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+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 57294 ***
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+Transcriber's Notes:
+     1. Page scan source: The Internet Archive
+        https://archive.org/details/underlockkeystor01spei
+        (Library of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign)
+
+
+
+
+
+
+UNDER LOCK AND KEY.
+---------
+VOL. I.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+UNDER LOCK AND KEY.
+
+
+
+A Story.
+
+
+
+
+BY
+T. W. SPEIGHT,
+AUTHOR OF "BROUGHT TO LIGHT," "FOOLISH MARGARET,"
+ETC.
+
+
+
+
+IN THREE VOLUMES,
+VOL. I.
+
+
+
+
+LONDON:
+TINSLEY BROTHERS, 18, CATHERINE STREET, STRAND,
+1869.
+[_All rights of Translation and Reproduction are reserved_.]
+
+
+
+
+
+
+LONDON:
+SAVILL, EDWARDS AND CO., PRINTERS, CHANDOS STREET,
+COVENT GARDEN.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+In justice to himself the author thinks it requisite to state that the
+entire plan of this story was sketched out, and several of the
+chapters written, before the first lines of Mr. Wilkie Collins's
+"Moonstone" had been given to the Public.
+
+He has further denied himself the pleasure of reading "The Moonstone"
+till after the completion of his own story, so as to preclude any
+possible charge of having derived the outline of his plot from the
+work of another writer.
+
+London, _February_, 1869.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+OF
+THE FIRST VOLUME.
+
+CHAP.
+        I. MY ARRIVAL AT DUPLEY WALLS.
+       II. THE MISTRESS OF DUPLEY WALLS.
+      III. A VOYAGE OF DISCOVERY.
+       IV. SCARSDALE WEIR.
+        V. AT ROSE COTTAGE.
+       VI. THE GROWTH OF A MYSTERY.
+      VII. EXIT JANET HOLME.
+     VIII. BY THE SCOTCH EXPRESS.
+       IX. AT THE "GOLDEN GRIFFIN."
+        X. THE STOLEN MANUSCRIPT.
+       XI. BON REPOS.
+      XII. THE AMSTERDAM EDITION OF 1698.
+     XIII. M. PLATZOFF'S SECRET--CAPTAIN DUCIE'S
+            TRANSLATION OF M. PAUL PLATZOFF'S MS.
+      XIV. DRASHKIL-SMOKING.
+       XV. THE DIAMOND.
+      XVI. JANET'S RETURN.
+     XVII. DUPLEY WALLS AFTER SEVEN YEARS.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+UNDER LOCK AND KEY.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+MY ARRIVAL AT DUPLEY WALLS.
+
+
+"Miss JANET HOLME,
+     To the care of Lady Pollexfen,
+           Dupley Walls, near Tydsbury,
+                            Midlandshire."
+
+"There, miss, I'm sure that will do famously," said Chirper, the
+overworked oldish young person whose duty it was to attend to the
+innumerable wants of the young-lady boarders of Park Hill Seminary.
+She had just written out, in a large sprawling hand, a card as above,
+which card was presently to be nailed on to the one small box that
+held the whole of my worldly belongings.
+
+"And I think, miss," added Chirper, meditatively, as she held out the
+card at arm's length and gazed at it admiringly, "that if I was to
+write out another card similar, and tie it round your arm, it would
+mayhap help you in getting safe to your journey's end."
+
+I, a girl of twelve, was the Janet Holme indicated above, and I had
+been looking over Chirper's shoulder with wondering eyes while she
+addressed the card. "But who is Lady Pollexfen, and where is Dupley
+Walls? and what have I to do with either, Chirper, please?" I asked.
+
+"If there is one thing in little girls more hateful than another, it
+is curiosity," answered Chirper, with her mouth half full of nails.
+"Curiosity has been the bane of many of our sex. Witness Bluebeard's
+unhappy wife. If you want to know more, you must ask Mrs. Whitehead. I
+have my instructions, and I acts on them."
+
+Meeting Mrs. Whitehead half an hour later as she was coming down the
+stone corridor that led from the refectory, I did ask that lady
+precisely the same questions that I had put to Chirper. Her frosty
+glance, filled with a cold surprise, smote me even through her
+spectacles, and I shrank a little, abashed at my own boldness.
+
+"The habit of asking questions elsewhere than in the class-room should
+not be encouraged in young ladies," said Mrs. Whitehead, with a sort
+of prim severity. "The other young ladies are gone home; you are about
+to follow their example."
+
+"But, Mrs. Whitehead--Madam," I pleaded, "I never had any other home
+than Park Hill."
+
+"More questioning, Miss Holme? Fie! Fie!" And with a lean forefinger
+uplifted in menacing reproval, Mrs. Whitehead sailed on her way, nor
+deigned me another word.
+
+I stole out into the playground, wondering, wretched, and yet smitten
+through with faint delicious thrillings of a new-found happiness such,
+as I had often dreamed of, but had scarcely dared hope ever to
+realize. I, Janet Holme, going home! It was almost too incredible for
+belief. I wandered about like one mazed--like one who stepping
+suddenly out of darkness into sunshine is dazzled by an intolerable
+brightness whichever way he turns his eyes. And yet I was wretched:
+for was not Miss Chinfeather dead? And that, too, was a fact almost
+too incredible for belief.
+
+As I wandered, this autumn morning, up and down the solitary
+playground, I went back in memory as far as memory would carry me, but
+only to find that Miss Chinfeather and Park Hill Seminary blocked up
+the way. Beyond them lay darkness and mystery. Any events in my
+child's life that might have happened before my arrival at Park Hill
+had for me no authentic existence. I had been part and parcel of Miss
+Chinfeather and the Seminary for so long a time that I could not
+dissociate myself from them even in thought. Other pupils had had
+holidays, and letters, and presents, and dear ones at home of whom
+they often talked; but for me there had been none of these things. I
+knew that I had been placed at Park Hill when a very little girl by
+some, to me, mysterious and unknown person, but further than that I
+knew nothing. The mistress of Park Hill had not treated me in any way
+differently from her other pupils; but had not the bills contracted on
+my account been punctually paid by somebody, I am afraid that the
+even-handed justice on which she prided herself--which, in conjunction
+with her aquiline nose and a certain antique severity of deportment,
+caused her to be known among us girls as _The Roman Matron_--would
+have been somewhat ruffled, and that sentence of expulsion from those
+classic walls would have been promptly pronounced and as promptly
+carried into effect.
+
+Happily no such necessity had ever arisen; and now the Roman Matron
+lay dead in the little corner room on the second floor, and had done
+with pupils, and half-yearly accounts, and antique deportment, for
+ever.
+
+In losing Miss Chinfeather I felt as though the corner-stone of my
+life had been rent away. She was too cold, she was altogether too far
+removed for me to regard her with love, or even with that modified
+feeling which we call affection. But then no such demonstration was
+looked for by Miss Chinfeather. It was a weakness above which she rose
+superior. But if my child's love was a gift which she would have
+despised, she looked for and claimed my obedience--the resignation of
+my will to hers, the absorption of my individuality in her own, the
+gradual elimination from my life of all its colour and freshness. She
+strove earnestly, and with infinite patience, to change me from a
+dreamy, passionate child--a child full of strange wild moods,
+capricious, and yet easily touched either to laughter or tears--into a
+prim and elegant young lady, colourless and formal, and of the most
+orthodox boarding-school pattern; and if she did not quite succeed in
+the attempt; the fault, such as it was, must be set down to my
+obstinate disposition and not to any lack of effort on the part of
+Miss Chinfeather. And now this powerful influence had vanished from my
+life, from the world itself, as swiftly and silently as a snowflake in
+the sun. The grasp of the hard but not unkindly hand, that had held me
+so firmly in the narrow groove in which it wished me to move, had been
+suddenly relaxed, and everything around me seemed tottering to its
+fall. Three nights ago Miss Chinfeather had retired to rest, as well,
+to all appearance, and as cheerful as ever she had been; next morning
+she had been found dead in bed. This was what they told us pupils; but
+so great was the awe in which I held the mistress of Park Hill
+Seminary that I could not conceive of Death even as venturing to
+behave disrespectfully towards her. I pictured him in my girlish fancy
+as knocking at her chamber door in the middle of the night, and after
+apologizing for the interruption, asking whether she was ready to
+accompany him. Then would she who was thus addressed arise, and wrap
+an ample robe about her, and place her hand with solemn sweetness in
+that of the Great Captain, and the two would pass out together into
+the starlit night, and Miss Chinfeather would be seen of mortal eyes
+nevermore.
+
+Such was the picture that had haunted my brain for two days and as
+many nights, while I wandered forlorn through house and playground or
+lay awake on my little bed. I had said farewell to one pupil after
+another till all were gone, and the riddle which I had been putting to
+myself continually for the last forty-eight hours had now been solved
+for me by Mrs. Whitehead, and had been told that I too was going home.
+
+"To the care of Lady Pollexfen, Dupley Walls, Midlandshire." The words
+repeated themselves again and again in my brain, and became a greater
+puzzle with every repetition. I had never to my knowledge heard of
+either the person or the place. I knew nothing of one or the other. I
+only knew that my heart thrilled strangely at the mention of the word
+_Home;_ that unbidden tears started to my eyes at the thought that
+perhaps--only perhaps--in that as yet unknown place there might be
+some one who would love me just a little. "Father--Mother." I spoke
+the words, but they sounded unreal to me, and as if uttered by
+another. I spoke them again, holding out my arms, and crying aloud.
+All my heart seemed to go out in the cry, but only the hollow winds
+answered me as they piped mournfully through the yellowing leaves, a
+throng of which went rustling down the walk as though stirred by the
+footsteps of a ghost. Then my eyes grew blind with tears, and I wept
+silently for a time as if my heart would break.
+
+But tears were a forbidden luxury at Park Hill, and when, a little
+later on, I heard Chirper calling me by name, I made haste to dry my
+eyes and compose my features. She scanned me narrowly as I ran up to
+her. "You dear, soft-hearted little thing!" she said. And with that
+she stooped suddenly and gave me a hearty kiss that might have been
+heard a dozen yards away. I was about to fling my arms round her neck,
+but she stopped me, saying, "That will do, dear. Mrs. Whitehead is
+waiting for us at the door."
+
+Mrs. Whitehead was watching us through the glass door which led into
+the playground. "The coach will be here in half an hour, Miss Holme,"
+she said; "so that you have not much time for your preparations."
+
+I stood like one stunned for a moment or two. Then I said, "If you
+please, Mrs. Whitehead, may I see Miss Chinfeather before I go?"
+
+Her thin, straight lips quivered slightly, but in her eyes I read only
+cold disapproval of my request. "Really," she said, "what a singular
+child you must be. I scarcely know what to say."
+
+"Oh, if you please, Mrs. Whitehead!" I urged. "Miss Chinfeather was
+always kind to me. I remember her as long as I can remember anything.
+To see her once more--for the last time. It would seem to me cruel to
+go away without."
+
+"Follow me," she said, almost in a whisper. So I followed her softly
+upstairs into the little corner room where Miss Chinfeather lay in
+white and solemn state, grandly indifferent to all mundane matters. As
+I gazed, it seemed but an hour ago since I had heard those still lips
+conjugating the verb _mourir_ for the behoof of poor ignorant me, and
+the words came back to me, and I could not help repeating them to
+myself as I looked: _Je meurs_, _tu meurs_, &c.
+
+I bent over and kissed the marble-cold forehead, and said farewell in
+my heart, and went downstairs without a word.
+
+Half an hour later the district coach, a splendid vision, pulled up
+impetuously at the gates. I was ready to the moment. Mrs. Whitehead's
+frosty fingers touched mine for an instant; she imprinted a chill kiss
+on my check, and looked relieved. "Good-bye, my dear Miss Holme, and
+God bless you," she said. "Strive to bear in mind through after life
+the lessons that have been instilled into you at Park Hill Seminary.
+Present my respectful compliments to Lady Pollexfen, and do not forget
+your catechism."
+
+At this point the guard sounded an impatient summons on his bugle;
+Chirper picked up my box, seized me by the hand, and hurried with me
+to the coach. My luggage found a place on the roof; I was
+unceremoniously bundled inside; Chirper gave me another of her hearty
+kisses, and pressed a crooked sixpence into my hand "for luck," as she
+whispered. I am sure there was a real tear in her eye as she did so.
+Next moment we were off.
+
+I kept my eyes fixed on the Seminary as long as it remained in view,
+especially on the little corner room. It seemed to me that I must be a
+very wicked girl indeed, because I felt no real sorrow at quitting the
+place that had been my home for so many years. I could not feel
+anything but secretly glad, but furtively happy with a happiness which
+I felt ashamed of acknowledging even to myself. Miss Chinfeather's
+white and solemn face, as seen in her coffin, haunted my memory, but
+even of her I thought only with a sort of chastened regret. She had
+never touched my heart. There had been about her a bleakness of nature
+that effectually chilled any tender buds of liking or affection that
+might in the ordinary course of events have grown up and blossomed
+round her life. Therefore, in my child's heart there was no lasting
+sorrow for her death, no gracious memories of her that would stay with
+me, and smell sweet, long after she herself should be dust.
+
+My eight miles' ride by coach was soon over. It ended at the railway
+station of the county town. The guard of the coach had, I suppose,
+received his secret instructions. Almost before I knew what had
+happened, I found myself in a first-class carriage, with a ticket for
+Tydsbury in my hand, and committed to the care of another guard, he of
+the railway, this time--a fiery-faced man, with immense red whiskers,
+who came and surveyed me as though I were some contraband article, but
+finished by nodding his head and saying with a smile, "I dessay we
+shall be good friends, miss, before we get to the end of our journey."
+
+It was my first journey by rail, and the novelty of it filled me with
+wonder and delight. The train by which I travelled was a fast one, and
+after my first feeling of fright at the rapidity of the motion had
+merged into one of intense pleasure and exhilaration of mind, I could
+afford to look back on my recent coach experience with a sort of
+pitying superiority, as on a something that was altogether rococo and
+out of date. Already the rush of new ideas into my mind was so
+powerful that the old landmarks of my life seemed in danger of being
+swept clean away. Already it seemed days instead of only a brief hour
+or two since I had bidden Mrs. Whitehead farewell, and had taken my
+last look at Park Hill Seminary.
+
+The red-faced guard was as good as his word; he and I became famous
+friends before I reached the end of my journey. At every station at
+which we stopped he came to the window to see how I was getting on,
+and whether I was in want of anything, and was altogether so kind to
+me that I was quite sorry to part from him when the train reached
+Tydsbury, and left me, a minute later, standing, a solitary waif, on
+the little platform.
+
+The one solitary fly of which the station could boast was laid under
+contribution. My little box was tossed on to its roof; I myself was
+shut up inside; the word was given, "To Dupley Walls;" the station was
+left behind, and away we went, jolting and rumbling along the quiet
+country lanes, and under overarching trees, all aglow just now with
+autumn's swift-fading beauty. The afternoon was closing in, and the
+wind was rising, sweeping up with melancholy soughs from the dim
+wooded hollows where it had lain asleep till the sun went down;
+garnering up the fallen leaves like a cunning miser, wherever it could
+find a hiding-place for them, and then dying suddenly down, and
+seeming to hold its breath as if listening for the footsteps of the
+coming winter.
+
+In the western sky hung a huge tumbled wrack of molten cloud like the
+ruins of some vast temple of the gods of eld. Chasmed buttresses,
+battlements overthrown; on the horizon a press of giants, shoulder
+against shoulder, climbing slowly to the rescue; in mid-sky a praying
+woman; farther afield a huge head, and a severed arm the fingers of
+which were clenched in menace: all these things I saw, and a score
+others, as the clouds changed from minute to minute in form and
+brightness, while the stars began to glow out like clusters of silver
+lilies in the eastern sky.
+
+We kept jolting on for so long a time through the twilight lanes, and
+the evening darkened so rapidly, that I began to grow frightened. It
+was like being lifted out of a dungeon, when the old fly drew up with
+a jerk, and a shout of "House there!" and when I looked out and saw
+that we were close to the lodge entrance of some park.
+
+Presently a woman, with a child in her arms, came out of the lodge and
+proceeded to open the gate for us. Said the driver--"How's Tootlums
+to-night?"
+
+The woman shouted something in reply, but I don't think the old fellow
+heard her.
+
+"Ay, ay," he called out, "Tootlums will be a famous young shaver one
+of these days," and with that he whipped up his horse, and away we
+went.
+
+The drive up the avenue, for such at the time I judged it to be, and
+such it proved to be, did not occupy many minutes. The fly came to a
+stand, and the driver got down and opened the door. "Now, young lady,
+here you are," he said, and I found myself in front of the main
+entrance to Dupley Walls.
+
+It was too dark by this time for me to discern more than the merest
+outline of the place. I saw that it was very large, and I noticed that
+not even one of its hundred windows showed the least glimmer of light.
+It loomed vast, dark, and silent, as if deserted by every living
+thing.
+
+The old driver gave a hearty pull at the bell, and the muffled clamour
+reached me where I stood. I was quaking with fears and apprehensions
+of that unknown future on whose threshold I was standing. Would Love
+or Hate open for me the doors of Dupley Walls? I was strung to such a
+pitch that it seemed impossible for any lesser passion to be
+handmaiden to my needs.
+
+What I saw when the massive door was at last opened was an aged woman,
+dressed like a superior domestic, who, in sharp accents, demanded to
+know what we meant by disturbing a quiet family in that unseemly way.
+She was holding one hand over her eyes, and trying to make out our
+appearance through the gathering darkness. I stepped close up to her.
+"I am Miss Janet Holme, from Park Hill Seminary," I said, "and I wish
+to speak with Lady Pollexfen."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+THE MISTRESS OF DUPLEY WALLS.
+
+
+The words were hardly out of my lips when the woman shrank suddenly
+back, as though struck by an invisible hand, and gave utterance to an
+inarticulate cry of wonder and alarm. Then, striding forward, she
+seized me by the wrist, and drew me into the lamp-lighted hall.
+"Child! child! why have you come here?" she cried, scanning my face
+with eager eyes. "In all the wide world this is the last place you
+should have come to."
+
+"Miss Chinfeather is dead, and all the young ladies have been sent to
+their homes. I have no home, so they have sent me here."
+
+"What shall I do? What will her ladyship say?" cried the woman, in a
+frightened voice, "how shall I ever dare to tell her?"
+
+"Who rang the bell, Dance, a few minutes ago? And to whom are you
+talking?"
+
+The voice sounded so suddenly out of the semi-darkness at the upper
+end of the large hall, which was lighted only by a small oil lamp,
+that both the woman and I started. Looking in the direction from which
+the sound had come, I could dimly make out, through the obscurity, the
+figures of two women who had entered without noise through the
+curtained doorway, close to which they were now standing. One of the
+two was very tall, and was dressed entirely in black. The second one,
+who was less tall, was also dressed in black, except that she seemed
+to have something white thrown over her head and shoulders; but I was
+too far away to make out any details.
+
+"Hush! don't you speak," whispered the woman warningly to me. "Leave
+me to break the news to her ladyship." With that she left me standing
+on the threshold, and hurried towards the upper end of the hall.
+
+The tall personage in black, then, with the harsh voice--high pitched,
+and slightly cracked--was Lady Pollexfen! How fast my heart beat! If
+only I could have slipped out unobserved I would never have braved my
+fortune within those walls again.
+
+She who had been called Dance went up to the two ladies, curtsied
+deeply, and began talking in a low earnest voice. Hardly, however, had
+she spoken a dozen words, when the lesser of the two ladies flung up
+her arms with a cry like that of some wounded creature, and would have
+fallen to the ground had not Dance caught her round the waist and so
+held her.
+
+"What folly is this?" cried Lady Pollexfen, sternly, striking the
+pavement of the ball sharply with the iron ferule of her cane. "To
+your room, Sister Agnes! For such poor weak fools as you solitude is
+the only safe companion. But, remember your oath! Not a word; not a
+word." With one lean hand uplifted, and menacing forefinger, she
+emphasized those last warning words.
+
+She who had been addressed as Sister Agnes raised herself with a deep
+sigh from the shoulder of Dance, cast one long look in the direction
+of the spot where I was standing, and vanished slowly through the
+curtained arch. Then Dance took up the broken thread of her narration,
+and Lady Pollexfen, grim and motionless, listened without a word.
+
+Even after Dance had done speaking her ladyship stood for some time
+looking straight before her, but saying nothing in reply. I felt
+intuitively that my fate was hanging on the decision of those few
+moments, but I neither stirred nor spoke.
+
+At length the silence was broken by Lady Pollexfen. "Take the child
+away," she said; "attend to her wants, make her presentable, and bring
+her to me in the Green Saloon after dinner. It will be time enough
+to-morrow to consider what must be done with her."
+
+Dance curtsied again. Her ladyship sailed slowly across the hall, and
+passed out through another curtained doorway.
+
+Dance's first act was to pay and dismiss the driver who had been
+waiting outside all this time. Then, taking me by the hand, "Come
+along with me, dear," she said. "Why, I declare, you look quite white
+and frightened! You have nothing to fear, child. We shall not eat
+you--at least, not just yet; not till we have fed you up a bit."
+
+At the end of a long corridor was Mrs. Dance's own room, into which I
+was now ushered. Scarcely had I made a few changes in my toilette when
+tea for two persons was brought in, and Mrs. Dance and I sat down to
+table. The old lady was well on with her second cup before she made
+any remark other than was required by the necessities of the occasion.
+
+I have called her an old woman, and such she looked in my youthful
+eyes, although her years were only about sixty. She wore a dark brown
+dress, and a black silk apron, and had on a cap with thick frilled
+borders, under which her grey hair was neatly snooded away. She looked
+ruddy and full of health. A shrewd sensible woman, evidently, yet with
+a motherly kindness about her that made me cling to her with a child's
+unerring instinct.
+
+"You look tired, poor thing," she said, as she leisurely stirred her
+tea; "and well you may, considering the long journey you have had
+to-day. I don't suppose that her ladyship will keep you more than ten
+minutes in the Green Saloon, and after that you can go to bed as soon
+as you like. What a surprise for all of us your coming has been! Dear,
+dear! who would have expected such a thing this morning? But I knew by
+the twitching of my corns that something uncommon was going to happen.
+I was really frightened of telling her ladyship that you were here.
+There's no knowing how she might have taken it; and there's no knowing
+what she will decide to do with you to-morrow."
+
+"But what has Lady Pollexfen to do with me in any way?" I asked.
+"Before this morning I never even heard her name, and now it seems
+that she is to do what she likes with me."
+
+"That she will do what she likes with you, you may depend, dear," said
+Mrs. Dance. "As to how she happens to have the right so to do, that is
+another thing, and one about which it is not my place to talk nor
+yours to question me. That she possesses such a right you may make
+yourself certain. All that you have to do is to obey and to ask no
+questions."
+
+I sat in distressed and bewildered silence for a little while. Then I
+ventured to say: "Please not to think me rude, but I should like to
+know who Sister Agnes is."
+
+Mrs. Dance stirred uneasily in her chair and bent her eyes on the
+fire, but did not immediately answer my question.
+
+"Sister Agnes is Lady Pollexfen's companion," she said at last. "She
+reads to her, and writes her letters, and talks to her, and all that,
+you know. Sister Agnes is a Roman Catholic, and came here from the
+convent of Saint Ursula. However, she is not a nun, but something like
+one of those Sisters of Mercy in the large towns who go about among
+poor people, and visit the hospitals and prisons. She is allowed to
+live here always, and Lady Pollexfen would hardly know how to get
+through the day without her."
+
+"Is she not a relative of Lady Pollexfen?" I asked.
+
+"No--not a relative," answered Dance. "You must try to love her a
+great deal, my dear Miss Janet, for if angels are ever allowed to
+visit this vile earth, Sister Agnes is one of them. But there goes her
+ladyship's bell. She is ready to receive you."
+
+I had washed away the stains of travel, and had put on my best frock,
+and Dance was pleased to say that I looked very nice, "though,
+perhaps, a trifle more old-fashioned than a girl of your age ought to
+look." Then she laid down a few rules for my guidance when in the
+presence of Lady Pollexfen, and led the way to the Green Saloon, I
+following with a timorous heart.
+
+Dance flung open the folding doors of the big room. "Miss Janet Holme
+to see your ladyship," she called out, and next moment the doors
+closed behind me, and I was left standing there alone.
+
+"Come nearer--come nearer," said her ladyship's cracked voice, as with
+a long lean hand she beckoned me to approach.
+
+I advanced slowly up the room, stopped and curtsied. Lady Pollexfen
+pointed out a high footstool about three yards from her chair. I
+curtsied again, and sat down on it. During the interview that followed
+my quick eyes had ample opportunity for taking a mental inventory of
+Lady Pollexfen and her surroundings.
+
+She had exchanged the black dress in which I first saw her for one of
+green velvet, trimmed with ermine. This dress was made with short
+sleeves and low body, so as to leave exposed her ladyship's arms,
+long, lean, and skinny, and her scraggy neck. Her nose was hooked, and
+her chin pointed. Between the two shone a row of large white even
+teeth, which long afterwards I knew to be artificial. Equally
+artificial was the mass of short black frizzly curls that crowned her
+head, which was unburdened with cap or covering of any kind. Her
+eyebrows were dyed to match her hair. Her cheeks, even through the
+powder with which they were thickly smeared, showed two spots of
+brilliant red, which no one less ignorant than I would have accepted
+without question as the last genuine remains of the bloom of youth.
+But at that first interview I accepted everything _au pied de la
+letter_, without doubt or question of any kind.
+
+Her ladyship wore long earrings of filigree gold. Round her neck
+was a massive gold chain. On her fingers sparkled several rings of
+price--diamonds, rubies, and opals. In figure her ladyship was tall,
+and as upright as a dart. She was, however, slightly lame of one foot,
+which necessitated the use of a cane when walking. Lady Pollexfen's
+cane was ivory-headed, and had a gold plate let into it, on
+which was engraved her crest and initials. She was seated in an
+elaborately-carved high-backed chair, near a table on which were the
+remains of a dessert for one person.
+
+The Green Saloon was a large gloomy room; at least, it looked gloomy
+as I saw it for the first time, lighted up by four wax candles where
+twenty were needed. These four candles being placed close by where
+Lady Pollexfen was sitting, left the other end of the saloon in
+comparative darkness. The furniture was heavy, formal, and
+old-fashioned. Gloomy portraits of dead-and-gone Pollexfens lined the
+green walls, and this might be the reason why there always seemed to
+me a slight graveyard flavour--scarcely perceptible, but none the less
+surely there--about this room which caused me to shudder involuntarily
+whenever I crossed its threshold.
+
+Lady Pollexfen's black eyes--large, cold, and steady as Juno's
+own--had been bent upon me all this time, measuring me from head to
+foot with what I felt to be a slightly contemptuous scrutiny. "What is
+your name, and how old are you?" she asked, with startling abruptness,
+after a minute or two of silence.
+
+"Janet Holme, and twelve years," I answered, laconically. A feeling of
+defiance, of dislike to this bedizened old woman, began to gnaw my
+child's heart. Young as I was, I had learned, with what bitterness I
+alone could have told, the art of wrapping myself round with a husk of
+cold reserve, which no one uninitiated in the ways of children could
+penetrate, unless I were inclined to let them. Sulkiness was the
+generic name for this quality at school, but I dignified it with a
+different term.
+
+"How many years were you at Park Hill Seminary? and where did you live
+before you went there?" asked Lady Pollexfen.
+
+"I have lived at Park Hill ever since I can remember anything. I don't
+know where I lived before that time."
+
+"Are your parents alive or dead? If the latter, what do you remember
+of them?"
+
+A lump came into my throat, and tears into my eyes. For a moment or
+two I could not answer. "I don't know anything about my parents," I
+said. "I never remember seeing them. I don't know whether they are
+alive or dead."
+
+"Do you know why you were consigned by the Park Hill people to this
+particular house--to Dupley Walls--to Me, in fact?"
+
+Her voice was raised almost to a shriek as she said these last words,
+and she pointed to herself with one claw-like finger.
+
+"No, my lady, I don't know why I was sent here. I was told to come,
+and I came."
+
+"But you have no claim on me--none whatever," she continued, fiercely.
+"Bear that in mind: remember it always. Whatever I may choose to do
+for you, will be done of my own free will, and not through compulsion
+of any kind. No claim whatever; remember that. None whatever."
+
+She was silent for some time after this, and sat with her cold steady
+eyes fixed intently on the fire. For my part, I sat as still as a
+mouse, afraid to stir, longing for my dismissal, and dreading to be
+questioned further.
+
+Lady Pollexfen roused herself at length with a deep sigh, and a few
+words muttered under her breath. "Here is a bunch of grapes for you,
+child," she said. "When you have eaten them it will be time for you to
+retire."
+
+I advanced timidly, and took the grapes, with a curtsey and a "Thank
+you, my lady," and then went back to my seat.
+
+As I sat eating my grapes my eyes went up to an oval mirror over the
+fire-place, in which were reflected the figures of Lady Pollexfen and
+myself. My momentary glance into its depths showed me how keenly but
+furtively her ladyship was watching me. But what interest could a
+great lady have in watching poor insignificant me? I ventured another
+glance into the mirror. Yes, she looked as if she were devouring me
+with her eyes. But hothouse grapes are nicer than mysteries, and how
+is it possible to give one's serious attention to two things at a
+time?
+
+When I had finished the grapes, I put my plate back on the table.
+"Ring that bell," said Lady Pollexfen. I rang it accordingly, and
+presently Dance made her appearance.
+
+"Miss Holme is ready to retire," said her ladyship.
+
+I arose, and going a step or two nearer to her, I made her my most
+elaborate curtsey, and said, "I wish your ladyship a very good night."
+
+The ghost of a smile flickered across her face. "I am pleased to find,
+child, that you are not entirely destitute of manners," she said, and
+with a stately wave of the arm I was dismissed.
+
+It was like an escape from slavery to hear the door of the Green
+Saloon shut behind me, and to get into the great corridors and
+passages outside. I could have capered for very glee; only Mrs. Dance
+was a staid sort of person, and might not have liked it.
+
+"Her ladyship is pleased with you, I'm sure," she remarked, as we went
+along.
+
+"That is more than I am with her," I answered, pertly. Mrs. Dance
+looked shocked.
+
+"You must not talk in that way, dear, not on any account," she said.
+"You must try to like Lady Pollexfen; it is to your interest to do so.
+But even should you never learn to like her, you must not let any one
+know it."
+
+"I'm sure that I shall like the lady you call Sister Agnes," I said.
+"When shall I see her? To-morrow?"
+
+Mrs. Dance looked at me sharply for a moment. "You think you shall
+like Sister Agnes, eh? When you come to know her, you will more than
+like her; you will love her. But perhaps Lady Pollexfen will not allow
+you to see her."
+
+"But why not?" I said, abruptly, and I could feel my eyes flash with
+anger.
+
+"The why not I am not at liberty to explain," said Mrs. Dance, drily.
+"And let me tell you, Miss Janet Holme, there are many things under
+this roof of which no explanation will be given you, and if you are a
+wise, good girl, you will not ask too many questions. I tell you this
+simply for your own good. Lady Pollexfen cannot abear people that are
+always prying and asking, What does this mean? and what does the other
+mean A still tongue is the sign of a wise head."
+
+Ten minutes later I had said my prayers, and was in bed. "Don't go
+without kissing me," I said to Dance, as she took up the candle.
+
+The old lady came back and kissed me tenderly. "Heaven bless you, and
+keep you, my dear!" she said, with solemn dignity. "There are those in
+the world who love you very dearly, and some day perhaps you will know
+all. I dare not say more. Good night, and God bless you."
+
+Mrs. Dance's words reached a chord in my heart that vibrated to the
+slightest touch. I cried myself silently to sleep.
+
+How long I had been asleep I had no means of knowing, but I was
+awakened sometime in the night by a rain of kisses, soft, warm, and
+light, on lips, cheeks, and forehead. The room was pitch dark, and for
+a second or two I thought I was still at Park Hill, and that Miss
+Chinfeather had come back from heaven to tell me how much she loved
+me. But this thought passed away like the slide of a magic lantern,
+and I knew that I was at Dupley Walls. The moment I knew this I put
+out my arms with the intention of clasping my unknown visitor round
+the neck. But I was not quick enough. The kisses ceased, my hands met
+each other in the empty air, and I heard a faint noise of garments
+trailing across the floor. I started up in bed, and called out, in a
+frightened voice, "Who's there?"
+
+"Hush! not a word!" whispered a voice out of the darkness. Then I
+heard the door of my room softly closed, and I felt that I was alone.
+
+I was left as wide awake as ever I had been in my life. My child's
+heart was filled with an unspeakable yearning, and yet the darkness
+and the mystery frightened me. It could not be Miss Chinfeather who
+had visited me, I argued with myself. The lips that had touched mine
+were not those of a corpse, but were instinct with life and love. Who,
+then, could my mysterious visitor be? Not Lady Pollexfen, surely! I
+half started up in bed at the thought. Just as I did so, without
+warning of any kind, a solemn muffled tramp became audible in the room
+immediately over mine. A tramp, slow, heavy, measured, from one end of
+the room to the other, and then back again. I slipped back into the
+bedclothes and buried myself up to the ears. I could hear the beating
+of my heart, oppressed now with a new terror before which the lesser
+one faded utterly. The very monotony of that dull measured walk was
+enough to unstring the nerves of a child, coming as it did in the
+middle of the night. I tried to escape from it by going still deeper
+under the clothes, but I could hear it even then. Since I could not
+escape it altogether, I had better listen to it with all my ears, for
+it was quite possible that it might come downstairs, and so into my
+room. Had such a thing happened, I think I should have died from sheer
+terror. Happily for me nothing of the kind took place; and, still
+listening, I fell asleep at last from utter weariness, and knew
+nothing more till I was awoke by a stray sunbeam smiting me across the
+eyes.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+A VOYAGE OF DISCOVERY.
+
+
+A golden sunbeam was shining through a crevice in the blinds; the
+birds were twittering in the ivy outside; oxen were lowing to each
+other across the park. Morning, with all her music, was abroad.
+
+I started up in bed and rubbed my eyes. Within the house everything
+was as mute as the grave. That horrible tramping overhead had
+ceased--had ceased, doubtless, with the return of daylight, which
+would otherwise have shifted it from the region of the weird to that
+of the commonplace. I smiled to myself as I thought of my terrors of
+the past night, and felt brave enough just then to have faced a
+thousand ghosts. In another minute I was out of bed, and had drawn up
+my blind, and flung open my window, and was drinking in the sweet
+peaceful scene that stretched away before me in long level lines to
+the edge of a far-off horizon.
+
+My window was high up and looked out at the front of the hall.
+Immediately below me was a semicircular lawn, shut in from the park by
+an invisible fence, close shaven, and clumped with baskets of flowers
+glowing just now with all the brilliance of late autumn. The main
+entrance--a flight of shallow steps, and an Ionic portico, as I
+afterwards found--was at one end of the building, and was reached by a
+long straight carriage drive, the route of which could be traced
+across the park by the thicker growth of trees with which it was
+fringed. This park stretched to right and left for a mile either way.
+In front, it was bounded, a short half-mile away, by the high road,
+beyond which were level wide-stretching meadows through which the
+river Adair washed slow and clear.
+
+But chief of all this morning I wanted to be down among the flowers.
+I made haste to wash and dress, taking an occasional peep through
+the window as I did so, and trying to entice the birds from their
+hiding-places in the ivy. Then I opened my bedroom door, and then, in
+view of the great landing outside, I paused. Several doors, all except
+mine now closed, gave admittance from this landing to different rooms.
+Both landing and stairs were made of oak, black and polished with age.
+One broad flight of stairs, with heavy carved banisters, pointed the
+way below; a second and narrower flight led to the regions above. As a
+matter of course I chose the former, but not till after a minute's
+hesitation as to whether I should venture to leave my room at all
+before I should be called. But my desire to see the baskets of flowers
+prevailed over everything else. I closed my door gently and hurried
+down.
+
+I found myself in the entrance-hall of Dupley Walls, into which I had
+been ushered on my arrival. There were the two curtained doorways
+through which Lady Pollexfen had come and gone. For the rest, it was a
+gloomy place enough, with its flagged floor, and its diamond-paned
+windows high up in the semicircular roof. A few rusty full-lengths
+graced the walls; the stairs were guarded by two effigies in armour; a
+marble bust of one of the Cæsars stood on a high pedestal in the
+middle of the floor; and that was all.
+
+I was glad to get away from this dismal spot and to find myself in the
+passage which led to the housekeeper's room. I opened the door and
+looked in, but the room was vacant. Farther along the same passage I
+found the kitchen and other domestic offices. The kitchen clock was
+just on the point of six as I went in. One servant alone had come
+down. From her I enquired my way into the garden, and next minute I
+was on the lawn. The close-cropped grass was wet with the heavy dew;
+but my boots were thick and I heeded it not, for the flowers were
+there within my very grasp.
+
+Oh, those flowers! can I ever forget them? I have seen none so
+beautiful since. There can be none so beautiful out of Paradise.
+
+One spray of scarlet geranium was all that I ventured to pluck. But
+the odours and the colours were there for all comers, and were as much
+mine for the time being as if the flowers themselves had belonged to
+me. Suddenly I turned and glanced up at the many-windowed house with a
+sort of guilty consciousness that I might possibly be doing wrong. But
+the house was still asleep--closed shutters or down-drawn blind at
+every window. I saw before me a substantial-looking red-brick mansion,
+with a high slanting roof, of not undignified appearance now that it
+was mellowed by age, but with no pretensions to architectural beauty.
+The sole attempt at outside ornamentation consisted of a few flutings
+of white stone, reaching from the ground to the second floor, and
+terminating in oval shields of the same material, on which had
+originally been carved the initials of the builder and the date of
+erection; but the summer's sun and the winter's rain of many a long
+year had rubbed both letters and figures carefully out. Long
+afterwards I knew that Dupley Walls had been built in the reign of the
+Third William by a certain Squire Pollexfen of that date, "out of my
+own head," as he himself put it in a quaint document still preserved
+among the family archives; and rather a muddled head it must have been
+in matters architectural.
+
+After this, I ventured round by the main entrance, with its gravelled
+carriage sweep, to the other side of the house, where I found a long
+flagged terrace bordered with large evergreens in tubs placed at
+frequent intervals. On to this terrace several French windows
+opened--the windows, as I found later in the day, of Lady Pollexfen's
+private rooms. To the left of this terrace stood a plantation of young
+trees, through which a winding path that opened by a wicket into the
+private grounds, invited me to penetrate. Through the green gloom I
+advanced bravely, my heart beating with all the pleasure of one who
+was exploring some unknown land. I saw no living thing by the way,
+save two grey rabbits that scuttered across my path and vanished in
+the undergrowth on the other side. Pretty frisky creatures! how I
+should like to have caught them, and fed them, and made pets of them
+as long as they lived!
+
+Two or three hundred yards farther on the path ended with another
+wicket, now locked, which opened into the high road. About a mile away
+I could discern the roofs and chimneys of a little town. When I got
+back to the hall I found dear old Dance getting rather anxious at my
+long absence, but she brightened into smiles when I kissed her and
+told her where I had been.
+
+"You must have slept well, or you would hardly look so rosy this
+morning," she said, as we sat down to breakfast.
+
+"I should have slept very well if I had not been troubled by the
+ghosts."
+
+"Ghosts! my dear Miss Janet? You do not mean to say----" and the old
+lady's cheek paled suddenly, and her cup rattled in her saucer as she
+held it.
+
+"I mean to say that Dupley Walls is haunted by two ghosts, one of
+which came and kissed me last night when I was asleep; while the other
+one was walking nearly all night in the room over mine."
+
+Dance's face brightened, but still wore a puzzled expression. "You
+must have dreamed that some one kissed you, dear," she said. "If you
+were asleep you could not know anything about it."
+
+"But I was awakened by it, and I am positive that it was no dream."
+Then I told her what few particulars there were to tell.
+
+"For the future we must lock your bedroom door," she said.
+
+"Then I should be worse frightened than ever. Besides, a real ghost
+would not be kept out by locking the door."
+
+"Well, dear, tell me if you are disturbed in the same way again. But
+as for the tramping you heard in the room overhead, that is easily
+explained. It was no ghost that you heard walking, but Lady
+Pollexfen." Then, seeing my look of astonishment, she went on to
+explain. "You see, my dear Miss Janet, her ladyship is a very peculiar
+person, and does many things that to commonplace people like you and
+me may seem rather strange. One of these little peculiarities is her
+fondness for walking about the room over yours at night. Now, if she
+likes to do this, I know of no reason why she should not do it. It is
+a little whim that does no harm to anybody; and as the house and
+everything in it are her own, she may surely please herself in such a
+trifle."
+
+"But what is there in the room that she should prefer it to any other
+in the house for walking in by night?" I asked.
+
+"What--is--there--in the room?" said the old lady, staring at me
+across the table with a strange frightened look in her eyes. "What a
+curious question! The room is a common room, of course, with nothing
+in it out of the ordinary way; only, as I said before, it happens to
+be Lady Pollexfen's whim to walk there. So, if you hear the noise
+again, you will know how to account for it, and will have too much
+good sense to feel in the least afraid."
+
+I had a half consciousness that Dance was prevaricating with me in
+this matter, or hiding something from me; but I was obliged to accept
+her version as the correct one, especially as I saw that, any further
+questioning would be of no avail.
+
+I did not see Lady Pollexfen that day. She was reported to be unwell,
+and kept her own rooms.
+
+About noon a message came from Sister Agnes that she would like to see
+me in her room. When I entered she was standing by a square oak table,
+resting one hand on it while the other was pressed to her heart. Her
+face was very pale, but her dark eyes beamed on me with a veiled
+tenderness that I could not misinterpret.
+
+"Good morrow, Miss Holme," she said, offering a white slender hand for
+my acceptance. "I am afraid that you will find Dupley Walls even
+duller than Park Hill Seminary."
+
+Her tone was cold and constrained. I looked up earnestly into her
+face. Her lips began to quiver painfully. Suddenly she stooped and
+kissed me. "Child! child! you must not look at me in that way," she
+cried.
+
+Instinct whispered something in my ear. "You are the lady who came and
+kissed me when I was asleep!" I exclaimed.
+
+Her brow contracted for a moment as if she were in pain. A hectic spot
+came out suddenly on either cheek, and vanished almost as swiftly.
+"Yes, it was I who came to your room last night," she said. "You are
+not vexed with me for doing so?"
+
+"On the contrary, I love you for it."
+
+Her smile, the sweetest I ever saw, beamed out at this. Gently she
+stroked my hair. "You looked so forlorn and weary last night," she
+said, "that after I got to bed I could not help thinking about you. I
+was afraid you would not be able to sleep in a strange place, so I
+could not rest till I had visited you: but I never intended to awake
+you."
+
+"I do not mind how often I am awakened the same way," I said. "No one
+has ever seemed to love me but you, and I cannot help loving you
+back."
+
+"Ma pauvre petite!" was all she said. We had sat down by this time
+close to the window, and Sister Agnes was holding one of my hands in
+hers and caressing it gently as she gazed dreamily across the park. My
+eyes, childlike, wandered from her to the room and then back again.
+The picture still lives in my memory as fresh as though it had been
+limned but yesterday.
+
+A square whitewashed room, fitted up with furniture of unpolished oak.
+On the walls a few proof engravings of subjects taken from Sacred
+History. A small bookcase in one corner, and a _prie-dieu_ in another.
+The floor uncarpeted, but polished after the French fashion. A
+writing-table; a large workbox; a heap of clothing for the poor; and
+lastly, a stand for flowers.
+
+The features of Sister Agnes were as delicate and clearly cut as those
+of some antique statue, but their habitual expression was one of
+intense melancholy. Her voice was low and gracious: the voice of a
+refined and educated gentlewoman. Her hair was black, with here and
+there a faint silver streak; but the peculiar head-dress of white
+linen which she wore left very little of it visible. Disfiguring as
+this head-dress might have been to many people, in her case it served
+merely to enhance the marble whiteness and transparent purity of her
+complexion. Her eyebrows were black and well-defined; but as for the
+eyes themselves, I can only repeat what I said before, that their dark
+depths were full of tenderness and a sort of veiled enthusiasm
+difficult to describe in words. Her dress was black, soft, and coarse,
+relieved by deep cuffs of white linen. Her solitary ornament, if
+ornament it could be called, was a rosary of black beads. Not without
+reason have I been thus particular in describing Sister Agnes and her
+surroundings, as they who read will discover for themselves by-and-by.
+
+Sister Agnes woke up from her reverie with a sigh, and began talking
+to me about my schooldays, and my mode of life at Park Hill Seminary.
+It was a pleasure to me to talk, because I felt that it was a pleasure
+to her to listen to me. And she let me talk on and on for I can't tell
+how long, only putting in a question now and again, till she knew
+almost as much about Miss Chinfeather and Park Hill as I knew myself.
+But she never seemed to weary. We were sitting close together, and
+after a time I felt her arm steal gently round my waist, pressing me
+closer still; and so, with my head nestling against her shoulder, I
+talked on, heedless of the time. O happy afternoon!
+
+It was broken by a summons for Sister Agues from Lady Pollexfen.
+"To-morrow, if the weather holds fine, we will go to Clarke Forest and
+gather blackberries," said Sister Agnes, as she gave me a parting
+kiss.
+
+That night I went early to bed, and never woke till daybreak.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+SCARSDALE WEIR.
+
+
+I was up betimes next morning, long before Sister Agnes could possibly
+be ready to take me to the forest. So I took my sewing into the
+garden, and found a pleasant sunny nook, where I sat and worked till
+breakfast time. The meal was scarcely over when Sister Agnes sent for
+me. It made my heart leap with pleasure to see how her beautiful
+melancholy face lighted up at my approach. Why should she feel such an
+interest in one whom she had never seen till a few hours ago? The
+question was one I could not answer; I could only recognise the fact,
+and be thankful.
+
+The morning was delicious; sunny, without being oppressive; while in
+the shade there was a faint touch of austerity like the first breath
+of coming winter. A walk of two miles brought us to the skirts of the
+forest, and in five minutes after quitting the high road we might have
+been a hundred miles away from any habitation, so utterly lost and
+buried from the outer world did we seem to be. Already the forest
+paths were half hidden by fallen leaves, which rustled pleasantly
+under our feet. By-and-by we came to a pretty opening in the wood,
+where some charitable soul had erected a rude rustic seat, that was
+more than half covered with the initials of idle wayfarers. Here
+Sister Agnes sat down to rest. She had brought a volume of poems with
+her, and while she read I wandered about, never going very far away,
+feasting on the purple blackberries, finding here and there a
+late-ripened cluster of nuts, trying to find out a nest or two among
+the thinned foliage, and enjoying myself in a quiet way, much to my
+heart's content.
+
+I don't think Sister Agnes read much that morning. Her gaze was
+oftener away from her book than on it. After a time she came and
+joined me in gathering nuts and blackberries. She seemed brighter and
+happier than I had hitherto seen her, entering into all my little
+projects with as much eagerness as though she were herself a child.
+How soon I had learned to love her! Why had I lived all those dreary
+years at Park Hill without knowing her? But I could never again feel
+quite so lonely, never quite such an outcast from that common
+household love which all the girls I had known seemed to accept as a
+matter of course. Even if I should unhappily be separated from Sister
+Agnes, I could not cease to love her; and although I had seen her for
+the first time barely forty-eight hours ago, my child's instinct told
+me that she possessed that steadfastness, sweet and strong, which
+allows no name that has once been written on its heart to be erased
+therefrom for ever.
+
+My thoughts were running in some such groove, but they were all as
+tangled and confused as the luxuriant undergrowth around me. It must
+have been out of this confusion that the impulse arose which caused me
+to address a question to Sister Agnes that startled her as much as if
+a shell had exploded at her feet.
+
+"Dear Sister Agnes," I said, "you seem to know my history, and all
+about me. Did you know my papa and mamma?"
+
+She dropped the leaf that held her fruit, and turned on me a haggard
+frightened face, that made my own grow pale. "What makes you think
+that I know your history?" she stammered out.
+
+"You who are so intimate with Lady Pollexfen must know why I was
+brought to Dupley Walls: you must know something about me. If you know
+anything about my father and mother, oh! do please tell me; please
+do!"
+
+"I am tired, Janet. Let us sit down," she said, wearily. So, hand in
+hand, we went back to the rustic seat and sat down.
+
+She sat for a minute or two without speaking, gazing straight before
+her into some far-away forest vista, but seeing only with that inner
+eye which: searches through the dusty chambers of heart and brain
+whenever some record of the past has to be brought forth to answer the
+questions of to-day.
+
+"I do know your history, dear child," she said at length, "and both
+your parents were friends of mine."
+
+"Were! Then neither of them is alive?"
+
+"Alas! no. They have been dead many years. Your father was drowned in
+one of the Italian lakes. Your mother died a year afterwards."
+
+All the sweet vague hopes that I had cherished in secret, ever since I
+could remember anything, of some day finding at least one of my
+parents alive, died out utterly as Sister Agnes said these words. My
+heart seemed to faint within me. I flung myself into her arms, and
+burst into tears.
+
+Very tenderly and lovingly, with sweet caresses and words of comfort,
+did Sister Agnes strive to win me back to cheerfulness. Her efforts
+were not unsuccessful, and after a time I grew calmer, and recovered
+my self-possession; and as soon as so much was accomplished we set out
+on our return to Dupley Walls. As we rose to go, I said, "Since you
+have told me so much, Sister Agnes, will you not also tell me why I
+have been brought to Dupley Walls, and why Lady Pollexfen has anything
+to do with me?"
+
+"That is a question, dear Janet, which I cannot answer," she said. "I
+am bound to Lady Pollexfen by a solemn promise not to reveal to you
+the nature of the secret bond which has brought you under her roof.
+That she has your welfare at heart you may well believe, and that it
+is to your interest to please her in every possible way is equally
+certain. More than this I dare not say, except that there are certain
+pages of your history, some of them of a very painful character, which
+it would not be advisable that you should read till you shall be many
+years older than you are now. Meanwhile, rest assured that in Lady
+Pollexfen, however eccentric she may seem to be, you have a firm and
+powerful friend; while in me, who has neither influence nor power, you
+have one who simply loves you, and prays night and day for your
+welfare."
+
+"And you will never cease to love me, will you?" I said, just as we
+stepped out of the forest into the high road.
+
+She took both my hands in hers and looked me straight in the face.
+"Never, while I live, Janet Holme, can I cease to love you," she said.
+Then we kissed and went on our way towards Dupley Walls.
+
+"You are to dine with her ladyship to-day, Miss Janet," said Dance the
+same afternoon. "We must look out your best bib and tucker."
+
+Dance seemed to think that a mighty honour was about to be conferred
+upon me, but for my own part I would have given much to forego the
+distinction. However, there was no help for it, so I submitted quietly
+to having my hair dressed and to being inducted into my best frock. I
+was dreadfully abashed when the footman threw open the dining-room
+door and announced in a loud voice, "Miss Janet Holme."
+
+Dinner had just been served, and her ladyship was waiting. I advanced
+up the room and made my curtsey. Lady Pollexfen looked at me grimly,
+without relaxing a muscle, and then extended a lean forefinger, which
+I pressed respectfully. The butler indicated a chair, and I sat down.
+Next moment Sister Agnes glided in through a side door, and took her
+place at the table, but considerably apart both from Lady Pollexfen
+and me. I felt infinitely relieved by her presence.
+
+Her ladyship looked as elaborately youthful, with her pink cheeks, her
+black wig, and her large white teeth, as on the evening of my arrival
+at Dupley Walls. But her hands shook a little, making the diamonds on
+her fingers scintillate in the candlelight as she carried her food to
+her mouth, and this was a sign of age which not all the art in the
+world could obviate. The table was laid out with a quantity of
+old-fashioned plate; indeed, the plate was out of all proportion to
+the dinner, which consisted of nothing more elaborate than some mutton
+broth, a roast pullet, and a custard. But there was a good deal of
+show, and we were waited on assiduously by a respectable but
+fatuous-looking butler. There was no wine brought out, but some old
+ale was poured into her ladyship's glass from a silver flagon. Sister
+Agnes had a small cover laid apart from ours. Her dinner consisted of
+herbs, fruit, bread, and water. It pained me to see that the look of
+intense melancholy which had lightened so wonderfully during our
+forest walk, had again overshadowed her face like a veil. She gave me
+one long, earnest look as she took her seat at the table, but after
+that she seemed scarcely to be aware of my presence.
+
+We had sat in grim silence for full five minutes, when Lady Pollexfen
+spoke.
+
+"Can you speak French, child?" she said, turning abruptly to me.
+
+"I can read it a little, but I cannot speak it," I replied.
+
+"Nor understand what is said when it is spoken in your presence?"
+
+"No, your ladyship."
+
+"So much the better," she answered with a grating laugh. "Children
+have long ears, and there is no freedom of conversation when they are
+present." With that she addressed some remarks in French to Sister
+Agnes, who replied to her in the same language. I knew nothing about
+my ears being long, but her ladyship's words had made them tingle as
+if they had been boxed. For one thing I was thankful--that no further
+remarks were addressed to me during dinner. The conversation in French
+became animated, and I had leisure to think of other things.
+
+Dinner was quickly over, and at a signal from her ladyship the folding
+doors were thrown open, and we defiled into the Green Saloon, I
+bringing up the rear meekly. On the table were fruit and flowers, and
+one small bottle of some light wine. The butler filled her ladyship's
+glass, and then withdrew.
+
+"You can take a pear, little girl," said Lady Pollexfen. Accordingly I
+took a pear, but when I had got it I was too timid to eat it, and
+could do nothing but hold it between my hot palms. Had I been at Park
+Hill Seminary, I would soon have made my teeth meet in the fruit, but
+I was not quite certain as to the proper mode of eating pears in
+society.
+
+Lady Pollexfen placed her glass in her eye, and examined me
+critically.
+
+"Haie! haie!" she said. "That good Chinfeather has not quite
+eradicated our gaucherie, it seems. We are deficient in ease and
+aplomb. What is the name of that Frenchwoman, Agnes, who 'finished'
+Lady Kinbuck's girls?"
+
+"You mean Madame Duclos."
+
+"The same. Look out her address to-morrow, and remind me that you
+write to her. If mademoiselle here remain in England, she will grow up
+weedy, and will never learn to carry her shoulders properly. Besides,
+the child has scarcely two words to say for herself. A little Parisian
+training may prove beneficial. At her age a French girl of family
+would be a little duchess in bearing and manners, even though she had
+never been outside the walls of her pension. How is such an anomaly to
+be accounted for? It is possible that the atmosphere may have
+something to do with it."
+
+Here was fresh food for wonder, and for such serious thought as my age
+admitted of. I was to be sent to a school in France! I could not make
+up my mind whether to be sorry or glad. In truth, I was neither wholly
+the one nor the other; the tangled web of my feelings was something
+altogether beyond my skill to unravel.
+
+Lady Pollexfen sipped her wine absently for a while; Sister Agnes was
+busy with some fine needlework; and I was striving to elaborate a
+giant and his attendant dwarf out of the glowing embers and cavernous
+recesses of the wood fire, while there was yet an underlying vein of
+thought at work in my mind which busied itself desultorily with trying
+to piece together all that I had ever heard or read of life in a
+French school.
+
+"You can run away now, little girl. You are _de trop_," said her
+ladyship, turning on me in her abrupt fashion. "And you, Agnes, may as
+well read to me a couple of chapters out of the _Girondins_. What a
+wonderful man was that Robespierre! What a giant! Had he but lived,
+how different the history of Europe would have been from what we know
+it to-day."
+
+I could almost have kissed her ladyship of my own accord, so pleased
+was I to get away. I made my curtsey to her, and also to Sister Agnes,
+whose only reply was a sweet sad smile, and managed to preserve my
+dignity till I was out of the room. But when the door was safely
+closed behind me, I ran, I flew along the passages till I reached the
+housekeeper's room. Dance was not there, neither had candles yet been
+lighted. The bright moonlight pouring in through the window, gave me a
+new idea.
+
+I had not yet been down to look at the river! What time could be
+better than the present one for such a purpose? I had heard some of
+the elder girls at Park Hill talk of the delights of boating by
+moonlight. Boating in the present case was out of the question, but
+there was the river itself to be seen. Taking my hat and scarf, I let
+myself out by a side door, and then sped away across the park like a
+hunted fawn, not forgetting to take an occasional bite at her
+ladyship's pear. To-night, for a wonder, my mind seemed purged of all
+those strange fears and stranger fancies engendered in it, some people
+would say, by superstition, while others would hold that they were
+merely the effects of a delicate nervous organization and an
+overexcitable brain reacting one upon the other. Be that as it may,
+for this night they had left me, and I skipped on my way as fearlessly
+as though I were walking at mid-day, and, with a glorious sense of
+freedom working within me, such, only in a more intense degree, as I
+had often felt on our rare holidays at school.
+
+There was a right of public footpath across one corner of the park.
+Tracking this narrow white ribbon through the greensward, I came at
+length to a stile which admitted me into the high road. Exactly
+opposite was a second stile opening on a second footpath, which I felt
+sure could lead to nowhere but the river. Nor was I mistaken. In
+another five minutes I was on the banks of the Adair.
+
+To my child's eyes the scene was one of exquisite beauty. To-day, I
+should probably call it flat, and wanting in variety. The equable
+full-flowing river was lighted up by a full and unclouded moon. The
+undergrowth that fringed its banks was silver-foliaged; silver white
+rose the mists in the meadows. Silence everywhere, save for the low
+liquid murmur of the river itself, which seemed burdened with some
+love secret, centuries old, which it was vainly striving to tell in
+articulate words.
+
+The burden of the beauty lay upon me and saddened me. I wandered
+slowly along the bank, watching the play of moonlight on the river.
+Suddenly I saw a tiny boat that was moored to an overhanging willow,
+and floated out the length of its chain towards the middle of the
+stream. I looked around. Not a creature of any kind was visible. Then
+I thought to myself, "how pleasant it would be to sit out there in the
+boat for a little while. And surely no one could be angry with me for
+taking such a liberty--not even the owner of the boat if he were to
+find me there."
+
+No sooner said than done. I went down to the edge of the river, and
+drew the boat inshore by the chain that held it. Then I stepped
+gingerly in, half frightened at my own temerity, and sat down. The
+boat glided slowly out again to the length of its chain and then
+became motionless. But it was motionless only for a moment or two. A
+splash in the water drew my attention to the chain. It had been
+insecurely fastened to a branch of the willow; my weight in the boat
+had caused it to become detached and fall into the water, and with
+horrified eyes I saw that I had now no means of getting back to the
+shore. Next moment the strength of the current carried the boat out
+into midstream, and I began to float slowly down the river.
+
+I sat like one paralysed, unable either to stir or speak. The willows
+seemed to bow their heads in mocking farewell as I glided past them. I
+heard the faint baying of a dog on some distant farm, and it sounded
+like a death-note in my frightened ears. Suddenly the spell that had
+held me was loosened, and I started to my feet. The boat heeled over,
+and but for a sudden instinctive movement backward I should have gone
+headlong into the river, and have ended my troubles there and then.
+The boat righted itself, veered half round, and then went steadily on
+its way down the stream. I sank on my knees and buried my face in my
+hands, and began to cry. When I had cried a little while it came into
+my mind that I would say my prayers. So I said them, with clasped
+hands and wet eyes, and the words seemed to come from me and affect me
+in a way that I had never experienced before. As I write these lines I
+have a vivid recollection of noticing how blurred and large the moon
+looked through my tears.
+
+My heart was now quieted a little; I was no longer so utterly
+overmastered by my fears. I was recalled to a more vivid sense of
+earth and its realities by the low melancholy striking of some village
+clock. I gazed eagerly along both banks of the river, but although the
+moon shone so brightly, neither house nor church nor any sign of human
+habitation was visible. When the clock had told its last syllable, the
+silence seemed even more profound than before. I might have been
+floating on a river that wound through a country never trodden by the
+foot of man, so entirely alone, so utterly removed from all human aid,
+did I feel myself to be.
+
+I drew the skirt of my frock over my shoulders, for the night air was
+beginning to chill me, and contrived to regain the seat I had taken on
+first entering the boat. Whither would the river carry me? was the
+question I now put to myself, To the sea, doubtless. Had I not been
+taught at school that sooner or later all rivers emptied themselves
+into the ocean? The immensity of the thought appalled me. It seemed to
+chill the beating of my heart; I grew cold from head to foot. Still
+the boat held its course steadily, swept onward by the resistless
+current; still the willows nodded their fantastic farewells. Along
+the level meadows far and wide the white mist lay like a vast
+winding-sheet; now and then through the stillness I heard, or seemed
+to hear, a moan--a mournful wail, as of some spirit just released from
+earthly bonds, and forced to leave its dear ones behind. The moonlight
+looked cruel, and the water very, very cold. Some one had told me that
+death by drowning was swift and painless. Those stars up there were
+millions of miles away: how long would it take my soul, I wondered, to
+travel that distance--to reach those glowing orbs--to leave them
+behind? How glorious such a journey, beyond all power of thought,--to
+track one's way among the worlds that flash through space! In the
+world I should leave there would be one person only who would mourn
+for me--Sister Agnes, who would----But what noise was that?
+
+A noise, low and faint at first, just taking the edge of silence with
+a musical murmur that seemed to die out for an instant now and again,
+then coming again stronger than before, and so growing by fine degrees
+louder and more confirmed, and resolving itself at last into a sound
+which could not be mistaken for that of anything but falling water.
+The sound was clearly in front of me,--I was being swept resistlessly
+towards it. A curve of the river and a swelling of the banks hid
+everything from me. The sound was momently growing louder, and had
+distinctly resolved itself into the roar and rush of some great body
+of water. I shuddered and grasped the sides of the boat with both
+hands. Suddenly the curve was rounded, and there, almost immediately
+in front of me, was a mass of buildings, and there, too, spanning the
+river, was what looked to me like a trellis-work bridge, and on the
+bridge was a human figure. The roar and noise of the cataract were
+deafening, but louder than all was my piercing cry for help. He who
+stood on the bridge heard it. I saw him fling up his hands as if in
+sudden horror, and that was the last thing I did see. I sank down with
+shut eyes in the bottom of the boat, and my heart went up in a silent
+cry to heaven. Next moment I was swept over Scarsdale Weir. The boat
+seemed to glide from under me; my head struck something hard; the
+water overwhelmed me, seized on me, dashed me here and there in its
+merciless arms; a noise as of a thousand cataracts filled my ears for
+a moment, and then I recollect nothing more.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+AT ROSE COTTAGE.
+
+
+On regaining my senses I found myself in a cozy little bed, in a cozy
+little room, with an old gentleman sitting by my side gently chafing
+one of my hands--a gentleman with white hair and a white moustache,
+with a ruddy face, and a smile that made me fall in love with him at
+first sight.
+
+"Did I not say that she would do famously in a little while?" he
+cried, in a cheery voice that it did one good to listen to. "I believe
+the Poppetina has only been hoaxing us all this time: pretending to be
+half-drowned just to find out whether anybody would make a fuss about
+her. Is not that the truth, little one?"
+
+"If you please, sir, where am I? And are you a doctor?" I asked,
+faintly.
+
+"I am not a doctor, either of medicine or law," answered the
+white-haired gentleman. "I am Major Strickland, and this place is Rose
+Cottage--the magnificent mansion which I call my own. But you had
+better not talk, dearie--at least not just yet: not till the doctor
+himself has seen you."
+
+"But how did I get here?" I pleaded. "Do tell me that, please."
+
+"Simply thus. My nephew Geordie was out mooning on the bridge when he
+heard a cry for help. Next minute he saw you and your boat go over the
+weir. He rushed down to the quiet water at the foot of the falls,
+plunged in, and fished you out before you had time to get more than
+half-drowned. My housekeeper, Deborah, put you to bed, and here you
+are. But I am afraid that you have hurt yourself among those ugly
+stones that line the weir; so Geordie has gone off for the doctor, and
+we shall soon know how you really are. One question I must ask you in
+order that I may send word to your friends. What is your name? and
+where do you live?"
+
+Before I could reply the village doctor came bounding up the stairs
+three at a time. Five minutes sufficed him for my case. A good night's
+rest and a bottle of his mixture were all that was required. A few
+hours would see me as well as ever. Then he went.
+
+"And now for the name and address, Poppetina," said the smiling major.
+"We must send word to papa and mamma without a moment's delay."
+
+"I have neither papa nor mamma," I answered. "My name is Janet Holme,
+and I come from Dupley Walls."
+
+"From Dupley Walls!" exclaimed the major. "I thought I knew everybody
+under Lady Pollexfen's roof, but I never heard of you before to-night,
+my dear."
+
+Then I told him that I had been only two days with Lady Pollexfen, and
+that all of my previous life that I could remember had been spent at
+Park Hill Seminary.
+
+The major was evidently puzzled by what I had told him. He mused
+for several moments without speaking. Hitherto my face had been in
+half-shadow, the candle having been placed behind the curtain that
+fell round the head of the bed, so as not to dazzle my eyes. This
+candle the major now took, and held it about a yard above my head, so
+that its full light fell on my upturned face. I was swathed in a
+blanket, and while addressing the major had raised myself on my elbow
+in bed. My long black hair, still damp, fell wildly round my
+shoulders.
+
+The moment Major Strickland's eyes rested on my face, on which the
+full light of the candle was now shining, his ruddy cheek paled; he
+started back in amazement, and was obliged to replace the candlestick
+on the table.
+
+"Great Heavens! what a marvellous resemblance!" he exclaimed. "It
+cannot arise from accident merely. There must be a hidden link
+somewhere."
+
+Then taking the candle for the second time, he scanned my face again
+with eyes that seemed to pierce me through and through. "It is as if
+one had come to me suddenly from the dead," I heard him say in a low
+voice. Then with down-bent head and folded arms he took several turns
+across the room.
+
+"Sir, of whom do I remind you?" I timidly asked.
+
+"Of some one, child, whom I knew when I was young--of some one who
+died long years before you were born." There was a ring of pathos in
+his voice that seemed like the echo of some sorrowful story.
+
+"Are you sure that you have no other name than Janet Holme?" he asked,
+presently.
+
+"None, sir, that I know of. I have been called Janet Holme ever since
+I can remember."
+
+"But about your parents. What were they called, and where did they
+live?"
+
+"I know nothing whatever about them except what Sister Agnes told me
+yesterday."
+
+"And she said--what?"
+
+"That my father was drowned abroad several years ago, and that my
+mother died a year later."
+
+"Poverina! But it is strange that Sister Agnes should have known your
+parents. Perhaps she can supply the missing link. The mention of her
+name reminds me that I have not yet sent word to Dupley Walls that you
+are safe and sound at Rose Cottage. Geordie must start without a
+moment's delay. I am an old friend of Lady Pollexfen, my dear, so that
+she will be quite satisfied when she learns that you are under my
+roof."
+
+"But, sir, when shall I see the gentleman who got me out of the
+water?" I asked.
+
+"What, Geordie? Oh, you'll see Geordie in the morning, never fear. A
+good boy! a fine boy! though it's his old uncle that says it."
+
+Then he rang the bell, and when Deborah, his only servant, came up, he
+committed me with many injunctions into her charge. Then taking my
+head gently between his hands, he kissed me tenderly on the forehead,
+and wished me "Good-night, and happy dreams."
+
+Deborah was very kind. She brought me up a delicious little supper,
+and decided that there was no need for me to take the doctor's
+nauseous mixture. She took it herself instead, but merely as a sop to
+her conscience and my own; "for, after all, you know, there's very
+little difference in physic--it's all nasty; and I daresay this
+mixture will do my lumbago no harm."
+
+The effects of the accident had almost entirely passed away by next
+morning, and I was dressed and downstairs by seven o'clock. I found
+the major hard at work digging up the garden for his winter crops.
+"Ah, Poppetina, down so early!" he cried. "And how do we feel this
+morning, eh? None the worse for our ducking, I hope."
+
+I assured him that I was quite well, and that I had never felt better
+in my life.
+
+"That will be good news for her ladyship," he replied, "and will prove
+to her that Miss Holme has not fallen among Philistines. In any case,
+she cannot be more pleased than I am to find that you have sustained
+no harm from your accident. There is something, Poverina, in that face
+of yours that brings back the past to me strangely. But here comes
+Master Geordie."
+
+I turned and saw a young man sauntering slowly down the pathway. He
+was very fair, and, to me, seemed very handsome. He had blue eyes, and
+his hair was a mass of short, crisp flaxen curls. From the way in
+which the major regarded him as he came lounging up, I could see that
+the old soldier was very proud of his young Adonis of a nephew. The
+latter lifted his hat as he opened the wicket, and bade his uncle good
+morning. Me he did not for the moment see.
+
+"Miss Holme is not up yet, I suppose?" he said. "I hope she is none
+the worse for her tumble over the weir."
+
+"Our little water-nymph is here to answer for herself," said the
+major. "The roses in her cheeks seem all the brighter for their
+wetting."
+
+George Strickland turned smilingly towards me, and held out his hand.
+"I am very glad, Miss Holme, to find that you have suffered so little
+from your accident," he said. "When I fished you out of the river last
+night you looked so death-like that I was afraid we should not be able
+to bring you round without difficulty."
+
+Tears stood in my eyes as I took his hand. "Oh, sir, how brave, how
+noble it was of you to act as you did! You saved my life at the risk
+of your own, and how can I ever thank you enough?"
+
+A bright colour came into his cheek as I spoke. "My dear Miss Holme,
+you must not speak in that way," he said. "What I did was a very
+ordinary thing. Any one else in my place would have done precisely the
+same. I must not claim more merit than is due for an action so
+simple."
+
+"To you it may seem a simple thing to do, but I cannot forget that it
+was my life that you saved."
+
+"What an old-fashioned princess it is!" said the major. "Why it must
+have been born a hundred years ago, and have had a fairy for its
+godmother. But here comes Deborah to tell us that breakfast is ready.
+Toasted bacon is better than pretty speeches, so come along with you,
+and make believe that you have known each other for a twelvemonth at
+least."
+
+Rose Cottage was a tiny place, and there were not wanting proofs that
+the major's income was commensurate with the scale of his
+establishment. A wise economy had to be a guiding rule in Major
+Strickland's life, otherwise Mr. George's college expenses would never
+have been met, and that young gentleman would not have had a proper
+start in life. Deborah was the only servant that the little household
+could afford; but then the major himself was gardener, butler, valet,
+and page in one. Thus--he cleaned the knives in a machine of his own
+invention; he brushed his own clothes; he lacquered his own boots, and
+at a pinch could mend them. He dug and planted his own garden, and
+grew enough potatoes and green-stuff to serve his little family the
+year round. In a little paddock behind his garden the major kept a
+cow; in the garden itself he had half a dozen hives; while not far
+away was a fowl-house that supplied him with more eggs than he could
+dispose of, except by sale. The major's maxim was, that the humblest
+offices of labour could be dignified by a gentleman, and by his own
+example he proved the rule. What few leisure hours he allowed himself
+were chiefly spent with rod and line on the banks of the Adair.
+
+George Strickland was an orphan, and had been adopted and brought up
+by his uncle since he was six years old. So far, the uncle had been
+able to supply the means for having him educated in accordance with
+his wishes. For the last three years George had been at one of the
+public schools, and now he was at home for a few weeks' holiday
+previously to going to Cambridge.
+
+It will of course be understood that but a very small portion of what
+is here set down respecting Rose Cottage and its inmates was patent to
+me at that first visit; much of it, indeed, did not come within my
+cognizance till several years afterwards.
+
+When breakfast was over the major lighted an immense meerschaum, and
+then invited me to accompany him over his little demesne. To a girl
+like me, whose life had been spent within the four bare walls of a
+school-room, everything was fresh and everything was delightful. First
+to the fowl-house, then to the hives, and after that to see the
+brindled calf in the paddock, whose gambols and general mode of
+conducting himself were so utterly absurd that I laughed more in ten
+minutes after seeing him than I had done in ten years previously.
+
+When we got back to the cottage, George was ready to take me on the
+river. The major went down with us and saw us safely aboard the _Water
+Lily_, bade us good-bye for an hour, and then went about his morning's
+business. I was rather frightened at first, the _Water Lily_ was such
+a tiny craft, so long and narrow that it seemed to me as if the least
+movement on one side must upset it. But George showed me exactly where
+to sit, and gave me the tiller-ropes, with instructions how to manage
+them, and was himself so full of quiet confidence that my fears
+quickly died a natural death, and a sweet sense of enjoyment took
+their place.
+
+We were On that part of the river which was below the weir, and as we
+put out from shore the scene of my last night's adventure was clearly
+visible. There, spanning the river just above the weir, was the
+open-work timber bridge on which George was standing when my cry for
+help struck his ears. There was the weir itself, a sheet of foaming
+frothing water, that as it fell dashed itself in white-lipped passion
+against the rounded boulders that seemed striving in vain to turn it
+from its course. And here, a little way from the bottom of the weir,
+was the pool of quiet water over which our little boat was now
+cleaving its way, and out of which the handsome young man now sitting
+opposite to me had plucked me, bruised and senseless, only a few short
+hours ago. I shuddered and could feel myself turn pale as I looked.
+George seemed to read my thoughts; he smiled, but said nothing. Then
+bending all his strength to the oars, he sent the _Water Lily_
+spinning on her course. All my skill and attention were needed for the
+proper management of the tiller, and for a little while all morbid
+musings were banished from my mind.
+
+Scarcely a word passed between us during the next half hour, but I was
+too happy to care much for conversation. When we had gone a couple of
+miles or more, George pointed out a ruinous old house that stood on a
+dreary flat about a quarter of a mile from the river. Many years ago,
+he told me, that house had been the scene of a terrible murder, and
+was said to have been haunted ever since. Nobody would live in it; it
+was shunned as a place accursed, and was now falling slowly into decay
+and ruin. I listened to the story with breathless interest, and the
+telling of it seemed to make us quite old friends. After this there
+seemed no lack of subjects for conversation. George shipped his oars,
+and the boat was allowed to float lazily down the stream. He told
+about his school days, and I told about mine. The height of his
+ambition, he said, was to go into the army, and become a soldier like
+his dear old uncle. But Major Strickland wanted him to become a
+lawyer; and owing everything to his uncle as he did, it was impossible
+for him not to accede to his wishes. "Besides which," added George,
+with a sigh, "a commission is an expensive thing to buy, and dear old
+uncle is anything but rich."
+
+When we first set out that morning I think that George, from the
+summit of his eighteen years, had been inclined to look down upon me
+as a little school miss, whom he might patronize in a kindly sort of
+way, but whose conversation could not possibly interest a man of his
+sense and knowledge of the world. But whether it arose from that
+"old-fashioned" quality of which Major Strickland had made mention,
+which caused me to seem so much older than my years; or whether it
+arose from the genuine interest I showed in all he had to say; certain
+it is that long before we got back to Rose Cottage we were talking as
+equals in years and understanding, but that by no means prevented me
+from looking up to him in my own mind as to a being superior not only
+to myself but to the common run of humanity. I was sorry when we got
+back in sight of the weir, and as I stepped ashore I thought that this
+morning and the one I had spent with Sister Agnes in Charke Forest
+were the two happiest of my life. I had no prevision that the
+fair-haired young man with whom I had passed three such pleasant hours
+would, in after years, influence my life in a way that just now I was
+far too much a child even to dream of.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+THE GROWTH OF A MYSTERY.
+
+
+We started at five o'clock to walk back to Dupley Walls, the major,
+and I, and George. It was only two miles away across the fields. I was
+quite proud to be seen in the company of so stately a gentleman as
+Major Strickland, who was dressed this afternoon as for a visit of
+ceremony. He had on a blue frock-coat tightly buttoned, to which the
+builder had imparted an intangible something that smacked undeniably
+of the vieux soldat. He wore a hat rather wide in the brim; a high
+stiff checked cravat; a white vest; and lacquered military boots, over
+which his tightly strapped trousers fell without a crease. He had
+white buckskin gloves, a stout silver-headed malacca cane, and carried
+a choice geranium in his button-hole.
+
+There was not much conversation among us by the way. The major's usual
+flow of talk seemed to have deserted him this afternoon, and his mood
+seemed unconsciously to influence both George and me. Lady Pollexfen's
+threat to send me to a French school weighed down my spirits. I had
+found dear friends--Sister Agnes, the kind-hearted major, and his
+nephew, only to be torn from them--to be plunged back into the cold
+cheerless monotony of school-girl life, where there would be no one to
+love me, but many to find fault.
+
+We went back by way of the plantation. George would not go any farther
+than the wicket at its edge, and it was agreed that he should there
+await the major's return from the hail. "I hope, Miss Holme, that we
+shall see you at Rose Cottage again before many days are over," he
+said, as he took my hand to bid me farewell. "Uncle has promised to
+ask her ladyship to spare you for a few days."
+
+"I shall be very, very glad to come, Mr. George. As long as I live I
+shall be in your debt, for I cannot forget that I owe you my life."
+
+"The fairy godmother is whispering in her ear," said the major in a
+loud aside. "She talks like a woman of forty."
+
+While still some distance away we could see Lady Pollexfen sunning
+herself on the western terrace. With a pang of regret I saw that
+Sister Agnes was not with her. The major quickened his pace; I clung
+to his hand, and felt without seeing that her ladyship's eyes were
+fixed upon me severely.
+
+"I have brought back your wandering princess, my lady," said the
+major, in his cheery way, as he lifted his hat. Then, as he took her
+proffered hand, "I hope your ladyship is in perfect health."
+
+"No princess, Major Strickland, but a base beggar brat," said Lady
+Pollexfen, without heeding his last words. "From the first moment of
+my seeing her I had a presentiment that she would cause me nothing
+but trouble and annoyance. That presentiment has been borne out by
+facts--by facts!" She nodded her head at the major, and rubbed one
+lean hand viciously within the other.
+
+"Your ladyship forgets that the child herself is here. Pray consider
+her feelings."
+
+"Were my feelings considered by those who sent her to Dupley Walls? I
+ought to have been consulted in the matter--to have had time given me
+to make fresh arrangements. It was enough to be burdened with the cost
+of her maintenance, without the added nuisance of having her before me
+as a continual eyesore. But I have arranged. Next week she leaves
+Dupley Walls for the Continent, and if I never see her face again, so
+much the better for both of us."
+
+"With all due respect to your ladyship, it seems to me that your tone
+is far more bitter than the occasion demands. What may be the
+relationship between Miss Holme and yourself it is quite impossible
+for me to say; but that there is a tie of some sort between you I
+cannot for a moment doubt."
+
+"And pray, Major Strickland, what reason may you have for believing
+that a tie of any kind exists between this young person and the
+mistress of Dupley Walls?"
+
+"I will take my stand on one point: on the extraordinary resemblance
+which this child bears to----"
+
+"To whom, Major Strickland?"
+
+"To one who lies buried in Elvedon churchyard. You know whom I mean.
+Such a likeness is far too remarkable to be the result of accident."
+
+"I deny the existence of any such likeness," said Lady Pollexfen,
+vehemently. "I deny it utterly. You are the victim of your own
+disordered imagination. Likeness, forsooth!" She laughed a bitter
+contemptuous laugh, and seemed to think that she had disposed of the
+question for ever.
+
+"Come here, child," said the major, taking me kindly by the hand, and
+leading me close up to her ladyship. "Look at her, Lady Pollexfen," he
+added; "scan her features thoroughly, and tell me then that the
+likeness of which I speak is nothing more than a figment of my own
+brain."
+
+Lady Pollexfen drew herself up haughtily. "To please you in a whim,
+Major Strickland, which I cannot characterize as anything but
+ridiculous, I will try to discover this fancied resemblance." Speaking
+thus, her ladyship carried her glass to her eye, and favoured me with
+a cold critical stare, under which I felt my blood boil with grief and
+indignation.
+
+"Pshaw! Major Strickland, you are growing old and foolish. I cannot
+perceive the faintest trace of such a likeness as you mention.
+Besides, if it really did exist it would prove nothing. It would
+merely serve to show that there may be certain secrets within Dupley
+Walls which not even Major Strickland's well-known acumen can fathom."
+
+"After that, of course I can only bid your ladyship farewell," said
+the offended major, with a ceremonious bow. Then turning to me:
+"Good-bye, my dear Miss Holme, for the present. Even at this, the
+eleventh hour, I must intercede with Lady Pollexfen to grant you
+permission to come and spend part of next week with us at Rose
+Cottage."
+
+"Oh! take her, and welcome; I have no wish to keep her here. But you
+will stop to dinner, major, when we will talk of these things further.
+And now, Miss Pest, you had better run away. You have heard too much
+already."
+
+I was glad enough to get away, so after a hasty kiss to Major
+Strickland I hurried indoors, and once in my own bedroom, I burst into
+an uncontrollable fit of crying. How cruel had been Lady Pollexfen's
+words! and her looks had been more cruel than they.
+
+I was still weeping when Sister Agnes came into the room. She had but
+just returned from Tydsbury. She knelt beside me, and took me in her
+arms and kissed me, and wiped away my tears. "Why was I crying?" she
+asked. I told her of all that Lady Pollexfen had said.
+
+"Oh! cruel, cruel of her to treat you thus!" she said. "Can nothing
+move her--nothing melt that heart of adamant? But, Janet, dear, you
+must not let her sharp words wound you so deeply. Would that my love
+could shield you from such trials in future. But that cannot always
+be. You must strive to regard such things as part of that stern
+discipline of life which is designed to tutor our wayward hearts and
+rebellious spirits, and bring them into harmony with a will superior
+to our own. And now you must tell me all about your voyage down the
+Adair, and your rescue by that brave George Strickland. Ah! how
+grieved I was, when the news was brought to Dupley Walls, that I could
+not hasten to you, and see with my own eyes that you had come to no
+harm! But I was chained to my post, and could not stir."
+
+Scarcely had Sister Agnes done speaking when the air was filled with a
+strain of music that seemed to be more sweet and solemn than anything
+I had ever heard before. All the soreness melted out of my heart as I
+listened; all my troubles seemed to take to themselves wings, and life
+to put on an altogether different aspect from any it had ever worn to
+me before. I saw clearly that I had not been so good a girl in many
+ways as I might have been. I would try my best not to be so
+inattentive at church in future, and I would never, no, not even on
+the coldest night in winter, neglect to say my prayers before getting
+into bed.
+
+"What is it? Where does it come from?" I whispered into the ear of
+Sister Agnes.
+
+"It is Father Spiridion playing the organ in the west gallery."
+
+"And who is Father Spiridion?"
+
+"A good man, and my friend. Presently you shall be introduced to him."
+
+No word more was spoken till the playing ceased. Then Sister Agnes
+took me by the hand and we went towards the west gallery. Father
+Spiridion saw us, and paused on the top of the stairs.
+
+"This is the child, holy father, of whom I have spoken to you once or
+twice; the child, Janet Holme."
+
+The father's shrewd blue eyes took me in from head to foot at a
+glance. He was a tall, thin, and slightly cadaverous-looking man, with
+high aquiline features; and with an indefinable something about him
+that made me recognise him on the spot as a gentleman. He wore a
+coarse brown robe that reached nearly to his feet, the cowl of which
+was drawn over his head. When Sister Agnes had spoken he laid his hand
+gently on my head, and said something I could not understand. Then
+placing his hand under my chin, he said, "Look me straight in the
+face, child."
+
+I lifted my eyes and looked him fairly in the face, till his blue eyes
+lighted up with a smile. Then patting me on the cheek, he said,
+addressing Sister Agnes, "Nothing shifty there, at any rate. It is a
+face full of candour, and of that innocent fearlessness which
+childhood should always have, but too often loses in an evil world. I
+dare be bound now, little Janet, that thou art fond of sweetmeats?"
+
+"Oh yes, sir, if you please."
+
+"By some strange accident I find here in my _soutane_ a tiny box of
+bonbons. They might have been put there expressly for a little sweet
+tooth of a Janet. Nothing could be more opportune. Take them, child,
+with Father Spiridion's blessing; and sometimes remember his name in
+thy prayers."
+
+I did not see Father Spiridion again before I was sent away to school,
+but in after years our threads of life crossed and re-crossed each
+other strangely, in a way that neither he nor I even dreamed of at
+that first interview.
+
+My life at Dupley Walls lengthened out from day to day, and in many
+ways I was exceedingly happy. My chief happiness lay in the love of
+dear Sister Agnes, with whom I spent at least one or two hours every
+day. Then I was very fond of Major Strickland, who, I felt sure, liked
+me in return--liked me for myself, and liked me still more, perhaps,
+for the strange resemblance which he said I bore to some dear one whom
+he had lost many long years before. Of George Strickland, too, I was
+very fond, but with a shy and diffident sort of liking. I held him as
+so superior to me in every way that I could only worship him from a
+distance. The major fetched me over to Rose Cottage several times.
+Such events were for me holidays in the true sense of the word.
+Another source of happiness arose from the fact that I saw very little
+of Lady Pollexfen. The indifference with which she had at first
+regarded me seemed to have deepened into absolute dislike. I was
+forbidden to enter her apartments, and I took care not to be seen by
+her when she was walking or riding out. I was sorry for her dislike,
+and yet glad that she dispensed with my presence. I was far happier in
+the housekeeper's room, where I was treated like a little queen. Dance
+and I soon learned to love each other very heartily.
+
+Those who have accompanied me thus far may not have forgotten the
+account of my first night at Dupley Walls, nor how frightened I was by
+the sound of certain mysterious footsteps in the room over mine. The
+matter was explained simply enough by Dance next day as a whim of Lady
+Pollexfen, who, for some reason best known to herself, chose that room
+out of all the big old house as the scene of her midnight
+perambulations. When therefore, on one or two subsequent occasions, I
+was disturbed in a similar way, I was no longer frightened, but only
+rendered sleepless and uncomfortable for the time being. I felt at
+such times, so profound was the surrounding silence, as if every
+living creature in the world, save Lady Pollexfen and myself, were
+asleep.
+
+But before long that room over mine acquired for itself in my mind a
+new and dread significance. A consciousness gradually grew upon me
+that there was about it something quite out of the common way; that
+its four walls held within themselves some grim secret, the rites
+appertaining to which were gone through when I and the rest of the
+uninitiated were supposed to be in bed and asleep. I cannot tell what
+it was that first made me suspect the existence of this secret.
+Certainly not the midnight walks of Lady Pollexfen. Perhaps a certain
+impalpable atmosphere of mystery, which, striking keenly on the
+sensitive nerves of a child, strung by recent events to a higher pitch
+than usual, broke down the first fine barrier that separates things
+common and of the earth earthy, from those dim intuitions which even
+the dullest of us feel at times of things spiritual and unseen. But
+however that may be, it so fell out that I, who at school had been one
+of the soundest of sleepers, had now become one of the worst. It often
+happened that I would awake in the middle of the night, even when
+there was no Lady Pollexfen to disturb me, and would so lie,
+sleepless, with wide-staring eyes, for hours, while all sorts of weird
+pictures would paint themselves idly in the waste nooks and corners of
+my brain. One fancy I had, and for many nights I thought it nothing
+more than fancy, that I could hear soft and muffled footsteps passing
+up and down the staircase just outside my door; and that at times I
+could even faintly distinguish them in the room over mine, where,
+however, they never stayed for more than a few minutes at any one
+time.
+
+In one of my daylight explorations about the old house I ventured up
+the flight of stairs that led from the landing outside my door to the
+upper rooms. At the top of these stairs I found a door that differed
+from every other door I had seen at Dupley Walls. In colour it was a
+dull dead black, and it was studded with large square-headed nails. It
+was without a handle of any kind, but was pierced by one tiny keyhole.
+To what strange chamber did this terrible door give access? and who
+was the mysterious visitor who came here night after night with hushed
+footsteps and alone? These were two questions that weighed heavily on
+my mind, that troubled me persistently when I lay awake in the dark,
+and even refused by day to be put entirely on one side.
+
+By-and-by the mystery deepened. In a recess close to the top of the
+flight of stairs that led to the black door was an old-fashioned case
+clock. When this clock struck the hour two small mechanical figures
+dressed like German burghers of the sixteenth century came out of two
+little turrets, bowed gravely to each other, and then retired, like
+court functionaries, backwards. It was a source of great pleasure to
+me to watch these figures go through their hourly pantomime. But after
+a time it came into my head to wonder whether they did their duty by
+night as well as by day, whether they came out and bowed to each other
+in the dark, or waited quietly in their turrets till morning. In
+pursuance of this inquiry I got out of bed one night after Dance had
+left me, and relighted my candle. I knew that it was just on the
+stroke of eleven, and here was a capital opportunity for studying the
+customs of my little burghers by night. I stole up the staircase with
+my candle, and waited for the clock to strike. It struck, and out came
+the figures as usual.
+
+"Perhaps they only came out because they saw my light," I said to
+myself. I felt that the question as to their mode of procedure in the
+dark was still an unsettled one.
+
+But scarcely had the clock finished striking when I was disturbed by
+the shutting of a door downstairs. Fearing that some one was coming,
+and that the light might betray me, I blew out my candle and waited to
+hear more. But all was silent in the house. I turned to go down, but
+as I did so I saw with astonishment that a thin streak of light shone
+from under the black door. I stood like one petrified. Was there any
+one inside the room? Listening intently, I waited for full five
+minutes without stirring a limb. Silence the most profound upstairs
+and down. Stepping on tiptoe, I went back to my room, shut myself in,
+and crept gladly into bed.
+
+Next night my curiosity overmastered my fear. As soon as Dance was
+gone I crept upstairs in the dark. One peep was enough. As on the
+previous night, a thin streak of light shone from under the black
+door--evidence that it was lighted up inside. Next night, and for
+several nights afterwards, I put the same plan in operation with
+precisely the same result. The light was always there.
+
+Having my attention thus concentrated as it were upon this one room,
+and lying awake so many hours when I ought to have been asleep, my
+suspicions gradually merged into certainty that it was visited every
+midnight by some one who came and went so lightly and quietly that
+only by intently listening could I distinguish the exact moment of
+their passing my door. Who was this visitor that came and went so
+mysteriously? To discover this, without being myself discovered, was a
+matter that required both tact and courage, but it was one on which I
+was almost as much a monomaniac as a child well can be. To have opened
+my door when the landing was perfectly dark would have been to see
+nothing. To have opened the door with a candle in my hand would have
+been to betray myself. I must wait for a moonlight night, which would
+light up the landing sufficiently for my purpose. I waited. My
+opportunity came. With my doorway in deep shadow, my door just
+sufficiently open for me to peer through, and with the staircase
+lighted up by the rays of the moon, I saw and recognised the
+mysterious midnight visitor to the room over mine. I saw and
+recognised Sister Agnes.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+EXIT JANET HOLME.
+
+
+The effect upon me of the discovery that Sister Agnes was the midnight
+visitor of the room over mine was at once to stifle that brood of
+morbid fancies with which of late both room and visitor had become
+associated in my mind. I loved her so thoroughly, she was to me so
+complete an embodiment of all that was noble and beautiful in
+womanhood, that however unsatisfying to my curiosity such visits might
+be, I could not doubt that she must have excellent reasons for making
+them. One thing was quite evident, that since she herself had said
+nothing respecting the room and her visits to it, it was impossible
+for me to question her on the matter. Such being the case, I felt that
+it would be a poor return for all her goodness to me to question Dance
+or any other person respecting what she herself wished to keep
+concealed. Besides, it was doubtful whether Dance would tell me
+anything, even if I were to ask her. She had warned me a few hours
+after my arrival at Dupley Walls that there were many things under
+that roof respecting which I must seek no explanation; and with no one
+of the other domestics was I in any way intimate.
+
+Still my curiosity remained unsatisfied; still over the room itself
+hung a veil of mystery which I would fain have lifted. All my visits
+to the room to see whether the light shone under the door had hitherto
+been made previously to the midnight visits of Sister Agnes. The
+question that now arose in my mind was whether the mysterious thread
+of light was or was not visible after Sister Agnes's customary
+visit--whether, in fact, it shone there all the night through. In
+order to solve this doubt I lay awake the night following that of my
+discovery of Sister Agnes. Listening intently, with my bedroom door
+ajar, I heard her go upstairs, and ten minutes later I could just
+distinguish her smothered footfall as she came down. I heard the door
+at the bottom of the corridor shut behind her, and then I knew that I
+was safe.
+
+Slipping out of bed, I stole, barefooted as I was, out of my bedroom
+and up the flight of stairs which led to the black door. Of ghosts in
+the ordinary meaning of that word--in the meaning which it has for
+five children out of six--I had no fear: my fears, such as they were,
+ran in quite another groove. I went upstairs slowly, with shut eyes,
+counting each stair as I put my feet on it from one up to ten. I knew
+that from the tenth stair the streak of light, if there, would be
+visible. On the tenth stair I opened my eyes. There was the thread of
+light shining clear and steady under the black door. For a minute I
+stood looking at it. In the intense silence the beating of my heart
+was painfully audible. Grasping the banister with one hand, I went
+down stairs backwards, step by step, and so regained the sanctuary of
+my own room.
+
+I scarcely know in what terms to describe, or how to make sufficiently
+clear, the strange sort of fascination there was for me in those
+nightly rambles--in living perpetually on the edge of a mystery. While
+daylight lasted the feeling slumbered within me; I could even take
+myself to task for wanting to pry into a secret that evidently in
+nowise concerned me. But as soon as twilight set in, and night's
+shadows began to creep timidly out of their corners, so surely could I
+feel the spell working within me, the desire creeping over me to
+pluck out the heart of the mystery that lay hidden behind the black
+nail-studded door upstairs. Sometimes I clomb the staircase at one
+hour, sometimes at another; but there was no real sleep for me,
+nothing but fitful uneasy dozes, till the brief journey had been made.
+After climbing to the tenth stair, and satisfying myself that the
+light was there, I would creep back noiselessly to bed, and fall at
+once into a deep dreamless sleep that was often prolonged till late in
+the forenoon.
+
+At length there came a night when the secret was laid bare, and the
+spell broken for ever. I had been in bed for two hours and a half,
+lying in that half-dreamy state in which facts and fancies are so
+inextricably jumbled together that it is too much labour to
+disintegrate the two, when the clock struck one. Next moment I was out
+of bed, standing with the handle of the half-opened door in my hand,
+listening to the silence. I had heard Sister Agnes come down some time
+ago, and I felt secure from interruption. To-night the moon shone
+brightly in through a narrow window in the gable, and all the way
+upstairs there was a track of white light as though a company of
+ghosts had lately passed that way. As I went upstairs I counted them
+up to the tenth, and then I stood still. Yes, the thread of light was
+there as it always was, only--only somehow it seemed broader to-night
+than I had ever noticed it as being before. It _was_ broader. I could
+not be mistaken. While I was still pondering over this problem, and
+wondering what it might mean, my eye was taken by the dull gleam of
+some small white object about half way up the door. My eyes were taken
+by it, and would not leave it till I had ascertained what it really
+was. I approached it step by step, slowly, and then I saw that it was
+in reality that which I had imagined it to be. It was a small silver
+key--Sister Agnes's key--which she had forgotten to take away with her
+on leaving the room. Moreover the door was unlocked, having been
+simply pulled to by Sister Agnes on leaving, which explained why the
+streak of light showed larger than common.
+
+I felt as though I were walking in a dream, so unreal did the whole
+business seem to me by this time. I was in a moonlight glamour; the
+influence of the silver orb was upon me. Of self-volition I seemed to
+have little or none left. I was given over to unseen powers, viewless,
+that dwell in space, of which we have ordinarily no human cognition.
+At such moments as these, and I have gone through many of them, I am
+no longer the Janet Holme of everyday life. I am lifted up and beyond
+my ordinary self. I obey a law whose beginning and whose ending I am
+alike ignorant of: but I feel that it is a law and not an impulse. I
+am led blindly forward, but I go unresistingly, feeling that there is
+no power left in me save that of obeying.
+
+Did I push open the door of the secret room, or was it opened for me
+by unseen hands? I know not. I only know that it closed noiselessly
+behind me of its own accord and left me standing there wondering,
+alone, with white face and staring eyes.
+
+The chamber was a large one, or seemed so to me. It was draped
+entirely in black, hiding whatever windows there might be. The
+polished wood floor was bare. The ceiling was painted with a number of
+sprawling Cupids, some of them scattering flowers, others weaving
+leafy chaplets, presumably to crown the inane-looking goddess
+reclining in their midst on a bank of impossible cloud. But both
+Cupids and goddess were dingy with age, and seemed to have grown too
+old for such Arcadian revels.
+
+The room was lighted with a dozen large wax candles placed in four
+silver tripods, each of them about six feet in height, and screwed to
+the floor to prevent their being overturned. All these preparations
+were not without an object. That object was visible in the middle of
+the room. It was a large black coffin studded with silver nails,
+placed on a black slab about four feet in height, and more than half
+covered with a large pall.
+
+I felt no fear at sight of this grim object. I was lifted too far
+above my ordinary self to be afraid. I simply wondered--wondered who
+lay asleep inside the coffin, and how long he or she had been there.
+
+The only article of furniture in the room was a _prie-dieu_ of black
+oak. I knelt on this, and gazed on the coffin, and wondered. My
+curiosity urged me to go up to it, and turn down the pall, and
+ascertain whether the name of the occupant was engraved on the lid.
+But stronger than my curiosity was a certain repugnance to go near it
+which I could not overcome. That some person was shut up there who
+during life had been of importance in the world, I could not doubt.
+This, too, was the room in which Lady Pollexfen took her midnight
+perambulations, and that coffin was the object she came to
+contemplate. Perhaps the occupant of the coffin came out, and walked
+with my lady, and held ghostly converse with her on such occasions. I
+fancied that even now I could hear him breathing heavily, and turning
+over uneasily in his narrow bed. There seemed a rustling, too, among
+the folds of the sombre curtains as though some one were in hiding
+there; and that low faint sobbing sigh which quivered through the
+room, like an accent of unutterable sorrow, whence did it come? Others
+than myself were surely there, though I might not be able to see them.
+
+I knelt on the _prie-dieu_, stirring neither hand nor foot; as
+immovable, in fact, except for my breathing, as a figure cut out of
+stone. Looking and wondering still, after a time it seemed to me that
+the lights were growing dimmer, that the room was growing colder; that
+some baleful presence was beside me with malicious intent to gradually
+numb and chill the life out of me, to freeze me, body and soul, till
+the two could no longer hold together; and that when morning came, if
+ever it did come to that accursed room, my husk would be there indeed,
+but Janet Holme herself would be gone for ever. A viewless horror
+stirred my hair, and caused my flesh to creep. The baneful influence
+that was upon me was deepening in intensity; every minute that passed
+seemed to render me more powerless to break the spell. Suddenly the
+clock struck two. At the same moment a light footfall sounded on the
+stairs outside. It was Sister Agnes coming back to lock the door, and
+to fetch the key which she had left behind two hours before. I heard
+her approach the door, and I saw the door itself pulled close to; then
+the key was turned, the bolt shot into its place, the key was
+withdrawn, and I was left locked up alone in that terrible room.
+
+But the proximity of another human being sufficed to break the spell
+under which I had been powerless only a minute before. Better risk
+discovery, better risk everything, than be left to pass the night
+where I was. Should that horror settle down upon me again, I felt that
+I must succumb to it. It would crush the life out of me as infallibly
+as though I were in the folds of some huge Python. Long before morning
+I should be dead.
+
+I slid from off the _prie-dieu_, and walking backward, with my eyes
+glancing warily to right and left, I reached the door, and struck it
+with my fists. "Sister Agnes!" I cried, "Sister Agnes! do not leave
+me. I am here alone."
+
+Again the curtains rustled, stirred by invisible fingers; again that
+faint long-drawn sigh ran like an audible shiver through the room. I
+heard eager fingers busy outside the door; a mist swam up before my
+eyes, and next moment I fainted dead away in the arms of Sister Agnes.
+
+For three weeks after that time I lay very ill--lay very close to the
+edge of the grave. But for the ceaseless attentions and tender
+assiduities of Sister Agnes and Dance I should have slipped out of
+life and all my troubles. To them I owe it that I am now alive to
+write these lines. One bright afternoon, as I was approaching
+convalescence, Sister Agnes and I, sitting alone, got into
+conversation respecting the room upstairs, and my visit to it.
+
+"But whose coffin is that, Sister Agnes?" I asked. "And why is it left
+there unburied?"
+
+"It is the coffin of Sir John Pollexfen, her ladyship's late husband,"
+answered Sister Agnes, very gravely. "He died thirteen years ago. By
+his will a large portion of the property left to his widow was
+contingent on his body being kept unburied and above ground for twenty
+years. Lady Pollexfen elected to have the body kept in that room which
+you were so foolish as to visit without permission; and there it will
+probably remain till the twenty years shall have expired. All these
+facts are well known to the household; indeed, to the country for
+miles around; but it was not thought necessary to mention them to a
+child like you, whose stay in the house would be of limited duration
+and to whom such knowledge could be of no possible benefit."
+
+"But why do you visit the room every midnight, Sister Agnes?"
+
+"It is the wish of Lady Pollexfen that, day and night, twelve candles
+shall be kept burning round the coffin, and ever since I came to
+reside at Dupley Walls it has been part of my duty to renew the
+candles once every twenty-four hours. Midnight is the hour appointed
+for the performance of that duty."
+
+"Do you not feel afraid to go there alone at such a time?"
+
+"Dear Janet, what is there to be afraid of? The dead have no power to
+harm us. We shall be as they are in a very little while. They are but
+travellers who have gone before us into a far country, leaving behind
+them a few poor relics, and a memory that, if we have loved them,
+ought to make us look forward with desire to the time when we shall
+see them again."
+
+Three weeks later I left Dupley Walls. Madame Duclos was in London for
+a week, and it was arranged that I should return to France with her.
+Major Strickland took me up to town and saw me safely into her hands.
+My heart was very sad at leaving all my dear new-found friends, but
+Sister Agnes had exhorted me to fortitude before I parted from her,
+and I knew that neither by her, nor the major, nor George, nor Dance,
+should I be forgotten. I saw Lady Pollexfen for a moment before
+leaving. She gave me two frigid fingers, and said that she hoped I
+would be a good girl, and attend assiduously to my lessons, for that
+in after life I should have to depend upon my own industry for a
+living. I felt at the moment that I would much rather do that than
+have to depend through life on her ladyship's bounty.
+
+A few tears would come when the moment arrived for me to say farewell
+to the major. He tried his best, in his hearty affectionate way, to
+cheer me up. I flung my arms round his neck and kissed him tenderly.
+He turned abruptly, seized his hat, and rushed from the room.
+Whereupon, Madame Duclos, who had been trying to look _sympathétique_,
+drew herself up, frowned, and pinched one of my ears viciously.
+Forty-eight hours later I was safely shut up in the Pension Clissot.
+
+
+Here my personal narrative ends. From this point the story of which
+the preceding pages form a part, will be recorded by another pen. It
+was deemed advisable by those to whose opinion in such matters I bow
+without hesitation, that this narrative of certain events in the
+life of a child--a necessary introduction to the narrative yet to
+come--should be written by the person whom it most concerned. Now that
+her task is done, she abnegates at once (and thankfully) the first
+person singular in favour of the third, and whatever is told of her in
+the following pages, is told not by herself, but by that other pen, of
+which mention is made above.
+
+Between the time when this curtain falls and the next one draws up,
+there is a lapse of seven years.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+BY THE SCOTCH EXPRESS.
+
+
+Among other passengers, on a certain fine spring morning, by the 10
+a.m. Scotch express, was one who had been so far able to propitiate
+the guard as to secure a whole compartment to himself. He was enjoying
+himself in a quiet way--smoking, and skimming his papers, and taking a
+bird's-eye view now and again at the landscape that was flying past
+him at the rate of forty miles an hour. Few people who cared to
+speculate as to his profession would have hesitated to set him down as
+a military man, even had not the words, "Captain Ducie," painted in
+white letters on a black portmanteau which protruded half-way from
+under his seat, rendered any such speculation needless. He must have
+been three or four-and-forty years old, judging from the lines about
+his mouth and eyes, but in some other respects he looked considerably
+younger. He wore neither beard nor whiskers, but his short hair, and
+his thick, drooping moustache were both jet black, and betrayed as
+yet, thanks either to Nature or Art, none of those straggling streaks
+of silver which tell so plainly of the advance of years. He had a
+clear olive complexion, a large aquiline nose, and deep-set eyes,
+piercing, and full of fire, under a grand sweep of eyebrow. In person
+he was tall and thin; broad-chested, but lean in the flank, with hands
+and feet that looked, almost effeminate, so small were they in
+comparison with his size. A black frock-coat, tightly buttoned, set
+off to advantage a figure of which he might still be reasonably proud.
+The remainder of his costume was in quiet keeping with the first
+fashion of the period.
+
+Captain Ducie smoked and read and stared out of the window much as
+eleven out of twelve of us would do under similar circumstances, while
+milepost after milepost flashed out for an instant and was gone. After
+a time he took a letter out of his breast pocket, opened it, and read
+it. It was brief, and ran as under:--
+
+
+     "Stapleton, Scotland,
+
+        "March 31st.
+
+"My Dear Ned,--Since you wish it, come down here for a few weeks;
+whether to recruit your health or your finances matters not. Mountain
+air and plain living are good for both, However, I warn you beforehand
+that you will find us very dull. Lady B.'s health is hardly what it
+ought to be, and we are seeing no company just now. If you like to
+take us as we are, I say again--come.
+
+"As for the last paragraph of your letter, I scarcely know in what
+terms to answer it. You have already bled me so often the same way,
+that I have grown heartily sick of the process. This must be the last
+time of asking, my boy; I wish you clearly to understand that. This
+place has cost me a great deal of money of late, and I cannot spring
+you more than a hundred. For that amount I enclose you a cheque.
+_Finis coronat opus_. Bear those words in mind, and believe me when I
+say that you have had your last cheque.
+
+     "From your affectionate cousin,
+
+                            "Barnstake."
+
+
+"Consummate little prig!" murmured Captain Ducie to himself as he
+refolded the letter, and put it away. "I can fancy the smirk on his
+face as he penned that precious effusion, and how, when he had
+finished it, he would trot off to his clothes-prop of a wife and ask
+her whether she did not think it at once amusing and severe. That
+letter shall cost your lordship fifty guineas. I don't allow people to
+write to me in that style with impunity."
+
+He lighted another cigar frowningly. "I wonder if I was ever so really
+hard up as I am now," he continued to himself. "I don't think I ever
+was quite. I have been in Queer Street many a time, but I've always
+found a friend round the corner, or have pulled myself through by the
+skin of the teeth somehow. But this time I see no lift in the cloud.
+My insolvency has become chronic; it is attacking the very citadel
+of life. I have not a single uncle or aunt to fall back upon. The
+poor creatures are all dead and buried, and their money all spent.
+Well!--Outlaw is an ugly word, but it is one that I shall have to
+learn how to spell before long. I shall have to leave my country for
+my country's good." He puffed away fiercely for a little while, and
+then he resumed. "It would not be a bad thing for a fellow like me to
+become a chief among the Red Skins--if they would have me. With them
+my lack of pence would be no bar to success. I can swim, and shoot,
+and ride: although I cannot paint a picture, I daresay that I could
+paint myself; and I know several fellows whose scalps I should have
+much pleasure in taking. As for the so-called amenities of civilized
+life, what are they worth to one who, like me, has no longer the means
+of enjoying them? After all, it is a question whether freedom and the
+prairie would not be preferable to Pall-Mall and a limited income of,
+say--twelve hundred a year--the sort of income that is just enough to
+make one the slave of society, but is not sufficient to pay for
+gilding its fetters. A station, by Jove! and with it the possibility
+of getting a drop of cognac."
+
+As soon as the train came to a stand, Captain Ducie vacated his seat
+and went in search of the refreshment-room. On coming back five
+minutes later, he was considerably disgusted to find that he was no
+longer to have his compartment to himself. The seat opposite to that
+on which he had been sitting was already occupied by a gentleman who
+was wrapped up to the nose in rugs and furs.
+
+"Any objection to smoking?" asked the captain presently as the train
+began to move. He was pricking the end of a fresh cigar as he asked
+the question. The words might be civil, but the tone was offensive; it
+seemed to convey--"I don't care whether you object or not: I intend to
+enjoy my weed all the same."
+
+The stranger, however, seemed in nowise offended. He smirked and
+quavered two yellow gloved fingers out of his furs. "Oh, no, certainly
+not," he said. "I too am a smoker and shall join you presently." He
+spoke with the slightest possible foreign accent, just sufficient to
+tell an educated ear that he was not an Englishman. If Captain Ducie's
+features were aquiline, those of the stranger might be termed
+vulturine--long, lean, narrow, with a thin high-ridged nose, and a
+chin that was pointed with a tuft of thick black hair. Except for this
+tuft he was clean shaven. His black hair, cropped close at back and
+sides, was trained into an elaborate curl on the top of the forehead
+and there fixed with _cosmètique_. Both hair and chin-tuft were of
+that uncompromising blue-black which tells unmistakably of the
+dye-pot. His skin was yellow and parchment-like, and stretched tightly
+over his forehead and high cheek bones, but puckering into a perfect
+network of lines about a mouth whose predominant expression was one of
+mingled cynicism and suspicion. There was suspicion, too, in his small
+black eyes, as well as a sort of lurking fierceness which not even his
+most urbane and elaborate smile could altogether eliminate. In person
+he was very thin and somewhat under the middle height, and had all the
+air of a confirmed valetudinarian. He was dressed as no English
+gentleman would care to be seen dressed in public. A long brown velvet
+coat trimmed with fur; lavender-coloured trowsers tightly strapped
+over patent leather boots; two or three vests of different colours
+under one made of the skin of some animal and fastened with gold
+buttons; a profusion of jewellery; an embroidered shirt-front and deep
+turn-down collar: such were the chief items of his attire. A hat with
+a very curly brim hung from the carriage roof, while for present
+head-gear be wore a sealskin travelling cap with huge lappets that
+came below his ears. In this cap, and wrapped to the chin in his
+bear-skin rug, he looked like some newly-discovered species of
+animal--a sort of cross between a vulture and a monkey, were such a
+thing possible, combining the deep-seated fierceness of the one with
+the fantastic cunning, and the impossibility of doing the most serious
+things without a grimace, of the other.
+
+No sooner had Captain Ducie lighted his cigar than with an impatient
+movement he put down the window close to which he was sitting. It had
+been carefully put up by the stranger while Ducie was in the
+refreshment room; but the latter was a man who always studied his own
+comfort before that of any one else, except when self whispered to him
+that such a course was opposed to his own interests, which was more
+than he could see in the present case.
+
+The stranger gave a little sniggering laugh as the window fell
+noisily; then he shivered and drew his furs more closely around him.
+"It is strange how fond you English people are of what you call fresh
+air," he said. "In Italy fresh air may be a luxury, but it cannot be
+had in your hang-dog climate without one takes a catarrh at the same
+time."
+
+Captain Ducie surveyed him coolly from head to foot for a moment or
+two. Then a sudden thought seemed to strike him. "I must really ask
+you to pardon my rudeness," he said, lifting his Glengarry. "If the
+open window is the least annoyance to you, by all means let it be
+shut. To me it is a matter of perfect indifference." As he spoke he
+pulled the window up, and then he turned on the stranger with a look
+that seemed to imply: "Although I seemed so truculent a few minutes
+ago, you see what a good-natured fellow I am at heart." In most of
+Captain Ducie's actions there was some ulterior motive at work,
+however trivial many of his actions might appear to an outsider, and
+in the present case it was not likely that he acted out of mere
+complaisance to a man whom he had never seen nor heard of ten minutes
+previously.
+
+"You are too good--really far too good," said the stranger. "Suppose
+we compromise the matter?" With that his lean hands, encased in
+lemon-coloured gloves, let down the window a couple of inches, and
+fixed it there with the strap.
+
+"Now really, you know, do just as you like about it," said the
+captain, with that slow amused smile which became his face so well.
+"As I said before, I am altogether indifferent in the matter."
+
+"As it is now, it will suit both of us, I think. And now to join you
+in your smoke."
+
+From the net over his head he reached down a small mahogany case. This
+he opened, and from it extracted a large meerschaum pipe elaborately
+mounted with gold filigree work. Having charged the pipe from an
+embroidered pouch filled with choice Turkish tobacco, he struck an
+allumette and began to smoke.
+
+"Decidedly an acquaintance worth cultivating," murmured the captain
+under his breath.
+
+"But what country does the beggar belong to?" A question more easily
+asked than answered: at all events, it was one which the captain found
+himself unable to solve to his own satisfaction. For a few minutes
+they smoked in silence.
+
+"Do you travel far, to-day?" asked the stranger at length. "Are you
+going across the Border?"
+
+"The end of my journey is Stapleton, Lord Barnstake's place, and not a
+great way from Edinbro'. Shall I have the pleasure of your Company as
+far as I go by rail?"
+
+"Ah, no, sir, not so far as that. Only to ----. There I must leave
+you, and take the train for Windermere. I live on the banks of your
+beautiful lake. Permettez-moi, monsieur," and with a movement that was
+a combination of a shrug, a grimace, and a bow, the stranger drew a
+card-case from one of his pockets, and extracting a card therefrom,
+handed it to Ducie.
+
+The captain took it with a bow, and sticking his glass in his eye,
+read:
+
+
+     M. Paul Platzoff.
+
+   _Bon Repos_,
+      _Windermere_.
+
+
+The captain in return handed over his pasteboard credential, and this
+solemn rite being accomplished conversation was resumed on more easy
+and agreeable terms.
+
+"I dare say you are puzzling your brains as to my nationality," said
+Platzoff with a smile. "I am not an Englishman; that you can tell from
+my accent. I am not a Frenchman, although I write 'monsieur' before my
+name. Still less am I either a German or an Italian. Neither am I a
+genuine Russian, although I look to Russia as my native country. In
+brief, my father was a Russian, my mother was a Frenchwoman, and I was
+born on board a merchantman during a gale of wind in the Baltic."
+
+"Then I should call you a true cosmopolitan--a genuine citizen of the
+world," remarked Ducie, who was amused with his new friend's
+frankness.
+
+"In ideas I strive to be such, but it is difficult at all times to
+overcome the prejudices of education and early training," answered
+Platzoff. "You, sir, are, I presume, in the army?"
+
+"Formerly I was in the army, but I sold out nearly a dozen years ago,"
+answered Ducie, drily. "Does this fellow expect me to imitate his
+candour?" thought the captain. "Would he like to know all about my
+grandfather and grandmother, and that I have a cousin who is an earl?
+If so, I am afraid he will be disappointed.
+
+"Did you see much service while you were in the army?" asked Platzoff.
+
+"I saw a good deal of hard fighting in the East, although not on any
+large scale." Ducie was beginning to get restive. He was not the sort
+of man to quietly allow himself to be catechized by a stranger.
+
+"I too know something of the East," said Platzoff. "Three of the
+happiest years of my life were spent in India. While out there I
+became acquainted with several gentlemen of your profession. With
+Colonel Leslie I was particularly intimate. I had been stopping with
+the poor fellow only a few days before that gallant affair at
+Ruckapore, in which he came by his death."
+
+"I remember the affair you speak of," said Ducie. "I was in one of the
+other presidencies at the time it happened."
+
+"There was another officer in poor Leslie's regiment with whom I was
+also on very intimate terms. He died of cholera a little later on, and
+I attended him in his last moments. I allude to a Captain Charles
+Pollexfen. Did you ever meet with him in your travels?"
+
+Captain Ducie's swarthy cheek deepened its hue. He paused to blow a
+speck of cigar ash off his sleeve before he spoke. "I did not know
+your Captain Charles Pollexfen," he said, in slow deliberate accents.
+"Till the present moment I never heard of his existence."
+
+Captain Ducie pulled his Glengarry over his brows, folded his arms,
+and shut his eyes. He had evidently made up his mind for a quiet
+snooze. Platzoff regarded him with a silent snigger. "Something I have
+said has pricked the gallant captain under his armour," he muttered to
+himself. "Is it possible that he and Pollexfen were acquainted with
+each other in India? But what matters it to me if they were?"
+
+When M. Platzoff had smoked his meerschaum to the last whiff, he put
+it carefully away, and disposed himself to follow Ducie's example in
+the matter of sleep. He rearranged his wraps, folded his arms, shut
+his eyes, and pressed his head resolutely against the cushion; but at
+the end of five minutes he opened his eyes, and seemed just as wakeful
+as before. "These beef-fed Englishmen seem as if they can sleep
+whenever and wherever they choose. Enviable faculty! daresay the
+heifers on which they gorge possess it in almost as great perfection."
+
+Hidden away among his furs was a small morocco-covered despatch-box.
+This he now proceeded to unlock, and to draw from it a folded paper
+which, on being opened, displayed a closely-written array of figures,
+as though it were the working out of some formidable problem in
+arithmetic. Platzoff smiled, and his smile was very different from his
+cynical snigger, as his eyes ran over the long array of figures. "I
+must try and get this finished as soon as I am back at Bon Repos," he
+muttered to himself. "I am frightened when I think what would happen
+if I were to die before its completion. My great secret would die with
+me, and perhaps hundreds of years would pass away before it would be
+brought to light. What a discovery it would be! To those concerned it
+would seem as though they had found the key-note of some lost
+religion--as though they had penetrated into some temple dedicated to
+the gods of Eld."
+
+His soliloquy was suddenly interrupted by three piercing shrieks from
+the engine, followed by a terrible jolting and swaying of the
+carriage, which made it almost impossible for those inside to keep
+their seats. Captain Ducie was alive to the danger in a moment. One
+glance out of the window was enough. "We are off the line! Hold fast!"
+he shouted to Platzoff, drawing up his legs, and setting his teeth,
+and looking very fierce and determined. M. Platzoff tried to follow
+his English friend's example. His yellow complexion faded to a sickly
+green. With eyes in which there was no room now for anything save
+anguish and terror unspeakable, he yet snarled at the mouth and showed
+his teeth like a wolf brought hopelessly to bay.
+
+The swaying and jolting grew worse. There was a grinding and
+crunching under the wheels of the carriage as though a thousand huge
+coffee-mills were at work. Suddenly the train parted in the middle,
+and while the forepart, with the engine, went ploughing through the
+ballast till brought up in safety a few hundred yards further on, the
+carriage in which were Ducie and Platzoff, together with the hinder
+part of the train, went toppling over a high embankment, and crashing
+down the side, and rolling over and over, came to a dead stand at the
+bottom, one huge mass of wreck and disaster.
+
+Captain Edmund Ducie was one of the first to emerge from the wreck. He
+crept out of the broken window of the crushed-up carriage, and shook
+himself as a dog might have done. "Once more a narrow squeak for
+life," he said, half aloud. "If I had been worth ten thousand a year,
+I should infallibly have been smashed. Not being worth ten brass
+farthings, here I am. What has become of my little Russian, I wonder?"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX.
+AT THE "GOLDEN GRIFFIN."
+
+
+No groan or cry emanated from that portion of the broken carriage out
+of which Captain Ducie had just crept. Could it be possible that
+Platzoff was killed? With considerable difficulty Ducie managed to
+wrench open the smashed door. Then he called the Russian by name; but
+there was no answer. He could discern nothing inside save a confused
+heap of rugs and minor articles of luggage. Under these, enough in
+themselves to smother him, Platzoff must be lying. One by one these
+articles were fished out of the carriage, and thrown aside by Ducie.
+Last of all he came to Platzoff, lying in a heap, white and
+insensible, like one already dead. Putting forth all his great
+strength, Ducie lifted the senseless body out of the carriage as
+carefully and tenderly as though it were that of a new-born child. He
+then saw that the Russian was bleeding from an ugly jagged wound at
+the back of his head. There was no trace of any other outward hurt. A
+faint pulsation of the heart told that he was still alive. On looking
+round, Ducie saw that there was a large country tavern only a few
+hundred yards from the scene of the accident. Towards this house,
+which announced itself to the world under the title of "The Golden
+Griffin," he now hastened with long measured strides, carrying the
+still insensible Russian in his arms. In all, some half-dozen
+carriages had come over the embankment. The shrieks and cries of the
+wounded passengers were something appalling. Already the passengers in
+the fore part of the train, who had escaped unhurt, together with the
+officials and a few villagers who happened to be on the spot, were
+doing their best to rescue these unfortunates from the terrible
+wreckage in which they were entangled.
+
+Captain Ducie was the first man from the accident to cross the
+threshold of the "Golden Griffin." He demanded to be shown the best
+spare room in the house. On the bed in this room he laid the body of
+the still insensible Platzoff. His next act was to despatch a mounted
+messenger for the nearest doctor. Then, having secured the services of
+a brisk steady-nerved chambermaid, he proceeded to dress the wound as
+well as the means at his command would allow of--washing it, and
+cutting away the hair, and, by means of some ice, which he was
+fortunate enough to procure, succeeding in all but stopping the
+bleeding, which, to a man so frail of body, so reduced in strength as
+Platzoff, would soon have been fatal. A teaspoonful of brandy
+administered at brief intervals did its part as a restorative, and
+some minutes before the doctor's arrival Ducie had the satisfaction of
+seeing his patient's eyes open, and of hearing him murmur faintly a
+few soft guttural words in some language which the captain judged to
+be his native Russ.
+
+Platzoff had quite recovered his senses by the time the doctor
+arrived, but was still too feeble to do more than whisper a few
+unconnected words. There were many claimants this forenoon on the
+doctor's attention, and the services required by Platzoff at his hands
+had to be performed as expeditiously as possible.
+
+"You must make up your mind to be a guest of the 'Golden Griffin' for
+at least a week to come," he said as he took up his hat preparatory to
+going. "With quiet, and care, and a strict adherence to my
+instructions, I daresay that by the end of that time you will be
+sufficiently recovered to leave here for your own home. Humanly
+speaking, sir, you owe your life to this gentleman," indicating Ducie.
+"But for his skill and promptitude, you would have been a dead man
+before I reached you."
+
+Platzoff's thin white hand was extended feebly. Ducie took it in his
+sinewy palms and pressed it gently. "You have this day done for me
+what I can never forget," whispered the Russian, brokenly. Then he
+closed his eyes, and seemed to sink off into a sleep of exhaustion.
+
+Leaving strict injunctions with the chambermaid not to quit the room
+till he should come back, Captain Ducie went downstairs with the
+intention of revisiting the scene of the disaster. He called in at the
+bar to obtain his favourite "thimbleful" of cognac, and there he found
+a very agreeable landlady with whom he got into conversation
+respecting the accident. Some five minutes had passed thus when he was
+touched on the shoulder by the chambermaid. "If you please, sir, the
+foreign gentleman has woke up, and is anxiously asking to see you."
+
+With a shrug of the shoulders, and a slight lowering of his black
+eyebrows, Captain Ducie went back upstairs. Platzoff's eager eyes
+fixed him as he entered the room. Ducie sat down close by the bed, and
+said in a kindly tone: "What is it? What can I do for you? Command me
+in any way."
+
+"My servant--where is he? And--and my despatch box. Valuable papers.
+Try to find it."
+
+Ducie nodded and left the room. The inquiries he made soon elicited
+the fact that Platzoff's servant had been even more severely injured
+than his master, and was at that moment lying, more dead than alive,
+in a little room upstairs. Slowly and musingly, with hands in pocket,
+Captain Ducie then took his way towards the scene of the accident. "It
+may suit my book very well to make friends with this Russian," he
+thought as he went along. "He is no doubt very rich, and I am very
+poor. In us the two extremes meet, and form the perfect whole. He
+might serve my purposes in more ways than one, and it is just as
+likely that his purposes might be served by me: for a man like that
+must have purposes that want serving. Nous verrons. Meanwhile, I am
+his obedient servant to command."
+
+Captain Ducie, hunting about among the débris of the train, was not
+long in finding the fragments of M. Platzoff's despatch box. Its
+contents were scattered about. Ducie spent ten minutes in gathering
+together the various letters and documents which it had contained.
+Then, with the broken box under his arm, and the papers in his hands,
+he went back to the Russian.
+
+He showed the papers one by one to Platzoff, who was strangely eager
+in the matter. When Ducie held, up the last of them, Platzoff groaned
+and shut his eyes. "They are all there as far as I can judge," he
+murmured, "except the most important one of all--a paper covered with
+figures, of no use to any one but myself. Oh, dear Captain Ducie! do
+please go once more and try to find the one that is still missing. If
+I only knew that it was burnt, or torn into fragments, I should not
+mind so much. But if it were to fall into the hands of a scoundrel
+skilful enough to master the secret which it contains, then I----." He
+stopped with a scared look on his face, as though he had unwittingly
+said more than he had intended.
+
+"Pray don't trouble yourself with any explanations just now," said
+Ducie. "You want the paper: that is enough. I will go and have a
+thorough hunt for it."
+
+Back went Ducie to the broken carriages, and began to search more
+carefully than before. "What can be the nature of the great secret, I
+wonder, that is hidden between the Sibylline leaves I am in search of?
+If what Platzoff's words implied be true, he who learns it is master
+of the situation. Would that it were known to me!"
+
+Slowly and carefully, inside and out of the carriage in which he and
+Platzoff had travelled, Captain Ducie conducted his search. One by one
+he again turned over the wraps and different articles of personal
+luggage belonging to both of them, which had not yet been removed. The
+first object that rewarded his search was a splendid diamond pin which
+he remembered having seen in Platzoff's scarf. Ducie picked it up and
+looked cautiously around. No one was regarding him. "Of the first
+water, and worth a hundred guineas at the very least," he muttered.
+Then he put it in his waistcoat pocket, and went on with his search.
+
+A minute or two later, hidden away under one of the cushions of the
+carriage, he found what he was looking for: a folded sheet of thick
+blue paper covered with a complicated array of figures--that and
+nothing more.
+
+Captain Ducie regarded the recovered treasure with a strange mixture
+of feelings. His hands trembled slightly; his heart was beating more
+quickly than usual; his eyes seemed to see and yet not to see the
+paper in his hands. Like one mazed and in deep doubt he stood.
+
+His reverie was broken by the approach of some of the railway
+officials. The cloud vanished from before his eyes, and he was his
+cool imperturbable self in a moment. Heading the long array of figures
+on the parchment were a few lines of ordinary writing, written,
+however, not in English, but Italian. These few lines Ducie now
+proceeded to read over more attentively than he had done at the first
+glance. He was sufficiently master of Italian to be able to translate
+them without much difficulty. Translated they ran as under:--
+
+     "Bon Repos,
+
+          "Windermere."
+
+
+"Carlo Mio,--In the Amsterdam edition of 1698 of _The Confessions of
+Parthenio the Mystic_ occur the passages given below. To your serious
+consideration, O! friend of my heart, I recommend these words. To read
+them, much patience is required. But they are freighted with wisdom,
+as you will discover long before you reach the end of them, and have a
+deep significance for that Great Cause to which the souls of both of
+us are knit by bonds which in this life can never be severed. When you
+read these lines, the hand that writes them will be cold in the grave.
+But Nature allows nothing to be lost, and somewhere in the wide
+universe the better part of me (the mystic Ego) will still exist;
+and if there be any truth in the doctrine of the Affinity of Souls,
+then shall you and I meet again elsewhere. Till that time shall
+come--Adieu!
+
+     "Thine,
+
+       "Paul Platzoff."
+
+
+Having carefully read these lines twice over, Captain Ducie refolded
+the paper, put it away in an inner pocket, and buttoned his coat over
+it. Then he took his way, deep in thought, back to the "Golden
+Griffin."
+
+The Russian's eager eyes asked him "What success?" before he could say
+a word.
+
+"I am sorry to say that I have not been able to find the paper," said
+Captain Ducie in slow deliberate tones. "I have found something
+else--your diamond pin, which you appear to have lost out of your
+scarf."
+
+Platzoff gazed at him with a sort of blank despair on his saffron
+face, but a low moan was his only reply. Then he turned his face to
+the wall and shut his eyes.
+
+Captain Ducie was a patient man, and he waited without speaking for a
+full hour. At the end of that time Platzoff turned, and held out a
+feeble hand. "Forgive me, my friend, if you will allow me to call you
+so," he said. "I must seem horribly ungrateful after all the trouble I
+have put you to, but I do not feel so. The loss of my MS. affected me
+so deeply for a little while that I could think of nothing else. I
+shall get over it by degrees."
+
+"If I remember rightly," remarked Ducie, "you said that the lost MS.
+was merely a complicated array of figures. Of what possible value can
+it be to any one who may chance to find it?"
+
+"Of no value whatever," answered Platzoff, "unless they who find it
+should also be skilful enough to discover the key by which alone it
+can be read; for, as I may now tell you, there is a hidden meaning in
+the figures. The finders I may or may not make that discovery, but how
+am I to ascertain what is the fact either one way or the other? For
+want of such knowledge my sense of security will be gone. I would
+almost prefer to know for certain that the MS. had been read than be
+left in utter doubt on the point. In the one case I should know what I
+had to contend against, and could take proper precautionary measures;
+in the other, I am left to do battle with a shadow that may or may not
+be able to work me harm."
+
+"Would possession of the information that is contained in the MS.
+enable any one to work you harm?"
+
+"It would to this extent, that it would put them in possession of a
+cherished secret, which . . . . but why talk of these things? What is
+done cannot be undone. I can only prepare myself for the worst."
+
+"One moment," said Ducie. "I think that after the thorough search made
+by me the chances are twenty to one against the MS. ever being found.
+But granting that it does turn up, the finder of it will probably be
+some ignorant navvie or incurious official, without either inclination
+or ability to master the secret of the cipher."
+
+
+Ten days later M. Platzoff was sufficiently recovered to set out for
+Bon Repos. At his earnest request Ducie had put off his own journey to
+stay with him. At another time the ex-captain might not have cared to
+spend ten days at a forlorn country tavern, even with a rich Russian;
+but, as he often told himself, he had "his book to make," and he
+probably looked upon this as a necessary part of the process. Before
+they parted it was arranged that as soon as Ducie should return from
+Scotland he should go and spend a month at Bon Repos. Then the two
+shook hands, and each went his own way. As one day passed after
+another without bringing any tidings of the lost MS., Platzoff's
+anxiety respecting it seemed to lessen, and by the time he left the
+"Golden Griffin" he had apparently ceased to trouble his mind any
+further in the matter.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X.
+THE STOLEN MANUSCRIPT.
+
+
+Captain Edmund Ducie came of a good family. His people were people of
+mark among the landed gentry of their county, and were well to do even
+for their position. Although only a fourth son his allowance had been
+a very handsome one, both while at Cambridge and afterwards during the
+early years of his life in the army. When of age, he had come into the
+very nice little fortune, for a fourth son, of nine thousand pounds;
+and it was known that there would be "something handsome" for him at
+his father's death, He had a more than ordinary share of good looks;
+his mind was tolerably cultivated, and afterwards enlarged by travel
+and service in various parts of the world; in manners and address he
+was a finished gentleman of the modern "swell" school. Yet all these
+advantages of nature and fortune were in a great measure nullified and
+rendered of no avail by reason of one fatal defect, of one black speck
+at the core. In a word, Captain Ducie was a born gambler.
+
+He had gambled when a child in the nursery, or had tried to gamble,
+for cakes and toys. He had gambled when at school for coppers,
+pocketknives, and marbles. He had gambled when at the University, and
+had felt the claws of the Children of Usury. He gambled away his nine
+thousand pounds, or such remainder of it as had not been forestalled,
+when he came of age. Later on, when in the army, and on home allowance
+again, for his father would not let him starve, he had kept on
+gambling; so that when, some five years later, his father died, and he
+dropped in for the "something handsome," two-thirds of it had to be
+paid down on the nail to make a free man of him again. On the
+remaining one-third he contrived to keep afloat for a couple of years
+longer; then, after a season of heavy losses, came the final crash,
+and Captain Ducie found himself under the necessity of selling his
+commission, and of retiring into private life.
+
+From this date Captain Ducie was compelled to live by "bleeding" his
+friends and connexions. He was a great favourite among them, and they
+rallied gallantly to his rescue. But Ducie still gambled; and the best
+of friends, and the most indulgent of relatives, grew tired after a
+time of seeing their cherished gold pieces slip heedlessly through the
+fingers of the man whom it was intended that they should substantially
+help, and be lost in the foul gutter of a gaming-house. One by one
+friend and relative dropped away from the doomed man till none were
+left. Little by little the tide of fortune ebbed away from his feet,
+leaving him stranded high and dry on the cruel shore of impecuniosity,
+hemmed in by a thousand debts, with the gaunt wolf of beggary staring
+him in the face.
+
+There was one point about Captain Ducie's gambling that redounded to
+his credit. No one ever suspected him of cheating. His "run of luck"
+was so uniformly bad, despite a brief fickle gleam of fortune now and
+again, which seemed sent only to lure him on to deeper destruction; it
+was so well known that he had spent two fortunes and alienated all his
+friends through his passion for the green cloth; that it would have
+been the height of absurdity to even suspect him of roguery. Indeed,
+"Ducie's luck" was a proverbial phrase at the whist-tables of his
+club. He was not a "turf" man, and had no knowledge of horses beyond
+that legitimate knowledge which every soldier ought to have. His money
+had all been lost either at cards or roulette. He was one of the most
+imperturbable of gamblers. Whatever the varying chances of the game
+might be, no man ever saw him either elated or depressed: he fought
+with his vizor down.
+
+No man could be more aware of his one besetting weakness, nor of his
+inability to conquer it, than was Captain Ducie. When he could no
+longer muster five pounds to gamble with, he would gamble with five
+shillings. There was a low public-house in Southwark to which, poorly
+dressed, he sometimes went when his funds were low. Here, unknown to
+the police, a little quiet gambling for small stakes went on from
+night to night. But however small might be the amount involved, there
+was the passion, the excitement, the gambling contagion, precisely as
+at Homburg or Baden; and these it was that made the very salt of
+Captain Ducie's life.
+
+About six months before we made his acquaintance he had been compelled
+to leave his pleasant suite of apartments in New Bond-street, and had,
+since that time, been the tenant of a shabby bedroom in a shabby
+little out-of-the-way street. When in town he took his meals at his
+club, and to that address all letters and papers for him were sent.
+But of late even the purlieus of his club had become dangerous ground.
+Round the palatial portal duns seemed to hover and flit mysteriously,
+so that the task of reaching the secure haven of the smoke-room was
+one of danger and difficulty; while the return voyage to the shabby
+little bedroom in the shabby little street could be accomplished in
+safety only by frequent tacking, and much skilful pilotage, to avoid
+running foul of various rocks and quicksands by the way.
+
+But now, after a six weeks' absence in Scotland, Captain Ducie felt
+that for a day or two at least he was tolerably safe. He felt like an
+old fox venturing into the open after the noise of the hunt has died
+away in the distance, who knows that for a little while he is safe
+from molestation. How delightful town looked, he thought, after the
+dull life he had been leading at Stapleton. He had managed to screw
+another fifty pounds out of Barnstake, and this very evening, the
+first of his return, he would go to Tom Dawson's rooms and there
+refresh himself with a little quiet faro or chicken-hazard: very quiet
+it must of necessity be unless he saw that it was going to turn out
+one of his lucky evenings, in which case he would try to "put up" the
+table and finish with a fortunate coup. But there was one little task
+that he had set himself to do before going out for the evening, and he
+proceeded to consider it over while discussing his cup of strong green
+tea and his strip of dry toast. To aid him in considering the matter
+he brought out of an inner pocket the stolen manuscript of M.
+Platzoff.
+
+While in Scotland, when shut up in his own room of a night, he had
+often exhumed the MS., and had set himself seriously to the task of
+deciphering it, only to acknowledge at the end of a terrible half-hour
+that he was ignominiously beaten. Whereupon he would console himself
+by saying that such a task was "not in his line," that his brains were
+not of that pettifogging order which would allow of his sitting down
+with the patience requisite to master the secret of the figures.
+To-night, for the twentieth time, he brought out the MS. He again read
+the prefatory note carefully over, although he could almost have said
+it by heart, and once more his puzzled eyes ran over the complicated
+array of figures, till at last, with an impatient "Pish!" he flung the
+MS. to the other side of the table, and poured out for himself another
+cup of tea.
+
+"I must send it to Bexell," he said to himself. "If anybody can make
+it out, he can. And yet I don't like making another man as wise as
+myself in such a matter. However, there is no help for it in the
+present case. If I keep the MS. by me till doomsday I shall never
+succeed in making out the meaning of those confounded figures."
+
+When he had finished his tea he took out his writing-desk and wrote as
+under:
+
+
+"My Dear Bexell,--I have only just got back from Scotland after an
+absence of six weeks. I have brought with me a severe catarrh, a new
+plaid, a case of Mountain Dew, and a MS. written in cipher. The first
+and second of these articles I retain for my own use. Of the third I
+send you half a dozen bottles by way of sample: a judicious imbibition
+of the contents will be found to be a sovereign remedy for the Pip and
+other kindred disorders that owe their origin to a melancholy frame of
+mind. The fourth article on my list I send you bodily. It has been
+lent to me by a friend of mine who states that he found it in his
+muniment chest among a lot of old title deeds, leases, &c., the first
+time he waded through them after coming into possession of his
+property. Neither he nor any friend to whom he has shown it can make
+out its meaning, and I must confess to being myself one of the
+puzzled. My friend is very anxious to have it deciphered, as he thinks
+it may in some way relate to his property, or to some secret bit of
+family history with which it would be advisable that he should become
+acquainted. Anyhow, he gave it to me to bring to town, with a request
+that I would seek out some one clever in such things, and try to get
+it interpreted for him. Now I know of no one except yourself who is at
+all expert in such matters. You, I remember, used to take a delight
+that to me was inexplicable in deciphering those strange
+advertisements which now and again appear in the newspapers. Let me
+therefore ask of you to bring your old skill to bear in the present
+case, and if you can make me anything like a presentable translation
+to send back to my friend the laird, you will greatly oblige
+
+          "Your friend,
+
+                "E. Ducie."
+
+
+The MS. consisted of three or four sheets of deed-paper fastened
+together at on e corner with silk. The prefatory note was on the first
+sheet. This first sheet Ducie cut away with his penknife and locked up
+in his desk. The remaining sheets he sent to his friend Bexell,
+together with the note which he had written.
+
+Three days later Mr. Bexell returned the sheets with his reply. In
+order properly to understand this reply it will be necessary to offer
+to the reader's notice a specimen of the MS. The conclusions arrived
+at by Mr. Bexell, and the mode by which he reached them, will then be
+more clearly comprehensible:
+
+The following is a counterpart of the first few lines of the MS.:
+
+
+  253.12   59.29   14.5    96.14  158.49    1.29       465.1    28.53
+      4       1      6      10       4       12           9      1
+                  ____________________________________
+   16.36  151.18   58.7    14.29  368.1   209.18 43.11   1.31    1.1
+                  ____________________________________
+     11       3                                           9      8
+   29.6   186.9   204.11   86.19   43.16  348.14       196.29  203.5
+      4       5      10       6      1       5            6      2
+  186.9     1.31   21.10  143.18  200.6    29.40       408.9    61.5
+      5       9      4        8      3       12          11      4
+  209.11  496.1    24.24   28.59   69.39  391.10        60.13  200.1
+      2       6      4        1     10       11           3      3
+
+
+The following is Mr. Bexel's reply to his friend Captain Ducie:
+
+
+"My Dear Ducie,--With this note you will receive back your confounded
+MS., but without a translation. I have spent a good deal of time and
+labour in trying to decipher it, and the conclusions at which I have
+arrived may be briefly laid before you.
+
+"1. Each group of three sets of figures represents a word.
+
+"2. Each group of two sets of figures--those with a line above and a
+line below--represents a letter only.
+
+"3. Those letters put together from the point where the double line
+begins to the point where it ceases, make up a word.
+
+"4. In the composition of this cryptogram _a book_ has been used as the
+basis on which to work.
+
+"5. In every group of three sets of figures the first set represents
+the page of the book; the second, the number of the line on that page,
+probably counting from the top; the third the position in ordinary
+rotation of the word on that line. Thus you have the number of the
+page, the number of the line, and the number of the word.
+
+"6. In the case of the interlined groups of two sets of figures, the
+first set represents the number of the page; the second set the number
+of the line, probably counting from the top, of which line the
+required letter will prove to be the initial one.
+
+"7. The words thus spelled out by the interlined groups of double
+figures are, in all probability, proper names, or other uncommon words
+not to be found in their entirety in the book on which the cryptogram
+is based, and consequently requiring to be worked out letter by
+letter.
+
+"8. The book in question is not a dictionary, nor any other work the
+words of which come in alphabetical rotation. It is probably some
+ordinary book which the writer of the cryptogram, and the person for
+whom it is written, have agreed upon beforehand to make use of as a
+key. I have no means of judging whether the book in question is an
+English or a foreign one, but by it alone, whatever it may be, can the
+cryptogram be read.
+
+"Now, my dear Ducie, it would be wearisome for me to describe, and
+equally wearisome for you to read, the processes of reasoning by means
+of which the above deductions have been arrived at. But in order to
+satisfy you that my assumptions are not entirely fanciful or destitute
+of sober sense, I will describe to you, as briefly as may be, the
+process by means of which I have come to the conclusion that the book
+used as the basis of the cryptogram was not a dictionary or other work
+in which the words come in alphabetical rotation: and such a
+conclusion is very easy of proof.
+
+"In a document so lengthy as the MS. of your friend the Scotch laird
+there must of necessity be many repetitions of what may be called
+'indispensable words'--words one or more of which are used in the
+composition of almost every long sentence. I allude to such words as
+_a, an, and, as, of, by, the, their, them, these, they, you, I, it_,
+&c. The first thing to do was to analyse the MS., and classify the
+different groups of figures for the purpose of ascertaining the number
+of repetitions of any one group. My analysis showed me that these
+repetitions were surprisingly few. Forty groups were repeated twice,
+fifteen three times, and nine groups four times. Now, according to my
+calculation, the MS. contains 1283 words. Out of those 1283 words
+there must have been more than the number of repetitions shown by my
+analysis, and not of one only, but of several of what I have called
+'indispensable words.' Had a dictionary been made use of by the writer
+of the MS. all such repetitions would have been referred to one
+particular page, and to one particular line of that page: that is to
+say, in every case where a word repeated itself in the MS. the same
+group of numbers would in every case have been its _valuer_. As the
+repetitions were so few I could only conclude that some book of an
+ordinary kind had been made use of and that the writer of the
+cryptogram had been sufficiently ingenious not to repeat his numbers
+very frequently in the case of 'indispensable words,' but had in the
+majority of cases given a fresh group of numbers at each repetition of
+such a word. I might, perhaps, go further and say that in the majority
+of cases where a group of figures is repeated such group refers to
+some word less frequently used than any of those specified above, and
+that one group was obliged to do duty on two or more occasions, simply
+because the writer was unable to find the word more than once in the
+book on which his cryptogram was based.
+
+"Having once arrived at the conclusion that some book had been used as
+the basis of the cryptogram, my next supposition that each group of
+three sets of numbers showed the page of the book, the number of the
+line from the top, and the position of the required word in that line,
+seemed at once borne out by an analysis of the figures themselves.
+Thus, taking the first set of figures in each group, I found that in
+no case did they run to a higher number than 500 which would seem to
+indicate that the basis-book was limited to that number of pages. The
+second set of figures ran to no higher number than 60, which would
+seem to limit the lines on each page to that number. The third set of
+figures in no case yielded a higher number than 12; which numerals,
+according to my theory, would indicate the maximum number of words in
+each line. Thus you have at once (if such information is of any use to
+you) a sort of a key to the size of the required volume.
+
+"I think I have now written enough, my dear Ducie, to afford you some
+idea of the method by means of which my conclusions have been arrived
+at. If you wish for further details I will supply them--but by word of
+mouth, and it be all the same to your honour; for this child detests
+letter-writing, and has taken a vow that if he reach the end of his
+present pen-and-ink venture in safety, he will never in time to come
+devote more than two pages of cream note to even the most exacting of
+friends: the sequitur of which is, that if you want to know more than
+is here set down you must give the writer a call, when you shall be
+talked to to your heart's content.
+
+     "Your exhausted friend,
+
+              "Geo. Bexell.
+
+"Captain Ducie."
+
+
+Captain Ducie had too great a respect for the knowledge of his friend
+Bexell in matters like the one under review, to dream for one moment
+of testing the validity of any of his conclusions. He accepted the
+whole of them as final. Having got the conclusions themselves, he
+cared nothing as to the processes by which they had been deduced: the
+details interested him not at all. Consequently he kept out of the way
+of his friend, being in truth considerably disgusted to find that, so
+far as he was himself concerned, the affair had ended in a fiasco. He
+could not look upon it in any other light. It was utterly out of the
+range of probability that he should ever succeed in ascertaining on
+what particular book the cryptogram was based, and no other knowledge
+was now of the slightest avail. He was half inclined to send back the
+MS. anonymously to Platzoff, as being of no further use to himself;
+but he was restrained by the thought that there was just a faint
+chance that the much-desired volume might turn up during his
+forthcoming visit to Bon Repos--that even at the eleventh hour the key
+might be found.
+
+He was terribly chagrined to think that the act of genteel petty
+larceny, by which he had lowered himself more in his own eyes than he
+would have cared to acknowledge, had been so absolutely barren of
+results. That portion of his moral anatomy which he would have called
+his conscience pricked him shrewdly now and again, but such pricks had
+their origin in the fact of his knavery having been unsuccessful. Had
+his wrong-doing won for him such a prize as he had fondly hoped to
+gain by its means, Conscience would have let her rusted spear hang
+unheeded on the wall, and beyond giving utterance now and then to a
+faint whisper in the dead of night, would have troubled him not at
+all.
+
+It was some time in the middle of the night, about a week after Bexell
+had sent him back the papers, that he awoke suddenly and completely,
+and there before him, as clearly as though it had been written in
+letters of fire on the black wall, he saw the title of the wished-for
+book. It was the book mentioned by Platzoff in his prefatory note:
+_The Confessions of Parthenio the Mystic_. The knowledge had come to
+him like a revelation. How stupid he must have been never to have
+thought of it before! That night he slept no more.
+
+Next morning he went to one of the most famous bookdealers in the
+metropolis. The book inquired for by Ducie was not known to the man.
+But that did not say that there was no such work in existence. Through
+his agents at home and abroad inquiry should be made, and the result
+communicated to Captain Ducie. Therewith the latter was obliged to
+content himself. Three days later came a pressing note of invitation
+from Platzoff.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI.
+BON REPOS.
+
+
+On a certain fine morning towards the end of May, Captain Ducie took
+train at Euston-square, and late the same afternoon was set down at
+Windermere. A fly conveyed himself and his portmanteau to the edge of
+the lake. Singling out one from the tiny fleet of pleasure boats
+always to be found at the Bowness landing-stage, Captain Ducie seated
+himself in the stern, and lighted his cigar. The boatman's sinewy arms
+soon pulled him out into the middle of the lake, when the head of the
+little craft was set for Bon Repos.
+
+The sun was dipping to the western hills. In his wake he had left a
+rack of torn and fiery cloud, as though he had rent his garments in
+wrath and cast them from him. Soft, grey mists and purple shadows
+were beginning to strike upward from the vales, but on the great
+shoulders of Fairfield, and on the scarred fronts of other giants
+further away, the sunshine lingered lovingly. It was like the hand of
+Childhood caressing the rugged brows of Age.
+
+With that glorious panorama which crowns the head of the lake before
+his eyes, with the rhythmic beat of the oars and the soft pulsing of
+the water in his cars, with the blue smoke-rings of his cigar rising
+like visible aspirations through the evening air, an unwonted peace,
+a soft brooding quietude, began to settle down upon the captain's
+world-worn spirit; and through the stillness came a faint whisper,
+like his mother's voice speaking from the far-off years of childhood,
+recalling to his memory things once known, but too long forgotten;
+lessons too long despised, but with a vital truth underlying them
+which he seemed never to have realized till now. Suddenly the boat's
+keel grazed the shingly strand, and there before him, half shrouded in
+the shadows of evening, was Bon Repos.
+
+A genuine north-country house, strong, rugged, and homely-looking,
+despite its Gallic cognomen. It was built of the rough grey stone of
+the district, and roofed with large blue slates. It stood at the head
+of a small lawn that sloped gently up from the lake. Immediately
+behind the house a precipitous hill covered with a thick growth of
+underwood and young trees swept upward to a considerable height. A
+narrow, winding lane, the only carriage approach to the house, wound
+round the base of this hill, and joined the high road a quarter of a
+mile away. The house was only two stories high, but was large enough
+to have accommodated a numerous and well-to-do family. The windows
+were all set in a framework of plain stone, but on the lower floor
+some of them had been modernized, the small square bluish panes having
+given place to polished plate glass, of which two panes only were
+needed for each window. But this was an innovation that had not spread
+far. The lawn was bordered with a tasteful diversity of shrubs and
+flowers, while here and there the tender fingers of some climbing
+plant seemed trying to smooth away a wrinkle in the rugged front of
+the old house.
+
+Captain Ducie walked up the gravelled pathway that led from the lake
+to the house, the boatman with his portmanteau bringing up the rear.
+Before he could touch either bell or knocker, the door was noiselessly
+opened, and a coloured servant, in a suit of plain black, greeted him
+with a respectful bow.
+
+"Captain Ducie, sir, if I am not misinformed?"
+
+"I am Captain Ducie."
+
+"Sir, you are expected. Your room is ready. Dinner will be served in
+half an hour from now. My master will meet you when you come
+downstairs."
+
+The portmanteau having been brought in, and the boatman paid and
+dismissed, said the coloured servant, "I will show you to your rooms
+if you will allow me to do so. The man appointed to wait upon you will
+follow with your luggage in a minute or two." He led the way, and
+Ducie followed in silence.
+
+The tired captain gave a sigh of relief and gratitude, and flung
+himself into an easy-chair as the door closed behind his conductor.
+His two rooms were _en suite_, and while as replete with comfort as
+the most thorough-going Englishman need desire, had yet about them a
+touch of lightness and elegance that smacked of a taste that had been
+educated on the Continent, and was unfettered by insular prejudices.
+
+"At Stapleton I had a loft that was hardly fit for a groom to sleep
+in; here I have two rooms that a cardinal might feel proud to occupy.
+Vive la Russe!"
+
+M. Platzoff was waiting at the foot of the staircase when Ducie went
+down. A cordial greeting passed between the two, and the host at once
+led the way to the dining-room. Platzoff in his suit of black and
+white cravat, with his cadaverous face, blue-black hair, and
+chin-tuft, and the elaborate curl on the top of his forehead, looked,
+at the first glance, more like a ghastly undertaker's man, or a waiter
+at a foreign café, than the host of an English country house. But a
+second glance would have shown you his embroidered linen, and the
+flashing gems on his fingers; and you could not be long with him
+without being made aware that you were in the company of a thorough
+man of the world--of one who had travelled much and observed much; of
+one whose correspondents kept him _au courant_ with all the chief
+topics of the day. He knew, and could tell you, the secret history of
+the last new opera; how much had been paid for it, what it had cost to
+produce, and all about the great green-room cabal against the new
+prima donna. He knew what amount of originality could be safely
+claimed for the last new drama that was taking the town by storm, and
+how many times the same story had been hashed up before. He had read
+the last French novel of any note, and could favour you with a few
+personal reminiscences of its author not generally known. As regarded
+political knowledge--if all his statements were to be trusted--he was
+informed as to much that was going on behind the great drop-scene. He
+knew how the wires were pulled that moved the puppets who danced in
+public, especially those wires which were pulled at Paris, Vienna, and
+St. Petersburg. Before Ducie had been six hours at Bon Repos he knew
+more about political intrigues at home and abroad than he had ever
+dreamt of in the whole course of his previous life.
+
+The dining-room at Bon Repos was a long low-ceilinged apartment,
+panelled with black oak, and fitted up in a rich and sombre style that
+was yet very different from the dull heavy formality that obtains
+among three-fourths of the dining-rooms in English country houses.
+Indeed, throughout the appointments and fittings of Bon Repos there
+was a touch of something Oriental grafted on to French taste, combined
+with a thorough knowledge and appreciation of insular comfort. From
+the dining-room windows a lovely stretch of the lake could be seen
+glimmering in the starlight, and our two friends sat this evening over
+their wine by the wide open sash, gazing out into the delicious night.
+Behind them, in the room, two or three candles were burning in silver
+sconces; but at the window they were sitting in that sort of half
+light which seems exactly suited for confidential talk. Captain Ducie
+took advantage of it after a time to ask his host a question which he
+would perhaps have scarcely cared to put by broad daylight.
+
+"Have you heard any news of your lost manuscript?"
+
+"None whatever," answered Platzoff. "Neither do I expect, after this
+lapse of time, to hear anything further concerning it. It has probably
+never been found, or if found, has (as you suggested at the 'Golden
+Griffin') fallen into the hands of some one too ignorant, or too
+incurious, to master the secret of the cipher."
+
+"It has been much in my thoughts since I saw you last," said Ducie.
+"Was the MS. in your own writing, may I ask?"
+
+"It was in my own writing," answered the Russian. "It was a
+confidential communication intended for the eye of my dearest friend,
+and for his eye only. It was unfinished when I lost it. I had been
+staying a few days at one of your English spas when I joined you in
+the train on the day of the accident. The MS., as far as it went, had
+all been written before I left home, but I took it with me in my
+despatch-box, together with other private papers, although I knew that
+I could not add a single line to it while I should be from home. I
+have wished a thousand times since that I had left it behind me."
+
+"I have heard of people to whom cryptography is a favourite study,"
+said the captain; "people who pride themselves on their ability to
+master the most difficult cipher ever invented. Let us hope that your
+MS. has not fallen into the hands of one of these clever individuals."
+
+Platzoff shrugged his shoulders. "Let us hope so, indeed," he said.
+"But I will not believe in any such untoward event. Too long a time
+has elapsed since the loss for me not to have heard something
+respecting the MS., had it been found by any one who knew how to make
+use of it. Besides, I would defy the most clever reader of cryptography
+to master my MS. without----Ah, bah! where's the use of talking about
+it? Should not you like some tobacco? Daylight's last tint has
+vanished, and there is a chill air sweeping down from the hills."
+
+As they left the window, Platzoff added: "One of the most annoying
+features connected with my loss arises from the fact that all my
+labour will have to be gone through again--and very tedious work it
+is. I am now engaged on a second MS., which is, as nearly as I can
+make it, a copy of the first one; and it is a task which must be done
+by myself alone. To have even one confidant would be to stultify the
+whole affair. Another glass of claret, and then I will introduce you
+to my sanctum."
+
+The coloured man who had opened the door for Captain Ducie had been in
+and out of the dining-room several times. He was evidently a favourite
+servant. Platzoff had addressed him as Cleon, and Ducie had now a
+question or two to ask concerning him.
+
+Cleon was a mulatto, tall, agile, and strong. Not bad-looking by any
+means, but carrying with him unmistakable traces of the negro blood in
+his veins. His hair was that of a genuine African--crisp and black,
+and was one mass of short curls; but except for a certain fulness of
+the lips his features were of the ordinary Caucasian type. He wore no
+beard, but a thin straight line of black moustache. His complexion was
+yellow, but a different yellow from that of his master--dusky,
+passionate, lava-like; suggestive of fiery depths below. His eyes,
+too, glowed with a smothered fire that seemed as if it might blaze out
+at any moment, and there was in them an expression of snake-like
+treachery that made Captain Ducie shudder involuntarily, as though he
+had seen some loathsome reptile, the first time he looked steadily
+into their half-veiled depths. One look into each other's eyes was
+sufficient for both these men.
+
+"Monsieur Cleon and I are born enemies, and he knows it as well as I
+do," murmured Ducie to himself, after the first secret signal of
+defiance had passed between the two. "Well, I never was afraid of any
+man in my life, and I'm not going to begin by being afraid of a
+valet." With that he shrugged his shoulders, and turned his back
+contemptuously on the mulatto.
+
+Cleon in his suit of black and white tie, with his quiet stealthy
+movements and unobtrusive attentions, would have been pronounced bon
+style as a gentleman's gentleman in the grandest of Belgravian
+mansions. Had he suddenly come into a fortune, and gone into society
+where his antecedents were unknown, five-sixths of his male associates
+would have pronounced him "a deuced gentlemanly fellow." The remaining
+one-sixth might have held a somewhat different opinion.
+
+"That coloured fellow seems to be a great favourite with you,"
+remarked Ducie, as Cleon left the room.
+
+"And well he may be," answered Platzoff. "On two separate occasions I
+owed my life to him. Once in South America, when a couple of brigands
+had got me at their mercy, and were about to try the temper of their
+knives on my throat. He potted them both one after the other. On the
+second occasion be rescued me from a tiger in the jungle, who was
+desirous of dining _à la Russe_. I have not made a favourite of Cleon
+without having my reasons for so doing."
+
+"He seems to me a shrewd fellow, and one who understands his
+business."
+
+"Cleon is not destitute of ability. When I settled at Bon Repos I made
+him major-domo of my small establishment, but he still retains his old
+position as my body-servant. I offered long ago to release him; but he
+will not allow any third person to come between himself and me, and I
+should not feel comfortable under the attentions of any one else."
+
+Platzoff opened the door as he ceased speaking and led the way to the
+smoking-room.
+
+As you lifted the curtain and went in, it was like passing at one step
+from Europe to the East--from the banks of Windermere to the shores of
+the Bosphorus. It was a circular apartment with a low cushioned divan
+running completely round it, except where broken by the two doorways,
+curtained with hangings of dark brown. The floor was an arabesque of
+different coloured tiles covered here and there with a tiny square of
+bright-hued Persian carpet. The walls were panelled with stamped
+leather to the height of six feet from the ground; above the panelling
+they were painted of a delicate cream colour with here and there a
+maxim or apothegm from the Koran, in the Arabic character, picked out
+in different colours. From the ceiling a silver lamp swung on chains
+of silver. In the centre of the room was a marble table on which were
+pipes and hookahs, cigars and tobaccos of various kinds. Smaller
+tables were placed here and there close to the divan for the
+convenience of smokers.
+
+Platzoff having asked Ducie to excuse him for five minutes, passed
+through the second doorway, and left the captain to an undisturbed
+survey of the room. He came back in a few minutes, but so transformed
+in outward appearance that Ducie scarcely knew him. He had left the
+room in the full evening costume of an English gentleman: he came back
+in the turban and flowing robes of a follower of the Prophet. But
+however comfortable his Eastern habit might be, M. Platzoff lacked the
+quiet dignity and grave repose of your genuine Turkish gentleman.
+
+"I am going to smoke one of these hookahs; let me recommend you to try
+another," said Platzoff as he squatted himself cross-legged on the
+divan.
+
+He touched a tiny gong, and Cleon entered.
+
+"Select a hookah for Monsieur Ducie, and prepare it."
+
+So Cleon, having chosen a pipe, tipped it with a new amber mouthpiece,
+charged the bowl with fragrant Turkish tobacco, handed the stem to
+Ducie, and then applied the light. The same service was next performed
+for his master. Then he withdrew, but only to reappear a minute or two
+later with coffee served up in the Oriental fashion--black and strong,
+without sugar or cream.
+
+"This is one of my little smoke-nights," said Platzoff as soon as they
+were alone. "Last night was one of my big smoke-nights."
+
+"You speak a language I do not understand."
+
+"I call those occasions on which I smoke opium my big smoke-nights."
+
+"Can it be true that you are an opium smoker?" said Ducie.
+
+"It can be and is quite true that I am addicted to that so-called
+pernicious habit. To me it is one of the few good things this world
+has to offer. Opium is the key that unlocks the golden gates of
+Dreamland. To its disciples alone is revealed the true secret of
+subjective happiness. But we will talk more of this at some future
+time."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII.
+THE AMSTERDAM EDITION OF 1698.
+
+
+Captain Ducie soon fell into the quiet routine of life at Bon Repos.
+It was not distasteful to him. To a younger man it might have seemed
+to lack variety, to have impinged too closely on the verge of dulness;
+but Captain Ducie had reached that time of life when quiet pleasures
+please the most, and when much can be forgiven the man who sets before
+you a dinner worth eating. Not that Ducie had anything to forgive.
+Platzoff had contracted a great liking for his guest, and his
+hospitality was of that cordial quality which makes the object of it
+feel himself thoroughly at home. Besides this, the captain knew when
+he was well off, and had no wish to exchange his present pleasant
+quarters, his rambles across the hills, and his sailings on the lake,
+for his dingy bedroom in town with the harassing hunted-down life of a
+man upon whom a dozen writs are waiting to be served, and who can
+never feel certain that his next day's dinner may not be eaten behind
+the locks and bars of a prison.
+
+Sometimes on horseback, sometimes on foot, sometimes accompanied by
+his host, sometimes alone, Ducie explored the lovely country round Bon
+Repos to his heart's content. Another source of pleasure and healthful
+exercise he found in long solitary pulls up and down the lake in a
+tiny skiff which had been set apart for his service. In the evening
+came dinner and conversation with his host, with perhaps a game or two
+of billiards to finish up the day.
+
+Captain Ducie found no scope for the exercise of his gambling
+proclivities at Bon Repos. Platzoff never touched card or dice. He
+could handle a cue tolerably well, but beyond a half-crown game, Ducie
+giving him ten points out of fifty, he could never be persuaded to
+venture. If the captain, when he went down to Bon Repos, had any
+expectation of replenishing his pockets by means of faro and unlimited
+loo, he was wretchedly mistaken. But whatever secret annoyance he
+might feel, he was too much a man of the world to allow his host even
+to suspect its existence.
+
+Of society in the ordinary meaning of that word there was absolutely
+none at Bon Repos. None of the neighbouring families by any chance
+ever called on Platzoff. By no chance did Platzoff ever call on any of
+the neighbouring families. "They are too good for me, too orthodox,
+too strait-laced," exclaimed the Russian one day in his quiet jeering
+way. "Or it may be that I am not good enough for them. Any way, we do
+not coalesce. Rather are we like flint and steel, and eliminate a
+spark whenever we come in contact. They look upon me as a pagan, and
+hold me in horror. I look upon three-fourths of them as Pharisees, and
+hold them in contempt. Good people there are among them no doubt;
+people whom it would be a pleasure to know, but I have neither time,
+health, nor inclination for conventional English visiting--for your
+ponderous style of hospitality. I am quite sure that my ideas of men
+and manners would not coincide with those of the quiet country ladies
+and gentlemen of these parts; while theirs would seem to me terribly
+wearisome and jejune. Therefore, as I take it, we are better apart."
+
+By and by Ducie discovered that his host was not so entirely isolated
+from the world as at first sight he appeared to be. Occasional society
+there was of a certain kind, intermittent, coming and going like birds
+of passage. One, or sometimes two visitors, of whose arrival Ducie had
+heard no previous mention, would now and again put in an appearance at
+the dinner table, would pass one, or at the most two, nights at Bon
+Repos, and would then be seen no more, having gone as mysteriously as
+they had come. These visitors were always foreigners, now of one
+nationality, now of another; and were always closeted privately with
+Platzoff for several hours. In appearance some of them were strangely
+shabby and unkempt, in a wild un-English sort of fashion, while others
+among them seemed like men to whom the good things of this world were
+no strangers. But whatever their appearance, they were all treated by
+Platzoff as honoured guests for whom nothing at his command was too
+good. As a matter of course, they were all introduced to Captain
+Ducie, but none of their names had been heard by him before--indeed,
+he had a dim suspicion, gathered, he could not have told how, that the
+names by which they were made known to him were in some cases
+fictitious ones, and appropriated for that occasion only. But to the
+captain that fact mattered nothing. They were people whom he should
+never meet after leaving Bon Repos, or if he did chance to meet them,
+whom he should never recognise.
+
+One other noticeable feature there was about these birds of passage.
+They were all men of considerable intelligence--men who could talk
+tersely and well on almost any topic that might chance to come
+uppermost at table, or during the after-dinner smoke. Literature, art,
+science, travel--on any or all of these subjects they had opinions to
+offer; but one subject there was that seemed tabooed among them as by
+common consent: that subject was politics. Captain Ducie saw and
+recognised the fact, but as he himself was a man who cared nothing for
+politics of any kind, and would have voted them a bore in general
+conversation, he was by no means disposed to resent their extrusion
+from the table talk at Bon Repos.
+
+As to whom and what these strangers might be, no direct information
+was vouchsafed by the Russian. Captain Ducie was left in a great
+measure to draw his own conclusions. A certain conversation which he
+had one day with his host seemed to throw some light on the matter.
+Ducie had been asking Platzoff whether he did not sometimes regret
+having secluded himself so entirely from the world; whether he did not
+long sometimes to be in the great centres of humanity, in London or
+Paris, where alone life's full flavour can be tasted.
+
+"Whenever Bon Repos becomes Mal Repos," answered Platzoff,--"whenever
+a longing such as you speak of comes over me,--and it does come
+sometimes,--then I flee away for a few weeks, to London oftener than
+anywhere else--certainly not to Paris: that to me is forbidden ground.
+By-and-by I come back to my nest among the hills vowing there is no
+place like it in the world's wide round. But even when I am here, I am
+not so shut out from the world and its great interests as you seem to
+imagine. I see History enacting itself before my eyes, and I cannot
+sit by with averted face. I hear the grand chant of Liberty as the
+beautiful goddess comes nearer and nearer and smites down one
+Oppressor after another with her red right hand; and I cannot shut my
+ears. I have been an actor in the great drama of Revolution ever
+since, a lad of twelve, I saw my father borne off in chains to
+Siberia, and heard my mother with her dying breath curse the tyrant
+who had sent him there. Since that day, Conspiracy has been the very
+salt of my life. For it I have fought and bled; for it I have suffered
+hunger, thirst, imprisonment, and dangers unnumbered. Paris, Vienna,
+St. Petersburg, are all places that I can never hope to see again. For
+me to set foot in any one of the three would be to run the risk of
+almost certain detection, and in my case detection would mean hopeless
+incarceration for the poor remainder of my days. To the world at large
+I may seem nothing but a simple country gentleman, living a dull life
+in a spot remote from all stirring interests. But I may tell you, sir
+(in strictest confidence, mind) that although I stand a little aside
+from the noise and heat of the battle, I work for it with heart and
+brain as busily, and to better purpose let us hope, than when I was a
+much younger man. I am still a conspirator, and a conspirator I shall
+remain till Death taps me on the shoulder and serves me with his last
+great writ of _habeas corpus_."
+
+These words recurred to Ducie's memory a day or two later when he
+found at the dinner-table two foreigners whom he had never seen
+before. "Is it possible that these bearded gentlemen are also
+conspirators?" asked the captain of himself. "If so, their mode of
+life must be a very uncomfortable one. It never seems to include the
+use of a razor, and very sparingly that of comb and brush. I am glad
+that I have nothing to do with what Platzoff calls _The Great Cause_."
+
+But Captain Ducie was not a man to trouble himself with the affairs of
+other people unless his own interests were in some way affected
+thereby. M. Paul Platzoff might have been mixed up with all the plots
+in Europe for anything the captain cared: it was a mere question of
+taste, and he never interfered with another man's tastes when they did
+not clash with his own. Besides, in the present case, his attention
+was claimed by what to him was a matter of far more serious interest.
+From day to day he was anxiously waiting for news from the London
+bookseller who was making inquiries on his behalf as to the
+possibility of obtaining a copy of "_The Confessions of Parthenio the
+Mystic_." Day passed after day till a fortnight had gone, and still
+there came no line from the bookseller.
+
+Ducie's impatience could no longer be restrained: he wrote, asking for
+news. The third day brought a reply. The bookseller had at last heard
+of a copy. It was in the library of a monastery in the Low Countries.
+The coffers of the monastery needed replenishing; the abbot was
+willing to part with the book, but the price of it would be a sum
+equivalent to fifty guineas of English money. Such was the purport of
+the letter.
+
+To Captain Ducie, just then, fifty guineas were a matter of serious
+moment. For a full hour he debated with himself whether or no he
+should order the book to be bought. Supposing it duly purchased;
+supposing that it really proved to be the key by which the secret of
+the Russian's MS. could be mastered; might not the secret itself prove
+utterly worthless as far as he, Ducie, was concerned? Might it not be
+merely a secret bearing on one of those confounded political plots in
+which Platzoff was implicated--a matter of moment no doubt to the
+writer, but of no earthly utility to any one not inoculated with such
+March-hare madness? These were the questions that it behoved him to
+consider. At the end of an hour he decided that the game was worth the
+candle: he would risk his fifty guineas.
+
+Taking one of Platzoff's horses, he rode without delay to the nearest
+telegraph station. His message to the bookseller was as under:
+
+"Buy the book, and send it down to me here by confidential messenger."
+
+The next few days were days of suspense, of burning impatience. The
+messenger arrived almost sooner than Ducie expected, bringing the book
+with him. Ducie sighed as he signed the cheque for fifty guineas, with
+ten pounds for expenses. That shabby calf-bound worm-eaten volume
+seemed such a poor exchange for the precious slip of paper that had
+just left his fingers. But what was done could not be undone, so he
+locked the book away carefully in his desk and locked up his
+impatience with it till nightfall.
+
+He could not get away from Platzoff till close upon midnight. When he
+got to his own room he bolted the door, and drew the curtains across
+the windows, although he knew that it was impossible for any one to
+spy on him from without. Then he opened his desk, spread out the MS.
+before him, and took up the volume. A calf-bound volume with red
+edges, and numbering five hundred pages. It was in English, and the
+title-page stated it to be "The Confessions of Parthenio the Mystic: a
+Romance. Translated from the Latin. With Annotations, and a Key to
+Sundrie Dark Meanings. Imprinted at Amsterdam in he Year of Grace
+1698." It was in excellent condition.
+
+Captain Ducie's eagerness to test his prize would not allow of more
+than a very cursory inspection of the general contents of the volume.
+So far as he could make out it seemed to be a political satire veiled
+under the transparent garb of an Eastern story. Parthenio was
+represented as a holy man--a Spiritualist or Mystic--who had lived for
+many years in a cave in one of the Arabian deserts. Commanded at
+length by what he calls the "inner voice," he sets out on his travels
+to visit sundry courts and kingdoms of the East. He returns after five
+years, and writes, for the benefit of his disciples, an account of the
+chief things he has seen and learned while on his travels. The courts
+of England, France, and Spain, under fictitious names, are the chief
+marks for his ponderous satire, and some of the greatest men in the
+three kingdoms are lashed with his most scurrilous abuse. Under any
+circumstances the book was not one that Captain Ducie would have cared
+to wade through, and in the present case, after dipping into a page
+here and there, and finding that it contained nothing likely to
+interest him, he proceeded at once to the more serious business of the
+evening.
+
+The clocks of Bon Repos were striking midnight as Captain Ducie
+proceeded to test the value of the first group of figures on the MS.,
+according to the formula laid down for him by his friend Bexell. The
+first group of figures was 253.12/4. Turning to page two hundred and
+fifty-three of the Confessions, and counting from the top of that
+page, he found that the fourth word of the twelfth line gave him
+_you_. The second clump of figures was 59.25/1. The first word of the
+twenty-fifth line of page fifty-nine gave him _will_. The third clump
+of figures gave him _have_, and the fourth _gathered_. These four
+words ranged in order read: _You will have gathered_. Such a sequence
+of words could not arise from mere accident. When he had got thus far
+Ducie knew that Platzoff's secret would soon be a secret no longer,
+that in a very little while the heart of the mystery would be laid
+bare.
+
+Encouraged by his success, Ducie went to work with renewed vigour, and
+before the clock struck one he had completed the first sentence of the
+MS., which ran as under:--
+
+_You will have gathered from the foregoing note, my dear Carlo, that I
+have something of importance to relate to you--something that I am
+desirous of keeping a secret front every one but yourself_.
+
+As his friend Bexell surmised, Ducie found that the groups of figures
+distinguished from the rest by two horizontal lines, one above and one
+below, as thus
+               ---------------------------------
+               58.7  14.29  368.1  209.18  43.11,
+               ---------------------------------
+were the _valeurs_ of some proper name or other word for which there
+was no equivalent in the book. Such words had to be spelt out letter
+by letter in the same way that complete words were picked out in other
+cases. Thus the marked figures as above, when taken letter by letter,
+made up the word _Carlo_--a name to which there was nothing similar in
+the Confessions.
+
+It had been broad daylight for two hours before Captain Ducie grew
+tired of his task and went to bed. He went on with it next night, and
+every night till it was finished. It was a task that deepened in
+interest as he proceeded with it. It grew upon him to such a degree
+that when near the close he feigned illness and kept his room for a
+whole day, so that he might the sooner get it done.
+
+If Captain Ducie had ever amused himself with trying to imagine the
+nature of the secret which he had now succeeded in unravelling, the
+reality must have been very different from his expectations. One
+gigantic thought, whose coming made him breathless for a moment, took
+possession of him, as a demon might have done, almost before he had
+finished his task, dwarfing all other thoughts by its magnitude. It
+was a thought that found relief in six words only: "It must and shall
+be mine!"
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII.
+M PLATZOFF'S SECRET--CAPTAIN DUCIE'S TRANSLATION
+OF M. PAUL PLATZOFF'S MS.
+
+
+"You will have gathered from the foregoing note, my dear Carlo, that I
+have something of importance to relate to you; something that I am
+desirous of keeping a secret from every one but yourself. From the
+same source you will have learned where to find the key by which alone
+the lock of my secret can be opened.
+
+"I was induced by two reasons to make use of 'The Confessions of
+Parthenio the Mystic' as the basis of my cryptographic communication.
+In the first place, each of us has in his possession a copy of the
+same edition of that rare book, viz. the Amsterdam edition of 1698. In
+the second place, there are not more thou half a dozen copies of the
+same work in England; so that if this document were by mischance to
+fall into the hands of some person other than him for whom it is
+intended, such person, even if sufficiently acute to guess at the
+means by which alone the cryptogram can be read, would still find it a
+matter of some difficulty to obtain possession of the requisite key.
+
+"I address these lines to you, my dear Lampini, not because you and I
+have been friends from youth, not because we have shared many dangers
+and hardship together, not because we have both kept the same great
+object in view throughout life; in fine, I do not address them to you
+as a private individual, but in your official capacity as Secretary of
+the Secret Society of San Marco.
+
+"You know how deeply I have had the objects of the Society at heart
+ever since, twenty-five years ago, I was deemed worthy of being made
+one of the initiated. You know how earnestly I have striven to forward
+its views both in England and abroad; that through my connexion with
+it I am _suspect_ at nearly every capital on the Continent--that I
+could not enter some of them except at the risk of my life; that
+health, time, money--all have been ungrudgingly given for the
+furtherance of the same great end.
+
+"Heaven knows, I am not penning these lines in any self-gratulatory
+frame of mind--I who write from this happy haven among the hills.
+Self-gratulation would ill become such as me. Where I have given gold,
+others have given their blood. Where I have given time and labour,
+others have undergone long and cruel imprisonments, have been
+separated from all they loved on earth, and have seen the best years
+of their life fade hopelessly out between the four walls of a living
+tomb. What are my petty sacrifices to such as these?
+
+"But not to every one is granted the happiness of cementing a great
+cause with his heart's blood. We must each work in the appointed
+way--some of us in the full light of day; others in obscure corners,
+at work that can never be seen, putting in the stones of the
+foundation painfully one by one, but never destined to share in the
+glory of building the roof of the edifice.
+
+"Sometimes, in your letters to me, especially when those letters
+contained any disheartening news, I have detected a tone of
+despondency, a latent doubt as to whether the cause, to which both of
+us are so firmly bound, was really progressing; whether it was not
+fighting against hope to continue the battle any longer; whether it
+would not be wiser to retreat to the few caves and fastnesses that
+were left us, and leaving Liberty still languishing in chains, and
+Tyranny still rampant in the high places of the world, to wage no
+longer a useless war against the irresistible Fates. Happily, with you
+such moods were of the rarest: you would have been more than mortal
+had not your soul at times sat in sackcloth and ashes.
+
+"Such seasons of doubt and gloom have come to me also; but I know
+that in our secret hearts we both of us have felt that there was a
+self-sustaining power, a latent vitality in our cause that nothing
+could crush out utterly; that the more it was trampled on the more
+dangerous it would become, and the faster it would spread. Certain
+great events that have happened during the last twelve months have
+done more towards the propagation of the ideas we have so much at
+heart than in our wildest dreams we dare have hoped only three short
+years ago. Gravely considering these things, it seems to me that the
+time cannot be far distant when the contingent plan of operations as
+agreed upon by the Central Committee two years ago, to which I gave in
+my adhesion on the occasion of your last visit to Bon Repos, will have
+to replace the scheme at present in operation, and will become the
+great lever in carrying out the Society's policy in time to come.
+
+"When the time shall be ripe, but one difficulty will stand in the way
+of carrying out the proposed contingent plan. That difficulty will
+arise from the fact that the Society's present expenses will then be
+trebled or quadrupled, and that a vast accession to the funds at
+command of the Committee for the time being will thus be imperatively
+necessitated. As a step, as a something towards obviating whatever
+difficulty may arise from lack of funds, I have devised to you, as
+Secretary of the Society, the whole of my personal estate, amounting
+in the aggregate to close upon fifteen thousand pounds. This property
+will not accrue to you till my decease; but that event will happen no
+very long time hence. My will, duly signed and witnessed, will be
+found in the hands of my lawyer.
+
+"But it was not merely to advise you of this bequest that I have
+sought such a roundabout mode of communication. I have a greater and a
+much more important bequest to make to the Society, through you, its
+accredited agent. I have in my possession a green DIAMOND, the
+estimated value of which is a hundred and fifty thousand pounds. This
+precious gem I shall leave to you, by you to be sold after my death,
+the proceeds of the sale to be added to the other funded property of
+the Society of San Marco.
+
+"The Diamond in question became mine during my travels in India many
+years ago. I believe my estimate of its value to be a correct one.
+Except my confidential servant, Cleon (whom you will remember), no one
+is aware that I have in my possession a stone of such immense value. I
+have never trusted it out of my own keeping, but have always retained
+it by me, in a safe place, where I could lay my hands upon it at a
+moment's notice. But not even to Cleon have I entrusted the secret of
+the hiding-place, incorruptibly faithful as I believe him to be. It is
+a secret locked in my own bosom alone.
+
+"You will now understand why I have resorted to cryptography in
+bringing these facts under your notice. It is intended that these
+lines shall not be read by you till after my decease. Had I adopted
+the ordinary mode of communicating with you, it seemed to me not
+impossible that some other eye than the one for which it was intended
+might peruse this statement before it reached you, and that through
+some foul play or underhand deed the Diamond might never come into
+your possession.
+
+"It only remains for me now to point out where and by what means the
+Diamond may be found. It is hidden away in----"
+
+
+Here the MS., never completed, ended abruptly.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV.
+DRASHKIL-SMOKING.
+
+
+"It must and shall be mine!"
+
+So spoke Captain Ducie on the spur of the moment as he wrote the last
+word of his translation of M. Platzoff's MS. And yet there was a keen
+sense of disappointment working within him. His blood had been at
+fever heat during the latter part of his task. Each fresh sentence of
+the cryptogram as he began to decipher it would, he hoped, before he
+reached the end of it reveal to him the hiding-place of the great
+Diamond. Up to the very last sentence he had thus fondly deluded
+himself, only to find that the abrupt ending of the MS. left him still
+on the brink of the secret, and left him there without any clue by
+which he could advance a single step beyond that point. He was
+terribly disappointed, and the longer he brooded over the case the
+more entirely hopeless was the aspect it put on.
+
+But there was an elasticity of mind about Captain Ducie that would not
+allow him to despair utterly for any length of time. In the course of
+a few days, as he began to recover from his first chagrin, he at the
+same time began to turn the affair of the Diamond over and over in his
+mind, now in one way, now in another, looking at it in this light and
+in that; trying to find the first faint indications of a clue which,
+judiciously followed up, might conduct him step by step to the heart
+of the mystery. Two questions naturally offered themselves for
+solution. First: Did Platzoff habitually carry the Diamond about his
+person? Second: Was it kept in some skilfully-devised hiding-place
+about the house? These were questions that could be answered only by
+time and observation.
+
+So Captain Ducie went about Bon Repos like a man with half a dozen
+pairs of eyes, seeing, and not only seeing but noting, a hundred
+little things such as would never have been observed by him under
+ordinary circumstances. But when, at the end of a week, he came to sum
+up and classify his observations, and to consider what bearing they
+had upon the great mystery of the hiding-place of the Diamond, he
+found that they had no bearing upon it whatever; that for anything
+seen or heard by him the world might hold no such precious gem, and
+the Russian's letter to Signor Lampini might be nothing more than an
+elaborate hoax.
+
+When the access of chagrin caused by the recognition of this fact had
+in some degree subsided, Ducie was ready enough to ridicule his own
+foolish expectations. "Platzoff has had the Diamond in his possession
+for years. For him there is nothing of novelty in such a fact. Yet
+here have I been foolish enough to expect that in the course of one
+short week I should, discover by some sign or token the spot where it
+is hidden, and that too after I knew from his own confession that the
+secret was one which he guarded most jealously. I might be here for
+five years and be not one whit wiser at the end of that time as
+regards the hiding-place of the Diamond than I am now. From this day I
+give up the affair as a bad job."
+
+Nevertheless, he did not quite do that. He kept up his habit of seeing
+and noting little things, but without any definite views as to any
+ulterior benefit that might accrue to him therefrom. Perhaps there was
+some vague idea floating in his mind that Fortune, who had served him
+so many kind turns in years gone by, might befriend him once again in
+this matter--might point out to him the wished-for clue, and indicate
+by what means he could secure the Diamond for his own.
+
+The magnitude of the temptation dazzled him. Captain Ducie would not
+have picked your pocket, or have stolen your watch, or your horse, or
+the title-deeds of your property. He had never put another man's name
+to a bill instead of his own. You might have made him trustee for your
+widow or children, and have felt sure that their interests would have
+been scrupulously respected at his hands. Yet with all this--strange
+contradiction as it may seem--if he could have laid surreptitious
+fingers on M. Platzoff's Diamond, that gentleman would certainly never
+have seen his cherished gem again. But had Platzoff placed it in his
+hands and said, "Take this to London for me and deposit it at my
+bankers," the commission would have been faithfully fulfilled. It
+seemed as if the element of mystery, of deliberate concealment, made
+all the difference in Captain Ducie's unspoken estimate of the case.
+Besides, would there not be something princely in such a theft? You
+cannot put a man who steals a diamond worth a hundred and fifty
+thousand pounds in the category of common thieves. Such an act verges
+on the sublime.
+
+One of the things seen and noticed by Captain Ducie was the absence,
+through illness, of the mulatto, Cleon, from his duties, and the
+substitution in his place of a man whom Ducie had never seen before.
+This stranger was both clever and obliging, and Platzoff himself
+confessed that the fellow made such a good substitute that he missed
+Cleon less than he at first feared he should have done. He was indeed
+very assiduous, and found time to do many odd jobs for Captain Ducie,
+who contracted quite a liking for him.
+
+Between Ducie and Cleon there existed one of those blind unreasoning
+hatreds which spring up full-armed and murderous at first sight. Such
+enmities are not the less deadly because they sometimes find no relief
+in words. Cleon treated Ducie with as much outward respect and
+courtesy as he did any other of his master's guests; no private
+communication ever passed between the two, and yet each understood the
+other's feelings towards him, and both of them were wise enough to
+keep as far apart as possible. Neither of them dreamed at that time of
+the strange fruit which their mutual enmity was to bear in time to
+come. Meanwhile, Cleon lay sick in his own room, and Captain Ducie was
+rather gladdened thereby.
+
+
+M. Platzoff rarely touched cigar or pipe till after dinner; but,
+whatever company he might have, when that meal was over, it was his
+invariable custom to retire for an hour or two to the room consecrated
+to the uses of the Great Herb, and his guests seldom or never declined
+to accompany him. To Captain Ducie, as an inveterate smoker, these
+_séances_ were very pleasant.
+
+On the very first evening of the captain's arrival at Bon Repos, M.
+Platzoff had intimated that he was an opium smoker, and that at no
+very distant date he would enlighten Ducie as to the practice in
+question. About a week later, as they sat down to their pipes and
+coffee, said Platzoff, "This is one of my big smoke-nights. To-night I
+go on a journey of discovery into Dreamland--a country that no
+explorations can exhaust, where beggars are the equals of kings, and
+where the Fates that control our actions are touched with a fine
+eccentricity that in a more commonplace world would be termed madness.
+But there nothing is commonplace."
+
+"You are going to smoke opium?" said Ducie, interrogatively.
+
+"I am going to smoke drashkil. Let me, for this once, persuade you to
+follow my example."
+
+"For this once I would rather be excused," said Ducie, laughingly.
+
+Platzoff shrugged his shoulders. "I offer to open for you the golden
+gates of a land full of more strange and wondrous things than were
+ever dreamed of by any early voyager as being in that new world on
+whose discovery he was bent; I offer to open up for you a set of
+experiences so utterly fresh and startling that your matter-of-fact
+English intellect cannot even conceive of such things. I offer you all
+this, and you laugh me down with an air of superiority, as though I
+were about to present you with something which, however precious it
+might be in my eyes, in yours was utterly without value."
+
+"If I sin at all," said Ducie, "it is through ignorance. The
+subject is one respecting which I know next to nothing. But I must
+confess that about experiences such as you speak of there is an
+intangibility--a want of substance--that to me would make them seem
+singularly valueless."
+
+"And is not the thing we call life one tissue of intangibilities?"
+asked the Russian. "You can touch neither the beginning nor the end
+of it. Do not its most cherished pleasures fly you even as you are in
+the very net of trying to grasp them? Do you know for certain that
+you--you yourself--are really here?--that you do not merely dream that
+you are here? What do you know?"
+
+"Your theories are too far-fetched for me," said Ducie. "A dream can
+be nothing more than itself--nothing can give it backbone or
+substance. To me such things are of no more value than the shadow I
+cast behind me when I walk in the sun."
+
+"And yet without substance there could be no shadow," snarled the
+Russian.
+
+"Do your experiences in any way resemble those recorded by De
+Quincey?"
+
+"They do and they do not," answered Platzoff. "I can often trace, or
+fancy that I can, a slight connecting likeness, arising probably from
+the fact that in the case of both of us a similar, or nearly similar
+agent was employed for a similar purpose. But, as a rule, the
+intellectual difference between any two men is sufficient to render
+their experiences in this respect utterly dissimilar."
+
+"It does not follow, I presume, that all the visions induced by the
+imbibition of opium, or what you term drashkil, are pleasant ones?"
+
+"By no means. You cannot have forgotten what De Quincey has to say on
+that score. But whether they are pleasant or the contrary, I accept
+them as so much experience, and in so far I am satisfied. You look
+incredulous, but I tell you, sir, that what I see, and what I undergo
+subjectively--while under the influence of drashkil, make up for me an
+experience as real, that dwells as vividly in my memory and that can
+be brought to mind like any other set of recollections, as if it were
+built up brick by brick, fact by fact, out of the incidents of
+everyday life. And all such experiences are valuable in this wise:
+that whatever I see while under the influence of drashkil, I see, as
+it were, with the eyes of genius. I breathe a keener atmosphere; I
+have finer intuitions; the brain is no longer clogged with that part
+of me which is mortal; in whatever imaginary scenes I assist, whether
+as actor or spectator matters not, I seem to discern the underlying
+meaning of things--I hear the low faint beating of the hidden pules of
+the world. To come back from this enchanted realm to the dull
+realities of everyday life is like depriving some hero of fairyland of
+his magic gifts and reducing him to the level of common humanity."
+
+"At which pleasant level I pray ever to be kept," said Ducie; "I have
+no desire to soar into those regions of romance where you seem so
+thoroughly at home."
+
+"So be it," said Platzoff, drily. "The intellects of you English have
+been nourished on beef and beer for so many generations, that there is
+no such thing as spiritual insight left among you. We must not expect
+too much." This was said not ill-naturedly, but in that quiet jeering
+tone which was almost habitual with Platzoff.
+
+Ducie maintained a judicious silence and went on puffing gravely at
+his meerschaum. Platzoff touched the gong and Cleon entered, for this
+conversation took place before the illness of the latter. The Russian
+held up two fingers, and Cleon bowed. Then Cleon opened a mahogany box
+in one corner of the room, and took out of it a pipe-bowl of red clay,
+into which he fitted a flexible tube five or six yards in length and
+tipped with amber. The bowl was then fixed into a stand of black oak
+about a foot high, and there held securely, and the mouthpiece handed
+to Platzoff. Cleon next opened an inlaid box, and by means of a tiny
+silver spatula he cut out a small block of some black greasy-looking
+mixture, which he proceeded to fit into the bowl of the pipe. On the
+top of this he sprinkled a little aromatic Turkish tobacco, and then
+applied an allumette. When he saw that the pipe was fairly alight, he
+bowed and withdrew.
+
+While these preparations were going on Platzoff had not been silent.
+"I have spoken to you of what I am about to smoke, both as opium and
+as drashkil," he said. "It is not by any means pure opium. With that
+great drug are mixed two or three others that modify and influence the
+chief ingredient materially. I had the secret of the preparation from
+a Hindoo gentleman while I was in India. It was imparted to me as an
+immense favour, it being a secret even there. The enthusiastic terms
+in which he spoke of it have been fully justified by the result, as
+you would discover for yourself if you could only be persuaded to try
+it. You shake your head. Eh bien! mon ami; the loss is yours not
+mine."
+
+"Some of what you have termed your 'experiences' are no doubt very
+singular ones?" said Ducie, interrogatively.
+
+"They are, very singular," answered Platzoff. "In my last
+drashkil-dream, for instance, I believed myself to be an Indian fakir,
+and I seemed to realize to the full the strange life of one of those
+strange beings. I was stationed in the shade of a large tree just
+without the gate Of some great city where all who came and went could
+see me. On the ground, a little way in front of me, was a wooden bowl
+for the reception of the offerings of the charitable. I had kept both
+my hands close shut for so many years that the nails had grown into
+the flesh, and the muscles had hardened so that I could no longer open
+them; and I was looked upon as a very holy man. The words of the
+passers-by were sweet in my ears, but I never spoke to them in return.
+Silent and immovable, I stood there through the livelong day,--and in
+my vision it was always day. I had the power of looking back, and I
+knew that, in the first instance, I had been led by religious
+enthusiasm to adopt that mode of life. I should be in the world but
+not of it, I should have more time for that introspective
+contemplation the aim and end of which is mental absorption in the
+divine Brahma; besides which, people would praise me, and all the
+world would know that I was a holy man. But the strangest part of the
+affair remains to be told. In the eyes of the people I had grown in
+sanctity from year to year; but in my own heart I knew that instead of
+approaching nearer to Brahma, I was becoming more depraved, more
+wicked, with a great inward wickedness, as time went on. I struggled
+desperately against the slough of sin that was slowly creeping over
+me, but in vain. It seemed to me as if the choice were given me either
+to renounce my life of outward-seeming sanctity, and becoming as other
+men were, to feel again that inward peace which had been mine long
+years before; or else, while remaining holy in the eyes of the
+multitude, to feel myself sinking into a bottomless pit of wickedness
+from which I could never more hope to emerge. My mental tortures while
+this struggle was going on, I can never forget: they are as much a
+real experience to me as if they had made up a part of my genuine
+waking life. And still I stood with closed hands in the shade of the
+tree; and the people cried out that I was holy, and placed their
+offerings in my bowl; and I could not make up my mind to abnegate the
+title they gave me and become as they were. And still I grew in inward
+wickedness, till I loathed myself as if I were some vile reptile; and
+so the struggle went on, and was still going on, when I opened my eyes
+and found myself again at Bon Repos."
+
+As Platzoff ceased speaking, Cleon applied the light, and Ducie in his
+eagerness drew a little nearer. Platzoff was dressed _à la Turk_, and
+sat with crossed legs on the low divan that ran round the room. Slowly
+and deliberately he inhaled the smoke from his pipe, expelling it a
+moment later, in part through his nostrils and in part through his
+lips. The layer of tobacco at the top of the bowl was quickly burnt to
+ashes. By this time the drug below was fairly alight, and before long
+a thick white sickly smoke began to ascend in rings and graceful
+spirals towards the roof of the room. Cleon was gone, and a solemn
+silence was maintained by both the men. Platzoff's eyes, black and
+piercing, were fixed on vacancy; they seemed to be gazing on some
+picture visible to himself alone. Ducie was careful not to disturb
+him. His inhalations were slow, gentle, and regular. After a time, a
+thin film or glaze began to gather over his wide-open eyes, dimming
+their brightness, and making them seem like the eyes of some one dead.
+His complexion became livid, his face more cadaverous than it
+naturally was. Then his eyes closed slowly and gently, like those of
+an infant dropping to sleep. For a little time longer he kept on
+inhaling the smoke, but every minute the inhalations became fainter
+and fewer in number. At length the hand that held the pipe dropped
+nervelessly by his side, the amber mouthpiece slipped from between his
+lips, his jaw dropped, and, with an almost imperceptible sigh, his
+head sank softly back on to the cushions behind, and M. Paul Platzoff
+was in the opium-eater's paradise.
+
+Ducie, who had never seen any one similarly affected, was frightened
+by his host's death-like appearance. He was doubtful whether Platzoff
+had not been seized with a fit. In order to satisfy himself he touched
+the gong and summoned Cleon. That incomparable domestic glided in,
+noiseless as a shadow.
+
+"Does your master always look as he does now after he has been smoking
+opium?" asked the captain.
+
+"Always, sir."
+
+"And how long does it take him to come round?"
+
+"That depends, sir, on the strength of the dose he has been smoking.
+The preparation is made of different strengths to suit him at
+different times; but always when he has been smoking drashkil I leave
+him undisturbed till midnight. If by that time he has not come round
+naturally and of his own accord, I carry him to bed and then
+administer to him a certain draught, which has the effect of sending
+him into a natural and healthy sleep, from which he awakes next
+morning thoroughly refreshed."
+
+"Then you will come to-night at twelve, and see how your master is by
+that time?" said Ducie.
+
+"It is part of my duty to do so," answered Cleon.
+
+"Then I will wait here till that time," said the captain. Cleon bowed
+and disappeared.
+
+So Ducie kept watch and ward for four hours, during the whole of which
+time Platzoff lay, except for his breathing, like one dead. As the
+last stroke of midnight struck, Cleon reappeared. His master showed
+not the slightest symptom of returning consciousness. Having examined
+him narrowly for a moment or two, he turned to Ducie.
+
+"You must pardon me, sir, for leaving you alone," he said, "but I must
+now take my master off to bed. He will scarcely wake up for
+conversation to-night."
+
+"Proceed as though I were not here," said Ducie. "I will just finish
+this weed, and then I too will turn in."
+
+Platzoff's private rooms, forming a suite four in number, were on the
+ground floor of Bon Repos. From the main corridor the first that you
+entered was the smoking-room already described. Next to that was the
+dressing-room, from which you passed into the bedroom. The last of the
+four was a small square room, fitted up with book-shelves, and used as
+a private library and study.
+
+Cleon, who was a strong, muscular fellow, lifted Platzoff's shrivelled
+body as easily as he might have done that of a child, and so carried
+him out of the room.
+
+Ducie met his host at the breakfast-table next morning. The latter
+seemed as well as usual, and was much amused when Ducie told him of
+his alarm, and how he had summoned Cleon under the impression that
+Platzoff had been taken dangerously ill.
+
+Platzoff rarely indulged in the luxury of drashkil-smoking oftener
+than once a week. His constitution was delicate, and a too frequent
+use of so dangerous a drug would have tended to shatter still further
+his already enfeebled health. Besides, as he said, he wished to keep
+it as a luxury, and not, by a too frequent indulgence in it, to take
+off the fine edge of enjoyment and render it commonplace. Ducie
+had several subsequent opportunities of witnessing the process of
+drashkil-smoking and its effects, but one description will serve for
+all. On every occasion the same formula was gone through, precisely as
+first seen by Ducie. The pipe was charged and lighted by Cleon (after
+he became ill, by the new servant Jasmin). Precisely at midnight Cleon
+returned, and either conducted or carried his master to bed, as the
+necessities of the case might require. It was his knowledge of the
+latter fact that stood Ducie in such good stead later on, when he came
+to elaborate the details of his scheme for stealing the Great Mogul
+Diamond.
+
+But as yet his scheme was in embryo. His visit was drawing to a close,
+and he was still without the slightest clue to the hiding-place of the
+Diamond.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV.
+THE DIAMOND.
+
+
+Captain Ducie had been six weeks at Bon Repos; his visit would come to
+a close in the course of three or four days, but he was still as
+ignorant of the hiding-place of the Diamond as on that evening when he
+learned for the first time that M. Platzoff had such a treasure in his
+possession.
+
+Since the completion of his translation of the stolen MS. he had
+dreamed day and night of the Diamond. It was said to be worth a
+hundred and fifty thousand pounds. If he could only succeed in
+appropriating it, what a different life would be his in time to come!
+In such a case, he would of course be obliged to leave England for
+ever. But he was quite prepared to do that. He was without any tie of
+kindred or friendship that need bind him to his native land. Once safe
+in another hemisphere, he would dispose of the Diamond, and the
+proceeds would enable him to live as a gentleman ought to live for the
+remainder of his days. Truly, a pleasant dream.
+
+But it was only a dream after all, as he himself in his cooler moments
+was quite ready to acknowledge. It was nothing but a dream even when
+Platzoff wrung from him an unreluctant consent to extend his visit at
+Bon Repos for another six weeks. If he stayed for six months, there
+seemed no likelihood that at the end of that time he would be one whit
+wiser on the one point on which he thirsted for information than he
+was now. Still, he was glad for various reasons to retain his pleasant
+quarters a little while longer.
+
+Truth to tell, in Captain Ducie M. Platzoff had found a guest so much
+to his liking that he could not make up his mind to let him go again.
+Ducie was incurious, or appeared to be so; he saw and heard, and asked
+no questions. He seemed to be absolutely destitute of political
+principles, and therein he formed a pleasant contrast both to M.
+Platzoff himself and to the swarm of foreign gentlemen who at
+different times found their way to Bon Repos. He was at once a good
+listener and a good talker. In fine, he made himself in every way so
+agreeable, and was at the same time so thorough a gentleman, that
+Platzoff was as glad to retain him as he himself was pleased to stay.
+
+Three out of the Captain's second term of six weeks had nearly come to
+an end when, on a certain evening, as he and Platzoff sat together in
+the smoke-room, the latter broached a subject which Ducie would have
+wagered all he possessed--though that was little enough--that his host
+would have been the last man in the world even to hint at.
+
+"I think I have heard you say that you have a taste for diamonds and
+precious stones," remarked Platzoff. Ducie had hazarded such a remark
+on one or two occasions as a quiet attempt to draw Platzoff out, but
+had only succeeded in eliciting a little shrug, and a cold smile, as
+though for him such a statement could have no possible interest.
+
+"If I have said so to you I have only spoken the truth," replied
+Ducie. "I am passionately fond of gems and precious stones of every
+kind. Have you any to show me?"
+
+"I have in my possession a green diamond said to be worth a hundred
+and fifty thousand pounds," answered the Russian, quietly.
+
+The simulated surprise with which Captain Ducie received this
+announcement was a piece of genuine comedy. His real surprise arose
+from the fact of Platzoff having chosen to mention the matter to him
+at all.
+
+"Great heaven!" he exclaimed. "Can you be in earnest? Had I heard such
+a statement from the lips of any other man than you, I should have
+questioned either his sanity or his truth."
+
+"You need not question either one or the other in my case," answered
+Platzoff, with a smile. "My assertion is true to the letter. Some
+evening when I am less lazy than I am now, you shall see the stone and
+examine it for yourself."
+
+"I take it as a great proof of your friendship for me, monsieur," said
+Ducie warmly, "that you have chosen to make me the recipient of such a
+confidence."
+
+"It _is_ a proof of my friendship," said the Russian. "No one of my
+political friends--and I have many that are dear to me, both in
+England and abroad--is aware that I have in my possession so
+inestimable a gem. But you, sir, are an English gentleman, and my
+friend for reasons unconnected with politics; I know that my secret
+will be safe in your keeping."
+
+Ducie winced inwardly, but he answered with grave cordiality, "The
+event, my dear Platzoff, will prove that your confidence has not been
+misplaced."
+
+After this the Russian went on to tell Ducie that the MS. lost at the
+time of the railway accident had reference to the great Diamond; that
+it contained secret instructions, addressed to a very dear friend of
+the writer, as to the disposal of the Diamond after his, Platzoff's,
+death; all of which was quite as well known to Ducie as to the Russian
+himself; but the captain sat with his pipe between his lips, and
+listened with an appearance of quiet interest that impressed his host
+greatly.
+
+That night Ducie's mind was too excited to allow of sleep. He was
+about to be shown the great Diamond; but would the mere fact of seeing
+it advance him one step towards obtaining possession of it? Would
+Platzoff, when showing him the stone, show him also the place where it
+was ordinarily kept. His confidence in Ducie would scarcely carry him
+as far as that. In any case, it would be something to have seen the
+Diamond, and for the rest, Ducie must trust to the chapter of
+accidents and his own wits. On one point he was fully determined, to
+make the Diamond his own at any cost, if the slightest possible chance
+of doing so were afforded him. He was dazzled by the magnitude of the
+temptation; so much so, indeed, that he never seemed to realize in his
+own mind the foulness of the deed by which alone it could become his
+property. Had any man hinted that he was a thief either in act or
+intention, he would have repudiated the term with scorn--would have
+repudiated it even in his own mind, for he made a point of hoodwinking
+and cozening himself as though he were some other person, whose good
+opinion must on no account be forfeited.
+
+Captain Ducie awaited with hidden impatience the hour when it should
+please M. Platzoff to fulfil his promise. He had not long to wait.
+Three evenings later, as they sat in the smoke-room, said Platzoff,
+"To-night you shall see the Great Mogul Diamond. No eyes save my own
+have seen it for ten years. I must ask you to put yourself for an hour
+or two under my instructions. Are you minded so to do?"
+
+"I shall be most happy to carry out your wishes in every way,"
+answered Ducie. "Consider me as your slave for the time being."
+
+"Attend then, if you please. This evening you will retire to your own
+rooms at eleven o'clock. Precisely at one-thirty a.m., you will come
+back here. You will be good enough to come in your slippers, because
+it is not desirable that any of the household should be disturbed by
+our proceedings. I have no further orders at present."
+
+"Your lordship's wishes are my commands," answered Ducie with a mock
+salaam.
+
+They sat talking and smoking till eleven; then Ducie left his host as
+if for the night. He lay down for a couple of hours on the sofa in his
+dressing-room. Precisely at one thirty he was on his way back to the
+smoke-room, his feet encased in a pair of Indian moccasins. A minute
+later he was joined by Platzoff in dressing-gown and slippers.
+
+"I need hardly tell you, my dear Ducie," began the latter, "that with
+a piece of property in my possession no larger than a pigeon's egg,
+and worth so many thousands of pounds, a secure place in which to
+deposit that property (since I choose to have it always near me) is an
+object of paramount importance. That secure place of deposit I have at
+Bon Repos. This you may accept as one reason for my having lived in
+such an out-of-the-world spot for so many years. It is a place known
+to myself alone. After my death it will become known to one person
+only--to the person into whose possession the Diamond will pass when I
+shall be no longer among the living, The secret will be told him that
+he may have the means of finding the Diamond, but not even to him
+will it become known till after my decease. Under these circumstances,
+my dear Ducie, you will, I am sure, excuse me for keeping the
+hiding-place of the Diamond a secret still--a secret even from you.
+Say--will you not?"
+
+With a malediction at his heart, but with a smile on his lips, Captain
+Ducie made reply. "Pray offer no excuses, my dear Platzoff, where none
+are needed. What I want is to see the Diamond itself, not to know
+where it is kept. Such a piece of information would be of no earthly
+use to me, and it would involve a responsibility which, under any
+circumstances, I should hardly care to assume."
+
+"It is well; you are an English gentleman," said the Russian, with a
+ceremonious inclination of the head, "and your words are based on
+wisdom and truth. It is necessary that I should blindfold you: oblige
+me with your handkerchief."
+
+Ducie with a smile handed over his handkerchief, and Platzoff
+proceeded to blindfold him--an operation which was rapidly and
+effectually performed by the deft fingers of the Russian.
+
+"Now, give me your hand, and come with me, but do not speak till you
+are spoken to."
+
+So Ducie laid a finger in the Russian's thin cold palm, and the latter
+taking a small bronze hand-lamp, conducted his bandaged companion from
+the room.
+
+In two minutes after leaving the smoke-room Ducie's geographical ideas
+of the place were completely at fault. Platzoff led him through so
+many corridors and passages, turning now to the right hand, and now to
+the left,--he guided him up and down so many flights of stairs, now of
+stone and now of wood, that he lost his reckoning entirely, and felt
+as though he were being conducted through some place far more spacious
+than Bon Repos. He counted the number of stairs in each flight that he
+went up or down. In two or three cases the numbers tallied, which
+induced him to think that Platzoff was conducting him twice over the
+same ground, in order perhaps the more effectually to confuse his
+ideas as to the position of the place to which he was being led.
+
+After several minutes spent thus in silent perambulation of the old
+house, they halted for a moment while Platzoff unlocked a door, after
+which they passed forward into a room, in the middle of which Ducie
+was left standing while Platzoff relocked the door, and then busied
+himself for a minute in trimming the lamp he had brought with him,
+which had been his only guide through the dark and silent house, for
+the servants had all gone to bed more than an hour ago.
+
+Ducie thus left to himself for a little while had time for reflection.
+The floor on which he was standing was covered with a thick soft
+carpet, consequently he was in one of the best rooms in the house.
+The atmosphere of this room was penetrated with a very faint aroma of
+pot-pourri, so faint that unless Captain Ducie's nose had been more
+than ordinarily keen he would never have perceived it. To the best of
+his knowledge there was only one room in Bon Repos that was permeated
+with the peculiar scent of pot-pourri. That room was M. Platzoff's
+private study, to which access was obtained through his bedroom. Ducie
+had been only twice into this room, but he remembered two facts in
+connexion with it. First, the scent already spoken of: secondly, that
+besides the door which opened into it from the bedroom, there was
+another door which he had noticed as being shut and locked both times
+that he was there. If the room in which they now were was really M.
+Platzoff's study, they had probably obtained access to it through the
+second door.
+
+While silently revolving these thoughts in his mind, Captain Ducie's
+fingers were busy with the formation of two tiny paper pellets, each
+no bigger than a pea. Unseen by Platzoff he contrived to drop these
+pellets on the carpet.
+
+"I must really apologize," said the Russian, next moment, "for keeping
+you waiting so long; but this lamp will not burn properly."
+
+"Don't hurry yourself on my account," said Ducie. "I am quite jolly.
+My eyes are ready bandaged: I am only waiting for the axe and the
+block."
+
+"We are not going to dispose of you in quite so summary a fashion,"
+said the Russian. "One minute more and your eyesight shall be restored
+to you."
+
+Ducie's quick ears caught a low click, as though some one had touched
+a spring. Then there was a faint rumbling, as though something were
+being rolled back on hidden wheels.
+
+"Lend me your hand again, and bend that tall figure of yours. Step
+carefully. There is another staircase to descend--the last and the
+steepest of all."
+
+Keeping fast hold of Platzoff's hand, Ducie followed slowly and
+cautiously, counting the steps as he went down. They were of stone,
+and were twenty-two in number. At the bottom of the staircase another
+door was unlocked. The two passed through, and the door was shut and
+relocked behind them.
+
+"Be blind no longer!" said Platzoff, taking off the handkerchief and
+handing it to Ducie with a smile. A few seconds elapsed before the
+latter could discern anything clearly. Then he saw that he was in a
+small vaulted chamber about seven feet in height, with a flagged
+floor, but without furniture of any kind save a small table of black
+oak on which Platzoff's lamp was now burning. The atmosphere of this
+dungeon had struck him with a sudden chill as he went in. At each end
+was a door, both of iron. The one that had opened to admit them was
+set in the thick masonry of the wall; the one at the opposite end
+seemed built into the solid rock.
+
+"Before we go any farther," said Platzoff, "I may as well explain to
+you how it happens that a respectable old country-house like Bon Repos
+has such a suspicious-looking hiding-place about its premises. You
+must know that I bought the house, many years ago, of the last
+representative of an old north-country family. He was a bachelor, and
+in him the family died out. Three years after I had come to reside
+here the old man, at that time on his death-bed, sent me a letter and
+a key. The letter revealed to me the secret of the place we are now
+exploring, of which I had no previous knowledge; the key is that of
+the two iron doors. It seems that the old man's ancestors had been
+deeply implicated in the Jacobite risings of last century. The house
+had been searched several times, and on one occasion occupied by
+Hanoverian troops. As a provision against such contingencies this
+hiding-place (a natural one as far as the cavern beyond is concerned,
+which has probably existed for thousands of years) was then first
+connected with the interior of the house, and rendered practicable at
+a moment's notice; and here on several occasions, certain members of
+the family, together with their plate and title-deeds, lay concealed
+for weeks at a time. The old gentleman gave me a solemn assurance that
+the secret existed with him alone; all who had been in any way
+implicated in the earlier troubles having died long ago. As the
+property had now become mine by purchase, he thought it only right
+that before he died these facts should be brought to my knowledge. You
+may imagine, my dear Ducie, with what eagerness I seized upon this
+place as a safe depository for my Diamond, which, up to that time, I
+had been obliged to carry about my person. And now, forward to the
+heart of the mystery!"
+
+Having unlocked and flung open the second iron door, Platzoff took up
+his lamp, and, closely followed by Ducie, entered a narrow winding
+passage in the rock. After following this passage, which tended
+slightly downwards for a considerable distance, they emerged into a
+large cavernous opening in the heart of the hill.
+
+Platzoff's first act was, by means of a long crook, to draw down
+within reach of his hand a large iron lamp that was suspended from the
+roof by a running chain. This lamp he lighted from the hand-lamp he
+had brought with him. As soon as released, it ascended to its former
+position, about ten feet from the ground. It burned with a clear white
+flame that lighted up every nook and cranny of the place. The sides of
+the cave were of irregular formation. Measuring by the eye, Ducie
+estimated the cave to be about sixty yards in length, by a breadth, in
+the widest part, of twenty. In height it appeared to be about forty
+feet. The floor was covered with a carpet of thick brown sand, but
+whether this covering was a natural or an artificial one Ducie had no
+means of judging. The atmosphere of the place was cold and damp, and
+the walls in many places dripped with moisture; in other places they
+scintillated in the lamplight as though thousands of minute gems were
+embedded in their surface.
+
+In the middle of the floor, on a pedestal of stones loosely piled
+together, was a hideous idol, about four feet in height, made of wood,
+and painted in various colours. In the centre of its forehead gleamed
+the great Diamond.
+
+"Behold!" was all that Platzoff said, as he pointed to the idol. Then
+they both stood and gazed in silence.
+
+Many contending emotions were at work just then in Ducie's breast,
+chief of which was a burning, almost unconquerable desire to make that
+glorious gem his own at every risk. In his ear a fiend seemed to be
+whispering.
+
+"All you have to do," it seemed to say, "is to grip old Platzoff
+tightly round the neck for a couple of minutes. His thread of life is
+frail, and would be easily broken. Then possess yourself of the
+Diamond and his keys. Go back by the way you came and fasten
+everything behind you. The household is all abed, and you could get
+away unseen. Long before the body of Platzoff would be discovered, if
+indeed it were ever discovered, you would be far away and beyond all
+fear of pursuit. Think! That tiny stone is worth a hundred and fifty
+thousand pounds."
+
+This was Ducie's temptation. It shook him inwardly as a reed is shaken
+by the wind. Outwardly he was his ordinary quiet impassive self, only
+gazing with eyes that gleamed on the gleaming gem, which shone like a
+new-fallen star on the forehead of that hideous image.
+
+The spell was broken by Platzoff, who, going up to the idol, and
+passing his hand through an orifice at the back of the skull, took the
+Diamond out of its resting-place, close behind the hole in the
+forehead, through which it was seen from the front. With thumb and
+forefinger he took it daintily out, and going back to Ducie dropped it
+into the outstretched palm of the latter.
+
+Ducie turned the Diamond over and over, and held it up before the
+light between his forefinger and thumb, and tried the weight of it on
+his palm. It was in the simple form of a table diamond, with only
+sixteen facets in all, and was just as it had left the fingers of some
+Indian cutter a couple of centuries ago. It glowed with a green fire,
+deep, yet tender, that flashed through its facets and smote the duller
+lamplight with sparkles of intense brilliancy. This, then, was the
+wondrous gem that many a time and oft had felt the touch of great
+Aurengzebe's hand! Ducie seemed to be examining it most closely; but,
+in truth, at that very moment he was debating in his own mind the
+terrible question of murder or no murder, and scarcely saw the stone
+itself at all.
+
+"Ami, you do not seem to admire my Diamond!" said the Russian
+presently, with a touch of pathos in his voice.
+
+Ducie pressed the Diamond back into Platzoff's hands. "I admire it so
+much," said he, "that I cannot enter into any commonplace terms of
+admiration. I will talk to you to-morrow respecting it. At present I
+lack fitting words."
+
+The Russian took back the stone, pressed it to his lips, and then went
+and replaced it in the forehead of the idol.
+
+"Who is your friend there?" said Ducie, with a desperate attempt to
+wrench his thoughts away from that all-absorbing temptation.
+
+"I am not sufficiently learned in Hindu mythology to tell you his name
+with certainty," answered Platzoff. "I take him to be no less a
+personage than Vishnu. He is seated upon the folds of the snake Jesha,
+whose seven heads bend over him to afford him shade. In one hand he
+holds a spray of the sacred lotus. He is certainly hideous enough to
+be a very great personage. Do you know, my dear Ducie," went on
+Platzoff, "I have a very curious theory with regard to that Hindu
+gentleman, whoever he may be. Many years ago he was worshipped in some
+great Eastern temple, and had, priests and acolytes without number to
+attend to his wants; and then, as now, the great Diamond shone in his
+forehead. By some mischance the Diamond was lost or stolen--in any
+case, he was dispossessed of it. From that moment he was an unhappy
+idol. He derived pleasure no longer from being worshipped, he could
+rest neither by night nor day--he had lost his greatest treasure. When
+he could no longer endure this state of wretchedness he stole out of
+the temple one fine night unknown to any one, and set out on his
+travels in search of the missing Diamond. Was it simple accident or
+occult knowledge, that directed his wanderings after a time to the
+shop of a London curiosity dealer, where I saw him, fell in love with
+him, and bought him? I know not: I only know that he and his darling
+Diamond were at last re-united, and here they have remained ever
+since. You smile as if I had been relating a pleasant fable. But tell
+me if you can how it happens that in the forehead of yonder idol there
+is a small cavity lined with gold into which the Diamond fits with the
+most exact nicety. That cavity was there when I bought the idol and
+has in no way been altered since. The shape of the Diamond, as you
+have seen for yourself, is rather peculiar. Is it therefore possible
+that mere accident can be at the bottom of such a coincidence? Is not
+my theory of the Wandering Idol much more probable as well as far more
+poetical? You smile again. You English are the greatest sceptics in
+the world. But it is time to go. We have seen all there is to be seen,
+and the temperature of this place will not benefit my rheumatism."
+
+So the lamp was put out, and Idol and Diamond were left to darkness
+and solitude. In the vaulted room, at the entrance to the winding way
+that led to the cavern, Ducie's eyes were again bandaged. Then up the
+twenty-two stone stairs, and so into the carpeted room above, where
+was the scent of _pot-pourri_. From this room they came by many
+passages and flights of stairs back to the smoking-room, where Ducie's
+bandage was removed. One last pipe, a little desultory conversation,
+and then bed.
+
+M. Platzoff being out of the way for an hour or two next afternoon,
+Captain Ducie contrived to pay a surreptitious visit to his host's
+private study. On the carpet he found one of the two paper pellets
+which he had dropped from his fingers the previous evening. There,
+too, was the same faint, sickly smell that had filled his nostrils
+when the handkerchief was over his eyes, which he now traced to a huge
+china jar in one corner, filled with the dried leaves of flowers
+gathered long summers before.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI.
+JANET'S RETURN.
+
+
+"There he is! there is dear Major Strickland!"
+
+The tidal train was just steaming into London Bridge station on a
+certain spring evening as the above words were spoken. From a window
+of one of the carriages a bright young face was peering eagerly, a
+face which lighted up with a smile of rare sweetness the moment Major
+Strickland's soldierly figure came into view. A tiny gloved hand was
+held out as a signal, the major's eye was caught, the train came to a
+stand, and next moment Janet Holme was on the platform with her arms
+round the old soldier's neck, and her lips held up for a kiss.
+
+The publicity of this transaction seemed slightly to shock the
+sensibilities of Miss Close, the English teacher, in whose charge
+Janet had come over; but she was won to a quite different view of the
+affair when the major, after requesting to be introduced to her, shook
+her cordially by the hand, said how greatly obliged he was to her for
+the care she had taken of "his dear Miss Holme," and invited her to
+dine next day with himself and Janet. Then Miss Close went her way,
+and the Major and Janet went theirs in a cab, to a hotel not a hundred
+miles from Piccadilly.
+
+Janet's first words as they got clear of the station were:
+
+"And now you must tell me how everybody is at Dupley Walls."
+
+"Everybody was quite well when I left home, except one person--Sister
+Agnes."
+
+"Dear Sister Agnes!" said Janet, and the tears sprang to her eyes in a
+moment. "I am more sorry than I can tell to hear that she is ill."
+
+"Not ill exactly, but ailing," said the major. "You must not alarm
+yourself unnecessarily. She caught a severe cold one wet evening about
+three months ago, as she was on her way home from visiting some poor
+sick woman in the village, and she seems never to have been quite well
+since."
+
+"I had a letter from her five days ago, but she never hinted to me
+that she was not well."
+
+"I can quite believe that. She is not one given to complain about
+herself, but one who strives to soothe the complaints of others. The
+good she does in her quiet way among the poor is something wonderful.
+I must tell you what an old bedridden man, to whom she had been very
+kind, said to her the other day. Said he, 'If everybody had their
+rights in this world, ma'am, or if I was king of fairyland, you should
+have a pair of angel's wings, so that everybody might know how good
+you are.' And there are a hundred others who would say the same
+thing."
+
+"If I had not had her dear letters to hearten me and cheer me up, I
+think that many a time I should have broken down utterly under the
+dreadful monotony of my life at the Pension Clissot. I had no
+holidays, in the common meaning of the word; no dear friends to go and
+see; none even to come once in a way to see me, were it only for one
+happy hour. I had no home recollections to which I could look back
+fondly in memory, and the future was all a blank--a mystery. But the
+letters of Sister Agnes spoke to me like the voice of a dear friend.
+They purified me, they lifted me out of my common work-a-day troubles,
+and all the petty meannesses of school-girl existence, and set before
+me the example of a good and noble life as the one thing worth
+striving for in this weary world."
+
+"Tut, tut, my dear child!" said the major, "you are far too young to
+call the world a weary world. Please heaven, it shall not be quite
+such a dreary place for you in time to come. We will begin the change
+this very evening. We shall just be in time to get a bit of dinner,
+and then, heigh! for the play."
+
+"The play, dear Major Strickland!" said Janet, with a sudden flush and
+an eager light in her eyes; "but would Sister Agnes approve of my
+going to such a place?"
+
+"I scarcely think, poverina, that Sister Agnes would disapprove of any
+place to which I might choose to take you."
+
+"Forgive me!" cried Janet, "I did not intend you to construe my words
+in that way."
+
+"I have never construed anything since I was at school fifty years
+ago," answered the major, laughingly. "Can you tell me now from your
+heart, little one, that you would not like to go to the play?"
+
+"I should like very, very much to go, and after what has been said I
+will never forgive you if you do not take me."
+
+"The penalty would be too severe. It is agreed that we shall go."
+
+"To me it seems only seven days instead of seven years since I was
+last driven through London streets," resumed Janet, as they were
+crawling up Fleet Street. "The same shops, the same houses, and even,
+as it seems to me, the same people crowding the pathways; and, to
+complete the illusion, the same kind travelling companion now as
+then."
+
+"To me the illusion seems by no means so complete. To London Bridge,
+seven years ago, I took a simple child of twelve: to-day I bring back
+a young lady of nineteen--a woman, in point of fact--who, I have no
+doubt, understands more of flirtation than she does of French, and
+would rather graduate in coquetry than in crochet-work."
+
+"Take care then, sir, lest I wing my unslaked arrows at you."
+
+"You are too late in the day, dear child, to practise on me. I am your
+devoted slave already--bound fast to the wheel of your triumphant car.
+What more would you have?"
+
+The hotel was reached at last, and the major gave Janet a short
+quarter of an hour for her toilette. When she got downstairs dinner
+was on the point of being served, and she found covers laid for three.
+Before she had time to ask a question, the third person entered the
+room. He was a tall well-built man of six or seven-and-twenty. He had
+light-brown hair, closely-cropped but still inclined to curl, and a
+thick beard and moustache of the same colour. He had blue eyes, and a
+pleasant smile, and the easy self-possessed manner of one who had seen
+"the world of men and things." His left sleeve was empty.
+
+Janet did not immediately recognise him, he looked so much older, so
+different in every way; but at the first sound of his voice she knew
+who stood before her. He came forward and held out his hand--the one
+hand that was left him.
+
+"May I venture to call myself an old friend, Miss Holme? and to hope
+that even after all these years I am not quite forgotten?"
+
+"I recognise you by your voice, not by your face. You are Mr. George
+Strickland. You it was who saved my life. Whatever else I may have
+forgotten, I have not forgotten that."
+
+"I am too well pleased to find that I live in your memory at all to
+cavil with your reason for recollecting me."
+
+"But--but, I never heard--no one ever told me--" Then she stopped with
+tears in her eyes, and glanced at his empty sleeve.
+
+"That I had left part of myself in India," he said, finishing the
+sentence for her. "Such, nevertheless, is the case. Uncle there says
+that the yellow rascals were so fond of me that they could not bear to
+part from me altogether. For my own part, I think myself fortunate
+that they did not keep me there _in toto_, in which case I should not
+have had the pleasure of meeting you here to-day."
+
+He had been holding her hand quite an unnecessary length of time. She
+now withdrew it gently. Their eyes met for one brief instant, then
+Janet turned away and seated herself at the table. The flush caused by
+the surprise of the meeting still lingered on her face, the tear-drops
+still lingered in her eyes, and as George Strickland sat down opposite
+to her he thought that he had never seen a sweeter vision nor one that
+appealed more directly to his imagination and his heart.
+
+Janet Holme at nineteen was very pleasant to look upon. Her face was
+not one of mere commonplace prettiness, but had an individuality of
+its own that caused it to linger in the memory like some sweet picture
+that once seen cannot readily be forgotten. Her eyes were of a tender
+luminous grey, full of candour and goodness. Her hair was a deep
+glossy brown; her face was oval, and her nose a delicate aquiline. On
+ordinary occasions she had little or no colour, yet no one could have
+taken the clear pallor of her cheek as a token of ill health; it
+seemed rather a result of the depth and earnestness of the life within
+her.
+
+In her wardrobe there was a lack of things fashionable, and as she sat
+at dinner this evening she had on a dress of black alpaca, made after
+a very quiet and nun-like style; with a thin streak of snow-white
+collar and cuff round throat and wrist; but without any ornament save
+a necklace of bog-oak, cut after an antique pattern, and a tiny gold
+locket in which was a photographic likeness of Sister Agnes.
+
+That was a very pleasant little dinner party. In the course of
+conversation it came out that, a few days previously, Captain George
+had been decorated with the Victoria Cross. Janet's heart thrilled
+within her as the major told in simple unexaggerated terms of the
+special deed of heroism by which the great distinction had been won.
+The major told also how George was now invalided on half-pay; and
+her heart thrilled with a still sweeter emotion when he went on
+to say that the young soldier would henceforth reside with him at
+Tydsbury--at Tydsbury which is only a short two miles from Dupley
+Walls! The feeling with which she heard this simple piece of news was
+one to which she had hitherto been an utter stranger. She asked
+herself, and blushed as she asked, whence this new sweet feeling
+emanated. But she was satisfied with asking the question, and seemed
+to think that no answer was required.
+
+When dinner was over they set out for the play. Janet had never been
+inside a theatre before, and for her the experience was an utterly
+novel and delightful one.
+
+On the third day after Janet's arrival in London they all went down to
+Tydsbury together--the major, and she, and George. But in the course
+of those three days the major took Janet about a good deal, and
+introduced her to nearly all the orthodox sights of the Great
+City--and a strange kaleidoscopic jumble they seemed at the time, only
+to be afterwards rearranged by Memory as portions of a bright and
+sunny picture the like of which she scarcely dared hope ever to see
+again.
+
+Captain Strickland parted from the major and Janet at Tydsbury
+station. The two latter were bound for Dupley Walls, for the major
+felt that his task would have been ill performed had he failed to
+deliver Janet into Lady Pollexfen's own hands. As they rumbled along
+the quiet country roads, which brought vividly back to Janet's mind
+the evening when she saw Dupley Walls for the first time, said the
+major: "Do you remember, poppetina, how, seven years ago, I spoke to
+you of a certain remarkable likeness which you then bore to some one
+whom I knew when I was quite a young man? or has the circumstance
+escaped your memory?"
+
+"I remember quite well your speaking of the likeness, and I have often
+wondered since who the original was of whom I was such a striking
+copy. I remember, too, how positively Lady Pollexfen denied the
+resemblance which you so strongly insisted upon."
+
+"Will her ladyship dare to deny it to-day?" said the major, sternly.
+"I tell you, child, that now you are grown up, the likeness seen by me
+seven years ago is still more clearly visible. When I look into your
+eyes I seem to see my own youth reflected there. When you are near me
+I can fancy that my lost treasure has not been really lost to me--that
+she has merely been asleep, like the Princess in the story-book, and
+that while time has moved on for me, she has come back out of her
+enchanted slumber as fresh and beautiful as when I saw her last. Ah,
+poverina! you cannot imagine what a host of recollections the sight of
+your sweet face conjures up whenever I choose to let my day-dreams
+have way for a little while."
+
+"I remember your telling me that my parents were unknown to you,"
+answered Janet. "Perhaps the lady to whom I bear so strong a
+resemblance was my mother."
+
+"No, not your mother, Janet. The lady to whom I refer died unmarried.
+She and I had been engaged to each other for three years; but Death
+came and claimed her a fortnight before the day fixed for our wedding;
+and here I am, a lonely old bachelor still."
+
+"Not quite lonely, dear Major Strickland," murmured Janet, as she
+lifted his hand and pressed it to her lips.
+
+"True, girl, not quite lonely. I have George, whom I love as though he
+were a son of my own. And there is Aunt Felicity, as the children used
+to call her, who is certainly very fond of me, as I also am of her."
+
+"Not forgetting poor me," said Janet.
+
+"Not forgetting you, dear, whom I love like a daughter."
+
+"And who loves you very sincerely in return."
+
+A few minutes later they drew up at Dupley Walls.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII.
+DUPLEY WALLS AFTER SEVEN YEARS.
+
+
+Major Strickland rang the bell, and the door was opened by a servant
+who was strange to Janet.
+
+"Be good enough to inform Lady Pollexfen that Major Strickland and
+Miss Holme have just arrived from town, and inquire whether her
+ladyship has any commands."
+
+The servant returned presently. "Her ladyship will see Major
+Strickland. Miss Holme is to go to the housekeeper's room."
+
+"I will see you again, poverina, after my interview with her
+ladyship," said the major, as he went off in charge of the footman.
+
+Janet, left alone, threaded her way by the old familiar passages to
+the housekeeper's room. Dance was not there, being probably in
+attendance on Lady Pollexfen, and Janet had the room to herself. Her
+heart was heavy within her.
+
+There was a chill sense of friendlessness, of being alone in the
+world, upon her. Were these cold walls to be the only home her youth
+would ever know? A few slow salt tears welled from her eyes as she sat
+brooding over the little wood fire, till presently there came a sound
+of footsteps, and the major's hand was laid caressingly on her
+shoulder.
+
+"What, all alone!" he said; "and with nothing better to do than read
+fairy tales in the glowing embers! Is there no one in all this big
+house to attend to your wants? But Dance will be here presently, I
+have no doubt, and the good old soul will do her best to make you
+comfortable. I have been to pay my respects to her ladyship, who is in
+one of her unamiable moods this evening. I, however, contrived to
+wring from her a reluctant consent to your paying Aunt Felicity and
+me a visit now and then at Tydsbury, and it shall be my business to
+see that the promise is duly carried out."
+
+"Then I am to remain at Dupley Walls!" said Janet. "I thought it
+probable that my visit might be for a few weeks only, as my first one
+was."
+
+"From what Lady Pollexfen said, I imagine that the present arrangement
+is to be a permanent one; but she gave no hint of the mode in which
+she intended to make use of your services, and that she will make use
+of you in some way, no one who knows her can doubt. And now, dear, I
+must say good-bye for the present; good-bye, and God bless you! You
+may look to see me again within the week. Keep up your spirits,
+and----but here comes Dance, who will cheer you up far better than I
+can."
+
+As the major went out, Dance came in. The good soul seemed quite
+unchanged, except that she had grown older and mellower, and seemed to
+have sweetened with age like an apple plucked unripe. A little cry of
+delight burst from her lips the moment she saw Janet. But in the very
+act of rushing forward with outstretched arms, she stopped. She
+stopped, and stared, and then curtsied as though involuntarily. "If
+the dead are ever allowed to come back to this earth, there is one of
+them before me now!" she murmured.
+
+Janet caught the words, but her heart was too full to notice them just
+then. She had her arms round Dance's neck in a moment, and her bright
+young head was pressed against the old servant's faithful breast.
+
+"Oh! Dance, Dance, I am so glad you are come!"
+
+"Hush! dear heart; hush! my poor child; you must not take on in that
+way. It seems a poor coming home for you--for I suppose Dupley Walls
+is to be your home in time to come--but there are those under this
+roof that love you dearly. Eh! but you are grown tall and bonny, and
+look as fresh and sweet as a morning in May. Her ladyship ought to be
+proud of you. But she gets that cantankerous and cross-grained in her
+old age, that you never know what will suit her for two minutes at a
+time. For all that, her spirit is just wonderful, and she is a real
+lady every inch of her. And you, Miss Janet, you are a thorough lady;
+anybody can see that, and her ladyship will see it as soon as anybody.
+She will like you none the worse for being a gentlewoman. But here am
+I preaching away like any old gadabout, and you not as much as taken
+your bonnet off yet. Get your things off, dearie, and I'll have a cup
+of tea ready in no time, and you'll feel ever so much better when you
+have had it."
+
+Dance could scarcely take her eyes off Janet's face, so attracted was
+she by the likeness which had wrung from her an exclamation on
+entering the room.
+
+But Janet was tired, and reserved all questions till the morrow; all
+questions, except one. That one was,
+
+"How is Sister Agnes?"
+
+Dance shook her head solemnly. "No worse and no better than she has
+been for the last two months. There is something lingering about her
+that I don't like. She is far from well, and yet not exactly what we
+call ill. Morning, noon, and night, she seems so terribly weary, and
+that is just what frightens me. She has asked after you I don't know
+how many times, and when tea is over you must go and see her. Only I
+must warn you, dear Miss Janet, not to let your feelings overcome you
+when you see her--not to make a scene. In that case your coming would
+do her not good but harm."
+
+Janet recovered her spirits in a great measure before tea was over.
+She and Dance had much to talk about, many pleasant reminiscences to
+call up and discuss. As if by mutual consent, Lady Pollexfen's name
+was not mentioned between them.
+
+As soon as tea was over, Dance went to inquire when Sister Agnes would
+see Miss Holme. The answer was "I will see her at once."
+
+So Janet went with hushed footsteps up the well-remembered staircase,
+opened the door softly, and stood for a moment on the threshold.
+Sister Agnes was lying on a sofa. She put her hand suddenly to her
+side and rose to her feet as Janet entered the room. A tall wasted
+figure robed in black, with a thin spiritualized face, the natural
+pallor of which was just now displaced by a transient flush that faded
+out almost as quickly as it had come. The white head-dress had been
+cast aside for once, and the black hair streaked with silver, was tied
+in a simple knot behind. The large dark eyes looked larger and darker
+than they had ever looked before, and seemed lit up with an inner fire
+that had its source in another world than ours.
+
+Sister Agnes advanced a step or two and held out her arms. "My
+darling!" was all she said as she pressed Janet to her heart, and
+kissed her again and again. They understood each other without words.
+The feeling within them was too deep to find expression in any
+commonplace greeting.
+
+The excitement of the meeting was too much for the strength of Sister
+Agnes. She was obliged to lie down again. Janet sat by her side
+caressing one of her wasted hands.
+
+"Your coming has made me very, very happy," murmured Sister Agnes
+after a time.
+
+"Through all the seven dreary years of my school life," said Janet,
+"the expectation of some day seeing you again was the one golden dream
+that the future held before me. That dream has now come true. How I
+have looked forward to this day none save those who have been
+circumstanced as I have can more than faintly imagine."
+
+"Are you at all acquainted with Lady Pollexfen's intentions in asking
+you to come to Dupley Walls?"
+
+"Not in the least. A fortnight ago I had no idea that I should so soon
+be here. I knew that I could not stay much longer at the Pension
+Clissot, and naturally wondered what instructions Madame Duclos would
+receive from Lady Pollexfen as to my disposal. The last time I saw her
+ladyship, her words seemed to imply that after my education should be
+finished I should have to trust to my own exertions for earning a
+livelihood; in fact, I have looked upon myself all along as ultimately
+destined to add one more unit to the great tribe of governesses."
+
+"Such a fate shall not be yours if my weak arm has power to avert it,"
+said Sister Agnes. "For the present your services are required at
+Dupley Walls, in the capacity of 'companion' to Lady Pollexfen--in
+brief, to occupy the position held by me for so many years, but from
+which I am now obliged to secede on account of ill health."
+
+Janet was almost too astounded to speak. "Companion to Lady Pollexfen!
+Me! Impossible!" was all that she could say.
+
+"Why impossible, dear Janet?" asked Sister Agnes, with her low, sweet
+voice. "I see no element of impossibility in such an arrangement. The
+duties of the position have been filled by me for many years, they
+have now devolved upon you, and I am not aware of anything that need
+preclude your acceptance of them."
+
+"We are not all angels like you, Sister Agnes," said Janet. "Lady
+Pollexfen, as I remember, is a very peculiar woman. She has no regard
+for the feelings of others, especially when those others are her
+inferiors in position. She says the most cruel things she can think
+of, and cares nothing how deeply they may wound. I am afraid that she
+and I would never agree."
+
+"That Lady Pollexfen is a very peculiar woman I am quite ready to
+admit. That she will say things to you that may seem hard and cruel,
+and that may wound your feelings, I will also allow. But granting all
+this, I can deduce from it no reason why the position should be
+refused by you. Had you gone out as governess, you would probably have
+had fifty things to contend against quite as disagreeable as Lady
+Pollexfen's temper and cynical remarks. You are young, dear Janet, and
+life's battle has yet to be fought by you. You must not expect that
+everything in this world will arrange itself in accordance with your
+wishes. You will have many difficulties to fight against and overcome,
+and the sooner you make up your mind to the acceptance of that fact,
+the better it will be for you in every way. If I have found the
+position of companion to Lady Pollexfen not quite unendurable, why
+should it be found so by you? Besides, her ladyship has many claims
+upon you--upon your best services in every way. Every farthing that
+has been spent upon you from the day you were born to the present time
+has come out of her purse. Except mere life itself, you owe everything
+to her. And even if this were not so, there are other and peculiar
+ties between you and her of which you know nothing (although you may
+possibly be made acquainted with them by-and-by), which are in
+themselves sufficient to lead her to expect every reasonable obedience
+at your hands. You must clothe yourself with good temper, dear Janet,
+as with armour of proof. You must make up your mind beforehand that
+however harsh her ladyship's remarks may sometimes seem, you will not
+answer her again. Do this, and her words will soon be powerless to
+sting you. Instead of feeling hurt or angry, you will be inclined to
+pity her--to pray for her. And she deserves pity, Janet, if any woman
+in this sinful world ever did. To have severed of her own accord those
+natural ties which other people cherish so fondly; to see herself
+fading into a dreary old age, and yet of her own free will to shut out
+the love that should attend her by the way and strew flowers on her
+path; to have no longer a single earthly hope or pleasure beyond those
+connected with each day's narrow needs or with the heaping together of
+more money where there was enough before--in all this there is surely
+room enough for pity, but none for any harsher feeling."
+
+"Dear Sister Agnes, your words make me thoroughly ashamed of myself,"
+said Janet, with tearful earnestness. "Arrogance ill becomes one like
+me who have been dependent on the charity of others from the day of my
+birth. Whatever task may be set me either by Lady Pollexfen or by you,
+I will do it to the best of my ability. Will you for this once pardon
+my petulance and ill temper, and I will strive not to offend you
+again?"
+
+"I am not offended, darling; far from it. I felt sure that you had
+good sense and good feeling enough to see the matter in its right
+light when it was properly put before you. But have you no curiosity
+as to the nature of your new duties?"
+
+"Very little at present, I must confess," answered Janet, with a wan
+smile. "The chief thing for which I care just now is to know that so
+long as I remain at Dupley Walls I shall be near you; and that of
+itself would be sufficient to enable me to rest contented under worse
+inflictions than Lady Pollexfen's ill temper."
+
+"You ridiculous Janet! Ah! if I only dared to tell you everything. But
+that must not be. Let us rather talk of what your duties will be in
+your new situation."
+
+"Yes, tell me about them, please," said Janet, "and you shall see in
+time to come that your words have not been forgotten."
+
+"To begin: you will have to go to her ladyship's room precisely at
+eight every morning. Sometimes she will not want you, in which case
+you will be at liberty till after breakfast. Should she want you it
+will probably be to read to her while she sips her chocolate, or it
+may be to play a game of backgammon with her before she gets up. A
+little later on you will be able to steal an hour or so for yourself,
+as while her ladyship is undergoing the elaborate processes of the
+toilette, your services will not be required. On coming down, if the
+weather be fine, she will want the support of your arm during her
+stroll on the terrace. If the weather be wet, she will probably attend
+to her correspondence and bookkeeping, and you will have to fill the
+parts both of amanuensis and accountant. When Mr. Madgin, her
+ladyship's man of business, comes up to Dupley Walls, you will have to
+be in attendance to take notes, write down instructions, and so on.
+By-and-by will come luncheon, of which, as a rule, you will partake
+with her. After luncheon you will be your own mistress for an hour
+while her ladyship sleeps. The moment she awakes you will have to be
+in attendance, either to play to her, or else to read to her--perhaps
+a little French or Italian, in both of which languages I hope that you
+are tolerably proficient. Your next duty will be to accompany her
+ladyship in her drive out. When you get back, will come dinner, but
+only when specially invited will you sit down with her ladyship. When
+that honour is not accorded you, you and I will dine here, darling, by
+our two selves."
+
+"Then I hope her ladyship will not invite me oftener than once a
+month," cried impulsive Janet.
+
+"The number of your invitations to dinner will depend upon the extent
+of her liking for you, so that we shall soon know whether or no you
+are a favourite. She may or may not require you after dinner. If she
+does require you, it may be either for reading or music, or to play
+backgammon with her; or even to sit quietly with her without speaking,
+for the mere sake of companionship. One fact you will soon discover
+for yourself--that her ladyship does not like to be long alone. And
+now, dearest, I think I have told you enough for the present. We will
+talk further of these things to-morrow. Give me just one kiss, and
+then see what you can find to play among that heap of old music on the
+piano. Madame Duclos used to write in raptures of your style and
+touch. We will now prove whether her eulogy was well founded."
+
+Janet found that she was not to occupy the same bedroom as on her
+first visit to Dupley Walls, but one nearer that of Sister Agnes. She
+was not sorry for this, for there had been a secret dread upon her of
+having to sleep in a room so near to that occupied by the body of Sir
+John Pollexfen. She had never forgotten her terrible experience in
+connexion with the Black Room, and she wished to keep herself entirely
+free from any such influences in time to come. The first question she
+asked Dance when they reached her bedroom was:--
+
+"Does Sister Agnes still visit the Black Room every midnight?"
+
+"Yes, for sure," answered Dance. "There is no one but her to do it.
+Her ladyship would not allow any of the servants to enter the room.
+Rather than that, I believe she would herself do what has to be done
+there. Sister Agues would not neglect that duty if she was dying."
+
+Janet said no more, but then and there she made up her mind to a
+certain course of action, of which nothing would have made her believe
+herself capable only an hour before.
+
+Early next forenoon she was summoned to an interview with Lady
+Pollexfen. Her heart beat more quickly than common as she was ushered
+by Dance into the old woman's dressing-room.
+
+Her ladyship was in demie-toilette--made up in part for the day, but
+not yet finished. Her black wig, with its long corkscrew curls, was
+carefully adjusted; her rouge and powder were artistically laid on,
+her eyebrows elaborately pointed, and in so far she looked as she
+always looked when visible to any one but her maid. But her figure
+wanted bracing up, so to speak, and looked shrunken and shrivelled in
+the old cashmere dressing-robe, from which at that early hour she had
+not emerged. Her fingers--long, lean, and yellow--were decorated with
+some half dozen valuable rings. Increasing years had not tended to
+make her hands steadier than Janet remembered them as being when she
+last saw her ladyship; and of late it had become a matter of some
+difficulty with her to keep her head quite still: it seemed possessed
+by an unaccountable desire to imitate the shaking of her hands. She
+was seated in an easy chair as Janet entered the room. Her breakfast
+equipage was on a small table at her elbow.
+
+As the door closed behind Janet, she stood still and curtsied.
+
+Lady Pollexfen placed her glass to her eye, and with a lean forefinger
+beckoned to Janet to draw near. Janet advanced, her eyes fixed
+steadily on those of Lady Pollexfen. A yard or two from the table she
+stopped and curtsied again.
+
+"I hope that I have the happiness of finding your ladyship quite
+well," she said, in a low clear voice, in which there was not the
+slightest tremor or hesitation.
+
+"And pray, Miss Holme, what can it matter to you whether I am well or
+ill? Answer me that if you please."
+
+"I owe so much to your ladyship, I have been such a pensioner on your
+bounty ever since I can remember anything, that mere selfishness
+alone, if no higher motive be allowed me, must always prompt me to
+feel an interest in the state of your ladyship's health."
+
+"Candid, at any rate. But I wish you clearly to understand that
+whatever obligation you may feel yourself under to me for what is past
+and gone, you have no claim of any kind upon me for the future. The
+tie between us can be severed by me at any moment."
+
+"Seven years ago your ladyship impressed that fact so strongly on my
+mind that I have never forgotten it. I have never felt myself to be
+other than a dependent on your bounty."
+
+"A very praiseworthy feeling, young lady, and one which I trust you
+will continue to cherish. Not that I wish other people to look upon
+you as a dependent. I wish----." She broke off abruptly, and stared
+helplessly round the room. Suddenly her head began to shake. "Heaven
+help me! what do I wish?" she exclaimed; and with that she began to
+cry, and seemed all in a moment to have grown older by twenty years.
+
+Janet, in her surprise, made a step or two forward, but Lady Pollexfen
+waved her fiercely back. "Fool! fool! why don't you go away?" she
+cried. "Why do you stare at me so? Go away, and send Dance to me. You
+have spoiled my complexion for the day."
+
+Janet left the room and sent Dance to her mistress, and then went for
+a ramble in the grounds. The seal of desolation and decay was set upon
+everything. The garden, no longer the choice home of choice flowers,
+was weed-grown and neglected. The greenhouses were empty, and falling
+to pieces for lack of a few simple repairs. The shrubs and evergreens
+had all run wild for want of pruning, and in several places the
+dividing hedges were broken down, and through the breaches sheep had
+intruded themselves into the private grounds. Even the house itself
+had a shabby out-at-elbows air, like a gentleman fallen upon evil
+days. Several of the upper windows were shuttered, some of the others
+showed a broken pane or two. Here and there a shutter had fallen away,
+or was hanging by a solitary hinge, suggesting thoughts of ghostly
+flappings to and fro in the rough wind on winter nights. Doors and
+window frames were blistering and splitting for want of paint.
+Close by the sacred terrace itself lay the fragments of a broken
+chimney-pot, blown down during the last equinoctial gales and suffered
+to lie where it had fallen. Everywhere were visible tokens of that
+miserly thrift which, carried to excess, degenerates into unthrift of
+the worst and meanest kind, from which the transition to absolute ruin
+is both easy and certain. For a full hour Janet trod the weed-grown
+walks with clasped hands and saddened eyes. At the end of that time
+Dance came in search of her. Lady Pollexfen wanted to see her again.
+
+
+
+
+END OF VOL. I.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Under Lock and Key, Volume I (of 3), by 
+T. W. Speight
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 57294 ***