WHEN the servants' dinner-bell at St. Crux rang as usual on the day of
George Bartram's departure, it was remarked that the new parlor-maid's
place at table remained empty. One of the inferior servants was sent
to her room to make inquiries, and returned with the information that
"Louisa" felt a little faint, and begged that her attendance at table
might be excused for that day. Upon this, the superior authority of the
housekeeper was invoked, and Mrs. Drake went upstairs immediately to
ascertain the truth for herself. Her first look of inquiry satisfied her
that the parlor-maid's indisposition, whatever the cause of it might
be, was certainly not assumed to serve any idle or sullen purpose of
her own. She respectfully declined taking any of the remedies which the
housekeeper offered, and merely requested permission to try the efficacy
of a walk in the fresh air.
"I have been accustomed to more exercise, ma'am, than I take here," she
said. "Might I go into the garden, and try what the air will do for me?"
"Certainly. Can you walk by yourself, or shall I send some one with
you?"
"I will go by myself, if you please, ma'am."
"Very well. Put on your bonnet and shawl, and, when you get out, keep in
the east garden. The admiral sometimes walks in the north garden, and he
might feel surprised at seeing you there. Come to my room, when you have
had air and exercise enough, and let me see how you are."
In a few minutes more Magdalen was out in the east garden. The sky was
clear and sunny; but the cold shadow of the house rested on the garden
walk and chilled the midday air. She walked toward the ruins of the
old monastery, situated on the south side of the more modern range of
buildings. Here there were lonely open spaces to breathe in freely; here
the pale March sunshine stole through the gaps of desolation and decay,
and met her invitingly with the genial promise of spring.
She ascended three or four riven stone steps, and seated herself on some
ruined fragments beyond them, full in the sunshine. The place she had
chosen had once been the entrance to the church. In centuries long gone
by, the stream of human sin and human suffering had flowed, day after
day, to the confessional, over the place where she now sat. Of all the
miserable women who had trodden those old stones in the bygone time,
no more miserable creature had touched them than the woman whose feet
rested on them now.
Her hands trembled as she placed them on either side of her, to support
herself on the stone seat. She laid them on her lap; they trembled
there. She held them out, and looked at them wonderingly; they trembled
as she looked. "Like an old woman!" she said, faintly, and let them drop
again at her side.
For the first time, that morning, the cruel discovery had forced itself
on her mind--the discovery that her strength was failing her, at the
time when she had most confidently trusted to it, at the time when she
wanted it most. She had felt the surprise of Mr. Bartram's unexpected
departure, as if it had been the shock of the severest calamity that
could have befallen her. That one check to her hopes--a check which at
other times would only have roused the resisting power in her to new
efforts--had struck her with as suffocating a terror, had prostrated her
with as all-mastering a despair, as if she had been overwhelmed by the
crowning disaster of expulsion from St. Crux. But one warning could be
read in such a change as this. Into the space of little more than a
year she had crowded the wearing and wasting emotions of a life. The
bountiful gifts of health and strength, so prodigally heaped on her by
Nature, so long abused with impunity, were failing her at last.
She looked up at the far faint blue of the sky. She heard the joyous
singing of birds among the ivy that clothed the ruins. Oh the cold
distance of the heavens! Oh the pitiless happiness of the birds! Oh the
lonely horror of sitting there, and feeling old and weak and worn, in
the heyday of her youth! She rose with a last effort of resolution,
and tried to keep back the hysterical passion swelling at her heart by
moving and looking about her. Rapidly and more rapidly she walked to and
fro in the sunshine. The exercise helped her, through the very fatigue
that she felt from it. She forced the rising tears desperately back to
their sources; she fought with the clinging pain, and wrenched it from
its hold. Little by little her mind began to clear again: the despairing
fear of herself grew less vividly present to her thoughts. There were
reserves of youth and strength in her still to be wasted; there was a
spirit sorely wounded, but not yet subdued.
She gradually extended the limits of her walk; she gradually recovered
the exercise of her observation.
At the western extremity the remains of the monastery were in a less
ruinous condition than at the eastern. In certain places, where the
stout old walls still stood, repairs had been made at some former time.
Roofs of red tile had been laid roughly over four of the ancient cells;
wooden doors had been added; and the old monastic chambers had been
used as sheds to hold the multifarious lumber of St. Crux. No padlocks
guarded any of the doors. Magdalen had only to push them to let the
daylight in on the litter inside. She resolved to investigate the sheds
one after the other--not from curiosity, not with the idea of making
discoveries of any sort. Her only object was to fill up the vacant time,
and to keep the thoughts that unnerved her from returning to her mind.
The first shed she opened contained the gardener's utensils, large and
small. The second was littered with fragments of broken furniture,
empty picture-frames of worm-eaten wood, shattered vases, boxes without
covers, and books torn from their bindings. As Magdalen turned to leave
the shed, after one careless glance round her at the lumber that it
contained, her foot struck something on the ground which tinkled against
a fragment of china lying near it. She stooped, and discovered that the
tinkling substance was a rusty key.
She picked up the key and looked at it. She walked out into the air, and
considered a little. More old forgotten keys were probably lying about
among the lumber in the sheds. What if she collected all she could find,
and tried them, one after another, in the locks of the cabinets and
cupboards now closed against her? Was there chance enough that any one
of them might fit to justify her in venturing on the experiment? If the
locks at St. Crux were as old-fashioned as the furniture--if there were
no protective niceties of modern invention to contend against--there was
chance enough beyond all question. Who could say whether the very key
in her hand might not be the lost duplicate of one of the keys on the
admiral's bunch? In the dearth of all other means of finding the way to
her end, the risk was worth running. A flash of the old spirit sparkled
in her weary eyes as she turned and re-entered the shed.
Half an hour more brought her to the limits of the time which she could
venture to allow herself in the open air. In that interval she had
searched the sheds from first to last, and had found five more keys.
"Five more chances!" she thought to herself, as she hid the keys, and
hastily returned to the house.
After first reporting herself in the housekeeper's room, she went
upstairs to remove her bonnet and shawl; taking that opportunity to hide
the keys in her bed-chamber until night came. They were crusted thick
with rust and dirt; but she dared not attempt to clean them until
bed-time secluded her from the prying eyes of the servants in the
solitude of her room.
When the dinner hour brought her, as usual, into personal contact with
the admiral, she was at once struck by a change in him. For the first
time in her experience the old gentleman was silent and depressed.
He ate less than usual, and he hardly said five words to her from the
beginning of the meal to the end. Some unwelcome subject of reflection
had evidently fixed itself on his mind, and remained there persistently,
in spite of his efforts to shake it off. At intervals through the
evening, she wondered with an ever-growing perplexity what the subject
could be.
At last the lagging hours reached their end, and bed-time came. Before
she slept that night Magdalen had cleaned the keys from all impurities,
and had oiled the wards, to help them smoothly into the locks. The last
difficulty that remained was the difficulty of choosing the time when
the experiment might be tried with the least risk of interruption and
discovery. After carefully considering the question overnight, Magdalen
could only resolve to wait and be guided by the events of the next day.
The morning came, and for the first time at St. Crux events justified
the trust she had placed in them. The morning came, and the one
remaining difficulty that perplexed her was unexpectedly smoothed away
by no less a person than the admiral himself! To the surprise of every
one in the house, he announced at breakfast that he had arranged to
start for London in an hour; that he should pass the night in town; and
that he might be expected to return to St. Crux in time for dinner on
the next day. He volunteered no further explanations to the housekeeper
or to any one else, but it was easy to see that his errand to London
was of no ordinary importance in his own estimation. He swallowed his
breakfast in a violent hurry, and he was impatiently ready for the
carriage before it came to the door.
Experience had taught Magdalen to be cautious. She waited a little,
after Admiral Bartram's departure, before she ventured on trying her
experiment with the keys. It was well she did so. Mrs. Drake took
advantage of the admiral's absence to review the condition of the
apartments on the first floor. The results of the investigation by
no means satisfied her; brooms and dusters were set to work; and the
house-maids were in and out of the rooms perpetually, as long as the
daylight lasted.
The evening passed, and still the safe opportunity for which Magdalen
was on the watch never presented itself. Bed-time came again, and found
her placed between the two alternatives of trusting to the doubtful
chances of the next morning, or of trying the keys boldly in the dead
of night. In former times she would have made her choice without
hesitation. She hesitated now; but the wreck of her old courage still
sustained her, and she determined to make the venture at night.
They kept early hours at St. Crux. If she waited in her room until
half-past eleven, she would wait long enough. At that time she stole out
on to the staircase, with the keys in her pocket, and the candle in her
hand.
On passing the entrance to the corridor on the bedroom floor, she
stopped and listened. No sound of snoring, no shuffling of infirm
footsteps was to be heard on the other side of the screen. She looked
round it distrustfully. The stone passage was a solitude, and the
truckle-bed was empty. Her own eyes had shown her old Mazey on his way
to the upper regions, more than an hour since, with a candle in his
hand. Had he taken advantage of his master's absence to enjoy the
unaccustomed luxury of sleeping in a room? As the thought occurred to
her, a sound from the further end of the corridor just caught her ear.
She softly advanced toward it, and heard through the door of the last
and remotest of the spare bed-chambers the veteran's lusty snoring in
the room inside. The discovery was startling, in more senses than one.
It deepened the impenetrable mystery of the truckle-bed; for it showed
plainly that old Mazey had no barbarous preference of his own for
passing his nights in the corridor; he occupied that strange and
comfortless sleeping-place purely and entirely on his master's account.
It was no time for dwelling on the reflections which this conclusion
might suggest. Magdalen retraced her steps along the passage, and
descended to the first floor. Passing the doors nearest to her, she
tried the library first. On the staircase and in the corridors she had
felt her heart throbbing fast with an unutterable fear; but a sense of
security returned to her when she found herself within the four walls of
the room, and when she had closed the door on the ghostly quiet outside.
The first lock she tried was the lock of the table-drawer. None of the
keys fitted it. Her next experiment was made on the cabinet. Would the
second attempt fail, like the first?
No! One of the keys fitted; one of the keys, with a little patient
management, turned the lock. She looked in eagerly. There were open
shelves above, and one long drawer under them. The shelves were devoted
to specimens of curious minerals, neatly labeled and arranged. The
drawer was divided into compartments. Two of the compartments contained
papers. In the first, she discovered nothing but a collection of
receipted bills. In the second, she found a heap of business documents;
but the writing, yellow with age, was enough of itself to warn her that
the Trust was not there. She shut the doors of the cabinet, and, after
locking them again with some little difficulty, proceeded to try
the keys in the bookcase cupboards next, before she continued her
investigations in the other rooms.
The bookcase cupboards were unassailable, the drawers and cupboards in
all the other rooms were unassailable. One after another she tried them
patiently in regular succession. It was useless. The chance which the
cabinet in the library had offered in her favor was the first chance and
the last.
She went back to her room, seeing nothing but her own gliding shadow,
hearing nothing but her own stealthy footfall in the midnight stillness
of the house. After mechanically putting the keys away in their former
hiding-place, she looked toward her bed, and turned away from it,
shuddering. The warning remembrance of what she had suffered that
morning in the garden was vividly present to her mind. "Another chance
tried," she thought to herself, "and another chance lost! I shall break
down again if I think of it; and I shall think of it if I lie awake in
the dark." She had brought a work-box with her to St. Crux, as one
of the many little things which in her character of a servant it was
desirable to possess; and she now opened the box and applied herself
resolutely to work. Her want of dexterity with her needle assisted the
object she had in view; it obliged her to pay the closest attention to
her employment; it forced her thoughts away from the two subjects of all
others which she now dreaded most--herself and the future.
The next day, as he had arranged, the admiral returned. His visit to
London had not improved his spirits. The shadow of some unconquerable
doubt still clouded his face; his restless tongue was strangely quiet,
while Magdalen waited on him at his solitary meal. That night the
snoring resounded once more on the inner side of the screen, and old
Mazey was back again in the comfortless truckle-bed.
Three more days passed--April came. On the second of the month
--returning as unexpectedly as he had departed a week before--Mr. George
Bartram re-appeared at St. Crux.
He came back early in the afternoon, and had an interview with his uncle
in the library. The interview over, he left the house again, and was
driven to the railway by the groom in time to catch the last train to
London that night. The groom noticed, on the road, that "Mr. George
seemed to be rather pleased than otherwise at leaving St. Crux." He also
remarked, on his return, that the admiral swore at him for overdriving
the horses--an indication of ill-temper, on the part of his master,
which he described as being entirely without precedent in all his former
experience. Magdalen, in her department of service, had suffered in like
manner under the old man's irritable humor: he had been dissatisfied
with everything she did in the dining-room; and he had found fault with
all the dishes, one after another, from the mutton-broth to the toasted
cheese.
The next two days passed as usual. On the third day an event happened.
In appearance, it was nothing more important than a ring at the
drawing-room bell. In reality, it was the forerunner of approaching
catastrophe--the formidable herald of the end.
It was Magdalen's business to answer the bell. On reaching the
drawing-room door, she knocked as usual. There was no reply. After again
knocking, and again receiving no answer, she ventured into the room, and
was instantly met by a current of cold air flowing full on her face. The
heavy sliding door in the opposite wall was pushed back, and the Arctic
atmosphere of Freeze-your-Bones was pouring unhindered into the empty
room.
She waited near the door, doubtful what to do next; it was certainly
the drawing-room bell that had rung, and no other. She waited, looking
through the open doorway opposite, down the wilderness of the dismantled
Hall.
A little consideration satisfied her that it would be best to go
downstairs again, and wait there for a second summons fro m the bell.
On turning to leave the room, she happened to look back once more, and
exactly at that moment she saw the door open at the opposite extremity
of the Banqueting-Hall--the door leading into the first of the
apartments in the east wing. A tall man came out, wearing his great coat
and his hat, and rapidly approached the drawing-room. His gait betrayed
him, while he was still too far off for his features to be seen. Before
he was quite half-way across the Hall, Magdalen had recognized--the
admiral.
He looked, not irritated only, but surprised as well, at finding his
parlor-maid waiting for him in the drawing-room, and inquired, sharply
and suspiciously, what she wanted there? Magdalen replied that she had
come there to answer the bell. His face cleared a little when he heard
the explanation. "Yes, yes; to be sure," he said. "I did ring, and
then I forgot it." He pulled the sliding door back into its place as he
spoke. "Coals," he resumed, impatiently, pointing to the empty scuttle.
"I rang for coals."
Magdalen went back to the kitchen regions. After communicating the
admiral's order to the servant whose special duty it was to attend to
the fires, she returned to the pantry, and, gently closing the door, sat
down alone to think.
It had been her impression in the drawing-room--and it was her
impression still--that she had accidentally surprised Admiral Bartram on
a visit to the east rooms, which, for some urgent reason of his own, he
wished to keep a secret. Haunted day and night by the one dominant idea
that now possessed her, she leaped all logical difficulties at a bound,
and at once associated the suspicion of a secret proceeding on the
admiral's part with the kindred suspicion which pointed to him as the
depositary of the Secret Trust. Up to this time it had been her settled
belief that he kept all his important documents in one or other of the
suite of rooms which he happened to be occupying for the time being.
Why--she now asked herself, with a sudden distrust of the conclusion
which had hitherto satisfied her mind--why might he not lock some of
them up in the other rooms as well? The remembrance of the keys still
concealed in their hiding-place in her room sharpened her sense of the
reasonableness of this new view. With one unimportant exception, those
keys had all failed when she tried them in the rooms on the north side
of the house. Might they not succeed with the cabinets and cupboards in
the east rooms, on which she had never tried them, or thought of trying
them, yet? If there was a chance, however small, of turning them to
better account than she had turned them thus far, it was a chance to be
tried. If there was a possibility, however remote, that the Trust might
be hidden in any one of the locked repositories in the east wing, it was
a possibility to be put to the test. When? Her own experience answered
the question. At the time when no prying eyes were open, and no
accidents were to be feared--when the house was quiet--in the dead of
night.
She knew enough of her changed self to dread the enervating influence of
delay. She determined to run the risk headlong that night.
More blunders escaped her when dinner-time came; the admiral's
criticisms on her waiting at table were sharper than ever. His hardest
words inflicted no pain on her; she scarcely heard him--her mind was
dull to every sense but the sense of the coming trial. The evening which
had passed slowly to her on the night of her first experiment with
the keys passed quickly now. When bed-time came, bed-time took her by
surprise.
She waited longer on this occasion than she had waited before. The
admiral was at home; he might alter his mind and go downstairs again,
after he had gone up to his room; he might have forgotten something in
the library and might return to fetch it. Midnight struck from the clock
in the servants' hall before she ventured out of her room, with the keys
again in her pocket, with the candle again in her hand.
At the first of the stairs on which she set her foot to descend, an
all-mastering hesitation, an unintelligible shrinking from some peril
unknown, seized her on a sudden. She waited, and reasoned with herself.
She had recoiled from no sacrifices, she had yielded to no fears, in
carrying out the stratagem by which she had gained admission to St.
Crux; and now, when the long array of difficulties at the outset had
been patiently conquered, now, when by sheer force of resolution the
starting-point was gained, she hesitated to advance. "I shrank from
nothing to get here," she said to herself. "What madness possesses me
that I shrink now?"
Every pulse in her quickened at the thought, with an animating shame
that nerved her to go on. She descended the stairs, from the third floor
to the second, from the second to the first, without trusting herself
to pause again within easy reach of her own room. In another minute, she
had reached the end of the corridor, had crossed the vestibule, and had
entered the drawing-room. It was only when her grasp was on the heavy
brass handle of the sliding door--it was only at the moment before
she pushed the door back--that she waited to take breath. The
Banqueting-Hall was close on the other side of the wooden partition
against which she stood; her excited imagination felt the death-like
chill of it flowing over her already.
She pushed back the sliding door a few inches--and stopped in momentary
alarm. When the admiral had closed it in her presence that day, she had
heard no noise. When old Mazey had opened it to show her the rooms in
the east wing, she had heard no noise. Now, in the night silence, she
noticed for the first time that the door made a sound--a dull, rushing
sound, like the wind.
She roused herself, and pushed it further back--pushed it halfway into
the hollow chamber in the wall constructed to receive it. She advanced
boldly into the gap, and met the night view of the Banqueting-Hall face
to face.
The moon was rounding the southern side of the house. Her paling beams
streamed through the nearer windows, and lay in long strips of slanting
light on the marble pavement of the Hall. The black shadows of the
pediments between each window, alternating with the strips of light,
heightened the wan glare of the moonshine on the floor. Toward its lower
end, the Hall melted mysteriously into darkness. The ceiling was lost to
view; the yawning fire-place, the overhanging mantel-piece, the long
row of battle pictures above, were all swallowed up in night. But one
visible object was discernible, besides the gleaming windows and the
moon-striped floor. Midway in the last and furthest of the strips of
light, the tripod rose erect on its gaunt black legs, like a monster
called to life by the moon--a monster rising through the light, and
melting invisibly into the upper shadows of the Hall. Far and near, all
sound lay dead, drowned in the stagnant cold. The soothing hush of night
was awful here. The deep abysses of darkness hid abysses of silence more
immeasurable still.
She stood motionless in the door-way, with straining eyes, with
straining ears. She looked for some moving thing, she listened for
some rising sound, and looked and listened in vain. A quick ceaseless
shivering ran through her from head to foot. The shivering of fear, or
the shivering of cold? The bare doubt roused her resolute will. "Now,"
she thought, advancing a step through the door-way, "or never! I'll
count the strips of moonlight three times over, and cross the Hall."
"One, two, three, four, five. One, two, three, four, five. One, two,
three, four, five."
As the final number passed her lips at the third time of counting, she
crossed the Hall. Looking for nothing, listening for nothing, one hand
holding the candle, the other mechanically grasping the folds of her
dress, she sped, ghost-like, down the length of the ghostly place. She
reached the door of the first of the eastern rooms, opened it, and ran
in. The sudden relief of attaining a refuge, the sudden entrance into a
new atmosphere, overpowered her for the moment. She had just time to
put the candle safely on a table before she dropped giddy and breathless
into the nearest chair.
Little by little she felt the rest quieting her. In a few minutes she
became conscious of the triumph of having won her way to the east
rooms. In a few minutes she was strong enough to rise from the chair, to
take the keys from her pocket, and to look round her.
The first objects of furniture in the room which attracted her attention
were an old bureau of carved oak, and a heavy buhl table with a cabinet
attached. She tried the bureau first; it looked the likeliest receptacle
for papers of the two. Three of the keys proved to be of a size to enter
the lock, but none of them would turn it. The bureau was unassailable.
She left it, and paused to trim the wick of the candle before she tried
the buhl cabinet next.
At the moment when she raised her hand to the candle, she heard the
stillness of the Banqueting-Hall shudder with the terror of a sound--a
sound faint and momentary, like the distant rushing of the wind.
The sliding door in the drawing-room had moved.
Which way had it moved? Had an unknown hand pushed it back in its socket
further than she had pushed it, or pulled it to again, and closed it?
The horror of being shut out all night, by some undiscoverable agency,
from the life of the house, was stronger in her than the horror of
looking across the Banqueting-Hall. She made desperately for the door of
the room.
It had fallen to silently after her when she had come in, but it was not
closed. She pulled it open, and looked.
The sight that met her eyes rooted her, panic-stricken, to the spot.
Close to the first of the row of windows, counting from the
drawing-room, and full in the gleam of it, she saw a solitary figure. It
stood motionless, rising out of the furthest strip of moonlight on the
floor. As she looked, it suddenly disappeared. In another instant she
saw it again, in the second strip of moonlight--lost it again--saw it in
the third strip--lost it once more--and saw it in the fourth. Moment by
moment it advanced, now mysteriously lost in the shadow, now suddenly
visible again in the light, until it reached the fifth and nearest strip
of moonlight. There it paused, and strayed aside slowly to the middle of
the Hall. It stopped at the tripod, and stood, shivering audibly in the
silence, with its hands raised over the dead ashes, in the action of
warming them at a fire. It turned back again, moving down the path of
the moonlight, stopped at the fifth window, turned once more, and came
on softly through the shadow straight to the place where Magdalen stood.
Her voice was dumb, her will was helpless. Every sense in her but the
seeing sense was paralyzed. The seeing sense--held fast in the fetters
of its own terror--looked unchangeably straightforward, as it had looked
from the first. There she stood in the door-way, full in the path of the
figure advancing on her through the shadow, nearer and nearer, step by
step.
It came close.
The bonds of horror that held her burst asunder when it was within
arm's-length. She started back. The light of the candle on the table
fell full on its face, and showed her--Admiral Bartram.
A long, gray dressing-gown was wrapped round him. His head was
uncovered; his feet were bare. In his left hand he carried his little
basket of keys. He passed Magdalen slowly, his lips whispering without
intermission, his open eyes staring straight before him with the glassy
stare of death. His eyes revealed to her the terrifying truth. He was
walking in his sleep.
The terror of seeing him as she saw him now was not the terror she
had felt when her eyes first lighted on him--an apparition in the
moon-light, a specter in the ghostly Hall. This time she could struggle
against the shock; she could feel the depth of her own fear.
He passed her, and stopped in the middle of the room. Magdalen ventured
near enough to him to be within reach of his voice as he muttered to
himself. She ventured nearer still, and heard the name of her dead
husband fall distinctly from the sleep-walker's lips.
"Noel!" he said, in the low monotonous tones of a dreamer talking in his
sleep, "my good fellow, Noel, take it back again! It worries me day and
night. I don't know where it's safe; I don't know where to put it. Take
it back, Noel--take it back!"
As those words escaped him, he walked to the buhl cabinet. He sat down
in the chair placed before it, and searched in the basket among his
keys. Magdalen softly followed him, and stood behind his chair, waiting
with the candle in her hand. He found the key, and unlocked the cabinet.
Without an instant's hesitation, he drew out a drawer, the second of a
row. The one thing in the drawer was a folded letter. He removed it, and
put it down before him on the table. "Take it back, Noel!" he repeated,
mechanically; "take it back!"
Magdalen looked over his shoulder and read these lines, traced in her
husband's handwriting, at the top of the letter: _To be kept in your own
possession, and to be opened by yourself only on the day of my decease.
Noel Vanstone._ She saw the words plainly, with the admiral's name and
the admiral's address written under them.
The Trust within reach of her hand! The Trust traced to its hiding-place
at last!
She took one step forward, to steal round his chair and to snatch the
letter from the table. At the instant when she moved, he took it up once
more, locked the cabinet, and, rising, turned and faced her.
In the impulse of the moment, she stretched out her hand toward the hand
in which he held the letter. The yellow candle-light fell full on him.
The awful death-in-life of his face--the mystery of the sleeping body,
moving in unconscious obedience to the dreaming mind--daunted her. Her
hand trembled, and dropped again at her side.
He put the key of the cabinet back in the basket, and crossed the room
to the bureau, with the basket in one hand and the letter in the other.
Magdalen set the candle on the table again, and watched him. As he had
opened the cabinet, so he now opened the bureau. Once more Magdalen
stretched out her hand, and once more she recoiled before the mystery
and the terror of his sleep. He put the letter in a drawer at the back
of the bureau, and closed the heavy oaken lid again. "Yes," he said.
"Safer there, as you say, Noel--safer there." So he spoke. So, time
after time, the words that betrayed him revealed the dead man living and
speaking again in the dream.
Had he locked the bureau? Magdalen had not heard the lock turn. As he
slowly moved away, walking back once more toward the middle of the room,
she tried the lid. It was locked. That discovery made, she looked to see
what he was doing next. He was leaving the room again, with the basket
of keys in his hand. When her first glance overtook him, he was crossing
the threshold of the door.
Some inscrutable fascination possessed her, some mysterious attraction
drew her after him, in spite of herself. She took up the candle and
followed him mechanically, as if she too were walking in her sleep.
One behind the other, in slow and noiseless progress, they crossed
the Banqueting-Hall. One behind the other, they passed through the
drawing-room, and along the corridor, and up the stairs. She followed
him to his own door. He went in, and shut it behind him softly. She
stopped, and looked toward the truckle-bed. It was pushed aside at the
foot, some little distance away from the bedroom door. Who had moved it?
She held the candle close and looked toward the pillow, with a sudden
curiosity and a sudden doubt.
The truckle-bed was empty.
The discovery startled her for the moment, and for the moment only.
Plain as the inferences were to be drawn from it, she never drew them.
Her mind, slowly recovering the exercise of its faculties, was still
under the influence of the earlier and the deeper impressions produced
on it. Her mind followed the admiral into his room, as her body had
followed him across the Banqueting-Hall.
Had he lain down again in his bed? Was he still asleep? She listened at
the door. Not a sound was audible in the room. She tried the door, and,
finding it not locked, softly opened it a few inches and listened again.
The rise and fall of his low, regular breathing instantly caught her
ear. He was still asleep.
She went into the room, and, shading th e candle-light with her hand,
approached the bedside to look at him. The dream was past; the old man's
sleep was deep and peaceful; his lips were still; his quiet hand was
laid over the coverlet in motionless repose. He lay with his face turned
toward the right-hand side of the bed. A little table stood there within
reach of his hand. Four objects were placed on it; his candle, his
matches, his customary night drink of lemonade, and his basket of keys.
The idea of possessing herself of his keys that night (if an opportunity
offered when the basket was not in his hand) had first crossed her mind
when she saw him go into his room. She had lost it again for the moment,
in the surprise of discovering the empty truckle-bed. She now recovered
it the instant the table attracted her attention. It was useless to
waste time in trying to choose the one key wanted from the rest--the one
key was not well enough known to her to be readily identified. She took
all the keys from the table, in the basket as they lay, and noiselessly
closed the door behind her on leaving the room.
The truckle-bed, as she passed it, obtruded itself again on
her attention, and forced her to think of it. After a moment's
consideration, she moved the foot of the bed back to its customary
position across the door. Whether he was in the house or out of it, the
veteran might return to his deserted post at any moment. If he saw the
bed moved from its usual place, he might suspect something wrong, he
might rouse his master, and the loss of the keys might be discovered.
Nothing happened as she descended the stairs, nothing happened as she
passed along the corridor; the house was as silent and as solitary as
ever. She crossed the Banqueting-Hall this time without hesitation; the
events of the night had hardened her mind against all imaginary terrors.
"Now, I have got it!" she whispered to herself, in an irrepressible
outburst of exaltation, as she entered the first of the east rooms and
put her candle on the top of the old bureau.
Even yet there was a trial in store for her patience. Some minutes
elapsed--minutes that seemed hours--before she found the right key and
raised the lid of the bureau. At last she drew out the inner drawer! At
last she had the letter in her hand!
It had been sealed, but the seal was broken. She opened it on the spot,
to make sure that she had actually possessed herself of the Trust before
leaving the room. The end of the letter was the first part of it she
turned to. It came to its conclusion high on the third page, and it was
signed by Noel Vanstone. Below the name these lines were added in the
admiral's handwriting:
"This letter was received by me at the same time with the will of my
friend, Noel Vanstone. In the event of my death, without leaving any
other directions respecting it, I beg my nephew and my executors
to understand that I consider the requests made in this document as
absolutely binding on me.
"ARTHUR EVERARD BARTRAM."
She left those lines unread. She just noticed that they were not in Noel
Vanstone's handwriting; and, passing over them instantly, as immaterial
to the object in view, turned the leaves of the letter, and transferred
her attention to the opening sentences on the first page. She read these
words:
"DEAR ADMIRAL BARTRAM--When you open my Will (in which you are named my
sole executor), you will find that I have bequeathed the whole residue
of my estate--after payment of one legacy of five thousand pounds--to
yourself. It is the purpose of my letter to tell you privately what the
object is for which I have left you the fortune which is now placed in
your hands.
"I beg you to consider this large legacy as intended--"
She had proceeded thus far with breathless curiosity and interest,
when her attention suddenly failed her. Something--she was too deeply
absorbed to know what--had got between her and the letter. Was it a
sound in the Banqueting-Hall again? She looked over her shoulder at the
door behind her, and listened. Nothing was to be heard, nothing was to
be seen. She returned to the letter.
The writing was cramped and close. In her impatient curiosity to read
more, she failed to find the lost place again. Her eyes, attracted by a
blot, lighted on a sentence lower in the page than the sentence at which
she had left off. The first three words she saw riveted her attention
anew--they were the first words she had met with in the letter which
directly referred to George Bartram. In the sudden excitement of that
discovery, she read the rest of the sentence eagerly, before she made
any second attempt to return to the lost place:
"If your nephew fails to comply with these conditions--that is to say,
if, being either a bachelor or a widower at the time of my decease, he
fails to marry in all respects as I have here instructed him to marry,
within six calendar months from that time--it is my desire that he shall
not receive--"
She had read to that point, to that last word and no further, when a
hand passed suddenly from behind her between the letter and her eye, and
gripped her fast by the wrist in an instant.
She turned with a shriek of terror, and found herself face to face with
old Mazey.
The veteran's eyes were bloodshot; his hand was heavy; his list slippers
were twisted crookedly on his feet; and his body swayed to and fro on
his widely parted legs. If he had tested his condition that night by
the unfailing criterion of the model ship, he must have inevitably
pronounced sentence on himself in the usual form: "Drunk again, Mazey;
drunk again."
"You young Jezebel!" said the old sailor, with a leer on one side of his
face, and a frown on the other. "The next time you take to night-walking
in the neighborhood of Freeze-your-Bones, use those sharp eyes of yours
first, and make sure there's nobody else night walking in the garden
outside. Drop it, Jezebel! drop it!"
Keeping fast hold of Magdalen's arm with one hand, he took the letter
from her with the other, put it back into the open drawer, and locked
the bureau. She never struggled with him, she never spoke. Her energy
was gone; her powers of resistance were crushed. The terrors of that
horrible night, following one close on the other in reiterated shocks,
had struck her down at last. She yielded as submissively, she trembled
as helplessly, as the weakest woman living.
Old Mazey dropped her arm, and pointed with drunken solemnity to a chair
in an inner corner of the room. She sat down, still without uttering a
word. The veteran (breathing very hard over it) steadied himself on both
elbows against the slanting top of the bureau, and from that commanding
position addressed Magdalen once more.
"Come and be locked up!" said old Mazey, wagging his venerable head with
judicial severity. "There'll be a court of inquiry to-morrow morning,
and I'm witness--worse luck!--I'm witness. You young jade, you've
committed burglary--that's what you've done. His honor the admiral's
keys stolen; his honor the admiral's desk ransacked; and his honor the
admiral's private letters broke open. Burglary! Burglary! Come and be
locked up!" He slowly recovered an upright position, with the assistance
of his hands, backed by the solid resisting power of the bureau; and
lapsed into lachrymose soliloquy. "Who'd have thought it?" said old
Mazey, paternally watering at the eyes. "Take the outside of her, and
she's as straight as a poplar; take the inside of her, and she's as
crooked as Sin. Such a fine-grown girl, too. What a pity! what a pity!"
"Don't hurt me!" said Magdalen, faintly, as old Mazey staggered up
to the chair, and took her by the wrist again. "I'm frightened, Mr.
Mazey--I'm dreadfully frightened."
"Hurt you?" repeated the veteran. "I'm a deal too fond of you--and more
shame for me at my age!--to hurt you. If I let go of your wrist, will
you walk straight before me, where I can see you all the way? Will you
be a good girl, and walk straight up to your own door?"
Magdalen gave the promise required of her--gave it with an eager longing
to reach the refuge of her room. She rose, and tried to take the candle
from the bureau, but old Mazey's cunning hand was too quick for
her. "Let the candle be," said the veteran, winking in momentary
forgetfulness of his responsible position. "You're a trifle quicker on
your legs than I am, my dear, and you might leave me in the lurch, if I
don't carry the light."
They returned to the inhabited side of the house. Staggering after
Magdalen, with the basket of keys in one hand and the candle in the
other, old Mazey sorrowfully compared her figure with the straightness
of the poplar, and her disposition with the crookedness of Sin, all
the way across "Freeze-your-Bones," and all the way upstairs to her own
door. Arrived at that destination, he peremptorily refused to give
her the candle until he had first seen her safely inside the room. The
conditions being complied with, he resigned the light with one hand, and
made a dash with the other at the key, drew it from the inside of
the lock, and instantly closed the door. Magdalen heard him outside
chuckling over his own dexterity, and fitting the key into the lock
again with infinite difficulty. At last he secured the door, with a
deep grunt of relief. "There she is safe!" Magdalen heard him say, in
regretful soliloquy. "As fine a girl as ever I sat eyes on. What a pity!
what a pity!"
The last sounds of his voice died out in the distance; and she was left
alone in her room.
Holding fast by the banister, old Mazey made his way down to the
corridor on the second floor, in which a night light was always burning.
He advanced to the truckle-bed, and, steadying himself against the
opposite wall, looked at it attentively. Prolonged contemplation of his
own resting-place for the night apparently failed to satisfy him.
He shook his head ominously, and, taking from the side-pocket of his
great-coat a pair of old patched slippers, surveyed them with an aspect
of illimitable doubt. "I'm all abroad to-night," he mumbled to himself.
"Troubled in my mind--that's what it is--troubled in my mind."
The old patched slippers and the veteran's existing perplexities
happened to be intimately associated one with the other, in the relation
of cause and effect. The slippers belonged to the admiral, who had taken
one of his unreasonable fancies to this particular pair, and who still
persisted in wearing them long after they were unfit for his service.
Early that afternoon old Mazey had taken the slippers to the village
cobbler to get them repaired on the spot, before his master called for
them the next morning; he sat superintending the progress and completion
of the work until evening came, when he and the cobbler betook
themselves to the village inn to drink each other's healths at parting.
They had prolonged this social ceremony till far into the night, and
they had parted, as a necessary consequence, in a finished and perfect
state of intoxication on either side.
If the drinking-bout had led to no other result than those night
wanderings in the grounds of St. Crux, which had shown old Mazey
the light in the east windows, his memory would unquestionably have
presented it to him the next morning in the aspect of one of the
praiseworthy achievements of his life. But another consequence had
sprung from it, which the old sailor now saw dimly, through the
interposing bewilderment left in his brain by the drink. He had
committed a breach of discipline, and a breach of trust. In plainer
words, he had deserted his post.
The one safeguard against Admiral Bartram's constitutional tendency to
somnambulism was the watch and ward which his faithful old servant kept
outside his door. No entreaties had ever prevailed on him to submit to
the usual precaution taken in such cases. He peremptorily declined to
be locked into his room; he even ignored his own liability, whenever
a dream disturbed him, to walk in his sleep. Over and over again,
old Mazey had been roused by the admiral's attempts to push past the
truckle-bed, or to step over it, in his sleep; and over and over again,
when the veteran had reported the fact the next morning, his master had
declined to believe him. As the old sailor now stood, staring in vacant
inquiry at the bed-chamber door, these incidents of the past rose
confusedly on his memory, and forced on him the serious question whether
the admiral had left his room during the earlier hours of the night. If
by any mischance the sleep-walking fit had seized him, the slippers in
old Mazey's hand pointed straight to the conclusion that followed--his
master must have passed barefoot in the cold night over the stone stairs
and passages of St. Crux. "Lord send he's been quiet!" muttered
old Mazey, daunted, bold as he was and drunk as he was, by the bare
contemplation of that prospect. "If his honor's been walking to-night,
it will be the death of him!"
He roused himself for the moment by main force--strong in his dog-like
fidelity to the admiral, though strong in nothing else--and fought off
the stupor of the drink. He looked at the bed with steadier eyes and
a clearer mind. Magdalen's precaution in returning it to its customary
position presented it to him necessarily in the aspect of a bed which
had never been moved from its place. He next examined the counterpane
carefully. Not the faintest vestige appeared of the indentation which
must have been left by footsteps passing over it. There was the plain
evidence before him--the evidence recognizable at last by his own
bewildered eyes--that the admiral had never moved from his room.
"I'll take the Pledge to-morrow!" mumbled old Mazey, in an outburst of
grateful relief. The next moment the fumes of the liquor floated back
insidiously over his brain; and the veteran, returning to his customary
remedy, paced the passage in zigzag as usual, and kept watch on the deck
of an imaginary ship.
Soon after sunrise, Magdalen suddenly heard the grating of the key
from outside in the lock of the door. The door opened, and old Mazey
re-appeared on the threshold. The first fever of his intoxication had
cooled, with time, into a mild, penitential glow. He breathed harder
than ever, in a succession of low growls, and wagged his venerable head
at his own delinquencies without intermission.
"How are you now, you young land-shark in petticoats?" inquired the old
sailor. "Has your conscience been quiet enough to let you go to sleep?"
"I have not slept," said Magdalen, drawing back from him in doubt of
what he might do next. "I have no remembrance of what happened after you
locked the door--I think I must have fainted. Don't frighten me again,
Mr. Mazey! I feel miserably weak and ill. What do you want?"
"I want to say something serious," replied old Mazey, with impenetrable
solemnity. "It's been on my mind to come here and make a clean breast of
it, for the last hour or more. Mark my words, young woman. I'm going to
disgrace myself."
Magdalen drew further and further back, and looked at him in rising
alarm.
"I know my duty to his honor the admiral," proceeded old Mazey, waving
his hand drearily in the direction of his master's door. "But, try
as hard as I may, I can't find it in my heart, you young jade, to be
witness against you. I liked the make of you (especially about the
waist) when you first came into the house, and I can't help liking the
make of you still--though you _have_ committed burglary, and though you
_are_ as crooked as Sin. I've cast the eyes of indulgence on fine-grown
girls all my life, and it's too late in the day to cast the eyes of
severity on 'em now. I'm seventy-seven, or seventy-eight, I don't
rightly know which. I'm a battered old hulk, with my seams opening, and
my pumps choked, and the waters of Death powering in on me as fast as
they can. I'm as miserable a sinner as you'll meet with anywhere in
these parts--Thomas Nagle, the cobbler, only excepted; and he's worse
than I am, for he's the younger of the two, and he ought to know better.
But the long and short or it is, I shall go down to my grave with an
eye of indulgence for a fine-grown girl. More shame for me, you young
Jezebel--more shame for me!"
The veteran's unmanageable eyes began to leer again in spite of him,
as he concluded his harangue in these terms: the last reserves of
austerity left in his face entrenched themselves dismally round the
corners of his mouth. Magdalen approached him again, and tried to speak.
He solemnly motioned her back with another dreary wave of his hand.
"No carneying!" said old Mazey; "I'm bad enough already, without that.
It's my duty to make my report to his honor the admiral, and I
_will_ make it. But if you like to give the house the slip before the
burglary's reported, and the court of inquiry begins, I'll disgrace
myself by letting you go. It's market morning at Ossory, and Dawkes will
be driving the light cart over in a quarter of an hour's time. Dawkes
will take you if I ask him. I know my duty--my duty is to turn the key
on you, and see Dawkes damned first. But I can't find it in my heart to
be hard on a fine girl like you. It's bred in the bone, and it wunt come
out of the flesh. More shame for me, I tell you again--more shame for
me!"
The proposal thus strangely and suddenly presented to her took Magdalen
completely by surprise. She had been far too seriously shaken by the
events of the night to be capable of deciding on any subject at a
moment's notice. "You are very good to me, Mr. Mazey," she said. "May I
have a minute by myself to think?"
"Yes, you may," replied the veteran, facing about forthwith and leaving
the room. "They're all alike," proceeded old Mazey, with his head still
running on the sex. "Whatever you offer 'em, they always want something
more. Tall and short, native and foreign, sweethearts and wives, they're
all alike!"
Left by herself, Magdalen reached her decision with far less difficulty
than she had anticipated.
If she remained in the house, there were only two courses before
her--to charge old Mazey with speaking under the influence of a drunken
delusion, or to submit to circumstances. Though she owed to the old
sailor her defeat in the very hour of success, his consideration for
her at that moment forbade the idea of defending herself at his
expense--even supposing, what was in the last degree improbable, that
the defense would be credited. In the second of the two cases (the
case of submission to circumstances), but one result could be
expected--instant dismissal, and perhaps discovery as well. What object
was to be gained by braving that degradation--by leaving the house
publicly disgraced in the eyes of the servants who had hated and
distrusted her from the first? The accident which had literally
snatched the Trust from her possession when she had it in her hand was
irreparable. The one apparent compensation under the disaster--in other
words, the discovery that the Trust actually existed, and that George
Bartram's marriage within a given time was one of the objects contained
in it--was a compensation which could only be estimated at its true
value by placing it under the light of Mr. Loscombe's experience. Every
motive of which she was conscious was a motive which urged her to leave
the house secretly while the chance was at her disposal. She looked out
into the passage, and called softly to old Mazey to come back.
"I accept your offer thankfully, Mr. Mazey," she said. "You don't know
what hard measure you dealt out to me when you took that letter from my
hand. But you did your duty, and I can be grateful to you for sparing me
this morning, hard as you were upon me last night. I am not such a bad
girl as you think me--I am not, indeed."
Old Mazey dismissed the subject with another dreary wave of his hand.
"Let it be," said the veteran; "let it be! It makes no difference, my
girl, to such an old rascal as I am. If you were fifty times worse than
you are, I should let you go all the same. Put on your bonnet and shawl,
and come along. I'm a disgrace to myself and a warning to others--that's
what I am. No luggage, mind! Leave all your rattle-traps behind you: to
be overhauled, if necessary, at his honor the admiral's discretion. I
can be hard enough on your boxes, you young Jezebel, if I can't be hard
on you."
With these words, old Mazey led the way out of the room. "The less I see
of her the better--especially about the waist," he said to himself, as
he hobbled downstairs with the help of the banisters.
The cart was standing in the back yard when they reached the lower
regions of the house, and Dawkes (otherwise the farm-bailiff's man) was
fastening the last buckle of the horse's harness. The hoar-frost of
the morning was still white in the shade. The sparkling points of it
glistened brightly on the shaggy coats of Brutus and Cassius, as they
idled about the yard, waiting, with steaming mouths and slowly wagging
tails, to see the cart drive off. Old Mazey went out alone and used his
influence with Dawkes, who, staring in stolid amazement, put a leather
cushion on the cart-seat for his fellow-traveler. Shivering in the sharp
morning air, Magdalen waited, while the preliminaries of departure were
in progress, conscious of nothing but a giddy bewilderment of thought,
and a helpless suspension of feeling. The events of the night confused
themselves hideously with the trivial circumstances passing before her
eyes in the courtyard. She started with the sudden terror of the night
when old Mazey re-appeared to summon her out to the cart. She trembled
with the helpless confusion of the night when the veteran cast the eyes
of indulgence on her for the last time, and gave her a kiss on the cheek
at parting. The next minute she felt him help her into the cart, and
pat her on the back. The next, she heard him tell her in a confidential
whisper that, sitting or standing, she was as straight as a poplar
either way. Then there was a pause, in which nothing was said, and
nothing done; and then the driver took the reins in hand and mounted to
his place.
She roused herself at the parting moment and looked back. The last sight
she saw at St. Crux was old Mazey wagging his head in the courtyard,
with his fellow-profligates, the dogs, keeping time to him with their
tails. The last words she heard were the words in which the veteran paid
his farewell tribute to her charms:
"Burglary or no burglary," said old Mazey, "she's a fine-grown girl, if
ever there was a fine one yet. What a pity! what a pity!"
THE END OF THE SEVENTH SCENE.