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 labelled 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 book-case cupboards next, before she continued her investigations in the other rooms.
The book-case 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 favour, 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 towards 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 reappeared 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 humour: 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 down- stairs again, and wait there for a second summons from 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 greatcoat 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 parlour-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 leapt 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; sh
e 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, in 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 farther back – pushed it half-way 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. Towards its lower end, the Hall melted mysteriously into darkness. The ceiling was lost to view; the yawning fireplace, the overhanging mantelpiece, 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 farthest 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 doorway, 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 doorway – ‘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 ghostlike 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 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, farther 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 drawingroom, and full in the gleam of it, she saw a solitary figure. It stood motionless, rising out of the farthest 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 paralysed. 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 doorway, 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 grey 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 moo
nlight, a spectre 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 hidingplace at last!
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