Kitabı oku: «David Elginbrod», sayfa 22
CHAPTER XXVII. MORE TROUBLES
Come on and do your best
To fright me with your sprites: you’re powerful at it.
You smell this business with a sense as cold As is a dead man’s nose.
A Winter’s Tale.
When Mr. Arnold came home to dinner, and heard of the accident, his first feeling, as is the case with weak men, was one of mingled annoyance and anger. Hugh was the chief object of it; for had he not committed the ladies to his care? And the economy of his house being partially disarranged by it, had he not a good right to be angry? His second feeling was one of concern for his niece, which was greatly increased when he found that she was not in a state to see him. Still, nothing must interfere with the order of things; and when Hugh went into the drawing-room at the usual hour, he found Mr. Arnold standing there in tail coat and white neck-cloth, looking as if he had just arrived at a friend’s house, to make one of a stupid party. And the party which sat down to dinner was certainly dreary enough, consisting only, besides the host himself, of Mrs. Elton, Hugh, and Harry. Lady Emily had had exertion enough for the day, and had besides shared in the shock of Euphra’s misfortune.
Mr. Arnold was considerably out of humour, and ready to pounce upon any object of complaint. He would have attacked Hugh with a pompous speech on the subject of his carelessness, but he was rather afraid of his tutor now;—so certainly will the stronger get the upper hand in time. He did not even refer to the subject of the accident. Therefore, although it filled the minds of all at table, it was scarcely more than alluded to. But having nothing at hand to find fault with more suitable, he laid hold of the first wise remark volunteered by good Mrs. Elton; whereupon an amusing pas de deux immediately followed; for it could not be called a duel, inasmuch as each antagonist kept skipping harmlessly about the other, exploding theological crackers, firmly believed by the discharger to be no less than bomb-shells. At length Mrs. Elton withdrew.
“By the way, Mr. Sutherland,” said Mr. Arnold, “have you succeeded in deciphering that curious inscription yet? I don’t like the ring to remain long out of my own keeping. It is quite an heirloom, I assure you.”
Hugh was forced to confess that he had never thought of it again.
“Shall I fetch it at once?” added he.
“Oh! no,” replied Mr. Arnold. “I should really like to understand the inscription. To-morrow will do perfectly well.”
They went to the drawing-room. Everything was wretched. However many ghosts might be in the house, it seemed to Hugh that there was no soul in it except in one room. The wind sighed fitfully, and the rain fell in slow, soundless showers. Mr. Arnold felt the vacant oppression as well as Hugh. Mrs Elton having gone to Lady Emily’s room, he proposed back gammon; and on that surpassing game, the gentlemen expended the best part of two dreary hours. When Hugh reached his room he was too tired and spiritless for any intellectual effort; and, instead of trying to decipher the ring, went to bed, and slept as if there were never a ghost or a woman in the universe.
His first proceeding, after breakfast next day, was to get together his German books; and his next to take out the ring, which was to be subjected to their analytical influences. He went to his desk, and opened the secret place. There he stood fixed.—The ring was gone. His packet of papers was there, rather crumpled: the ring was nowhere. What had become of it? It was not long before a conclusion suggested itself. It flashed upon him all at once.
“The ghost has got it,” he said, half aloud. “It is shining now on her dead finger. It was Lady Euphrasia. She was going for it then. It wasn’t on her thumb when she went. She came back with it, shining through the dark—stepped over me, perhaps, as I lay on the floor in her way.”
He shivered, like one in an ague-fit.
Again and again, with that frenzied, mechanical motion, which, like the eyes of a ghost, has “no speculation” in it, he searched the receptacle, although it freely confessed its emptiness to any asking eye. Then he stood gazing, and his heart seemed to stand still likewise.
But a new thought stung him, turning him almost sick with a sense of loss. Suddenly and frantically he dived his hand into the place yet again, useless as he knew the search to be. He took up his papers, and scattered them loose. It was all unavailing: his father’s ring was gone as well.
He sank on a chair for a moment; but, instantly recovering, found himself, before he was quite aware of his own resolution, halfway down stairs, on his way to Mr. Arnold’s room. It was empty. He rang for his servant. Mr. Arnold had gone away on horseback, and would not be home till dinner-time. Counsel from Mrs. Elton was hopeless. Help from Euphra he could not ask. He returned to his own room. There he found Harry waiting for him. His neglected pupil was now his only comforter. Such are the revenges of divine goodness.
“Harry!” he said, “I have been robbed.”
“Robbed!” cried Harry, starting up. “Never mind, Mr. Sutherland; my papa’s a justice of the peace. He’ll catch the thief for you.”
“But it’s your papa’s ring that they’ve stolen. He lent it to me, and what if he should not believe me?”
“Not believe you, Mr. Sutherland? But he must believe you. I will tell him all about it; and he knows I never told him a lie in my life.”
“But you don’t know anything about it, Harry.”
“But you will tell me, won’t you?”
Hugh could not help smiling with pleasure at the confidence his pupil placed in him. He had not much fear about being believed, but, at the best, it was an unpleasant occurrence.
The loss of his own ring not only added to his vexation, but to his perplexity as well. What could she want with his ring? Could she have carried with her such a passion for jewels, as to come from the grave to appropriate those of others as well as to reclaim her own? Was this her comfort in Hades, ‘poor ghost’?
Would it be better to tell Mr. Arnold of the loss of both rings, or should he mention the crystal only? He came to the conclusion that it would only exasperate him the more, and perhaps turn suspicion upon himself, if he communicated the fact that he too was a loser, and to such an extent; for Hugh’s ring was worth twenty of the other, and was certainly as sacred as Mr. Arnold’s, if not so ancient. He would bear it in silence. If the one could not be found, there could certainly be no hope of the other.
Punctual as the clock, Mr. Arnold returned. It did not prejudice him in favour of the reporter of bad tidings, that he begged a word with him before dinner, when that was on the point of being served. It was, indeed, exceeding impolitic; but Hugh would have felt like an impostor, had he sat down to the table before making his confession.
“Mr. Arnold, I am sorry to say I have been robbed, and in your house, too.”
“In my house? Of what, pray, Mr. Sutherland?”
Mr. Arnold had taken the information as some weak men take any kind of information referring to themselves or their belongings—namely, as an insult. He drew himself up, and lowered portentously.
“Of your ring, Mr. Arnold.”
“Of—my—ring?”
And he looked at his ring-finger, as if he could not understand the import of Hugh’s words.
“Of the ring you lent me to decipher,” explained Hugh.
“Do you suppose I do not understand you, Mr. Sutherland? A ring which has been in the family for two hundred years at least! Robbed of it? In my house? You must have been disgracefully careless, Mr. Sutherland. You have lost it.”
“Mr. Arnold,” said Hugh, with dignity, “I am above using such a subterfuge, even if it were not certain to throw suspicion where it was undeserved.”
Mr. Arnold was a gentleman, as far as his self-importance allowed. He did not apologize for what he had said, but he changed his manner at once.
“I am quite bewildered, Mr. Sutherland. It is a very annoying piece of news—for many reasons.”
“I can show you where I laid it—in the safest corner in my room, I assure you.”
“Of course, of course. It is enough you say so. We must not keep the dinner waiting now. But after dinner I shall have all the servants up, and investigate the matter thoroughly.”
“So,” thought Hugh with himself, “some one will be made a felon of, because the cursed dead go stalking about this infernal house at midnight, gathering their own old baubles. No, that will not do. I must at least tell Mr. Arnold what I know of the doings of the night.”
So Mr. Arnold must still wait for his dinner; or rather, which was really of more consequence in the eyes of Mr. Arnold, the dinner must be kept waiting for him. For order and custom were two of Mr. Arnold’s divinities; and the economy of his whole nature was apt to be disturbed by any interruption of their laws, such as the postponement of dinner for ten minutes. He was walking towards the door, and turned with some additional annoyance when Hugh addressed him again:
“One moment, Mr. Arnold, if you please.”
Mr. Arnold merely turned and waited.
“I fear I shall in some degree forfeit your good opinion by what I am about to say, but I must run the risk.”
Mr. Arnold still waited.
“There is more about the disappearance of the ring than I can understand.”
“Or I either, Mr. Sutherland.”
“But I must tell you what happened to myself, the night that I kept watch in Lady Euphrasia’s room.”
“You said you slept soundly.”
“So I did, part of the time.”
“Then you kept back part of the truth?”
“I did.”
“Was that worthy of you?”
“I thought it best: I doubted myself.”
“What has caused you to change your mind now?”
“This event about the ring.”
“What has that to do with it? How do you even know that it was taken on that night?”
“I do not know; for till this morning I had not opened the place where it lay: I only suspect.”
“I am a magistrate, Mr. Sutherland: I would rather not be prejudiced by suspicions.”
“The person to whom my suspicions refer, is beyond your jurisdiction, Mr. Arnold.”
“I do not understand you.”
“I will explain myself.”
Hugh gave Mr. Arnold a hurried yet circumstantial sketch of the apparition he believed he had seen.
“What am I to judge from all this?” asked he, coldly, almost contemptuously.
“I have told you the facts; of course I must leave the conclusions to yourself, Mr. Arnold; but I confess, for my part, that any disbelief I had in apparitions is almost entirely removed since—”
“Since you dreamed you saw one?”
“Since the disappearance of the ring,” said Hugh.
“Bah!” exclaimed Mr. Arnold, with indignation. “Can a ghost fetch and carry like a spaniel? Mr. Sutherland, I am ashamed to have such a reasoner for tutor to my son. Come to dinner, and do not let me hear another word of this folly. I beg you will not mention it to any one.”
“I have been silent hitherto, Mr. Arnold; but circumstances, such as the commitment of any one on the charge of stealing the ring, might compel me to mention the matter. It would be for the jury to determine whether it was relevant or not.”
It was evident that Mr. Arnold was more annoyed at the imputation against the nocturnal habits of his house, than at the loss of the ring, or even its possible theft by one of his servants. He looked at Hugh for a moment as if he would break into a furious rage; then his look gradually changed into one of suspicion, and, turning without another word, he led the way to the dining-room, followed by Hugh. To have a ghost held in his face in this fashion, one bred in his own house, too, when he had positively declared his absolute contempt for every legend of the sort, was more than man could bear. He sat down to dinner in gloomy silence, breaking it only as often as he was compelled to do the duties of a host, which he performed with a greater loftiness of ceremony than usual.
There was no summoning of the servants after dinner, however. Hugh’s warning had been effectual. Nor was the subject once more alluded to in Hugh’s hearing. No doubt Mr. Arnold felt that something ought to be done; but I presume he could never make up his mind what that something ought to be. Whether any reasons for not prosecuting the inquiry had occurred to him upon further reflection, I am unable to tell. One thing is certain; that from this time he ceased to behave to Hugh with that growing cordiality which he had shown him for weeks past. It was no great loss to Hugh; but he felt it; and all the more, because he could not help associating it with that look of suspicion, the remains of which were still discernible on Mr. Arnold’s face. Although he could not determine the exact direction of Mr. Arnold’s suspicions, he felt that they bore upon something associated with the crystal ring, and the story of the phantom lady. Consequently, there was little more of comfort for him at Arnstead.
Mr. Arnold, however, did not reveal his change of feeling so much by neglect as by ceremony, which, sooner than anything else, builds a wall of separation between those who meet every day. For the oftener they meet, the thicker and the faster are the bricks and mortar of cold politeness, evidently avoided insults, and subjected manifestations of dislike, laid together.
CHAPTER XXVIII. A BIRD’S-EYE VIEW
O, cocks are crowing a merry midnight,
I wot the wild-fowls are boding day;
Give me my faith and troth again,
And let me fare me on my way.
Sae painfully she clam the wa’,
She clam the wa’ up after him;
Hosen nor shoon upon her feet,
She hadna time to put them on.
Scotch Ballad.—Clerk Saunders.
Dreary days passed. The reports of Euphra were as favourable as the nature of the injury had left room to expect. Still they were but reports: Hugh could not see her, and the days passed drearily. He heard that the swelling was reduced, and that the ankle was found not to be dislocated, but that the bones were considerably injured, and that the final effect upon the use of the parts was doubtful. The pretty foot lay aching in Hugh’s heart. When Harry went to bed, he used to walk out and loiter about the grounds, full of anxious fears and no less anxious hopes. If the night was at all obscure, he would pass, as often as he dared, under Euphra’s window; for all he could have of her now was a few rays from the same light that lighted her chamber. Then he would steal away down the main avenue, and thence watch the same light, whose beams, in that strange play which the intellect will keep up in spite of—yet in association with—the heart, made a photo-materialist of him. For he would now no longer believe in the pulsations of an ethereal medium; but—that the very material rays which enlightened Euphra’s face, whether she waked or slept, stole and filtered through the blind and the gathered shadows, and entered in bodily essence into the mysterious convolutions of his brain, where his soul and heart sought and found them.
When a week had passed, she was so far recovered as to be able to see Mr. Arnold; from whom Hugh heard, in a somewhat reproachful tone, that she was but the wreck of her former self. It was all that Hugh could do to restrain the natural outbreak of his feelings. A fortnight passed, and she saw Mrs. Elton and Lady Emily for a few moments. They would have left before, but had yielded to Mr. Arnold’s entreaty, and were staying till Euphra should be at least able to be carried from her room.
One day, when the visitors were out with Mr. Arnold, Jane brought a message to Hugh, requesting him to walk into Miss Cameron’s room, for she wanted to see him. Hugh felt his heart flutter as if doubting whether to stop at once, or to dash through its confining bars. He rose and followed the maid. He stood over Euphra pale and speechless. She lay before him wasted and wan; her eyes twice their former size, but with half their former light; her fingers long and transparent; and her voice low and feeble. She had just raised herself with difficulty to a sitting posture, and the effort had left her more weary.
“Hugh!” she said, kindly.
“Dear Euphra!” he answered, kissing the little hand he held in his.
She looked at him for a little while, and the tears rose in her eyes.
“Hugh, I am a cripple for life.”
“God forbid, Euphra!” was all he could reply.
She shook her head mournfully. Then a strange, wild look came in her eyes, and grew till it seemed from them to overflow and cover her whole face with a troubled expression, which increased to a look of dull agony.
“What is the matter, dear Euphra?” said Hugh, in alarm. “Is your foot very painful?”
She made no answer. She was looking fixedly at his hand.
“Shall I call Jane?”
She shook her head.
“Can I do nothing for you?”
“No,” she answered, almost angrily.
“Shall I go, Euphra?”
“Yes—yes. Go.”
He left the room instantly. But a sharp though stifled cry of despair drew him back at a bound. Euphra had fainted.
He rang the bell for Jane; and lingered till he saw signs of returning consciousness.
What could this mean? He was more perplexed with her than ever he had been. Cunning love, however, soon found a way of explaining it—A way?—Twenty ways—not one of them the way.
Next day, Lady Emily brought him a message from Euphra—not to distress himself about her; it was not his fault.
This message the bearer of it understood to refer to the original accident, as the sender of it intended she should: the receiver interpreted it of the occurrence of the day before, as the sender likewise intended. It comforted him.
It had become almost a habit with Hugh, to ascend the oak tree in the evening, and sit alone, sometimes for hours, in the nest he had built for Harry. One time he took a book with him; another he went without; and now and then Harry accompanied him. But I have already said, that often after tea, when the house became oppressive to him from the longing to see Euphra, he would wander out alone; when, even in the shadows of the coming night, he would sometimes climb the nest, and there sit, hearing all that the leaves whispered about the sleeping birds, without listening to a word of it, or trying to interpret it by the kindred sounds of his own inner world, and the tree-talk that went on there in secret. For the divinity of that inner world had abandoned it for the present, in pursuit of an earthly maiden. So its birds were silent, and its trees trembled not.
An aging moon was feeling her path somewhere through the heavens; but a thin veil of cloud was spread like a tent under the hyaline dome where she walked; so that, instead of a white moon, there was a great white cloud to enlighten the earth,—a cloud soaked full of her pale rays. Hugh sat in the oak-nest. He knew not how long he had been there. Light after light was extinguished in the house, and still he sat there brooding, dreaming, in that state of mind in which to the good, good things come of themselves, and to the evil, evil things. The nearness of the Ghost’s Walk did not trouble him, for he was too much concerned about Euphra to fear ghost or demon. His mind heeded them not, and so was beyond their influence.
But while he sat, he became aware of human voices. He looked out from his leafy screen, and saw once more, at the end of the Ghost’s Walk, a form clothed in white. But there were voices of two. He sent his soul into his ears to listen. A horrible, incredible, impossible idea forced itself upon him—that the tones were those of Euphra and Funkelstein. The one voice was weak and complaining; the other firm and strong.
“It must be some horrible ghost that imitates her,” he said to himself; for he was nearly crazy at the very suggestion.
He would see nearer, if only to get rid of that frightful insinuation of the tempter. He descended the tree noiselessly. He lost sight of the figure as he did so. He drew near the place where he had seen it. But there was no sound of voices now to guide him. As he came within sight of the spot, he saw the white figure in the arms of another, a man. Her head was lying on his shoulder. A moment after, she was lifted in those arms and borne towards the house,—down the Ghost’s Avenue.
A burning agony to be satisfied of his doubts seized on Hugh. He fled like a deer to the house by another path; tried, in his suspicion, the library window; found it open, and was at Euphra’s door in a moment. Here he hesitated. She must be inside. How dare he knock or enter?
If she was there, she would be asleep. He would not wake her. There was no time to lose. He would risk anything, to be rid of this horrible doubt.
He gently opened the door. The night-light was burning. He thought, at first, that Euphra was in the bed. He felt like a thief, but he stole nearer. She was not there. She was not on the couch. She was not in the room. Jane was fast asleep in the dressing-room. It was enough.
He withdrew. He would watch at his door to see her return, for she must pass his door to reach her own. He waited a time that seemed hours. At length—horrible, far more horrible to him than the vision of the ghost—Euphra crept past him, appearing in the darkness to crawl along the wall against which she supported herself, and scarcely suppressing her groans of pain. She reached her own room, and entering, closed the door.
Hugh was nearly mad. He rushed down the stair to the library, and out into the wood. Why or whither he knew not.
Suddenly he received a blow on the head. It did not stun him, but he staggered under it. Had he run against a tree? No. There was the dim bulk of a man disappearing through the boles. He darted after him. The man heard his footsteps, stopped, and waited in silence. As Hugh came up to him, he made a thrust at him with some weapon. He missed his aim. The weapon passed through his coat and under his arm. The next moment, Hugh had wrenched the sword-stick from him, thrown it away, and grappled with—Funkelstein. But strong as Hugh was, the Bohemian was as strong, and the contest was doubtful. Strange as it may seem—in the midst of it, while each held the other unable to move, the conviction flashed upon Hugh’s mind, that, whoever might have taken Lady Euphrasia’s ring, he was grappling with the thief of his father’s.
“Give me my ring,” gasped he.
An imprecation of a sufficiently emphatic character was the only reply. The Bohemian got one hand loose, and Hugh heard a sound like the breaking of glass. Before he could gain any advantage—for his antagonist seemed for the moment to have concentrated all his force in the other hand—a wet handkerchief was held firmly to his face. His fierceness died away; he was lapt in the vapour of dreams; and his senses departed.
