_A MIDNIGHT VISITOR_
The frightful warnings of Lady Knollys haunted me too. Was there no escape
from the dreadful companion whom fate had assigned me? I made up my mind
again and again to speak to my father and urge her removal. In other things
he indulged me; here, however, he met me drily and sternly, and it was
plain that he fancied I was under my cousin Monica's influence, and also
that he had secret reasons for persisting in an opposite course. Just then
I had a gay, odd letter from Lady Knollys, from some country house in
Shropshire. Not a word about Captain Oakley. My eye skimmed its pages in
search of that charmed name. With a peevish feeling I tossed the sheet upon
the table. Inwardly I thought how ill-natured and unwomanly it was.
After a time, however, I read it, and found the letter very good-natured.
She had received a note from papa. He had 'had the impudence to forgive
_her_ for _his_ impertinence.' But for my sake she meant, notwithstanding
this aggravation, really to pardon him; and whenever she had a disengaged
week, to accept his invitation to Knowl, from whence she was resolved to
whisk me off to London, where, though I was too young to be presented at
Court and come out, I might yet--besides having the best masters and a good
excuse for getting rid of Medusa--see a great deal that would amuse and
surprise me.
'Great news, I suppose, from Lady Knollys?' said Madame, who always knew
who in the house received letters by the post, and by an intuition from
whom they came.
'Two letters--you and your papa. She is quite well, I hope?'
'Quite well, thank you, Madame.'
Some fishing questions, dropped from time to time, fared no better. And
as usual, when she was foiled even in a trifle, she became sullen and
malignant.
That night, when my father and I were alone, he suddenly closed the book he
had been reading, and said--
'I heard from Monica Knollys to-day. I always liked poor Monnie; and though
she's no witch, and very wrong-headed at times, yet now and then she does
say a thing that's worth weighing. Did she ever talk to you of a time,
Maud, when you are to be your own mistress?'
'No,' I answered, a little puzzled, and looking straight in his rugged,
kindly face.
'Well, I thought she might--she's a rattle, you know--always _was_ a
rattle, and that sort of people say whatever comes uppermost. But that's a
subject for me, and more than once, Maud, it has puzzled me.'
He sighed.
'Come with me to the study, little Maud.'
So, he carrying a candle, we crossed the lobby, and marched together
through the passage, which at night always seemed a little awesome, darkly
wainscoted, uncheered by the cross-light from the hall, which was lost at
the turn, leading us away from the frequented parts of the house to that
misshapen and lonely room about which the traditions of the nursery and the
servants' hall had had so many fearful stories to recount.
I think my father had intended making some disclosure to me on reaching
this room. If so, he changed his mind, or at least postponed his intention.
He had paused before the cabinet, respecting the key of which he had given
me so strict a charge, and I think he was going to explain himself more
fully than he had done. But he went on, instead, to the table where his
desk, always jealously locked, was placed, and having lighted the candles
which stood by it, he glanced at me, and said--
'You must wait a little, Maud; I shall have something to say to you. Take
this candle and amuse yourself with a book meanwhile.'
I was accustomed to obey in silence. I chose a volume of engravings,
and ensconced myself in a favourite nook in which I had often passed a
half-hour similarly. This was a deep recess by the fireplace, fenced on the
other side by a great old escritoir. Into this I drew a stool, and, with
candle and book, I placed myself snugly in the narrow chamber. Every now
and then I raised my eyes and saw my father either writing or ruminating,
as it seemed to me, very anxiously at his desk.
Time wore on--a longer time than he had intended, and still he continued
absorbed at his desk. Gradually I grew sleepy, and as I nodded, the book
and room faded away, and pleasant little dreams began to gather round me,
and so I went off into a deep slumber.
It must have lasted long, for when I wakened my candle had burnt out; my
father, having quite forgotten me, was gone, and the room was dark and
deserted. I felt cold and a little stiff, and for some seconds did not know
where I was.
I had been wakened, I suppose, by a sound which I now distinctly heard, to
my great terror, approaching. There was a rustling; there was a breathing.
I heard a creaking upon the plank that always creaked when walked upon in
the passage. I held my breath and listened, and coiled myself up in the
innermost recess of my little chamber.
Sudden and sharp, a light shone in from the nearly-closed study door. It
shone angularly on the ceiling like a letter L reversed. There was a pause.
Then some one knocked softly at the door, which after another pause was
slowly pushed open. I expected, I think, to see the dreaded figure of
the linkman. I was scarcely less frightened to see that of Madame de la
Rougierre. She was dressed in a sort of grey silk, which she called her
Chinese silk--precisely as she had been in the daytime. In fact, I do not
think she had undressed. She had no shoes on. Otherwise her toilet was
deficient in nothing. Her wide mouth was grimly closed, and she stood
scowling into the room with a searching and pallid scrutiny, the candle
held high above her head at the full stretch of her arm.
Placed as I was in a deep recess, and in a seat hardly raised above the
level of the floor, I escaped her, although it seemed to me for some
seconds, as I gazed on this spectre, that our eyes actually met.
I sat without breathing or winking, staring upon the formidable image which
with upstretched arm, and the sharp lights and hard shadows thrown upon her
corrugated features, looked like a sorceress watching for the effect of a
spell.
She was plainly listening intensely. Unconsciously she had drawn her lower
lip altogether between her teeth, and I well remember what a deathlike and
idiotic look the contortion gave her. My terror lest she should discover me
amounted to positive agony. She rolled her eyes stealthily from corner to
corner of the room, and listened with her neck awry at the door.
Then to my father's desk she went. To my great relief, her back was towards
me. She stooped over it, with the candle close by; I saw her try a key--it
could be nothing else--and I heard her blow through the wards to clear
them.
Then, again, she listened at the door, candle in hand, and then with long
tiptoe steps came back, and papa's desk in another moment was open, and
Madame cautiously turning over the papers it contained.
Twice or thrice she paused, glided to the door, and listened again intently
with her head near the ground, and then returned and continued her search,
peeping into papers one after another, tolerably methodically, and reading
some quite through.
While this felonious business was going on, I was freezing with fear lest
she should accidentally look round and her eyes light on me; for I could
not say what she might not do rather than have her crime discovered.
Sometimes she would read a paper twice over; sometimes a whisper no louder
than the ticking of a watch, sometimes a brief chuckle under her breath,
bespoke the interest with which here and there a letter or a memorandum was
read.
For about half an hour, I think, this went on; but at the time it seemed to
me all but interminable. On a sudden she raised her head and listened for a
moment, replaced the papers deftly, closed the desk without noise, except
for the tiny click of the lock, extinguished the candle, and rustled
stealthily out of the room, leaving in the darkness the malign and hag-like
face on which the candle had just shone still floating filmy in the dark.
Why did I remain silent and motionless while such an outrage was being
committed? If, instead of being a very nervous girl, preoccupied with
an undefinable terror of that wicked woman, I had possessed courage and
presence of mind, I dare say I might have given an alarm, and escaped from
the room without the slightest risk. But so it was; I could no more stir
than the bird who, cowering under its ivy, sees the white owl sailing back
and forward under its predatory cruise.
Not only during her presence, but for more than an hour after, I remained
cowering in my hiding-place, and afraid to stir, lest she might either be
lurking in the neighborhood, or return and surprise me.
You will not be astonished, that after a night so passed I was ill and
feverish in the morning. To my horror, Madame de la Rougierre came to visit
me at my bedside. Not a trace of guilty consciousness of what had passed
during the night was legible in her face. She had no sign of late watching,
and her toilet was exemplary.
As she sat smiling by me, full of anxious and affectionate enquiry,
and smoothed the coverlet with her great felonious hand, I could quite
comprehend the dreadful feeling with which the deceived husband in the
'Arabian Nights' met his ghoul wife, after his nocturnal discovery.
Ill as I was, I got up and found my father in that room which adjoined his
bedchamber. He perceived, I am sure, by my looks, that something unusual
had happened. I shut the door, and came close beside his chair.
'Oh, papa, I have such a thing to tell you!' I forgot to call him 'Sir.' 'A
secret; and you won't say who told you? Will you come down to the study?'
He looked hard at me, got up, and kissing my forehead, said--'Don't be
frightened, Maud; I venture to say it is a mare's nest; at all events, my
child, we will take care that no danger reaches you; come, child.'
And by the hand he led me to the study. When the door was shut, and we had
reached the far end of the room next the window, I said, but in a low tone,
and holding his arm fast--
'Oh, sir, you don't know what a dreadful person we have living with
us--Madame de la Rougierre, I mean. Don't let her in if she comes; she
would guess what I am telling you, and one way or another I am sure she
would kill me.'
'Tut, tut, child. You _must_ know that's nonsense,' he said, looking pale
and stern.
'Oh no, papa. I am horribly frightened, and Lady Knollys thinks so too.'
'Ha! I dare say; one fool makes many. We all know what Monica thinks.'
'But I _saw_ it, papa. She stole your key last night, and opened your desk,
and read all your papers.'
'Stole my key!' said my father, staring at me perplexed, but at the same
instant producing it. 'Stole it! Why here it is!'
'She unlocked your desk; she read your papers for ever so long. Open it
now, and see whether they have not been stirred.'
He looked at me this time in silence, with a puzzled air; but he did unlock
the desk, and lifted the papers curiously and suspiciously. As he did so
he uttered a few of those inarticulate interjections which are made with
closed lips, and not always intelligible; but he made no remark.
Then he placed me on a chair beside him, and sitting down himself, told
me to recollect myself, and tell him distinctly all I had seen. This
accordingly I did, he listening with deep attention.
'Did she remove any paper?' asked my father, at the same time making a
little search, I suppose, for that which he fancied might have been stolen.
'No; I did not see her take anything.'
'Well, you are a good girl, Maud. Act discreetly. Say nothing to
anyone--not even to your cousin Monica.'
Directions which, coming from another person would have had no great
weight, were spoken by my father with an earnest look and a weight of
emphasis that made them irresistibly impressive, and I went away with the
seal of silence upon my lips.
'Sit down, Maud, _there_. You have not been very happy with Madame de la
Rougierre. It is time you were relieved. This occurrence decides it.'
He rang the bell.
'Tell Madame de la Rougierre that I request the honour of seeing her for a
few minutes here.'
My father's communications to her were always equally ceremonious. In a
few minutes there was a knock at the door, and the same figure, smiling,
courtesying, that had scared me on the threshold last night, like the
spirit of evil, presented itself.
My father rose, and Madame having at his request taken a chair opposite,
looking, as usual in his presence, all amiability, he proceeded at once to
the point.
'Madame de la Rougierre, I have to request you that you will give me the
key now in your possession, which unlocks this desk of mine.'
With which termination he tapped his gold pencil-case suddenly on it.
Madame, who had expected something very different, became instantly so
pale, with a dull purplish hue upon her forehead, that, especially when she
had twice essayed with her white lips, in vain, to answer, I expected to
see her fall in a fit.
She was not looking in his face; her eyes were fixed lower, and her mouth
and cheek sucked in, with a strange distortion at one side.
She stood up suddenly, and staring straight in his face, she succeeded in
saying, after twice clearing her throat--
'I cannot comprehend, Monsieur Ruthyn, unless you intend to insult me.'
'It won't do, Madame; I must have that false key. I give you the
opportunity of surrendering it quietly here and now.'
'But who dares to say I possess such thing?' demanded Madame, who, having
rallied from her momentary paralysis, was now fierce and voluble as I had
often seen her before.
'You know, Madame, that you can rely on what I say, and I tell you that you
were seen last night visiting this room, and with a key in your possession,
opening this desk, and reading my letters and papers contained in it.
Unless you forthwith give me that key, and any other false keys in your
possession--in which case I shall rest content with dismissing you
summarily--I will take a different course. You know I am a magistrate;--and
I shall have you, your boxes, and places up-stairs, searched forthwith,
and I will prosecute you criminally. The thing is clear; you aggravate by
denying; you must give me that key, if you please, instantly, otherwise I
ring this bell, and you shall see that I mean what I say.'
There was a little pause. He rose and extended his hand towards the
bell-rope. Madame glided round the table, extended her hand to arrest his.
'I will do everything, Monsieur Ruthyn--whatever you wish.'
And with these words Madame de la Rougierre broke down altogether. She
sobbed, she wept, she gabbled piteously, all manner of incomprehensible
roulades of lamentation and entreaty; coyly, penitently, in a most
interesting agitation, she produced the very key from her breast, with a
string tied to it. My father was little moved by this piteous tempest. He
coolly took the key and tried it in the desk, which it locked and unlocked
quite freely, though the wards were complicated. He shook his head and
looked her in the face.
'Pray, who made this key? It is a new one, and made expressly to pick this
lock.'
But Madame was not going to tell any more than she had expressly bargained
for; so she only fell once more into her old paroxysm of sorrow,
self-reproach, extenuation, and entreaty.
'Well,' said my father,' I promised that on surrendering the key you should
go. It is enough. I keep my word. You shall have an hour and a half to
prepare in. You must then be ready to depart. I will send your money to you
by Mrs. Rusk; and if you look for another situation, you had better not
refer to me. Now be so good as to leave me.'
Madame seemed to be in a strange perplexity. She bridled up, dried her eyes
fiercely, and dropped a great courtesy, and then sailed away towards the
door. Before reaching it she stopped on the way, turning half round, with
a peaked, pallid glance at my father, and she bit her lip viciously as she
eyed him. At the door the same repulsive pantomime was repeated, as she
stood for a moment with her hand upon the handle. But she changed her
bearing again with a sniff, and with a look of scorn, almost heightened to
a sneer, she made another very low courtesy and a disdainful toss of her
head, and so disappeared, shutting the door rather sharply behind her.