Chapter XVII.

ALL the remainder of that dreadful afternoon we spent in vain endeavours to get admission. No answer came to us from those closed doors—silence, dead and unbroken, was within those concealing walls, which it seemed wonderful to me did not beat and throb with the torturing life within them. The whole house was disturbed, as was to be supposed. While we stood in an anxious, troubled group round Miss Mortimer’s door, Carson, with her melancholy and ashamed face, stood anxious and terrified at a little distance—the maids below came to take furtive peeps upon the stairs—and Ellis himself stood listening in the hall, catching at every sound. The whole house was conscious of some dreadful crisis, which had occurred, or was occurring; and even in the frightful anxiety which possessed us, Aunt Milly began to feel that extraordinary infraction of all the decorums of such a house. She whispered to Sara to leave us, and go downstairs to restore the equilibrium of the household a little, and sent Carson into Lizzie’s room, where the poor creature sank, overpowered and almost fainting, upon the bed. Then Aunt Milly went away to her own apartment, and came back with a huge bunch of keys. With these in her hand she motioned me to follow her round about into the little corridor to which Miss Mortimer’s dressing-room opened. “Milly, stand by me,” she cried, with a sob. “I’d rather face so many lions than go in upon her against her will—but it must be—I cannot help myself. After what we saw to-day, I should be guilty, I should be a criminal—don’t you think so, Milly?—if I left her alone to-night.”

It was getting dusk, and the light was pale and ghastly in that little corridor which was close upon the backstairs, and very bare and chill. The door opened without the assistance of the keys. We went into the little luxurious room where the fire burned brightly, warm though the weather was, and which bore all the marks of being lived in and cherished. An easy-chair and footstool were placed at the side of the fire, and close by stood a little table with a raised ornamental rim, like a tray, in which some books and some of Miss Mortimer’s materials{345} for work were placed. At the other end of the room was a window, where stood a plain rush-bottomed chair and a large round basket of work; there was Carson’s place; and the union of the two in this their joint retirement and dwelling-place—the junction of the lady’s luxuries and the servant’s labours in this habitation common to them both—struck me with a pathetic force, now that this old, long, immemorial connection was brought to a close so hurriedly. Aunt Milly did not linger in this room; she went straight to the door leading into the bedchamber which was fastened. “Sarah,” she called softly, “Sarah!” there was no answer. We listened, and the silence round was dreadful; the silence and the gathering twilight, and the terrible mystery of life or death that lay in that closed-up room. Then she tried the keys with her trembling hands. Still not a word from the solitary within, not even of remonstrance or indignation. After what seemed to us a dreadful tedious interval, in which the night appeared visibly to darken round us, the lock at length yielded. The key that had been in it fell, with a dull, heavy sound, inside, making our hearts beat. Then Aunt Milly opened the door. I shall never forget the sensation with which I entered that dark room. What we were to find there, a ghastly corpse or a miserable living creature, nobody could tell; treading on the soft carpets that made our footsteps noiseless, brushing past those soft-drawn curtains which shut out every draught, coming into this atmosphere of care, and comfort, and luxury, the contrast was almost too dreadful to bear. I remember trying to listen for her breath, but could not for the terrified beating of my own heart. The darkness made everything more dreadful still, for the blinds were drawn down, and the little light there was fell so faintly through them that we could scarcely find our way through the room. Aunt Milly was before me; she made a terrified plunge forward, and gave a cry as we came past the head of the bed, which was towards the dressing-room door. Something lay in a heap on the floor by the side of the bed. She threw herself down on the floor beside that heap. I don’t think she was conscious, even when she touched it, what it was; but as I rushed to help her, as I thought, I was suddenly arrested by a gleam of eyes from the bed. “I am not dead,” said Miss Mortimer. I could not help nor command myself. Some scream or shriek came from me in the extremity of my awe and terror. I could hear it answered by a sudden stir and commotion outside the door. “They’re killing my mistress,” was Lizzie’s voice; and with the wildest alarm lest some violent{346} attack on the door should follow, I rushed to it, opened it, and asked for lights.

Outside were half the household grouped at various distances. No precautions could stifle that eager curiosity which knew by instinct that some wonderful mystery was here. They all dispersed when they saw me, frightened and ashamed of themselves. Only Lizzie kept her ground. She seized hold of my sleeve and detained me. “You’re no to stay there!” cried Lizzie. “Oh, no you, no you! You’ll gang and let them kill you, and the bairn’ll perish, and the Captain never come hame! Let me in! I’ll get the drinks and keep up the fire, and never close an e’e; but it’s no you that’s to watch, and you the light o’ folks e’en. It’s no to be you! If I was to gang to my bed and sleep, what would the Captain say to me?” cried poor Lizzie, with a trembling burst of excitement and anxiety, standing close up by me, holding my sleeve, pressing to enter the room. Somehow it comforted me, though it was a piece of folly. I told her again to get the lights, and went back into the dark, solemn room. These sounds of the outside world had not entered there. Miss Mortimer lay on the bed with her eyes wide-awake and gleaming, gathering into them all the little light in the room. Aunt Milly stood beside her, asking how she was; herself scarcely recovered from the shock that had been given her by that heap of clothes upon the floor, trembling, not knowing very well what she said, her great yearning anxiety and curiosity to get at her sister’s heart, overflowing in uneasy questions. Did she feel ill? Would she have anything? How was she? Miss Mortimer took no notice of her questions. She repeated once “I am not dead,” with a strange spitefulness and defiance, and for the rest lay silent, looking at me as I moved about the room, a dark undecipherable figure, and at poor Aunt Milly standing beside me. She took no other notice. It seemed to please her to lie there silent, defying all our curiosity. But she did not complain or find fault with our presence. I believe in my heart she was glad to have her dreadful solitude thus broken, and that it was a comfort to her desolation to see living creatures moving in the darkness. I cannot help thinking so; but after that one expression, twice repeated, not all the anxious questions of her sister could bring a syllable to her lips.

When the candles came she closed her eyes; then, after a little interval, made a wrench at the curtains and gave an impatient sigh. The sigh was for Carson, who doubtless knew exactly what she liked and what she did not like. The fire{347} was laid already in the grate, and I lighted it, and began to put away those things which lay on the floor. Wherever I moved, when it was within her sight, she followed me with her eyes from within the crimson shadow of the curtain. She was perfectly composed and self-possessed. She was even well as it appeared. The ghastly colour had disappeared from her face. She lay there self-absorbed, as she sat over her knitting. All the dread incidents of this day had passed over, and left Sarah Mortimer unchanged. Such a woman could deny, defy, live through any thing. I watched her with indescribable awe and——. Well! I had pitied her while she was alone; but do you suppose I could love such a woman, lying there unmoved and unrepentant, in her dread self-occupation? It was not possible I hated her, loathed her, turned away with sickening and disgust from her dreadful looks. It was hard, even, to pity her now.