CHAPTER XXIXENTRAPPED
“Thief!” hissed the woman, under her breath. “How dare you? Where did you come from?”
She had not seen Isabel since her encounter with Brownie, therefore did not know until that moment of her proximity.
She had come out of her own room just as Miss Douglas entered Isabel’s, and, seeing the door open, glanced in as Brownie had done.
She recognized Miss Douglas in an instant, and comprehended at once her object there.
She glided in noiselessly, hoping to come upon her unawares, and wrest the casket from her without much trouble, but the girl turned just in season to confront her.
Brownie herself grew pale at this unexpected encounter, but, clutching her recovered property firmly in her hands, she held herself proudly at bay.
“You are the thief, madam—you and your daughter,” she said, haughtily.
“Liar! Put down that box!”
“I shall not, madam!”
“Then I will ring and have you arrested. I know not how you happen to be here; I devoutly hoped you would never cross our path again; but fate seems to decree that you turn up as a marplot wherever we go. Will you put that box down, or shall I ring?” and the angry woman grasped the bell-pull vigorously.
Brownie never relaxed a muscle, except that the proud lips curled into a scornful smile.
“You can ring the bell if you choose, Mrs. Coolidge.”
“Have you no fear of the consequences?” her enemy asked, eying her wonderingly, and her lips twitching with wrath.
“None!”
“But you will have to face this whole household.”
“Gather the whole household here, if you will, and have the facts regarding this property brought to light; also the way in which you became possessed of it. Methinks Sir Charles Randal would not be pleased to know that his betrothed wife entered the room of another and purloined such things as these.”
Mrs. Coolidge winced at her words, and she could have trampled her under foot for her scorn and fearlessness.
“You are insolent, Miss Douglas,” she breathed, in suppressed, wrathful tones.
“Insolent or not, I only speak plain truth; and I shall not yield up this casket unless personal violence is used to wrest it from me,” Brownie answered, with calm dignity.
“You are cool, truly,” sneered the woman, exasperated by her manner more than by her words, and as desirous of creating no disturbance as Brownie herself could be.
“Yes, I am cool. This box is mine, I tell you, and this much I will say, if you persist in disputing my right to it and its contents, I have only to appeal to a certain nobleman of the realm to substantiate my claim and protect mefrom your abuse,” Brownie said, suddenly resolving to appeal to Lord Dunforth, if Mrs. Coolidge persisted in her abuse.
“A nobleman of the realm! You!”
Intense scorn was breathed in these few words.
“Yes, madam, I! I have but to tell my story of these jewels to prove that they belong to me, and reveal your wickedness to those whom you do not care to have know it!”
“Pray, why did you not make this appeal in the first place?” queried Mrs. Coolidge, skeptically.
“Because I did not know then if he were living. I have since discovered that he is. Now, as I have no desire to prolong this interview further, I will wish you good-day.”
Brownie took a step toward the door, but her enemy, rendered desperate by her undaunted bearing, and the fearful consequences which would result if Isabel should thus suddenly be deprived of wearing the jewels, darted before her, shut the door, locking it, and put the key in her pocket.
“There! We will see who will win in this little game, Miss Douglas,” she said, between her teeth, while there was a dangerous gleam in her eye. “You do not leave this room,” she added, “until you give up that casket. How do you suppose Isabel will account for the disappearance of all her elegant jewels, which have been so much admired?”
“Madam, truth is a virtue which is safe always to cultivate,” Brownie answered, with quiet sarcasm.
She utterly baffled her; while she was so cool, so haughty, so beautiful standing so fearless there, with her jewels closely clasped in her arms, that she became enraged beyond endurance.
“Will you give me that, once for all, I ask you?” Mrs. Coolidge whispered, hoarsely, with livid face and a deadly light in her light blue eyes.
“I will not!” and the beautiful brown eyes met hers fearlessly, defiantly.
Mrs. Coolidge took a few steps forward, as if impelled by some hidden force, hesitated, bent her head a momentin thought, while an evil smile flitted over her hard features.
Then, assuming a more conciliatory tone, she said:
“Really, Miss Douglas, you are so persistent, and so positive, that you almost persuade me into the belief that the jewels are yours, after all.”
Brownie made no reply to this concession, but stood quietly regarding her enemy.
“Come into my room and let us talk the matter over quietly,” the wily woman added, flashing a cunning look at the young girl from her half-closed eyes. “I think we can come to a better understanding, and I have a proposition to make to you.”
Brownie felt somewhat suspicious of this smooth talk, and feared that the sudden change in Mrs. Coolidge’s manner was only assumed for some hidden purpose; yet she thought it might be better to temporize with her, and it would, perhaps, save publicity.
She could not leave the room, as things were, without making a disturbance, for the door was locked, the key in the woman’s pocket, and she knew of no other means of egress, although there were several arches in the spacious apartment, hung with draperies, which she thought must conceal entrances to some other portion of the house.
“I do not know what better understanding you may wish for,” she replied, coldly. “Your daughter took this box from my room, and I have told you repeatedly that it and its contents belong to me, and you know, as well as I, Mrs. Coolidge, that any judge would decide in my favor should the case be brought into court. But we can talk it over here as well as anywhere.”
“Then why did you come sneaking into this room, like a thief, to get them? Why didn’t you take the matter into court, and let the judge decide in your favor?” sneered the exasperated woman, almost losing her self-control again under Brownie’s coolness and her refusal to go with her.
“I did not sneak into the room like a thief, madam. I was passing along the corridor, the door was open, and, glancing in, I saw my casket upon the table, I entered andtook it, intending to inform Miss Coolidge of the fact as soon as I had it beyond her reach.”
“You say you can prove your claim. Who is this nobleman who knows so much about these jewels?” asked Mrs. Coolidge, with sudden interest.
Brownie thought a moment before answering.
She disliked to implicate his lordship in the matter if she could possibly help it; but she saw that Mrs. Coolidge was desperate about the jewels, and perhaps the power of his name might frighten her into letting them go, and the matter would drop there, so she said:
“It is Lord Dunforth!”
“Lord Dunforth!” she exclaimed, with a violent start of surprise.
Then she suddenly remembered, with a thrill that made her feel faint, Isabel’s account of her strange interview with his lordship at Lady Peasewell’s, and she began to fear that she was getting beyond her depth in this matter; and yet this very revelation made her more determined than ever to keep the jewels, at least until after Isabel’s marriage; for their absence would occasion a great hue and cry, and necessitate such awkward explanations that Sir Charles would mistrust something wrong, and then all their plans would be ruined, for he had only that day named the wedding day. Yet, if she resorted to force to keep them, Brownie, on the other hand, would instantly take active measures to recover them, and if she could, she said, prove through Lord Dunforth that they were hers, they would immediately be brought into open disgrace. Whichever way she turned, it looked dark.
There was only one way of escape from this threatening danger, and that was very hazardous; but she had resolved from the first, if worse came to worst, that she would try it, and that was why she appeared so anxious to get her into her rooms.
She stood measuring her strength against Brownie’s, while these thoughts passed through her mind, and that same cunning gleam lurked in her eyes as before.
“Lord Dunforth!” she repeated. “Do you know him?”
“No, madam; at least, not well enough to claim his acquaintance and protection, except in case of stern necessity;but he knows all about these jewels, and when I told my story he would know that I spoke the truth.”
“How would he know it? When did he ever see those jewels before he saw Isabel wear them?” the woman asked, inquisitively, and burning with a desire to know more about them herself.
“Madam,” Brownie answered, haughtily, “I decline answering any more questions. I insist that you let me go quietly; you can then make whatever explanation regarding the absence of these gems you may see fit. But, if you persist in giving me further trouble, I shall immediately make the whole matter public, and doubtless you know what the consequences will be.”
Mrs. Coolidge’s eyes flashed, and the young girl, catching their gleam at that instant, involuntarily shivered, they looked so evil.
“My dear Miss Douglas,” she began, politely, after a moment, “can we not temporize in this matter? You know if Isabel ceases suddenly to wear those jewels it is going to make matters very awkward for her. Could you not be persuaded, for a handsome consideration, to loan them to her until after her marriage, which will be in a little more than a month?”
Brownie’s lips curled with scorn at this proposition. The woman who could make it under the existing circumstances seemed so little and small of soul to her.
“No, madam; I think I have loaned them long enough already,” was her quiet but scathing reply.
The angry woman’s lips twitched nervously, and her hands were clinched with passion that this poor, friendless girl should dare to thwart her so—that she should dare to stand so proudly, defiantly before her, and fling out so coolly her scathing sarcasms. She grew white as the delicate lace at her throat, and her eyes burned with a lurid light which boded mischief.
“Hark,” she said, suddenly. “Somebody is coming. It may be Isabel, and we shall have a scene. Come into my room, and I will let you out through there.”
She walked swiftly across the room, seemingly much disturbed, although Brownie had caught no sound of any one approaching.
She pushed aside some hangings and revealed a narrow door.
Brownie wondered that such a narrow, peculiar door should connect two elegant rooms, but she reasoned that this must be part of the original castle, and that all these elegant hangings had been put up to conceal the awkward doors.
Before opening it, Mrs. Coolidge shoved a heavy bolt (another circumstance which struck Brownie as singular), and, opening the door, revealed a small, square room or passage, dimly lighted by a dormer window set high in the stone wall.
The place was perfectly bare, and there was a damp, uncanny feeling in the atmosphere, as if it had not been opened before in a long while.
Brownie involuntarily drew back, as she reached the door, and again glanced suspiciously at her companion.
Mrs. Coolidge, who was watching her prey with the intentness of a cat watching a mouse, noticed her hesitation, and, with a light laugh, said:
“It isn’t a very nice way to take you, Miss Douglas, but it saves going through the corridor, and I would not have Isabel meet you now, with that casket in your hands, for the world. My room is at the end of this passage, and we use it when we want to run back and forth. I do not think it can have been used much of late years, for it is so damp and full of cobwebs; but I discovered it while gratifying my Yankee curiosity to find out what was underneath all these hangings, and we have found it very convenient, I assure you. Come on; I’ll go forward and open the door at the other end of the passage, and then you will see better.”
She half-crossed the dimly lighted space, and Brownie followed, considerably reassured by her fluent explanation, although even then she thought it strange that the door should have been bolted if the passage was “so convenient.”
Suddenly Mrs. Coolidge stopped, with a startled look.
“Did you not hear some one at the door?” she whispered.
“No; I heard nothing,” Brownie replied, yet bending her head to listen.
“There is surely some one there,” persisted Mrs. Coolidge. “I forgot to unlock Isabel’s door, and the key is in my pocket. Wait just a moment while I go and unfasten it.”
She glided swiftly by the young girl, holding her breath and watching her narrowly with her basilisk eyes, passed through the narrow door, drew it hastily after her, and shoved the bolt, leaving the astonished and dismayed girl a close prisoner in that dismal cell.
All too late, Brownie saw how she had been fooled and entrapped, and berated herself soundly for having trusted the faithless woman for an instant.
After the first surprise was over, she looked about her to measure the dimensions of her prison.
It could not have been more than eight feet by six, and was lighted only by that one small window set so high in the wall that it was impossible to look out. There was no sign of any other door or mode of egress that she could discover, only the bare, damp walls of solid stone.
There was not an article of furniture in the place, and Brownie groped her way to the wall, leaning against it for support, for she was excited and trembling at finding herself so cleverly entrapped and shut up from the light of day.
“I suppose she thinks to frighten me into submission by shutting me up like a naughty child,” she said, with curling lips and flashing eyes. “But she will find she has ‘reckoned without her host,’ for only one stronger than I shall ever get these precious jewels away from me again. Oh, auntie,” she added, a moment after, “you little knew what a troublesome legacy you were giving me; were they not sacred to me on your account, they are not worth all this trouble and contention. But they shall not have them now.”
She walked to the door and rapped upon it.
“Mrs. Coolidge,” she said, in cold, stern tones, “if you think to subdue me thus, and gain your end, you are very much mistaken in my character, and I warn you that you are only heaping up wrath for yourself.”
There was no answer, and Brownie finally concludedthat the only thing she could do for the present was to exercise abundant patience and wait.
She had not a thought of fear, however, that the wicked woman would dare to keep her there long; her whole soul—all the Douglas blood in her veins rose up in rebellion against this arbitrary act, and she resolved that the future should hold for her jailer a reckoning full of retribution.
When Mrs. Coolidge had accomplished her piece of diabolical treachery, and the door was bolted upon her prisoner, she sank down upon a chair, nearly fainting.