you think Madame knew of those dreadful people? Oh, no — say you don’t — you don’t believe it — tell me she did not. I’m distracted, Mary Quince, I’m frightened out of my life.”
“There now, Miss Maud, dear — there now, don’t take on so — why should she? — no such a thing. Mrs. Rusk, law bless you, she’s no more meaning in what she says than the child unborn.”
But I was really frightened. I was in a horrible state of uncertainty as to Madame de la Rougierre’s complicity with the party who had beset us at the warren, and afterwards so murderously bear out poor gamekeeper. How was I ever to get rid of that horrible woman? How long was she to enjoy her continual opportunities of affrighting and injuring me?
“She hates me — she hates me, Mary Quince; and she will never stop until she has done me some dreadful injury. Oh! will no one relieve me — will no one take her away? Oh, papa, papa, papa! you will be sorry when it is too late.”
I was crying and wringing my hands, and turning from side to side, at my wits’ ends, and honest Mary Quince in vain endeavoured to quite and comfort me.
Chapter 18.
A Midnight Visitor
THE FRIGHTFUL warnings of Lady Knollys haunted me too. Was there no escape from the dreadful companion whom fate had assigned me? I made up my mind again and again to speak to my father and urge her removal. In other things he indulged me; here, however, he met me drily and sternly, and it was plain that he fancied I was under my cousin Monica’s influence, and also that he had secret reasons for persisting in an opposite course. Just then I had a gay, odd letter from Lady Knollys, from some country house in Shropshire. Not a word about Captain Oakley. My eye skimmed its pages in search of that charmed name. With a peevish feeling I tossed the sheet upon the table. Inwardly I thought how ill-natured and unwomanly it was.
After a time, however, I read it, and found the letter very good-natured. She had received a note from papa. He had “had the impudence to forgive her for his impertinence.” But for my sake she meant, notwithstanding this aggravation, really to pardon him; and whenever she had a disengaged week, to accept his invitation to Knowl, from whence she was resolved to whisk me off to London, where, though I was too young to be presented at Court and come out, I might yet — besides having the best masters and a good excuse for getting rid of Medusa — see a great deal that would amuse and surprise me.
“Great news, I suppose, from Lady Knollys?” said Madame, who always knew who in the house received letters by the post, and by an intuition from whom they came.
“Two letters — you and your papa. She is quite well, I hope?”
“Quite well, thank you, Madame.”
Some fishing questions, dropped from time to time, fared no better. And as usual, when she was foiled even in a trifle, she became sullen and indignant.
That night, when my father and I were alone, he suddenly closed the book he had been reading, and said —
“I heard from Monica Knollys to-day. I always liked poor Monnie; and though she’s no witch, and very wrong-headed at times, yet now and then she does say a thing that’s worth weighing. Did she every talk to you of a time, Maud, when you are to be your own mistress?”
“No,” I answered, a little puzzled, and looking straight in his rugged, kindly face.
“Well, I thought she might — she’s a rattle, you know — always was a rattle, and that sort of people say whatever comes uppermost. But that’s a subject for me, and more than once, Maud, it has puzzled me.”
He sighed.
“Come with me to the study, little Maud.”
So, he carrying a candle, we crossed the lobby, and marched together through the passage, which at night always seemed a little awesome, darkly wainscoted, uncheered by the cross-light from the hall, which was lost at the turn, leading us away from the frequented parts of the house to that misshapen and lonely room about which the traditions of the nursery and the servants’ hall had had so many fearful stories to recount.
I think my father had intended making some disclosure to me on reaching this room. If so, he changed his mind, or at least postponed his intention.
He had paused before the cabinet, respecting the key of which he had given me so strict a charge, and I think he was going to explain himself more fully than he had done. But he went on, instead, to the table where his desk, always jealously locked, was placed, and having lighted the candles which stood by it, he glanced at me, and said —
“You must wait a little, Maud; I shall have something to say to you. Take this candle and amuse yourself with a book meanwhile.”
I was accustomed to obey in silence. I chose a volume of engravings, and ensconced myself in a favourite nook in which I had often passed a half-hour similarly. This was a deep recess by the fireplace, fenced on the other side by a great old escritoir. Into this I drew a stool, and, with candle and book, I placed myself snugly in the narrow chamber. Every now and then I raised my eyes and saw my father either writing or ruminating, as it seemed to me, very anxiously at his desk.
Time wore on — a longer time than he had intended, and still he continued absorbed at his desk. Gradually I grew sleepy, and as I nodded, the book and room faded away, and pleasant little dreams began to gather round me, and so I went off into a deep slumber.
It must have lasted long, for when I wakened my candle had burnt out; my father, having quite forgotten me, was gone, and the room was dark and deserted. I felt cold and a little stiff, and for some seconds did not know where I was.
I had been wakened, I suppose, by a sound which I now distinctly heard, to my great terror, approaching. There was a rustling; there was a breathing. I heard a creaking upon the plank that always creaked when walked upon in the passage. I held my breath and listened, and coiled myself up in the innermost recess of my little chamber.
Sudden and sharp, a light shone in from the nearly-closed study door. It shone angularly on the ceiling like a letter L reversed. There was a pause. Then some one knocked softly at the door, which after another pause was slowly pushed open. I expected, I think, to see the dreaded figure of the linkman. I was scarcely less frightened to see that of Madame de la Rougierre. She was dressed in a sort of grey silk, which she called her Chinese silk — precisely as she had been in the daytime. In fact, I do not think she had undressed. She had no shoes on. Otherise her toilet was deficient in nothing. Her wide mouth was grimly closed, and she stood scowling into the room with a searching and pallid scrutiny, the candle held high above her head at the full stretch of her arm.
Placed as I was in a deep recess, and in a seat hardly raised above the level of the floor, I escaped her, although it seemed to me for some seconds, as I gazed on this thin spectre, that our eyes actually met.
I sat without breathing or winking, staring upon the formidable image which with upstretched arm, and the sharp lights and hard shadows thrown upon her corrugated features, looked like a sorceress watching for the effect of a spell.
She was plainly listening intensely. Unconsciously she had drawn her lower lip altogether between her teeth, and I well remember what a deathlike and idiotic look the contortion gave her. My terror lest she should discover me amounted to positive agony. She rolled her eyes stealthily from corner to corner of the room, and listened with her neck awry at the door.
Then to my father’s desk she went. To my great relief, her back was towards me. She stooped over it, with the candle close by; I saw her try a key — it could be nothing else — and I heard her blow through the wards to clear them.
Then, again, she listened at the door, candle in hand, and then with long tiptoe steps came back, and papa’s desk in another moment was open, and Madame cautiously turning over the papers it contained.
Twice