_SOMEBODY IN THE ROOM WITH THE COFFIN_
When we returned, a 'young' gentleman had arrived. We saw him in the
parlour as we passed the window. It was simply a glance, but such a one
as suffices to make a photograph, which we can study afterwards, at our
leisure. I remember him at this moment--a man of six-and-thirty--dressed in
a grey travelling suit, not over-well made; light-haired, fat-faced,
and clumsy; and he looked both dull and cunning, and not at all like a
gentleman.
Branston met us, announced the arrival, and handed me the stranger's
credentials. My cousin and I stopped in the passage to read them.
'_That's_ your uncle Silas's,' said Lady Knollys, touching one of the two
letters with the tip of her finger.
'Shall we have lunch, Miss?'
'Certainly.' So Branston departed.
'Read it with me, Cousin Monica,' I said. And a very curious letter it was.
It spoke as follows:--
'How can I thank my beloved niece for remembering her aged and forlorn
kinsman at such a moment of anguish?'
I had written a note of a few, I dare say, incoherent words by the next
post after my dear father's death.
'It is, however, in the hour of bereavement that we most value the ties
that are broken, and yearn for the sympathy of kindred.'
Here came a little distich of French verse, of which I could only read
_ciel_ and _l'amour_.
'Our quiet household here is clouded with a new sorrow. How inscrutable are
the ways of Providence! I--though a few years younger--how much the more
infirm--how shattered in energy and in mind--how mere a burden--how
entirely _de trop_--am spared to my sad place in a world where I can be no
longer useful, where I have but one business--prayer, but one hope--the
tomb; and he--apparently so robust--the centre of so much good--so
necessary to you--so necessary, alas! to me--is taken! He is gone to his
rest--for us, what remains but to bow our heads, and murmur, "His will be
done"? I trace these lines with a trembling hand, while tears dim my
old eyes. I did not think that any earthly event could have moved me so
profoundly. From the world I have long stood aloof. I once led a life of
pleasure--alas! of wickedness--as I now do one of austerity; but as I never
was rich, so my worst enemy will allow I never was avaricious. My sins, I
thank my Maker, have been of a more reducible kind, and have succumbed to
the discipline which Heaven has provided. To earth and its interests, as
well as to its pleasures, I have long been dead. For the few remaining
years of my life I ask but quiet--an exemption from the agitations and
distractions of struggle and care, and I trust to the Giver of all Good for
my deliverance--well knowing, at the same time, that whatever befalls will,
under His direction, prove best. Happy shall I be, my dearest niece, if in
your most interesting and, in some respects, forlorn situation, I can be
of any use to you. My present religious adviser--of whom I ventured to ask
counsel on your behalf--states that I ought to send some one to represent
me at the melancholy ceremony of reading the will which my beloved and now
happy brother has, no doubt, left behind; and the idea that the experience
and professional knowledge possessed by the gentleman whom I have selected
may possibly be of use to you, my dearest niece, determines me to place
him at your disposal. He is the junior partner in the firm of Archer and
Sleigh, who conduct any little business which I may have from time to time;
may I entreat your hospitality for him during a brief stay at Knowl? I
write, even for a moment, upon these small matters of business with
an effort--a painful one, but necessary. Alas! my brother! The cup of
bitterness is now full. Few and evil must the remainder of my old days be.
Yet, while they last, I remain always for my beloved niece, that which all
her wealth and splendour cannot purchase--a loving and faithful kinsman and
friend,
SILAS RUTHYN.'
'Is not it a kind letter?' I said, while tears stood in my eyes.
'Yes,' answered Lady Knollys, drily.
'But don't you think it so, really?'
'Oh! kind, very kind,' she answered in the same tone, 'and perhaps a little
cunning.'
'Cunning!--how?'
'Well, you know I'm a peevish old Tabby, and of course I scratch now and
then, and see in the dark. I dare say Silas is sorry, but I don't think he
is in sackcloth and ashes. He has reason to be sorry and anxious, and I say
I think he is both; and you know he pities you very much, and also himself
a good deal; and he wants money, and you--his beloved niece--have a great
deal--and altogether it is an affectionate and prudent letter: and he has
sent his attorney here to make a note of the will; and you are to give the
gentleman his meals and lodging; and Silas, very thoughtfully, invites you
to confide your difficulties and troubles to _his_ solicitor. It is very
kind, but not imprudent.'
'Oh, Cousin Monica, don't you think at such a moment it is hardly natural
that he should form such petty schemes, even were he capable at other times
of practising so low? Is it not judging him hardly? and you, you know, so
little acquainted with him.'
'I told you, dear, I'm a cross old thing--and there's an end; and I really
don't care two pence about him; and of the two I'd much rather he were no
relation of ours.'
Now, was not this prejudice? I dare say in part it was. So, too, was
my vehement predisposition in his favour. I am afraid we women are
factionists; we always take a side, and nature has formed us for advocates
rather than judges; and I think the function, if less dignified, is more
amiable.
I sat alone at the drawing-room window, at nightfall, awaiting my cousin
Monica's entrance.
Feverish and frightened I felt that night. It was a sympathy, I fancy, with
the weather. The sun had set stormily. Though the air was still, the sky
looked wild and storm-swept. The crowding clouds, slanting in the attitude
of flight, reflected their own sacred aspect upon my spirits. My grief
darkened with a wild presaging of danger, and a sense of the supernatural
fell upon me. It was the saddest and most awful evening that had come since
my beloved father's death.
All kinds of shapeless fears environed me in silence. For the first time,
dire misgivings about the form of faith affrighted me. Who were these
Swedenborgians who had got about him--no one could tell how--and held
him so fast to the close of his life? Who was this bilious, bewigged,
black-eyed Doctor Bryerly, whom none of us quite liked and all a little
feared; who seemed to rise out of the ground, and came and went, no one
knew whence or whither, exercising, as I imagined, a mysterious authority
over him? Was it all good and true, or a heresy and a witchcraft? Oh, my
beloved father! was it all well with you?
When Lady Knollys entered, she found me in floods of tears, walking
distractedly up and down the room. She kissed me in silence; she walked
back and forward with me, and did her best to console me.
'I think, Cousin Monica, I would wish to see him once more. Shall we go
up?'
'Unless you really wish it very much, I think, darling, you had better not
mind it. It is happier to recollect them as they were; there's a change,
you know, darling, and there is seldom any comfort in the sight.'
'But I do wish it _very_ much. Oh! won't you come with me?'
And so I persuaded her, and up we went hand in hand, in the deepening
twilight; and we halted at the end of the dark gallery, and I called Mrs.
Rusk, growing frightened.
'Tell her to let us in, Cousin Monica,' I whispered.
'She wishes to see him, my lady--does she?' enquired Mrs. Rusk, in an
under-tone, and with a mysterious glance at me, as she softly fitted the
key to the lock.
'Are you quite sure, Maud, dear?'
'Yes, yes.'
But when Mrs. Rusk entered bearing the candle, whose beam mixed dismally
with the expiring twilight, disclosing a great black coffin standing upon
trestles, near the foot of which she took her stand, gazing sternly into
it, I lost heart again altogether and drew back.
'No, Mrs. Rusk, she won't; and I am very glad, dear,' she added to me.
'Come, Mrs. Rusk, come away. Yes, darling,' she continued to me, 'it is
much better for you;' and she hurried me away, and down-stairs again. But
the awful outlines of that large black coffin remained upon my imagination
with a new and terrible sense of death.
I had no more any wish to see him. I felt a horror even of the room, and
for more than an hour after a kind of despair and terror, such as I have
never experienced before or since at the idea of death.
Cousin Monica had had her bed placed in my room, and Mary Quince's moved to
the dressing-room adjoining it. For the first time the superstitious awe
that follows death, but not immediately, visited me. The idea of seeing my
father enter the room, or open the door and look in, haunted me. After Lady
Knollys and I were in bed, I could not sleep. The wind sounded mournfully
outside, and the small sounds, the rattlings, and strainings that responded
from within, constantly startled me, and simulated the sounds of steps, of
doors opening, of knockings, and so forth, rousing me with a palpitating
heart as often as I fell into a doze.
At length the wind subsided, and these ambiguous noises abated, and I,
fatigued, dropped into a quiet sleep. I was awakened by a sound in the
gallery--which I could not define. A considerable time had passed, for the
wind was now quite lulled. I sat up in my bed a good deal scared, listening
breathlessly for I knew not what.
I heard a step moving stealthily along the gallery. I called my cousin
Monica softly; and we both heard the door of the room in which my father's
body lay unlocked, some one furtively enter, and the door shut.
'What can it be? Good Heavens, Cousin Monica, do you hear it?'
'Yes, dear; and it is two o'clock.'
Everyone at Knowl was in bed at eleven. We knew very well that Mrs. Rusk
was rather nervous, and would not, for worlds, go alone, and at such an
hour, to the room. We called Mary Quince. We all three listened, but we
heard no other sound. I set these things down here because they made so
terrible an impression upon me at the time.
It ended by our peeping out, all three in a body, upon the gallery. Through
each window in the perspective came its blue sheet of moonshine; but the
door on which our attention was fixed was in the shade, and we thought we
could discern the glare of a candle through the key-hole. While in whispers
we were debating this point together, the door opened, the dusky light of
a candle emerged, the shadow of a figure crossed it within, and in another
moment the mysterious Doctor Bryerly--angular, ungainly, in the black cloth
coat that fitted little better than a coffin--issued from the chamber,
candle in hand; murmuring, I suppose, a prayer--it sounded like a farewell--
stepped cautiously upon the gallery floor, shutting and locking the door
upon the dead; and then having listened for a second, the saturnine figure,
casting a gigantic and distorted shadow upon the ceiling and side-wall from
the lowered candle, strode lightly down the long dark passage, away from
us.
I can only speak for myself, and I can honestly say that I felt as much
frightened as if I had just seen a sorcerer stealing from his unhallowed
business. I think Cousin Monica was also affected in the same way, for she
turned the key on the inside of the door when we entered. I do not think
one of us believed at the moment that what we had seen was a Doctor Bryerly
of flesh and blood, and yet the first thing we spoke of in the morning was
Doctor Bryerly's arrival. The mind is a different organ by night and by
day.