"Yes. You don"t want to be turned out, do you?"
"Oh, no miss."
"Well, obey me now, and you shall remain. I am the mistress of Dalton Hall, and the owner of these estates. Wiggins is the agent, and seems disinclined to do what I wish. He will have to leave. If you don"t want to leave also, obey me now."
All this seemed to puzzle the porter, but certainly made no impression upon his resolve. He looked at Edith, then at the ground, then at the trees, and finally, as Edith concluded, he said:
"Beg pardon, miss, but orders is orders, an" I"ve got to obey mine."
Edith now began to feel discouraged. Yet there was one resource left, and this she now tried. Drawing forth her purse, she took out some pieces of gold.
"Come," said she, "you do very well to obey orders in ordinary cases; but in my case you are violating the law, and exposing yourself to punishment. Now I will pay you well if you do me this little service, and will give you this now, and much more afterward. Here, take this, and let me out quick."
The porter kept his eyes fixed on the ground, and did not even look at the gold. "See!" said Edith, excitedly and hurriedly--"see!"
The porter would not look. But at last he spoke, and then came the old monotonous sentence,
"Beggin" your pardon, miss, an" hopin" there"s no offense, I can"t do it. I"ve got to obey orders, miss."
At this Edith gave up the effort, and turning away, walked slowly and sadly from the gates.
This was certainly more than she had antic.i.p.ated. By this she saw plainly that Wiggins was determined to play a bold game. The possibility of such restraint as this had never entered into her mind. Now she recalled Miss Plympton"s fears, and regretted when too late that she had trusted herself within these gates. And now what the porter had told her showed her in one instant the full depth of his design. He evidently intended to keep her away from all communication with the outside world.
And she--what could she do? How could she let Miss Plympton know? How could she get out? No doubt Wiggins would contrive to keep all avenues of escape closed to her as this one was. Even the walls would be watched, so that she should not clamber over.
Among the most disheartening of her discoveries was the incorruptible fidelity of the servants of Wiggins. Twice already had she tried to bribe them, but on each occasion she had failed utterly. The black servant and the porter were each alike beyond the reach of her gold.
Her mind was now agitated and distressed. In her excitement she could not yet return to the Hall, but still hoped that she might escape, though the hope was growing faint indeed. She felt humiliated by the defeat of her attempts upon the honesty of the servants. She was troubled by the thought of her isolation, and did not know what might be best to do.
One thing now seemed evident, and this was that she had a better chance of escaping at this time than she would have afterward. If she was to be watched, the outlook could not yet be as perfect or as well organized as it would afterward be. And among the ways of escape she could think of nothing else than the wall. That wall, she thought, must certainly afford some places which she might scale. She might find some gate in a remote place which could afford egress. To this she now determined to devote herself.
With this purpose on her mind, she sought to find her way through the trees to the wall. This she was able to do without much difficulty, for though the trees grew thick, there was no underbrush, but she was able to walk along without any very great trouble. Penetrating in this way through the trees, she at length came to the wall. But, to her great disappointment, she found its height here quite as great as it had been near the gate, and though in one or two places trees grew up which threw their branches out over it, yet those trees were altogether inaccessible to her.
Still she would not give up too quickly, but followed the wall for a long distance. The further she went, however, the more hopeless did her search seem to grow. The ground was unequal, sometimes rising into hills, and at other times sinking into valleys; but in all places, whether hill or valley, the wall arose high, formidable, not to be scaled by one like her. As she looked at it the thought came to her that it had been arranged for that very purpose, so that it should not be easily climbed, and so it was not surprising that a barrier which might baffle the active poacher or trespa.s.ser should prove insuperable to a slender girl like her.
She wandered on, however, in spite of discouragement, in the hope of finding a gate. But this search was as vain as the other. After walking for hours, till her feeble limbs could scarcely support her any longer, she sank down exhausted, and burst into tears.
For a long time she wept, overwhelmed by acc.u.mulated sorrow and despondency and disappointment. At length she roused herself, and drying her eyes, looked up and began to think of returning to the Hall.
To her amazement she saw the black servant, Hugo, standing not far away.
As she raised her eyes he took off his cap, and grinned as usual. The sight of him gave Edith a great shock, and excited new suspicions and fears within her.
Had she been followed?
She must have been. She had been watched and tracked. All her desperate efforts had been noted down to be reported to Wiggins--all her long and fruitless search, her baffled endeavors, her frustrated hopes!
It was too much.
CHAPTER VII.
A PARLEY WITH THE JAILERS.
Coming as it did close upon her baffled efforts to escape, this discovery of Hugo proclaimed to Edith at once most unmistakably the fact that she was a prisoner. She was walled in. She was under guard and under surveillance. She could not escape without the consent of Wiggins, nor could she move about without being tracked by the spy of Wiggins. It was evident also that both the porter and the black servant Hugo were devoted to their master, and were beyond the reach both of persuasion and of bribery.
The discovery for a moment almost overwhelmed her once more; but the presence of another forced her to put a restraint upon her feelings. She tried to look unconcerned, and turning away her eyes, she sat in the same position for some time longer. But beneath the calm which her pride forced her to a.s.sume her heart throbbed painfully, and her thoughts dwelt with something almost like despair upon her present situation.
But Edith had a strong and resolute soul in spite of her slender and fragile frame; she had also an elastic disposition, which rose up swiftly from any prostration, and refused to be cast down utterly. So now this strength of her nature a.s.serted itself; and triumphing over her momentary weakness, she resolved to go at once and see Wiggins himself.
With these subordinates she had nothing to do. Her business was with Wiggins, and with Wiggins alone.
Yet the thought of an interview had something in it which was strangely repugnant to Edith. The aspect of her two jailers seemed to her to be repellent in the extreme. That white old man, with the solemn mystery of his eyes, that weird old woman, with her keen, vigilant outlook--these were the ones who now held her in restraint, and with these she had to come in conflict. In both of them there seemed something uncanny, and Edith could not help feeling that in the lives of both of these there was some mystery that pa.s.sed her comprehension.
Still, uncanny or not, whatever might be the mystery of her jailers, they remained her jailers and nothing less. It was against this thought that the proud soul of Edith chafed and fretted. It was a thought which was intolerable. It roused her to the intensest indignation. She was the lady of Dalton Hall; these who thus dared to restrain her were her subordinates. This Wiggins was not only her inferior, but he had been the enemy of her life. Could she submit to fresh indignities or wrongs at the hands of one who had already done so much evil to her and hers?
She could not.
That white old man with his mystery, his awful eyes, his venerable face, his unfathomable expression, and the weird old woman, his a.s.sociate, with her indescribable look and her air of watchfulness, were both partners in this crime of unlawful imprisonment. They dared to put restrictions upon the movements of their mistress, the lady of Dalton Hall. Such an attempt could only be the sign of a desperate mind, and the villainy of their plan was of itself enough to sink them deep in Edith"s thoughts down to an abyss of contempt and indignation. This indignation roused her, and her eagerness to see Miss Plympton impelled her to action. Animated by such feelings and motives, she delayed no longer, but at once returned to the Hall to see Wiggins himself.
On her way back she was conscious of the fact that Hugo was following; but she took no notice of it, as it was but the sequel to the preceding events of the day. She entered the Hall, and finding Mrs. Dunbar, told her to tell Wiggins that she wished to see him. After this she went down to the dreary drawing-room, where she awaited the coming of her jailer.
The room was unchanged from what it had been on the preceding day. By this time also Edith had noticed that there were no servants about except Hugo. The drear desolation of the vast Hall seemed drearier from the few inmates who dwelt there, and the solitude of the place made it still more intolerable.
After some time Wiggins made his appearance. He came in slowly, with his eyes fixed upon Edith, and the same expression upon his face which she had noticed before. A most singular man he was, whoever or whatever he might be. That h.o.a.ry head and that venerable face might have awed her under other circ.u.mstances, and the unfathomable mystery of its expression might have awakened intense interest and sympathy; but as it was, Edith had no place for any other feelings than suspicion, indignation, and scorn.
"What do you mean by this treatment?" said Edith, abruptly. "It seems as though you are trying to imprison me. I have told you that I wish to call on Miss Plympton. I can not get a carriage, and I am not allowed to leave this place on foot. You are responsible for this, and I tell you now that I must go, and at once."
At this peremptory address Wiggins stood looking at her with his usual expression, and for some moments made no reply.
"I did not know," said he at length, in a slow and hesitating voice, "that you wished to leave so soon."
"But I told you so. You drove away Miss Plympton yesterday from my gates. I promised to call on her this morning. She is anxiously expecting me. I must go to her." Wiggins again waited for a few moments before replying, and at length said, in an abstracted tone:
"No, no; it can not be--it can not be!"
"Can not be!" repeated Edith. "It seems to me that you are trying to carry out a most extraordinary course of action toward me. This looks like restraint or imprisonment."
Wiggins looked at her with an expression of earnest entreaty on his face, with which there was also mingled an air of indescribable sadness.
"It is necessary," said he, in a mournful voice. "Can you not bring yourself to bear with it? You do not know what is at stake. Some day all will be explained."
"This is silly," exclaimed Edith. "No explanation is possible. I insist on leaving this place at once. If you refuse to let me go, it will he worse for you than for me."
"You do not know what you ask," said Wiggins.
"I ask you," said Edith, sternly and proudly, "to open those gates to your mistress."