"Oh save me, Madame!--oh save me!--oh save me, Madame!" I pleaded, with the wild monotony of perfect terror, grasping and clinging to her dress, and looking up, with an agonised face, into the eyes of that shadowy Atropos.
"Save a you, indeed! Save! What _niaiserie_!"
"Oh, Madame! Oh, _dear_ Madame! for G.o.d"s sake, only get me away--get me from this, and I"ll do everything you ask me all my life--I will--_indeed_, Madame, I will! Oh save me! save me! _save_ me!"
I was clinging to Madame as to my guardian angel in my agony.
"And who told you, cheaile, you are in any danger?" demanded Madame, looking down on me with a black and witchlike stare.
"I am, Madame--I am--in great danger! Oh, Madame, think of me--take pity on me! I have none to help me--there is no one but G.o.d and you!"
Madame all this time viewed me with the same dismal stare, like a sorceress reading futurity in my face.
"Well, maybe you are--how can I tell? Maybe your uncle is mad--maybe you are mad. You have been my enemy always--why should I care?"
Again I burst into wild entreaty, and, clasping her fast, poured forth my supplications with the bitterness of death.
"I have no confidence in you, little Maud; you are little rogue--pet.i.te traitresse! Reflect, if you can, how you "av always treat Madame. You "av attempt to ruin me--you conspire with the bad domestics at Knowl to destroy me--and you expect me here to take a your part! You would never listen to me--you "ad no mercy for me--you join to hunt me away from your house like wolf. Well, what you expect to find me now? _Bah_!"
This terrific "Bah!" with a long nasal yell of scorn, rang in my ears like a clap of thunder.
"I say you are mad, pet.i.te insolente, to suppose I should care for you more than the poor hare it will care for the hound--more than the bird who has escape will love the oiseleur. I do not care--I ought not care. It is your turn to suffer. Lie down on your bed there, and suffer quaitely."
CHAPTER LXIII
_SPICED CLARET_
I did not lie down; but I despaired. I walked round and round the room, wringing my hands in utter distraction. I threw myself at the bedside on my knees. I could not pray; I could only shiver and moan, with hands clasped, and eyes of horror turned up to heaven. I think Madame was, in her malignant way, perplexed. That some evil was intended me I am sure she was persuaded; but I dare say Meg Hawkes had said rightly in telling me that she was not fully in their secrets.
The first paroxysm of despair subsided into another state. All at once my mind was filled with the idea of Meg Hawkes, her enterprise, and my chances of escape. There is one point at which the road to Elverston makes a short ascent: there is a sudden curve there, two great ash-trees, with a roadside stile between, at the right side, covered with ivy. Driving back and forward, I did not recollect having particularly remarked this point in the highway; but now it was before me, in the thin light of the thinnest segment of moon, and the figure of Meg Hawkes, her back toward me, always ascending towards Elverston. It was constantly the same picture--the same motion without progress--the same dreadful suspense and impatience.
I was now sitting on the side of the bed, looking wistfully across the room. When I did not see Meg Hawkes, I beheld Madame darkly eyeing first one then another point of the chamber, evidently puzzling over some problem, and in one of her most savage moods--sometimes muttering to herself, sometimes protruding, and sometimes s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g up her great mouth.
She went into her own room, where she remained, I think, nearly ten minutes, and on her return there was that in the flash of her eyes, the glow of her face, and the peculiar fragrance that surrounded her, that showed she had been partaking of her favourite restorative.
I had not moved since she left my room.
She paused about the middle of the floor, and looked at me with what I can only describe as her wild-beast stare.
"You are a very secrete family, you Ruthyns--you are so coning. I hate the coning people. By my faith, I weel see Mr. Silas Ruthyn, and ask wat he mean. I heard him tell old Wyat that Mr. Dudley is gone away to-night. He shall tell me everything, or else I weel make echec et mat aussi vrai que je vis."
Madame"s words had hardly ceased, when I was again watching Meg Hawkes on the steep road, mounting, but never reaching, the top of the acclivity, on the way to Elverston, and mentally praying that she might be brought safely there. Vain prayer of an agonised heart! Meg"s journey was already frustrated: she was not to reach Elverston in time.
Madame revisited her apartment, and returned, not, I think, improved in temper. She walked about the room, hustling the scanty furniture hither and thither as she encountered it. She kicked her empty box out of her way, with a horrid crash, and a curse in French. She strode and swaggered round the room, muttering all the way, and turning the corners of her course with a furious whisk. At last, out of the door she went. I think she fancied she had not been sufficiently taken into confidence as to what was intended for me.
It was now growing late, and yet no succour! I was seized, I remember, with a dreadful icy shivering.
I was listening for signals of deliverance. At ever distant sound, half stifled with a palpitation, these sounds piercing my ear with a horrible and exaggerated distinctness--"Oh Meg!--Oh cousin Monica!--Oh come! Oh Heaven, have mercy!--Lord, have mercy!" I thought I heard a roaring and jangle of voices. Perhaps it came from Uncle Silas"s room. It might be the tipsy violence of Madame. It might--merciful Heaven!--be the arrival of friends. I started to my feet; I listened, quivering with attention. Was it in my brain?--was it real? I was at the door, and it seemed to open of itself. Madame had forgotten to lock it; she was losing her head a little by this time. The key stood in the gallery door beyond; it too, was open.
I fled wildly. There was a subsiding sound of voices in my uncle"s room.
I was, I know not how, on the lobby at the great stair-head outside my uncle"s apartment. My hand was on the banisters, my foot on the first step, when below me and against the faint light that glimmered through the great window on the landing I saw a bulky human form ascending, and a voice said "Hush!" I staggered back, and at that instant fancied, with a thrill of conviction, I heard Lady Knollys"s voice in Uncle Silas" room.
I don"t know how I entered the room; I was there like a ghost. I was frightened at my own state.
Lady Knollys was not there--no one but Madame and my guardian.
I can never forget the look that Uncle Silas fixed on me as he cowered, seemingly as appalled as I.
I think I must have looked like a phantom newly risen from the grave.
"What"s that?--where do you come from?" whispered he.
"Death! death!" was my whispered answer, as I froze with terror where I stood.
"What does she mean?--what does all this mean?" said Uncle Silas, recovering wonderfully, and turning with a withering sneer on Madame. "Do you think it right to disobey my plain directions, and let her run about the house at this hour?"
"Death! death! Oh, pray to G.o.d for you and me!" I whispered in the same dreadful tones.
My uncle stared strangely at me again; and after several horrible seconds, in which he seemed to have recovered himself, he said, sternly and coolly--
"You give too much place to your imagination, niece. Your spirits are in an odd state--you ought to have advice."
"Oh, uncle, pity me! Oh, uncle, you are good! you"re kind; you"re kind when you think. You could not--you could not--could not! Oh, think of your brother that was always so good to you! He sees me here. He sees us both.
Oh, save me, uncle--save me!--and I"ll give up everything to you. I"ll pray to G.o.d to bless you--I"ll never forget your goodness and mercy. But don"t keep me in doubt. If I"m to go, oh, for G.o.d"s sake, shoot me now!"
"You were always odd, niece; I begin to fear you are insane," he replied, in the same stern icy tone.
"Oh, uncle--oh!--am I? Am I _mad_?"
"I hope not; but you"ll conduct yourself like a sane person if you wish to enjoy the privileges of one."
Then, with his finger pointing at me, he turned to Madame, and said, in a tone of suppressed ferocity--
"What"s the meaning of this?--why is she here?"
Madame was gabbling volubly, but to me it was only a shrilly noise. My whole soul was concentrated in my uncle, the arbiter of my life, before whom I stood in the wildest agony of supplication.
That night was dreadful. The people I saw dizzily, made of smoke or shining vapour, smiling or frowning, I could have pa.s.sed my hand through them. They were evil spirits.
"There"s no ill intended you; by ---- there"s none," said my uncle, for the first time violently agitated. "Madame told you why we"ve changed your room. You told her about the bailiffs, did not you? "with a stamp of fury he demanded of Madame, whose nasal roullades of talk were running on like a accompaniment all the time. She had told me indeed only a few hours since, and now it sounded to me like the echo of something heard a month ago or more.
"You can"t go about the house, d--n it, with bailiffs in occupation. There now--there"s the whole thing. Get to your room, Maud, and don"t vex me.
There"s a good girl."
He was trying to smile as he spoke these last words, and, with quavering soft tones, to quiet me; but the old scowl was there, the smile was corpse-like and contorted, and the softness of his tones was more dreadful than another man"s ferocity.