_A WELL-KNOWN FACE LOOKS IN_
You who have never experienced it can have no idea how angry and frightened
you become under the sinister insult of being locked into a room, as on
trying the door I found I was.
The key was in the lock; I could see it through the hole. I called after
Madame, I shook at the solid oak-door, beat upon it with my hands, kicked
it--but all to no purpose.
I rushed into the next room, forgetting--if indeed I had observed it, that
there was no door from it upon the gallery. I turned round in an angry and
dismayed perplexity, and, like prisoners in romances, examined the windows.
I was shocked and affrighted on discovering in reality what they
occasionally find--a series of iron bars crossing the window! They were
firmly secured in the oak woodwork of the window-frame, and each window
was, besides, so compactly screwed down that it could not open. This
bedroom was converted into a prison. A momentary hope flashed on
me--perhaps all the windows were secured alike! But it was no such thing:
these gaol-like precautions were confined to the windows to which I had
access.
For a few minutes I felt quite distracted; but I bethought me that I must
now, if ever, control my terrors and exert whatever faculties I possessed.
I stood upon a chair and examined the oak-work. I thought I detected marks
of new chiselling here and there. The screws, too, looked new; and they
and the scars on the woodwork were freshly smeared over with some coloured
stuff by way of disguise.
While I was making these observations, I heard the key stealthily stirred.
I suspect that Madame wished to surprise me. Her approaching step, indeed,
was seldom audible; she had the soft tread of the feline tribe.
I was standing in the centre of the room confronting her when she entered.
'Why did you lock the door, Madame?' I demanded.
She slipped in suddenly with an insidious smirk, and locked the door
hastily.
'Hish!' whispered Madame, raising her broad palm; and then screwing in her
cheeks, she made an ogle over her shoulder in the direction of the passage.
'Hish! be quiate, cheaile, weel you, and I weel tale you everything
presently.'
She paused, with her ear laid to the door.
'Now I can speak, ma chère; I weel tale a you there is bailiff in the
house, two, three, four soche impertinent fallows! They have another as bad
as themselve to make a leest of the furniture: we most keep them out of
these rooms, dear Maud.'
'You left the key in the door on the outside,' I retorted; 'that was not to
keep them out, but me in, Madame.'
'_Deed_ I leave the key in the door?' ejaculated Madame, with both hands
raised, and such a genuine look of consternation as for a moment shook me.
It was the nature of this woman's deceptions that they often puzzled though
they seldom convinced me.
'I re-ally think, Maud, all those so frequent changes and excite-ments they
weel overturn my poor head.'
'And the windows are secured with iron bars--what are they for?' I
whispered sternly, pointing with my finger at these grim securities.
'That is for more a than forty years, when Sir Phileep Aylmer was to reside
here, and had this room for his children's nursery, and was afraid they
should fall out.'
'But if you look you will find these bars have been put here very recently:
the screws and marks are quite new.'
'_Eendeed!_' ejaculated Madame, with prolonged emphasis, in precisely the
same consternation. 'Why, my dear, they told a me down stair what I have
tell a you, when I ask the reason! Late a me see.'
And Madame mounted on a chair, and made her scrutiny with much curiosity,
but could not agree with me as to the very recent date of the carpentry.
There is nothing, I think, so exasperating as that sort of falsehood which
affects not to see what is quite palpable.
'Do you mean to say, Madame, that you really think those chisellings and
screws are forty years old?'
'How can I tell, cheaile? What does signify whether it is forty or only
fourteen years? Bah! we av other theeng to theenk about. Those villain men!
I am glad to see bar and bolt, and lock and key, at least, to our room, to
keep soche faylows out!'
At that moment a knock came to the door, and Madame's nasal 'in moment'
answered promptly, and she opened the door, stealthily popping out her
head.
'Oh, that is all right; go you long, no ting more, go way.'
'Who's there?' I cried.
'Hold a your tongue,' said Madame imperiously to the visitor, whose voice I
fancied I recognised--'_go_ way.'
Out slipped Madame again, locking the door; but this time she returned
immediately, bearing a tray with breakfast.
I think she fancied that I would perhaps attempt to break away and escape;
but I had no such thought at that moment. She hastily set down the tray on
the floor at the threshold, locking the door as before.
My share of breakfast was a little tea; but Madame's digestion was seldom
disturbed by her sympathies, and she ate voraciously. During this process
there was a silence unusual in her company; but when her meal was ended she
proposed a reconnaissance, professing much uncertainty as to whether my
Uncle had been arrested or not.
'And in case the poor old gentleman be poot in what you call stone jug,
where are _we_ to go my dear Maud--to Knowl or to Elverston? You must
direct.'
And so she disappeared, turning the key in the door as before. It was an
old custom of hers, locking herself in her room, and leaving the key in the
lock; and the habit prevailed, for she left it there again.
With a heavy heart I completed my simple toilet, wondering all the while
how much of Madame's story might be false and how much, if any, true. Then
I looked out upon the dingy courtyard below, in its deep damp shadow, and
thought, 'How could an assassin have scaled that height in safety, and
entered so noiselessly as not to awaken the slumbering gamester?' Then
there were the iron bars across my window. What a fool had I been to object
to that security!
I was labouring hard to reassure myself, and keep all ghastly suspicions at
arm's length. But I wished that my room had been to the front of the house,
with some view less dismal.
Lost in these ruminations of fear, as I stood at the window I was startled
by the sound of a sharp tread on the lobby, and by the key turning in the
lock of my door.
In a panic I sprang back into the corner, and stood with my eyes fixed
upon the door. It opened a little, and the black head of Meg Hawkes was
introduced.
'Oh, Meg!' I cried; 'thank God!'
'I guessed'twas you, Miss Maud. I am feared, Miss.'
The miller's daughter was pale, and her eyes, I thought, were red and
swollen.
'Oh, Meg! for God's sake, what is it all?'
'I darn't come in. The old un's gone down, and locked the cross-door, and
left me to watch. They think I care nout about ye, no more nor themselves.
I donna know all, but summat more nor her. They tell her nout, she's so
gi'n to drink; they say she's not safe, an' awful quarrelsome. I hear a
deal when fayther and Master Dudley be a-talkin' in the mill. They think,
comin' in an' out, I don't mind; but I put one think an' t'other together.
An' don't ye eat nor drink nout here, Miss; hide away this; it's black
enough, but wholesome anyhow!' and she slipt a piece of a coarse loaf from
under her apron. '_Hide_ it mind. Drink nout but the water in the jug
there--it's clean spring.'
'Oh, Meg! Oh, Meg! I know what you mean,' said I, faintly.
'Ay, Miss, I'm feared they'll try it; they'll try to make away wi' ye
somehow. I'm goin' to your friends arter dark; I darn't try it no sooner.
I'll git awa to Ellerston, to your lady-cousin, and I'll bring 'em back wi'
me in a rin; so keep a good hairt, lass. Meg Hawkes will stan' to ye. Ye
were better to me than fayther and mother, and a';' and she clasped me
round the waist, and buried her head in my dress; 'an I'll gie my life for
ye, darling, and if they hurt ye I'll kill myself.'
She recovered her sterner mood quickly--
'Not a word, lass,' she said, in her old tone. 'Don't ye try to git
away--they'll _kill_ ye--ye _can't_ do't. Leave a' to me. It won't be,
whatever it is, till two or three o'clock in the morning. I'll ha'e them a'
here long afore; so keep a brave heart--there's a darling.'
I suppose she heard, or fancied she heard, a step approaching, for she
said--
'Hish!'
Her pale wild face vanished, the door shut quickly and softly, and the key
turned again in the lock.
Meg, in her rude way, had spoken softly--almost under her breath; but no
prophecy shrieked by the Pythoness ever thundered so madly in the ears of
the hearer. I dare say that Meg fancied I was marvellously little moved by
her words. I felt my gaze grow intense, and my flesh and bones literally
freeze. She did not know that every word she spoke seemed to burst like a
blaze in my brain. She had delivered her frightful warning, and told
her story coarsely and bluntly, which, in effect, means distinctly and
concisely; and, I dare say, the announcement so made, like a quick bold
incision in surgery, was more tolerable than the slow imperfect mangling,
which falters and recedes and equivocates with torture. Madame was long
away. I sat down at the window, and tried to appreciate my dreadful
situation. I was stupid--the imagery was all frightful; but I beheld it as
we sometimes see horrors--heads cut off and houses burnt--in a dream, and
without the corresponding emotions. It did not seem as if all this were
really happening to me. I remember sitting at the window, and looking and
blinking at the opposite side of the building, like a person unable but
striving to see an object distinctly, and every minute pressing my hand to
the side of my head and saying--
'Oh, it won't be--it won't be--Oh no!--never!--it could not be!' And in
this stunned state Madame found me on her return.
But the valley of the shadow of death has its varieties of dread. The
'horror of great darkness' is disturbed by voices and illumed by sights.
There are periods of incapacity and collapse, followed by paroxysms
of active terror. Thus in my journey during those long hours I found
it--agonies subsiding into lethargies, and these breaking again into
frenzy. I sometimes wonder how I carried my reason safely through the
ordeal.
Madame locked the door, and amused herself with her own business, without
minding me, humming little nasal snatches of French airs, as she smirked on
her silken purchases displayed in the daylight. Suddenly it struck me that
it was very dark, considering how early it was. I looked at my watch;
it seemed to me a great effort of concentration to understand it. Four
o'clock, it said. Four o'clock! It would be dark at five--_night_ in one
hour!
'Madame, what o'clock is it? Is it evening?' I cried with my hand to my
forehead, like a person puzzled.
'Two three minutes past four. It had five minutes to four when I came
upstairs,' answered she, without interrupting her examination of a piece of
darned lace which she was holding close to her eyes at the window.
'Oh, Madame! _Madame!_ I'm frightened,' cried I, with a wild and piteous
voice, grasping her arm, and looking up, as shipwrecked people may their
last to heaven, into her inexorable eyes. Madame looked frightened too, I
thought, as she stared into my face. At last she said, rather angrily, and
shaking her arm loose--
'What you mean, cheaile?'
'Oh save me, Madame!--oh save me!--oh save me, Madame!' I pleaded, with the
wild monotony of perfect terror, grasping and clinging to her dress, and
looking up, with an agonised face, into the eyes of that shadowy Atropos.
'Save a you, indeed! Save! What _niaiserie_!'
'Oh, Madame! Oh, _dear_ Madame! for God's sake, only get me away--get me
from this, and I'll do everything you ask me all my life--I will--_indeed_,
Madame, I will! Oh save me! save me! _save_ me!'
I was clinging to Madame as to my guardian angel in my agony.
'And who told you, cheaile, you are in any danger?' demanded Madame,
looking down on me with a black and witchlike stare.
'I am, Madame--I am--in great danger! Oh, Madame, think of me--take pity on
me! I have none to help me--there is no one but God and you!'
Madame all this time viewed me with the same dismal stare, like a sorceress
reading futurity in my face.
'Well, maybe you are--how can I tell? Maybe your uncle is mad--maybe you
are mad. You have been my enemy always--why should I care?'
Again I burst into wild entreaty, and, clasping her fast, poured forth my
supplications with the bitterness of death.
'I have no confidence in you, little Maud; you are little rogue--petite
traîtresse! Reflect, if you can, how you 'av always treat Madame. You 'av
attempt to ruin me--you conspire with the bad domestics at Knowl to destroy
me--and you expect me here to take a your part! You would never listen to
me--you 'ad no mercy for me--you join to hunt me away from your house like
wolf. Well, what you expect to find me now? _Bah_!'
This terrific 'Bah!' with a long nasal yell of scorn, rang in my ears like
a clap of thunder.
'I say you are mad, petite insolente, to suppose I should care for you more
than the poor hare it will care for the hound--more than the bird who has
escape will love the oiseleur. I do not care--I ought not care. It is your
turn to suffer. Lie down on your bed there, and suffer quaitely.'