The Dead Secret
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THE DEAD SECRET
side of her toward the walls. She never noticed them, never turned away for them. Across the hall, and up the stairs at the end of it, she ran, till she gained the open landing at the top – and there she suddenly checked herself in front of the first door.
The first door of the long range of rooms that opened on the landing; the door that fronted the topmost of the flight of stairs. She stopped; she looked at it – it was not the door she had come to open; and yet she could not tear herself away from it. Scrawled on the panel in white chalk was the figure –»I». And when she looked down at the bunch of keys in her hands, there was the figure «I». on a label, answering to it.
She tried to think, to follow out any one of all the thronging suspicions that beset her to the conclusion at which it might point. The effort was useless; her mind was gone; her bodily senses of seeing and hearing – senses which had now become painfully and incomprehensibly sharpened – seemed to be the sole relics of intelligence that she had left to guide her. She put her hand over her eyes, and waited a little so, and then went on slowly along the landing, looking at the doors.
No. «II.», No. «III.», No. «IV.», traced on the panels in the same white chalk, and answering to the numbered labels on the keys, the figures on which were written in ink. No. «IV». the middle room of the first floor range of eight. She stopped there again, trembling from head to foot. It was the door of the Myrtle Room.
Did the chalked numbers stop there? She looked on down the landing. No. The four doors remaining were regularly numbered on to «VIII».
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She came back again to the door of the Myrtle Room, sought out the key labeled with the figure «IV». – hesitated – and looked back distrustfully over the deserted hall.
The canvases of the old family pictures, which she had seen bulging out of their frames in the past time when she hid the letter, had, for the most part, rotted away from them now, and lay in great black ragged strips on the floor of the hall. Islands and continents of damp spread like the map of some strange region over the lofty vaulted ceiling. Cobwebs, heavy with dust, hung down in festoons from broken cornices. Dirt stains lay on the stone pavement, like gross reflections of the damp stains on the ceiling. The broad flight of stairs leading up to the open landing before the rooms of the first floor had sunk down bodily toward one side. The banisters which protected the outer edge of the landing were broken away into ragged gaps. The light of day was stained, the air of heaven was stilled, the sounds of earth were silenced in the north hall.
Silenced? Were all sounds silenced? Or was there something stirring that just touched the sense of hearing, that just deepened the dismal stillness, and no more?
Sarah listened, keeping her face still set toward the hall – listened, and heard a faint sound behind her. Was it outside the door on which her back was turned? Or was it inside – in the Myrtle Room?
Inside. With the first conviction of that, all thought, all sensation left her. She forgot the suspicious numbering of the doors; she became insensible to the lapse of time, unconscious of the risk of discovery. All exercise of her other faculties was now merged in the exercise of the one faculty of listening.
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It was a still, faint, stealthily rustling sound; and it moved to and fro at intervals, to and fro softly, now at one end, now at the other of the Myrtle Room. There were moments when it grew suddenly distinct – other moments when it died away in gradations too light to follow. Sometimes it seemed to sweep over the floor at a bound – sometimes it crept with slow, continuous rustlings that just wavered on the verge of absolute silence.
Her feet still rooted to the spot on which she stood, Sarah turned her head slowly, inch by inch, toward the door of the Myrtle Room. A moment before, while she was as yet unconscious of the faint sound moving to and fro within it, she had been drawing her breath heavily and quickly. She might have been dead now, her bosom was so still, her breathing so noiseless. The same mysterious change came over her face which had altered it when the darkness began to gather in the little parlor at Truro. The same fearful look of inquiry which she had then fixed on the vacant corner of the room was in her eyes now, as they slowly turned on the door.
«Mistress!» she whispered. «Am I too late? Are you there before me?»
The stealthily rustling sound inside paused – renewed itself – died away again faintly; away at the lower end of the room.
Her eyes still remained fixed on the Myrtle Room, strained, and opened wider and wider – opened as if they would look through the very door itself – opened as if they were watching for the opaque wood to turn transparent, and show what was behind it.
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«Over the lonesome floor, over the lonesome floor – how light it moves!» she whispered again. «Mistress! does the black dress I made for you rustle no louder than that?»
The sound stopped again – then suddenly advanced at one stealthy sweep close to the inside of the door.
If she could have moved at that moment; if she could have looked down to the line of open space between the bottom of the door and the flooring below, when the faintly rustling sound came nearest to her, she might have seen the insignificant cause that produced it lying self-betrayed under the door, partly outside, partly inside, in the shape of a fragment of faded red paper from the wall of the Myrtle Room. Time and damp had loosened the paper all round the apartment. Two or three yards of it had been torn off by the builder while he was examining the walls – sometimes in large pieces, sometimes in small pieces, just as it happened to come away – and had been thrown down by him on the bare, boarded floor, to become the sport of the wind, whenever it happened to blow through the broken panes of glass in the window. If she had only moved! If she had only looked down for one little second of time!
She was past moving and past looking: the paroxysm of superstitious horror that possessed her held her still in every limb and every feature. She never started, she uttered no cry, when the rustling noise came nearest. The one outward sign which showed how the terror of its approach shook her to the very soul expressed itself only in the changed action of her right hand, in which she still held the keys. At the instant when the wind wafted the fragment of paper closest to the door, her
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fingers lost their power of contraction, and became as nerveless and helpless as if she had fainted. The heavy bunch of keys slipped from her suddenly loosened grasp, dropped at her side on the outer edge of the landing, rolled off through a gap in the broken banister, and fell on the stone pavement below, with a crash which made the sleeping echoes shriek again, as if they were sentient beings writhing under the torture of sound!
The crash of the falling keys, ringing and ringing again through the stillness, woke her, as it were, to instant consciousness of present events and present perils. She started, staggered backward, and raised both her hands wildly to her head – paused so for a few seconds – then made for the top of the stairs with the purpose of descending into the hall to recover the keys.
Before she had advanced three paces the shrill sound of a woman’s scream came from the door of communication at the opposite end of the hall. The scream was twice repeated at a greater distance off, and was followed by a confused noise of rapidly advancing voices and footsteps.
She staggered desperately a few paces farther, and reached the first of the row of doors that opened on the landing. There nature sank exhausted: her knees gave way under her – her breath, her sight, her hearing all seemed to fail her together at the same instant – and she dropped down senseless on the floor at the head of the stairs.
CHAPTER IV
MR. MUNDER
ON THE SEAT OF JUDGMENT
The murmuring voices and the hurrying footsteps came nearer and nearer, then stopped altogether. After an interval of silence, one voice called out loudly, «Sarah! Sarah! where are you?» and the next instant Uncle Joseph appeared alone in the door-way that led into the north hall, looking eagerly all round him.
At first the prostrate figure on the landing at the head of the stairs escaped his view. But the second time he looked in that direction the dark dress, and the arm that lay just over the edge of the top stair, caught his eye. With a loud cry of terror and recognition, he flew across the hall and ascended the stairs. Just as he was kneeling by Sarah’s side, and raising her head on his arm, the steward, the housekeeper, and the maid, all three crowded together after him into the door-way.
«Water!» shouted the old man, gesticulating at them wildly with his disengaged hand. «She is here – she has fallen down – she is in a faint! Water! water!»
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Mr. Munder looked at Mrs. Pentreath, Mrs. Pentreath looked at Betsey, Betsey looked at the ground. All three stood stock-still; all three seemed equally incapable of walking across the hall. If the science of physiognomy be not an entire delusion, the cause of this amazing unanimity was legibly written in their faces; in other words, they all three looked equally afraid of the ghost.
«Water, I say! Water!» reiterated Uncle Joseph, shaking his fist at them. «She is in a faint! Are you three at the door there, and not one heart of mercy among you? Water! water! water! Must I scream myself into fits before I can make you hear?»
«I’ll get the water, ma’am», said Betsey, «if you or Mr. Munder will please to take it from here to the top of the stairs».
She ran to the kitchen, and came back with a glass of water, which she offered, with a respectful courtesy, first to the housekeeper, and then to the steward.
«How dare you ask us to carry things for you?» said Mrs. Pentreath, backing out of the door-way.
«Yes! how dare you ask us?» added Mr. Munder, backing after Mrs. Pentreath.
«Water!» shouted the old man for the third time. He drew his niece backward a little, so that she could be supported against the wall behind her. «Water! or I trample down this dungeon of a place about your ears!» he shouted, stamping with impatience and rage.
«If you please, Sir, are you sure it’s really the lady who is up there?» asked Betsey, advancing a few paces tremulously with the glass of water.
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«Am I sure?» exclaimed Uncle Joseph, descending the stairs to meet her. «What fool’s question is this? Who should it be?» «The ghost, Sir», said Betsey, advancing more and more
slowly. «The ghost of the north rooms».
Uncle Joseph met her a few yards in advance of the foot of the stairs, took the glass of water from her with a gesture of contempt, and hastened back to his niece. As Betsey turned to effect her retreat, the bunch of keys lying on the pavement below the landing caught her eye. After a little hesitation she mustered courage enough to pick them up, and then ran with them out of the hall as fast as her feet could carry her.
Meanwhile Uncle Joseph was moistening his niece’s lips with the water, and sprinkling it over her forehead. After a while her breath began to come and go slowly, in faint sighs, the muscles of her face moved a little, and she feebly opened her eyes. They fixed affrightedly on the old man, without any expression of recognition. He made her drink a little water, and spoke to her gently, and so brought her back at last to herself. Her first words were, «Don’t leave me». Her first action, when she was able to move, was the action of crouching closer to him.
«No fear, my child», he said, soothingly; «I will keep by you. Tell me, Sarah, what has made you faint? What has frightened you so?»
«Oh, don’t ask me! For God’s sake, don’t ask me!»
«There, there! I shall say nothing, then. Another mouthful of water? A little mouthful more?»
«Help me up, uncle; help me to try if I can stand». «Not yet – not quite yet; patience for a little longer».
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«Oh, help me! help me! I want to get away from the sight of those doors. If I can only go as far as the bottom of the stairs I shall be better».
«So, so», said Uncle Joseph, assisting her to rise. «Wait now, and feel your feet on the ground. Lean on me, lean hard, lean heavy. Though I am only a light and a little man, I am solid as a rock. Have you been into the room?» he added, in a whisper. «Have you got the letter?»
She sighed bitterly, and laid her head on his shoulder with a weary despair.
«Why, Sarah! Sarah!» he exclaimed. «Have you been all this time away, and not got into the room yet?»
She raised her head as suddenly as she had laid it down, shuddered, and tried feebly to draw him toward the stairs. «I shall never see the Myrtle Room again – never, never, never more!» she said. «Let us go; I can walk; I am strong now. Uncle Joseph, if you love me, take me away from this house; away any where, so long as we are in the free air and the daylight again; any where, so long as we are out of sight of Porthgenna Tower».
Elevating his eyebrows in astonishment, but considerately refraining from asking any more questions, Uncle Joseph assisted his niece to descend the stairs. She was still so weak that she was obliged to pause on gaining the bottom of them to recover her strength. Seeing this, and feeling, as he led her afterward across the hall, that she leaned more and more heavily on his arm at every fresh step, the old man, on arriving within speaking distance of Mr. Munder and Mrs. Pentreath,
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asked the housekeeper if she possessed any restorative drops which she would allow him to administer to his niece.
Mrs. Pentreath’s reply in the affirmative, though not very graciously spoken, was accompanied by an alacrity of action which showed that she was heartily rejoiced to take the first fair excuse for returning to the inhabited quarter of the house. Muttering something about showing the way to the place where the medicine-chest was kept, she immediately retraced her steps along the passage to her own room; while Uncle Joseph, disregarding all Sarah’s whispered assurances that she was well enough to depart without another moment of delay, followed her silently, leading his niece.
Mr. Munder, shaking his head, and looking woefully disconcerted, waited behind to lock the door of communication. When he had done this, and had given the keys to Betsey to carry back to their appointed place, he, in his turn, retired from the scene at a pace indecorously approaching to something like a run. On getting well away from the north hall, however, he regained his self-possession wonderfully. He abruptly slackened his pace, collected his scattered wits, and reflected a little, apparently with perfect satisfaction to himself; for when he entered the housekeeper’s room he had quite recovered his usual complacent solemnity of look and manner. Like the vast majority of densely stupid men, he felt intense pleasure in hearing himself talk, and he now discerned such an opportunity of indulging in that luxury, after the events that had just happened in the house, as he seldom enjoyed. There is only one kind of speaker who is quite certain never to break down under any stress of circumstances – the man whose capability of talk-
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