TO say nothing of it, to frighten the house! Hetty had never encountered in her own youthful person such a difficulty before. To keep the secret of something which had happened, which now it was very clear to her was not accidental—something perhaps that might be important, to keep the secret from those whom it might concern! In a moment her little fiction about the gardener disappeared, and she felt that she had never truly believed it. Something of far greater meaning lay beneath. She confronted it vaguely with frightened eyes; the conditions of her coming, and of the life here, and of Miss Hofland’s wonder and questioning, all flashing upon her in a moment. Everything went to prove that there was a mystery involved, something connected with the family that probably ought not to be concealed. She looked at Mr. Darrell with eyes which woke from a sort of stupefaction of fear and wonder into intelligence and acute anxiety. She did not speak, having scarcely regained sufficient possession of herself to trust her voice, but examined him with those awakened eyes.
“There is nothing wrong,” he said, with a slight tremulousness. “I would not deceive you. Whatever may be the rights of the matter, nothing could be gained by disturbing the house.”
“Oh, what is it?” cried Hetty, in spite of herself.
He shook his head with a smile. “Nothing,” he said, “that can affect you, nothing indeed. You have seen or heard me going to my patient?”
“Oh, Mr. Darrell,” said Hetty, with the indignation of sincerity, “it was not you.”
He shrank a little from her look. “I think you are mistaken,” he said; “how can you tell in the night who it is? I have to be about at all hours. I go through the park, or even across the garden, as the shortest way.”
Hetty eyed him once more with the superiority of fact over fiction. She looked at him as if she saw through him, he thought, and, what was worse, undervalued him, and set him down as a deceiver. In reality Hetty was far too much perplexed and disturbed in her mind to come to any such decided conclusion. She was looking at him instinctively to try to make him out. And in this look a great many things were communicated by the one to the other which did not at all involve the immediate question. Hetty saw a face which was full of anxiety, and perhaps of desire to veil a certain secret, but which at the same time was open and true, the countenance of a man in whom guile was not. The true recognise the true, however different may be their mental altitude or position. She thought he was deceiving her, and yet by instinct she believed in him. And he saw, in the young face lifted to him with such troubled questioning, the look of a judge before whose decision he trembled. If she should judge him from the surface, as it was so natural she should—if she took the fiction on his lips for the indication of his character, the young doctor in a moment felt that the work in which he was engaged, and which already his conscience disapproved, would cost him dear.
“Miss Asquith,” he said, hurriedly, “I must not stop to explain. Will you remember, whatever may happen, that I am always about? even when you don’t see anything of me, I’m near. Don’t let yourself be frightened; whatever happens, I am always near.”
“It would be better to tell me what it is. Then I could not be frightened,” said Hetty, with as much calm as she could muster. But before he could reply, he no less than she started at the sound of a step—one step and no more, at which she clutched his arm with terror unspeakable, and he looked quickly round with a look of alarm in which there was no counterfeit. There was but one step, which was a thing to curdle the blood, as it seemed to Hetty, more than any succession of footsteps—one single stealthy step and no more.
“Who is there? Speak,” cried the young doctor, with a voice which was not loud, but seemed to penetrate the intense morning stillness like a knife. And then, while Hetty stood speechless, there suddenly appeared round the corner of the house the paltry figure of Mrs. Mills the housekeeper, in extremely simple morning apparel, with a scared look in her face.
“Oh, Mr. Darrell, is it you?” she cried in her turn, in a voice full of relief.
It would have been embarrassing for an older and more experienced young woman than Hetty to find herself discovered by the housekeeper in close colloquy with young Mr. Darrell, in the early morning before the house was astir. But Hetty was too young for any such feeling. She was frightened, but relieved beyond measure. It is not pleasant to think that even the housekeeper stands and looks in at your window in the grey of the morning before any one is awake. But still this seemed to Hetty, somehow, more possible than if it had been the doctor making mysterious, impossible journeys round the house. Her hand dropped from that clutch upon his arm. She felt restored at once to the practicable world.
“I am trying to persuade Miss Asquith,” he said, “that she heard nothing worse than myself passing through the garden, and that she must not be surprised if she hears me again.”
The woman, who looked pale, as if she had been up all night, melted into an uneasy smile. “No, no, she mustn’t be afraid. There are a many noises about this house,” she said.
“Nothing more than the doctor going his rounds, late or early,” said Darrell; “you will believe Mrs. Mills? And now go back to your room, and I hope you won’t let me disturb your rest again. Remember,” he said, with emphasis, “I’m always about. I’m always near.”
“You’ve got your window all open, miss,” said the housekeeper. “Bless me! it should always be well fastened and the shutters shut. I must give the housemaid a piece of my mind.”
Hetty followed her in, unresisting, as she pushed into the privacy of the room, which on ordinary occasions the girl was jealous of exposing to vulgar eyes, with its little array of photographs and family treasures. Mrs. Mills took no notice of these, but she quickly shut and fastened the window. “It’s very early for you to be up. Don’t you know it’s very awkward for the servants, Miss Asquith, when a young lady takes to getting up at these unearthly hours?”
“I did not mean to trouble anybody. I heard a step, and I opened the window to see what it was.”
“Dear me!” said the housekeeper; “I shouldn’t have done that. What a daring thing for a young lady to do! Supposing it had been housebreakers, and your window so nice and handy for them to step into the house?”
“Do you think it was housebreakers?” Hetty cried.
“Bless you, my child, no, not in daylight. They’re not as bold as that. But another time, Miss Asquith, take my advice, and don’t open your window in that confiding way. You’re always a deal safer with everything shut. And there are always sounds about an old house like this. For my part, I never pay any attention. Have everything well shut and fastened, and then you can’t take any harm, whoever may be about.”
“I thought perhaps,” said Hetty, timidly, “there might be some danger—that it might be right to call some one—that I ought to ring the bell, or something.”
“Bless me!” said the housekeeper again. “You would be as good as an extra watchman for the family. But look here, my dear young lady, don’t you take any trouble. What is the house to you? You’re only a stranger in it. Shut up your window and lock your door, and nothing can harm you. I’ll have it done myself to-night. As for the house, there are plenty to see to that, and no danger of housebreakers here.”
Hetty was very much agitated by these interviews. She found no satisfaction in them. The doctor’s repeated assurance that he was always near was little more consolatory than the housekeeper’s injunctions to shut herself up, and take no concern for the house. Hetty could not understand anything of the kind. To be shut up in shivering safety, a poor little atom of terrified consciousness in the midst of unknown dangers, indifferent to and shut off from everybody around, seemed to her so unnatural, so horrible. She remembered now the chill she had felt when she heard Miss Hofland lock her door. Was it possible to live in a house like this—each shut in, safe under lock and key, and no one taking any interest in the panic or trouble which might be in the next room?
This thought was more strange to Hetty than even the thought of danger. Danger! She had known what it was to feel a thrill of terror when she woke in the night and heard some of those sounds which are always alarming to a watcher: the vague noises of the darkness, sounds exaggerated by the surrounding silence into something inexplainable, mysterious creaks and cracklings. But then there was the sense of habitation in the house, the certainty of father and mother always ready to be appealed to, and at whose appearance all dangers were disarmed. At Horton the sensation was very different. The house felt empty, cold, with a mysterious chill in it, and a few trembling individuals dotted along the side of the house, each shut up in her separate room. This was more dreadful to Hetty than words could say. She was very silent all day, shivering from time to time, extremely pale, as unlike the bright-faced girl she had been a little while before as it is possible to conceive. And they were all very kind. Miss Hofland flew to her favourite idea of a headache and to her favourite expedient of lying on the sofa, which was her panacea for all troubles. “I’ll get you a book, my dear,” she said. “I have a very nice book, which I brought with me. I am sure you have never read it; and now you can lie quite comfortably, and not be disturbed by anything. Going to bed may be better when you have a headache; some people think so: but it is giving in so when you go to bed, and then it’s lonely, and unless you can sleep, I don’t see the advantage. You are just as well on the sofa, and more cheerful. I am afraid Horton is not going to agree with you: and that would be such a bore when we have just got so nicely settled down.”
“I don’t wonder it does not agree with her,” said the housekeeper, “a young lady that sleeps with her window open in this weather.”
“Oh, goodness!” cried Miss Hofland. “A window opening on the park in any weather! You must not do it, my dear. Why, anything might run in—a rabbit or a squirrel out of the woods, or one of the sheep that’s grazing about, or even a cow. Fancy being woke in the middle of the night by a cow! I can’t conceive what I should do—shriek till I brought the house down. Fancy a cow’s breath suddenly puffed out upon you, and a great ‘Mo—oo’ in the middle of the night!”
“A cow’s an innocent thing,” said Mrs. Mills. The housekeeper kept appearing all day, coming in with every meal, keeping an eye upon Hetty. The girl felt this confusedly, though she could not think why it was.
“Oh yes! it is an innocent thing and a nice thing in its proper place. But in your bedroom at the dead of night! My dear, you must consider, if not for your own sake, yet for the sake of other people. I make it a rule to shut up my windows, even in summer. When you get used to living in strange houses that are nothing to you, where you are only for a time, you have to be particular. Why, anybody might come in—a tramp that had got into the park.”
“Don’t frighten the young ladies, Miss Hofland, please. There’s no such thing possible. A tramp could no more get in here than at Windsor Castle. It would be as much as their places were worth to the lodge-keepers. And it’s a thing that never happened. No, it’s an old house, and if any one says there are noises about, that can’t be quite accounted for, well, I’ll not go against them: but as for tramps!” Mrs. Mills cried, with a laugh. The derision in her tone seemed to Hetty to be addressed to herself. What a little fool you are! but at least keep it to yourself, that look seemed to say.
And at night, when they all went to bed, both Miss Hofland and the housekeeper went with Hetty to her room. The latter had given instructions to the housemaid, and everything was fastened in Hetty’s room, the shutters closed, the curtains drawn, a dreadful sense of being shut up and cut off from everything breathing in the motionless air. Hetty gasped, with a feeling that she could not get breath. But the room was large and lofty, and not without air, so that the sensation was imaginative rather than real. There was a bright fire blazing, which made everything look cheerful. “This is what I call comfortable,” Miss Hofland said. “Don’t you think so too, my dear? Those nice soft curtains keep out every bit of draught. I must say they understand comfort in this house. Mine are so thick, if a gale is blowing, I never feel it in the least—and these are nearly as good. Surely you like that better than an open window at this time of the year?”
“Some people have a fad about open windows, and say you should have them all the year through. Some people have a fad about curtains. I don’t blame Miss Asquith, for she’s very young: but I think when a young lady is living with other people she should go by the ways of the house.”
“I don’t see that at all,” said Miss Hofland. “If you’ve any sort of rights, you’ve a right to arrange your own room as you choose, and I have never done otherwise. A lady that has to live in other people’s houses has many things to put up with, but I never should give in to that. All the same, my dear, when you sleep on the ground-floor you can’t be too particular. Now lock the door after me, and you will be as snug and as safe as if you were in a box. Good-night, dear, and sleep well, and don’t mind if you should hear the house tumbling down. It’s no concern of ours.”
With this Miss Hofland crossed the little passage to her own door, and waving her hand, shut and locked it, as Hetty could very well hear. The housekeeper retired by the other, repeating Miss Hofland’s advice. “Just turn the key when I’m gone, and then you’ll be sure nothing can happen to frighten you. And there’s really nothing to frighten any one, only noises such as you hear in every old house.”
Hetty, with a beating heart, did as she was told; and then the oppression of this shut-in solitude and silence came round her like a shroud. The curtains seemed to close round with an ominous envelopment. The straight lines of the walls, with no windows to break them, frightened her as if they were the sides of a box, as Miss Hofland had said. The girl’s nerves were so strained that she burst into one of those youthful tempests of tears which relieve the bosom. She had nothing to cry for, nothing. Comfort, luxurious and elaborate, surrounded her, and no harm was near that she knew of. The fire burned cheerfully; everything was shut out that could frighten or trouble her. For what did Hetty cry, or what had she to fear?
