"Mrs. Pentreath,—You must be tired of receiving letters from me, fixing a day for the arrival of Mr. Frankland and myself. On this, the third occasion of my writing to you about our plans, it will be best, I think, to make no third appointment, but merely to say that we shall leave West Winston for Porthgenna the moment I can get the doctor's permission to travel."
"Mrs. Pentreath,—You must be tired of receiving letters from me, fixing a day for the arrival of Mr. Frankland and myself. On this, the third occasion of my writing to you about our plans, it will be best, I think, to make no third appointment, but merely to say that we shall leave West Winston for Porthgenna the moment I can get the doctor's permission to travel."
"So far," remarked Mrs. Pentreath, placing the letter on her lap, and smoothing it out rather irritably while she spoke—"so far, there is nothing of much consequence. The letter certainly seems to me (between ourselves) to be written in rather poor language—too much like common talking to come up to my idea of what a lady's style of composition ought to be—but that is a matter of opinion. I can't say, and I should be the last person to wish to say, that the beginning of Mrs. Frankland's letter is not, upon the whole, perfectly clear. It is the middle and the end that I wish to consult you about, Mr. Munder."
"Just so," said Mr. Munder. Only two words, but more meaning in them than two hundred in the mouth of an ordinary man! The housekeeper cleared her throat with extraordinary loudness and elaboration, and read on thus:
"My principal object in writing these lines is to request, by Mr. Frankland's desire, that you and Mr. Munder will endeavor to ascertain, as privately as possible, whether a person now traveling in Cornwall—in whom we happen to be much interested—has been yet seen in the neighborhood of Porthgenna. The person in question is known to us by the name of Mrs. Jazeph. She is an elderly woman, of quiet, lady-like manners, looking nervous and in delicate health. She dresses, according to our experience of her, with extreme propriety and neatness, and in dark colors. Her eyes have a singular expression of timidity, her voice is particularly soft and low, and her manner is frequently marked by extreme hesitation. I am thus particular in describing her, in case she should not be traveling under the name by which we know her."For reasons which it is not necessary to state, both my husband and myself think it probable that, at some former period of her life, Mrs. Jazeph may have been connected with the Porthgenna neighborhood. Whether this be the fact or no, it is indisputably certain that she is familiar with the interior of Porthgenna Tower, and that she has an interest of some kind, quite incomprehensible to us, in the house. Coupling these facts with the knowledge we have of her being now in Cornwall, we think it just within the range of possibility that you or Mr. Munder, or some other person in our employment, may meet with her; and we are particularly anxious, if she should by any chance ask to see the house, not only that you should show her over it with perfect readiness and civility, but also that you should take private and particular notice of her conduct from the time when she enters the building to the time when she leaves it. Do not let her out of your sight for a moment; and, if possible, pray get some trustworthy person to follow her unperceived, and ascertain where she goes to after she has quitted the house. It is of the most vital importance that these instructions (strange as they may seem to you) should be implicitly obeyed to the very letter."I have only room and time to add that we know nothing to the discredit of this person, and that we particularly desire you will manage matters with sufficient discretion (in case you meet with her) to prevent her from having any suspicion that you are acting under orders, or that you have any especial interest in watching her movements. You will be good enough to communicate this letter to the steward, and you are at liberty to repeat the instructions in it to any other trustworthy person, if necessary."Yours truly,"Rosamond Frankland."P.S.—I have left my room, and the baby is getting on charmingly."
"My principal object in writing these lines is to request, by Mr. Frankland's desire, that you and Mr. Munder will endeavor to ascertain, as privately as possible, whether a person now traveling in Cornwall—in whom we happen to be much interested—has been yet seen in the neighborhood of Porthgenna. The person in question is known to us by the name of Mrs. Jazeph. She is an elderly woman, of quiet, lady-like manners, looking nervous and in delicate health. She dresses, according to our experience of her, with extreme propriety and neatness, and in dark colors. Her eyes have a singular expression of timidity, her voice is particularly soft and low, and her manner is frequently marked by extreme hesitation. I am thus particular in describing her, in case she should not be traveling under the name by which we know her.
"For reasons which it is not necessary to state, both my husband and myself think it probable that, at some former period of her life, Mrs. Jazeph may have been connected with the Porthgenna neighborhood. Whether this be the fact or no, it is indisputably certain that she is familiar with the interior of Porthgenna Tower, and that she has an interest of some kind, quite incomprehensible to us, in the house. Coupling these facts with the knowledge we have of her being now in Cornwall, we think it just within the range of possibility that you or Mr. Munder, or some other person in our employment, may meet with her; and we are particularly anxious, if she should by any chance ask to see the house, not only that you should show her over it with perfect readiness and civility, but also that you should take private and particular notice of her conduct from the time when she enters the building to the time when she leaves it. Do not let her out of your sight for a moment; and, if possible, pray get some trustworthy person to follow her unperceived, and ascertain where she goes to after she has quitted the house. It is of the most vital importance that these instructions (strange as they may seem to you) should be implicitly obeyed to the very letter.
"I have only room and time to add that we know nothing to the discredit of this person, and that we particularly desire you will manage matters with sufficient discretion (in case you meet with her) to prevent her from having any suspicion that you are acting under orders, or that you have any especial interest in watching her movements. You will be good enough to communicate this letter to the steward, and you are at liberty to repeat the instructions in it to any other trustworthy person, if necessary.
"Yours truly,"Rosamond Frankland.
"P.S.—I have left my room, and the baby is getting on charmingly."
"There!" said the housekeeper. "Who is to make head or tail of that, I should like to know! Did you ever, in all your experience, Mr. Munder, meet with such a letter before? Here is a very heavy responsibility laid on our shoulders, without one word of explanation. I have been puzzling my brains about what their interest in this mysterious woman can be the whole morning; and the more I think, the less comes of it. What is your opinion, Mr. Munder? We ought to do something immediately. Is there any course in particular which you feel disposed to point out?"
Mr. Munder coughed dubiously, crossed his right leg over his left, put his head critically on one side, coughed for the second time, and looked at the housekeeper. If it had belonged to any other man in the world, Mrs. Pentreath would have considered that the face which now confronted hers expressed nothing but the most profound and vacant bewilderment. But it was Mr. Munder's face, and it was only to be looked at with sentiments of respectful expectation.
"I rather think—" began Mr. Munder.
"Yes?" said the housekeeper, eagerly.
Before another word could be spoken, the maid-servant entered the room to lay the cloth for Mrs. Pentreath's dinner.
"There, there! never mind now, Betsey," said the housekeeper, impatiently. "Don't lay the cloth till I ring for you. Mr. Munder and I have something very important to talk about, and we can't be interrupted just yet."
She had hardly said the word, before an interruption of the most unexpected kind happened. The door-bell rang. This was a very unusual occurrence at Porthgenna Tower. The few persons who had any occasion to come to the house on domestic business always entered by a small side gate, which was left on the latch in the day-time.
"Who in the world can that be!" exclaimed Mrs. Pentreath, hastening to the window, which commanded a side view of the lower door steps.
The first object that met her eye when she looked out was a lady standing on the lowest step—a lady dressed very neatly in quiet, dark colors.
"Good Heavens, Mr. Munder!" cried the housekeeper, hurrying back to the table, and snatching up Mrs. Frankland's letter, which she had left on it. "There is a stranger waiting at the door at this very moment! a lady! or, at least, a woman—and dressed neatly, dressed in dark colors! You might knock me down, Mr. Munder, with a feather! Stop, Betsey—stop where you are!"
"I was only going, ma'am, to answer the door," said Betsey, in amazement.
"Stop where you are," reiterated Mrs. Pentreath, composing herself by a great effort. "I happen to have certain reasons, on this particular occasion, for descending out of my own place and putting myself into yours. Stand out of the way, you staring fool! I am going up stairs to answer that ring at the door myself."
Mrs. Pentreath's surprise at seeing a lady through the window, was doubled by her amazement at seeing a gentleman when she opened the door. Waiting close to the bell-handle, after he had rung, instead of rejoining his niece on the step, Uncle Joseph stood near enough to the house to be out of the range of view from Mrs. Pentreath's window. To the housekeeper's excited imagination, he appeared on the threshold with the suddenness of an apparition—the apparition of a little rosy-faced old gentleman, smiling, bowing, and taking off his hat with a superb flourish of politeness, which had something quite superhuman in the sweep and the dexterity of it.
"How do you do? We have come to see the house," said Uncle Joseph, trying his infallible expedient for gaining admission the instant the door was open.
Mrs. Pentreath was struck speechless. Who was this familiar old gentleman with the foreign accent and the fantastic bow? and what did he mean by talking to her as if she was his intimate friend? Mrs. Frankland's letter said not so much, from beginning to end, as one word about him.
"How do you do? We have come to see the house," repeated Uncle Joseph, giving his irresistible form of salutation the benefit of a second trial.
"So you said just now, Sir," remarked Mrs. Pentreath, recovering self-possession enough to use her tongue in her own defense. "Does the lady," she continued, looking down over the old man's shoulder at the step on which his niece was standing—"does the lady wish to see the house too?"
Sarah's gently spoken reply in the affirmative, short as it was, convinced the housekeeper that the woman described in Mrs. Frankland's letter really and truly stood before her. Besides the neat, quiet dress, there was now the softly toned voice, and, when she looked up for a moment, there were the timid eyes also to identify her by! In relation to this one of the two strangers, Mrs. Pentreath, however agitated and surprised she might be, could no longer feel any uncertainty about the course she ought to adopt. But in relation to the other visitor, the incomprehensible old foreigner, she was beset by the most bewildering doubts. Would it be safest to hold to the letter of Mrs. Frankland's instructions, and ask him to wait outside while the lady was being shown over the house? or would it be best to act on her own responsibility, and to risk giving him admission as well as his companion? This was a difficult point to decide, and therefore one which it was necessary to submit to the superior sagacity of Mr. Munder.
"Will you step in for a moment, and wait here while I speak to the steward?" said Mrs. Pentreath, pointedly neglecting to notice the familiar old foreigner, and addressing herself straight through him to the lady on the steps below.
"Thank you very much," said Uncle Joseph, smiling and bowing, impervious to rebuke. "What did I tell you?" he whispered triumphantly to his niece, as she passed him on her way into the house.
Mrs. Pentreath's first impulse was to go down stairs at once, and speak to Mr. Munder. But a timely recollection of that part of Mrs. Frankland's letter which enjoined her not to lose sight of the lady in the quiet dress, brought her to a stand-still the next moment. She was the more easily recalled to a remembrance of this particular injunction by a curious alteration in the conduct of the lady herself, who seemed to lose all her diffidence, and to become surprisingly impatient to lead the way into the interior of the house, the moment she had stepped across the threshold.
"Betsey!" cried Mrs. Pentreath, cautiously calling to the servant after she had only retired a few paces from the visitors—"Betsey! ask Mr. Munder to be so kind as to step this way."
Mr. Munder presented himself with great deliberation, and with a certain lowering dignity in his face. He had been accustomed to be treated with deference, and he was not pleased with the housekeeper for unceremoniously leaving him the moment she heard the ring at the bell, without giving him time to pronounce an opinion on Mrs. Frankland's letter. Accordingly, when Mrs. Pentreath, in a high state of excitement, drew him aside out of hearing, and confided to him, in a whisper, the astounding intelligence that the lady in whom Mr. and Mrs. Frankland were so mysteriously interested was, at that moment, actually standing before him in the house, he received her communication with an air of the most provoking indifference. It was worse still when she proceeded to state her difficulties—warily keeping her eye on the two strangers all the while. Appeal as respectfully as she might to Mr. Munder's superior wisdom for guidance, he persisted in listening with a disparaging frown, and ended by irritably contradicting her when she ventured to add, in conclusion, that her own ideas inclined her to assume no responsibility, and to beg the foreign gentleman to wait outside while the lady, in conformity with Mrs. Frankland's instructions, was being shown over the house.
"Such may be your opinion, ma'am," said Mr. Munder, severely. "It is not mine."
The housekeeper looked aghast. "Perhaps," she suggested, deferentially, "you think that the foreign old gentleman would be likely to insist on going over the house with the lady?"
"Of course I think so," said Mr. Munder. (He had thought nothing of the sort; his only idea just then being the idea of asserting his own supremacy by setting himself steadily in opposition to any preconceived arrangements of Mrs. Pentreath.)
"Then you would take the responsibility of showing them both over the house, seeing that they have both come to the door together?" asked the housekeeper.
"Of course I would," answered the steward, with the promptitude of resolution which distinguishes all superior men.
"Well, Mr. Munder, I am always glad to be guided by your opinion, and I will be guided by it now," said Mrs. Pentreath. "But, as there will be two people to look after—for I would not trust the foreigner out of sight on any consideration whatever—I must really beg you to share the trouble of showing them over the house along with me. I am so excited and nervous that I don't feel as if I had all my wits about me—I never was placed in such a position as this before—I am in the midst of mysteries that I don't understand—and, in short, if I can't count on your assistance, I won't answer for it that I shall not make some mistake. I should be very sorry to make a mistake, not only on my own account, but—" Here the housekeeper stopped, and looked hard at Mr. Munder.
"Go on, ma'am," said Mr. Munder, with cruel composure.
"Not only on my own account," resumed Mrs. Pentreath, demurely, "but on yours; for Mrs. Frankland's letter certainly casts the responsibility of conducting this delicate business on your shoulders as well as on mine."
Mr. Munder recoiled a few steps, turned red, opened his lips indignantly, hesitated, and closed them again. He was fairly caught in a trap of his own setting. He could not retreat from the responsibility of directing the housekeeper's conduct, the moment after he had voluntarily assumed it; and he could not deny that Mrs. Frankland's letter positively and repeatedly referred to him by name. There was only one way of getting out of the difficulty with dignity, and Mr. Munder unblushingly took that way the moment he had recovered self-possession enough to collect himself for the effort.
"I am perfectly amazed, Mrs. Pentreath," he began, with the gravest dignity. "Yes, I repeat, I am perfectly amazed that you should think me capable of leaving you to go over the house alone, under such remarkable circumstances as those we are now placed in. No, ma'am! whatever my other faults may be, shrinking from my share of responsibility is not one of them. I don't require to be reminded of Mrs. Frankland's letter; and—no!—I don't require any apologies. I am quite ready, ma'am—quite ready to show the way up stairs whenever you are."
"The sooner the better, Mr. Munder—for there is that audacious old foreigner actually chattering to Betsey now, as if he had known her all his life!"
The assertion was quite true. Uncle Joseph was exercising his gift of familiarity on the maid-servant (who had lingered to stare at the strangers, instead of going back to the kitchen), just as he had already exercised it on the old lady passenger in the stage-coach, and on the driver of the pony-chaise which took his niece and himself to the post-town of Porthgenna. While the housekeeper and the steward were holding their private conference, he was keeping Betsey in ecstasies of suppressed giggling by the odd questions that he asked about the house, and about how she got on with her work in it. His inquiries had naturally led from the south side of the building, by which he and his companion had entered, to the west side, which they were shortly to explore; and thence round to the north side, which was forbidden ground to every body in the house. When Mrs. Pentreath came forward with the steward, she overheard this exchange of question and answer passing between the foreigner and the maid:
"But tell me, Betzee, my dear," said Uncle Joseph. "Why does nobody ever go into these mouldy old rooms?"
"Because there's a ghost in them," answered Betsey, with a burst of laughter, as if a series of haunted rooms and a series of excellent jokes meant precisely the same thing.
"Hold your tongue directly, and go back to the kitchen," cried Mrs. Pentreath, indignantly. "The ignorant people about here," she continued, still pointedly overlooking Uncle Joseph, and addressing herself only to Sarah, "tell absurd stories about some old rooms on the unrepaired side of the house, which have not been inhabited for more than half a century past—absurd stories about a ghost; and my servant is foolish enough to believe them."
"No, I'm not," said Betsey, retiring, under protest, to the lower regions. "I don't believe a word about the ghost—at least not in the day-time." Adding that important saving clause in a whisper, Betsey unwillingly withdrew from the scene.
Mrs. Pentreath observed, with some surprise, that the mysterious lady in the quiet dress turned very pale at the mention of the ghost story, and made no remark on it whatever. While she was still wondering what this meant, Mr. Munder emerged into dignified prominence, and loftily addressed himself, not to Uncle Joseph, and not to Sarah, but to the empty air between them.
"If you wish to see the house," he said, "you will have the goodness to follow me."
With those words, Mr. Munder turned solemnly into the passage that led to the foot of the west staircase, walking with that peculiar, slow strut in which all serious-minded English people indulge when they go out to take a little exercise on Sunday. The housekeeper, adapting her pace with feminine pliancy to the pace of the steward, walked the national Sabbatarian Polonaise by his side, as if she was out with him for a mouthful of fresh air between the services.
"As I am a living sinner, this going over the house is like going to a funeral!" whispered Uncle Joseph to his niece. He drew her arm into his, and felt, as he did so, that she was trembling.
"What is the matter?" he asked, under his breath.
"Uncle! there is something unnatural about the readiness of these people to show us over the house," was the faintly whispered answer. "What were they talking about just now, out of our hearing? Why did that woman keep her eyes fixed so constantly on me?"
Before the old man could answer, the housekeeper looked round, and begged, with the severest emphasis, that they would be good enough to follow. In less than another minute they were all standing at the foot of the west staircase.
"Aha!" cried Uncle Joseph, as easy and talkative as ever, even in the presence of Mr. Munder himself. "A fine big house, and a very good staircase."
"We are not accustomed to hear either the house or the staircase spoken of in these terms, Sir," said Mr. Munder, resolving to nip the foreigner's familiarity in the bud. "The Guide to West Cornwall, which you would have done well to make yourself acquainted with before you came here, describes Porthgenna Tower as a Mansion, and uses the word Spacious in speaking of the west staircase. I regret to find, Sir, that you have not consulted the Guide-book to West Cornwall."
"And why?" rejoined the unabashed German. "What do I want with a book, when I have got you for my guide? Ah, dear Sir, but you are not just to yourself! Is not a living guide like you, who talks and walks about, better for me than dead leaves of print and paper? Ah, no, no! I shall not hear another word—I shall not hear you do any more injustice to yourself." Here Uncle Joseph made another fantastic bow, looked up smiling into the steward's face, and shook his head several times with an air of friendly reproach.
Mr. Munder felt paralyzed. He could not have been treated with more ease and indifferent familiarity if this obscure foreign stranger had been an English duke. He had often heard of the climax of audacity; and here it was visibly embodied in one small, elderly individual, who did not rise quite five feet from the ground he stood on!
While the steward was swelling with a sense of injury too large for utterance, the housekeeper, followed by Sarah, was slowly ascending the stairs. Uncle Joseph, seeing them go up, hastened to join his niece, and Mr. Munder, after waiting a little while on the mat to recover himself, followed the audacious foreigner with the intention of watching his conduct narrowly, and chastising his insolence at the first opportunity with stinging words of rebuke.
The procession up the stairs thus formed was not, however, closed by the steward; it was further adorned and completed by Betsey, the servant-maid, who stole out of the kitchen to follow the strange visitors over the house, as closely as she could without attracting the notice of Mrs. Pentreath. Betsey had her share of natural human curiosity and love of change. No such event as the arrival of strangers had ever before enlivened the dreary monotony of Porthgenna Tower within her experience; and she was resolved not to stay alone in the kitchen while there was a chance of hearing a stray word of the conversation, or catching a chance glimpse of the proceedings among the company up stairs.
In the mean time the housekeeper had led the way as far as the first-floor landing, on either side of which the principal rooms in the west front were situated. Sharpened by fear and suspicion, Sarah's eyes immediately detected the repairs which had been effected in the banisters and stairs of the second flight.
"You have had workmen in the house?" she said quickly to Mrs. Pentreath.
"You mean on the stairs?" returned the housekeeper. "Yes, we have had workmen there."
"And nowhere else?"
"No. But they are wanted in other places badly enough. Even here, on the best side of the house, half the bedrooms up stairs are hardly fit to sleep in. They were any thing but comfortable, as I have heard, even in the late Mrs. Treverton's time; and since she died—"
The housekeeper stopped with a frown and a look of surprise. The lady in the quiet dress, instead of sustaining the reputation for good manners which had been conferred on her in Mrs. Frankland's letter, was guilty of the unpardonable discourtesy of turning away from Mrs. Pentreath before she had done speaking. Determined not to allow herself to be impertinently silenced in that way, she coldly and distinctly repeated her last words—
"And since Mrs. Treverton died—"
She was interrupted for the second time. The strange lady, turning quickly round again, confronted her with a very pale face and a very eager look, and asked, in the most abrupt manner, an utterly irrelevant question:
"Tell me about that ghost story," she said. "Do they say it is the ghost of a man or of a woman?"
"I was speaking of the late Mrs. Treverton," said the housekeeper, in her severest tones of reproof, "and not of the ghost story about the north rooms. You would have known that, if you had done me the favor to listen to whatIsaid."
"I beg your pardon; I beg your pardon a thousand times for seeming inattentive! It struck me just then—or, at least, I wanted to know—"
"If you care to know about any thing so absurd," said Mrs. Pentreath, mollified by the evident sincerity of the apology that had been offered to her, "the ghost, according to the story, is the ghost of a woman."
The strange lady's face grew whiter than ever; and she turned away once more to the open window on the landing.
"How hot it is!" she said, putting her head out into the air.
"Hot, with a northeast wind!" exclaimed Mrs. Pentreath, in amazement.
Here Uncle Joseph came forward with a polite request to know when they were going to look over the rooms. For the last few minutes he had been asking all sorts of questions of Mr. Munder; and, having received no answers which were not of the shortest and most ungracious kind, had given up talking to the steward in despair.
Mrs. Pentreath prepared to lead the way into the breakfast-room, library, and drawing-room. All three communicated with each other, and each room had a second door opening on a long passage, the entrance to which was on the right-hand side of the first-floor landing. Before leading the way into these rooms, the housekeeper touched Sarah on the shoulder to intimate that it was time to be moving on.
"As for the ghost story," resumed Mrs. Pentreath, while she opened the breakfast-room door, "you must apply to the ignorant people who believe in it, if you want to hear it all told. Whether the ghost is an old ghost or a new ghost, and why she is supposed to walk, is more than I can tell you." In spite of the housekeeper's affectation of indifference toward the popular superstition, she had heard enough of the ghost-story to frighten her, though she would not confess it. Inside the house, or outside the house, nobody much less willing to venture into the north rooms alone could in real truth have been found than Mrs. Pentreath herself.
While the housekeeper was drawing up the blinds in the breakfast-parlor, and while Mr. Munder was opening the door that led out of it into the library, Uncle Joseph stole to his niece's side, and spoke a few words of encouragement to her in his quaint, kindly way.
"Courage!" he whispered. "Keep your wits about you, Sarah, and catch your little opportunity whenever you can."
"My thoughts! My thoughts!" she answered in the same low key. "This house rouses them all against me. Oh, why did I ever venture into it again!"
"You had better look at the view from the window now," said Mrs. Pentreath, after she had drawn up the blind. "It is very much admired."
While affairs were in this stage of progress on the first floor of the house, Betsey, who had been hitherto stealing up by a stair at a time from the hall, and listening with all her ears in the intervals of the ascent, finding that no sound of voices now reached her, bethought herself of returning to the kitchen again, and of looking after the housekeeper's dinner, which was being kept warm by the fire. She descended to the lower regions, wondering what part of the house the strangers would want to see next, and puzzling her brains to find out some excuse for attaching herself to the exploring party.
After the view from the breakfast-room window had been duly contemplated, the library was next entered. In this room, Mrs. Pentreath, having some leisure to look about her, and employing that leisure in observing the conduct of the steward, arrived at the unpleasant conviction that Mr. Munder was by no means to be depended on to assist her in the important business of watching the proceedings of the two strangers. Doubly stimulated to assert his own dignity by the disrespectfully easy manner in which he had been treated by Uncle Joseph, the sole object of Mr. Munder's ambition seemed to be to divest himself as completely as possible of the character of guide, which the unscrupulous foreigner sought to confer on him. He sauntered heavily about the rooms, with the air of a casual visitor, staring out of window, peeping into books on tables, frowning at himself in the chimney-glasses—looking, in short, any where but where he ought to look. The housekeeper, exasperated by this affectation of indifference, whispered to him irritably to keep his eye on the foreigner, as it was quite as much as she could do to look after the lady in the quiet dress.
"Very good; very good," said Mr. Munder, with sulky carelessness. "And where are you going to next, ma'am, after we have been into the drawing-room? Back again, through the library, into the breakfast-room? or out at once into the passage? Be good enough to settle which, as you seem to be in the way of settling every thing."
"Into the passage, to be sure," answered Mrs. Pentreath, "to show the next three rooms beyond these."
Mr. Munder sauntered out of the library, through the door-way of communication, into the drawing-room, unlocked the door leading into the passage—then, to the great disgust of the housekeeper, strolled to the fire-place, and looked at himself in the glass over it, just as attentively as he had looked at himself in the library mirror hardly a minute before.
"This is the west drawing-room," said Mrs. Pentreath, calling to the visitors. "The carving of the stone chimney-piece," she added, with the mischievous intention of bringing them into the closest proximity to the steward, "is considered the finest thing in the whole apartment."
Driven from the looking-glass by this manœuvre, Mr. Munder provokingly sauntered to the window and looked out. Sarah, still pale and silent—but with a certain unwonted resolution just gathering, as it were, in the lines about her lips—stopped thoughtfully by the chimney-piece when the housekeeper pointed it out to her. Uncle Joseph, looking all round the room in his discursive manner, spied, in the farthest corner of it from the door that led into the passage, a beautiful maple-wood table and cabinet, of a very peculiar pattern. His workmanlike enthusiasm was instantly aroused, and he darted across the room to examine the make of the cabinet closely. The table beneath projected a little way in front of it, and, of all the objects in the world, what should he see reposing on the flat space of the projection but a magnificent musical box at least three times the size of his own!
"Aïe! Aïe!! Aïe!!!" cried Uncle Joseph, in an ascending scale of admiration, which ended at the very top of his voice. "Open him! set him going! let me hear what he plays!" He stopped for want of words to express his impatience, and drummed with both hands on the lid of the musical box in a burst of uncontrollable enthusiasm.
"Mr. Munder!" exclaimed the housekeeper, hurrying across the room in great indignation. "Why don't you look? why don't you stop him? He's breaking open the musical box. Be quiet, Sir! How dare you touch me?"
"Set him going! set him going!" reiterated Uncle Joseph, dropping Mrs. Pentreath's arm, which he had seized in his agitation. "Look here! this by my side is a music box too! Set him going! Does he play Mozart? He is three times bigger than ever I saw! See! see! this box of mine—this tiny bit of box that looks nothing by the side of yours—it was given to my own brother by the king of all music-composers that ever lived, by the divine Mozart himself. Set the big box going, and you shall hear the little baby-box pipe after! Ah, dear and good madam, if you love me—"
"Sir!!!" exclaimed the housekeeper, reddening with virtuous indignation to the very roots of her hair.
"What do you mean, Sir, by addressing such outrageous language as that to a respectable female?" inquired Mr. Munder, approaching to the rescue. "Do you think we want your foreign noises, and your foreign morals, and your foreign profanity here? Yes, Sir! profanity. Any man who calls any human individual, whether musical or otherwise, 'divine,' is a profane man. Who are you, you extremely audacious person? Are you an infidel?"
Before Uncle Joseph could say a word in vindication of his principles, before Mr. Munder could relieve himself of any more indignation, they were both startled into momentary silence by an exclamation of alarm from the housekeeper.
"Where is she?" cried Mrs. Pentreath, standing in the middle of the drawing-room, and looking with bewildered eyes all around her.
The lady in the quiet dress had vanished.
She was not in the library, not in the breakfast-room, not in the passage outside. After searching in those three places, the housekeeper came back to Mr. Munder with a look of downright terror in her face, and stood staring at him for a moment perfectly helpless and perfectly silent. As soon as she recovered herself she turned fiercely on Uncle Joseph.
"Where is she? I insist on knowing what has become of her! You cunning, wicked, impudent old man! where is she?" cried Mrs. Pentreath, with no color in her cheeks and no mercy in her eyes.
"I suppose she is looking about the house by herself," said Uncle Joseph. "We shall find her surely as we take our walks through the other rooms." Simple as he was, the old man had, nevertheless, acuteness enough to perceive that he had accidentally rendered the very service to his niece of which she stood in need. If he had been the most artful of mankind, he could have devised no better means of diverting Mrs. Pentreath's attention from Sarah to himself than the very means which he had just used in perfect innocence, at the very moment when his thoughts were farthest away from the real object with which he and his niece had entered the house. "So! so!" thought Uncle Joseph to himself, "while these two angry people were scolding me for nothing, Sarah has slipped away to the room where the letter is. Good! I have only to wait till she comes back, and to let the two angry people go on scolding me as long as they please."
"What are we to do? Mr. Munder! what on earth are we to do?" asked the housekeeper. "We can't waste the precious minutes staring at each other here. This woman must be found. Stop! she asked questions about the stairs—she looked up at the second floor the moment we got on the landing. Mr. Munder! wait here, and don't let that foreigner out of your sight for a moment. Wait here while I run up and look into the second-floor passage. All the bedroom doors are locked—I defy her to hide herself if she has gone up there." With those words, the housekeeper ran out of the drawing-room, and breathlessly ascended the second flight of stairs.
While Mrs. Pentreath was searching on the west side of the house, Sarah was hurrying, at the top of her speed, along the lonely passages that led to the north rooms.
Terrified into decisive action by the desperate nature of the situation, she had slipped out of the drawing-room into the passage the instant she saw Mrs. Pentreath's back turned on her. Without stopping to think, without attempting to compose herself, she ran down the stairs of the first floor, and made straight for the housekeeper's room. She had no excuses ready, if she had found any body there, or if she had met any body on the way. She had formed no plan where to seek for them next, if the keys of the north rooms were not hanging in the place where she still expected to find them. Her mind was lost in confusion, her temples throbbed as if they would burst with the heat at her brain. The one blind, wild, headlong purpose of getting into the Myrtle Room drove her on, gave unnatural swiftness to her trembling feet, unnatural strength to her shaking hands, unnatural courage to her sinking heart.
She ran into the housekeeper's room, without even the ordinary caution of waiting for a moment to listen outside the door. No one was there. One glance at the well-remembered nail in the wall showed her the keys still hanging to it in a bunch, as they had hung in the long-past time. She had them in her possession in a moment; and was away again, along the solitary passages that led to the north rooms, threading their turnings and windings as if she had left them but the day before; never pausing to listen or to look behind her, never slackening her speed till she was at the top of the back staircase, and had her hand on the locked door that led into the north hall.
As she turned over the bunch to find the first key that was required, she discovered—what her hurry had hitherto prevented her from noticing—the numbered labels which the builder had methodically attached to all the keys when he had been sent to Porthgenna by Mr. Frankland to survey the house. At the first sight of them, her searching hands paused in their work instantaneously, and she shivered all over, as if a sudden chill had struck her.
If she had been less violently agitated, the discovery of the new labels and the suspicions to which the sight of them instantly gave rise would, in all probability, have checked her further progress. But the confusion of her mind was now too great to allow her to piece together even the veriest fragments of thoughts. Vaguely conscious of a new terror, of a sharpened distrust that doubled and trebled the headlong impatience which had driven her on thus far, she desperately resumed her search through the bunch of keys.
One of them had no label; it was larger than the rest—it was the key that fitted the door of communication before which she stood. She turned it in the rusty lock with a strength which, at any other time, she would have been utterly incapable of exerting; she opened the door with a blow of her hand, which burst it away at one stroke from the jambs to which it stuck. Panting for breath, she flew across the forsaken north hall, without stopping for one second to push the door to behind her. The creeping creatures, the noisome house-reptiles that possessed the place, crawled away, shadow-like, on either 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."
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? Wereallsounds 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.
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.
"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 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.
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!"
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.
"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."
"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, 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 talking does not include any dangerous underlying capacity for knowing what he means. Among this favored order of natural orators, Mr. Munder occupied a prominent rank—and he was now vindictively resolved to exercise his abilities on the two strangers, under pretense of asking for an explanation of their conduct, before he could suffer them to quit the house.
On entering the room, he found Uncle Joseph seated with his niece at the lower end of it, engaged in dropping some sal volatile into a glass of water. At the upper end stood the housekeeper with an open medicine-chest on the table before her. To this part of the room Mr. Munder slowly advanced, with a portentous countenance; drew an arm-chair up to the table; sat himself down in it, with extreme deliberation and care in the matter of settling his coat-tails; and immediately became, to all outward appearance, the model of a Lord Chief Justice in plain clothes.
Mrs. Pentreath, conscious from these preparations that something extraordinary was about to happen, seated herself a little behind the steward. Betsey restored the keys to their place on the nail in the wall, and was about to retire modestly to her proper kitchen sphere, when she was stopped by Mr. Munder.
"Wait, if you please," said the steward; "I shall have occasion to call on you presently, young woman, to make a plain statement."
Obedient Betsey waited near the door, terrified by the idea that she must have done something wrong, and that the steward was armed with inscrutable legal power to try, sentence, and punish her for the offense on the spot.
"Now, Sir," said Mr. Munder, addressing Uncle Joseph as if he was the Speaker of the House of Commons, "if you have done with that sal volatile, and if the person by your side has sufficiently recovered her senses to listen, I should wish to say a word or two to both of you."
At this exordium, Sarah tried affrightedly to rise from her chair; but her uncle caught her by the hand, and pressed her back in it.
"Wait and rest," he whispered. "I shall take all the scolding on my own shoulder, and do all the talking with my own tongue. As soon as you are fit to walk again, I promise you this: whether the big man has said his word or two, or has not said it, we will quietly get up and go our ways out of the house."
"Up to the present moment," said Mr. Munder, "I have refrained from expressing an opinion. The time has now come when, holding a position of trust as I do in this establishment, and being accountable, and indeed responsible, as I am, for what takes place in it, and feeling, as I must, that things can not be allowed or even permitted to rest as they are—it is my duty to say that I think your conduct is very extraordinary." Directing this forcible conclusion to his sentence straight at Sarah, Mr. Munder leaned back in his chair, quite full of words, and quite empty of meaning, to collect himself comfortably for his next effort.
"My only desire," he resumed, with a plaintive impartiality, "is to act fairly by all parties. I don't wish to frighten any body, or to startle any body, or even to terrify any body. I wish to unravel, or, if you please, to make out, what I may term, with perfect propriety—events. And when I have done that, I should wish to put it to you, ma'am, and to you, Sir, whether—I say, I should wish to put it to you both, calmly, and impartially, and politely, and plainly, and smoothly—and when I say smoothly, I mean quietly—whether you are not both of you bound to explain yourselves."
Mr. Munder paused, to let that last irresistible appeal work its way to the consciences of the persons whom he addressed. The housekeeper took advantage of the silence to cough, as congregations cough just before the sermon, apparently on the principle of getting rid of bodily infirmities beforehand, in order to give the mind free play for undisturbed intellectual enjoyment. Betsey, following Mrs. Pentreath's lead, indulged in a cough on her own account—of the faint, distrustful sort. Uncle Joseph sat perfectly easy and undismayed, still holding his niece's hand in his, and giving it a little squeeze, from time to time, when the steward's oratory became particularly involved and impressive. Sarah never moved, never looked up, never lost the expression of terrified restraint which had taken possession of her face from the first moment when she entered the housekeeper's room.
"Now what are the facts, and circumstances, and events?" proceeded Mr. Munder, leaning back in his chair, in calm enjoyment of the sound of his own voice. "You, ma'am, and you, Sir, ring at the bell of the door of this Mansion" (here he looked hard at Uncle Joseph, as much as to say, "I don't give up that point about the house being a Mansion, you see, even on the judgment-seat")—"you are let in, or, rather, admitted. You, Sir, assert that you wish to inspect the Mansion (you say 'see the house,' but, being a foreigner, we are not surprised at your making a little mistake of that sort); you, ma'am, coincide, and even agree, in that request. What follows? You are shown over the Mansion. It is not usual to show strangers over it, but we happen to have certain reasons—"
Sarah started. "What reasons?" she asked, looking up quickly.
Uncle Joseph felt her hand turn cold, and tremble in his. "Hush! hush!" he said, "leave the talking to me."
At the same moment Mrs. Pentreath pulled Mr. Munder warily by the coat-tail, and whispered to him to be careful. "Mrs. Frankland's letter," she said in his ear, "tells us particularly not to let it be suspected that we are acting under orders."
"Don't you fancy, Mrs. Pentreath, that I forget what I ought to remember," rejoined Mr. Munder—who had forgotten, nevertheless. "And don't you imagine that I was going to commit myself" (the very thing which he had just been on the point of doing). "Leave this business in my hands, if you will be so good.—What reasons did you say, ma'am?" he added aloud, addressing himself to Sarah. "Never you mind about reasons; we have not got to do with them now; we have got to do with facts, and circumstances, and events. I was observing, or remarking, that you, Sir, and you, ma'am, were shown over this Mansion. You were conducted, and indeed led, up the west staircase—the Spacious west staircase, Sir! You were shown with politeness, and even with courtesy, through the breakfast-room, the library, and the drawing-room. In that drawing-room, you, Sir, indulge in outrageous, and, I will add, in violent language. In that drawing-room, you, ma'am, disappear, or, rather, go altogether out of sight. Such conduct as this, so highly unparalleled, so entirely unprecedented, and so very unusual, causes Mrs. Pentreath and myself to feel—" Here Mr. Munder stopped, at a loss for a word for the first time.
"Astonished," suggested Mrs. Pentreath after a long interval of silence.
"No, ma'am!" retorted Mr. Munder. "Nothing of the sort. We were not at all astonished; we were—surprised. And what followed and succeeded that? What did you and I hear, Sir, on the first floor?" (looking sternly at Uncle Joseph). "And what did you hear, Mrs. Pentreath, while you were searching for the missing and absent party on the second floor? What?"
Thus personally appealed to, the housekeeper answered briefly—"A scream."
"No! no! no!" said Mr. Munder, fretfully tapping his hand on the table. "A screech, Mrs. Pentreath—a screech. And what is the meaning, purport, and upshot of that screech?—Young woman!" (here Mr. Munder turned suddenly on Betsey) "we have now traced these extraordinary facts and circumstances as far as you. Have the goodness to step forward, and tell us, in the presence of these two parties, how you came to utter, or give, what Mrs. Pentreath calls a scream, but what I call a screech. A plain statement will do, my good girl—quite a plain statement, if you please. And, young woman, one word more—speak up. You understand me? Speak up!"
Covered with confusion by the public and solemn nature of this appeal, Betsey, on starting with her statement, unconsciously followed the oratorical example of no less a person than Mr. Munder himself; that is to say, she spoke on the principle of drowning the smallest possible infusion of ideas in the largest possible dilution of words. Extricated from the mesh of verbal entanglement in which she contrived to involve it, her statement may be not unfairly represented as simply consisting of the following facts:
First, Betsey had to relate that she happened to be just taking the lid off a saucepan, on the kitchen fire, when she heard, in the neighborhood of the housekeeper's room, a sound of hurried footsteps (vernacularly termed by the witness a "scurrying of somebody's feet"). Secondly, Betsey, on leaving the kitchen to ascertain what the sound meant, heard the footsteps retreating rapidly along the passage which led to the north side of the house, and, stimulated by curiosity, followed the sound of them for a certain distance. Thirdly, at a sharp turn in the passage, Betsey stopped short, despairing of overtaking the person whose footsteps she heard, and feeling also a sense of dread (termed by the witness, "creeping of the flesh") at the idea of venturing alone, even in broad daylight, into the ghostly quarter of the house. Fourthly, while still hesitating at the turn in the passage, Betsey heard "the lock of a door go," and, stimulated afresh by curiosity, advanced a few steps farther—then stopped again, debating within herself the difficult and dreadful question, whether it is the usual custom of ghosts, when passing from one place to another, to unlock any closed door which may happen to be in their way, or to save trouble by simply passing through it. Fifthly, after long deliberation, and many false starts—forward toward the north hall and backward toward the kitchen—Betsey decided that it was the immemorial custom of all ghosts to pass through doors, and not unlock them. Sixthly, fortified by this conviction, Betsey went on boldly close to the door, when she suddenly heard a loud report, as of some heavy body falling (graphically termed by the witness a "banging scrash"). Seventhly, the noise frightened Betsey out of her wits, brought her heart up into her mouth, and took away her breath. Eighthly, and lastly, on recovering breath enough to scream (or screech), Betsey did, with might and main, scream (or screech), running back toward the kitchen as fast as her legs would carry her, with all her hair "standing up on end," and all her flesh "in a crawl" from the crown of her head to the soles of her feet.
"Just so! just so!" said Mr. Munder, when the statement came to a close—as if the sight of a young woman with all her hair standing on end and all her flesh in a crawl were an ordinary result of his experience of female humanity—"Just so! You may stand back, my good girl—you may stand back.—There is nothing to smile at, Sir," he continued, sternly addressing Uncle Joseph, who had been excessively amused by Betsey's manner of delivering her evidence. "You would be doing better to carry, or rather transport, your mind back to what followed and succeeded the young woman's screech. What did we all do, Sir? We rushed to the spot, and we ran to the place. And what did we all see, Sir?—We sawyou, ma'am, lying horizontally prostrate, on the top of the landing of the first of the flight of the north stairs; and we saw those keys, now hanging up yonder, abstracted and purloined, and, as it were, snatched from their place in this room, and lying horizontally prostrate likewise on the floor of the hall.—There are the facts, the circumstances, and the events, laid, or rather placed, before you. What have you got to say to them? I call upon you both solemnly, and, I will add, seriously! In my own name, in the name of Mrs. Pentreath, in the name of our employers, in the name of decency, in the name of wonder—what do you mean by it?"
With that conclusion, Mr. Munder struck his fist on the table, and waited, with a glare of merciless expectation, for any thing in the shape of an answer, an explanation, or a defense which the culprits at the bottom of the room might be disposed to offer.
"Tell him any thing," whispered Sarah to the old man. "Any thing to keep him quiet; any thing to make him let us go! After what I have suffered, these people will drive me mad!"
Never very quick at inventing an excuse, and perfectly ignorant besides of what had really happened to his niece while she was alone in the north hall, Uncle Joseph, with the best will in the world to prove himself equal to the emergency, felt considerable difficulty in deciding what he should say or do. Determined, however, at all hazards, to spare Sarah any useless suffering, and to remove her from the house as speedily as possible, he rose to take the responsibility of speaking on himself, looking hard, before he opened his lips, at Mr. Munder, who immediately leaned forward on the table with his hand to his ear. Uncle Joseph acknowledged this polite act of attention with one of his fantastic bows; and then replied to the whole of the steward's long harangue in these six unanswerable words:
"I wish you good-day, Sir!"
"How dare you wish me any thing of the sort!" cried Mr. Munder, jumping out of his chair in violent indignation. "How dare you trifle with a serious subject and a serious question in that way? Wish me good-day, indeed! Do you suppose I am going to let you out of this house without hearing some explanation of the abstracting and purloining and snatching of the keys of the north rooms?"
"Ah! it is that you want to know?" said Uncle Joseph, stimulated to plunge headlong into an excuse by the increasing agitation and terror of his niece. "See, now! I shall explain. What was it, dear and good Sir, that we said when we were first let in? This—'We have come to see the house.' Now there is a north side to the house, and a west side to the house. Good! That is two sides; and I and my niece are two people; and we divide ourselves in two, to see the two sides. I am the half that goes west, with you and the dear and good lady behind there. My niece here is the other half that goes north, all by herself, and drops the keys, and falls into a faint, because in that old part of the house it is what you call musty-fusty, and there is smells of tombs and spiders, and that is all the explanation, and quite enough, too. I wish you good-day, Sir."
"Damme! if ever I met with the like of you before!" roared Mr. Munder, entirely forgetting his dignity, his respectability, and his long words in the exasperation of the moment. "You are going to have it all your own way, are you, Mr. Foreigner? You will walk out of this place when you please, will you, Mr. Foreigner? We will see what the justice of the peace for this district has to say to that," cried Mr. Munder, recovering his solemn manner and his lofty phraseology. "Property in this house is confided to my care; and unless I hear some satisfactory explanation of the purloining of those keys hanging up there, Sir, on that wall, Sir, before your eyes, Sir—I shall consider it my duty to detain you, and the person with you, until I can get legal advice, and lawful advice, and magisterial advice. Do you hear that, Sir?"
Uncle Joseph's ruddy cheeks suddenly deepened in color, and his face assumed an expression which made the housekeeper rather uneasy, and which had an irresistibly cooling effect on the heat of Mr. Munder's anger.
"You will keep us here?You?" said the old man, speaking very quietly, and looking very steadily at the steward. "Now, see. I take this lady (courage, my child, courage! there is nothing to tremble for)—I take this lady with me; I throw that door open, so! I stand and wait before it; and I say to you, 'Shut that door against us, if you dare.'"
At this defiance, Mr. Munder advanced a few steps, and then stopped. If Uncle Joseph's steady look at him had wavered for an instant, he would have closed the door.
"I say again," repeated the old man, "shut it against us, if you dare. The laws and customs of your country, Sir, have made me an Englishman. If you can talk into one ear of a magistrate, I can talk into the other. If he must listen to you, a citizen of this country, he must listen to me, a citizen of this country also. Say the word, if you please. Do you accuse? or do you threaten? or do you shut the door?"
Before Mr. Munder could reply to any one of these three direct questions, the housekeeper begged him to return to his chair and to speak to her. As he resumed his place, she whispered to him, in warning tones, "Remember Mrs. Frankland's letter!"
At the same moment, Uncle Joseph, considering that he had waited long enough, took a step forward to the door. He was prevented from advancing any farther by his niece, who caught him suddenly by the arm, and said in his ear, "Look! they are whispering about us again!"
"Well!" said Mr. Munder, replying to the housekeeper. "I do remember Mrs. Frankland's letter, ma'am; and what then?"
"Hush! not so loud," whispered Mrs. Pentreath. "I don't presume, Mr. Munder, to differ in opinion with you; but I want to ask one or two questions. Do you think we have any charge that a magistrate would listen to, to bring against these people?"
Mr. Munder looked puzzled, and seemed, for once in a way, to be at a loss for an answer.
"Does what you remember of Mrs. Frankland's letter," pursued the housekeeper, "incline you to think that she would be pleased at a public exposure of what has happened in the house? She tells us to takeprivatenotice of that woman's conduct, and to follow herunperceivedwhen she goes away. I don't venture on the liberty of advising you, Mr. Munder, but, as far as regards myself, I wash my hands of all responsibility, if we do any thing but follow Mrs. Frankland's instructions (as she herself tells us) to the letter."
Mr. Munder hesitated. Uncle Joseph, who had paused for a minute when Sarah directed his attention to the whispering at the upper end of the room, now drew her on slowly with him to the door. "Betzee, my dear," he said, addressing the maid, with perfect coolness and composure, "we are strangers here; will you be so kind to us as to show the way out?"
Betsey looked at the housekeeper, who motioned to her to appeal for orders to the steward. Mr. Munder was sorely tempted, for the sake of his own importance, to insist on instantly carrying out the violent measures to which he had threatened to have recourse; but Mrs. Pentreath's objections made him pause in spite of himself.
"Betzee, my dear," repeated Uncle Joseph, "has all this talking been too much for your ears? has it made you deaf?"
"Wait!" cried Mr. Munder, impatiently. "I insist on your waiting, Sir!"
"You insist? Well, well, because you are an uncivil man is no reason why I should be an uncivil man too. We will wait a little, Sir, if you have any thing more to say." Making that concession to the claims of politeness, Uncle Joseph walked gently backward and forward with his niece in the passage outside the door. "Sarah, my child, I have frightened the man of the big words," he whispered. "Try not to tremble so much; we shall soon be out in the fresh air again."
In the mean time, Mr. Munder continued his whispered conversation with the housekeeper, making a desperate effort, in the midst of his perplexities, to maintain his customary air of patronage and his customary assumption of superiority. "There is a great deal of truth, ma'am," he softly began—"a great deal of truth, certainly, in what you say. But you are talking of the woman, while I am talking of the man. Do you mean to tell me that I am to let him go, after what has happened, without at least insisting on his giving me his name and address?"
"Do you put trust enough in the foreigner to believe that he would give you his right name and address if you asked him?" inquired Mrs. Pentreath. "With submission to your better judgment, I must confess that I don't. But supposing you were to detain him and charge him before the magistrate—and how you are to do that, the magistrate's house being, I suppose, about a couple of hours' walk from here, is more than I can tell—you must surely risk offending Mrs. Frankland by detaining the woman and charging the woman as well; for after all, Mr. Munder, though I believe the foreigner to be capable of any thing, it was the woman that took the keys, was it not?"
"Quite so! quite so!" said Mr. Munder, whose sleepy eyes were now opened to this plain and straightforward view of the case for the first time. "I was, oddly enough, putting that point to myself, Mrs. Pentreath, just before you happened to speak of it. Just so! just so!"