curtains drawn, a dreadful sense of being
shut up and cut off from everything breathing in the motionless air.
Hetty gasped, with a feeling that she could not get breath. But the room
was large and lofty, and not without air, so that the sensation was
imaginative rather than real. There was a bright fire blazing, which
made everything look cheerful. “This is what I call comfortable,” Miss
Hofland said. “Don’t you think so too, my dear? Those nice soft curtains
keep out every bit of draught. I must say they understand comfort in
this house. Mine are so thick, if a gale is blowing, I never feel it in
the least--and these are nearly as good. Surely you like that better
than an open window at this time of the year?”
“Some people have a fad about open windows, and say you should have them
all the year through. Some people have a fad about curtains. I don’t
blame Miss Asquith, for she’s very young: but I think when a young lady
is living with other people she should go by the ways of the house.”
“I don’t see that at all,” said Miss Hofland. “If you’ve any sort of
rights, you’ve a right to arrange your own room as you choose, and I
have never done otherwise. A lady that has to live in other people’s
houses has many things to put up with, but I never should give in to
that. All the same, my dear, when you sleep on the ground-floor you
can’t be too particular. Now lock the door after me, and you will be as
snug and as safe as if you were in a box. Good-night, dear, and sleep
well, and don’t mind if you should hear the house tumbling down. It’s no
concern of ours.”
With this Miss Hofland crossed the little passage to her own door, and
waving her hand, shut and locked it, as Hetty could very well hear. The
housekeeper retired by the other, repeating Miss Hofland’s advice. “Just
turn the key when I’m gone, and then you’ll be sure nothing can happen
to frighten you. And there’s really nothing to frighten any one, only
noises such as you hear in every old house.”
Hetty, with a beating heart, did as she was told; and then the
oppression of this shut-in solitude and silence came round her like a
shroud. The curtains seemed to close round with an ominous envelopment.
The straight lines of the walls, with no windows to break them,
frightened her as if they were the sides of a box, as Miss Hofland had
said. The girl’s nerves were so strained that she burst into one of
those youthful tempests of tears which relieve the bosom. She had
nothing to cry for, nothing. Comfort, luxurious and elaborate,
surrounded her, and no harm was near that she knew of. The fire burned
cheerfully; everything was shut out that could frighten or trouble her.
For what did Hetty cry, or what had she to fear?
[Illustration]
[Illustration]